bradies pov
Post show the backstage area was buzzing, everyone reflecting on how great the show was. The whole area smelt like sweat, deodorant mixed with sweat, along with assorted alcohol type smells.
I was covered in head to toe sweat, after putting every ounce of what I had into our performance, i hated seeing those bands who put on a halfass show after people had done so much to come see them. And I aimed to never put anything less than 110% into my performances. But tonight my heart just wasn’t in it, it felt like that time after stack is the new black when we felt we couldn’t keep this up. Like it was all an act, and the performance was over. We didn’t need to pretend any more.
I got changed and cleaned myself up as much as possible, grabbed a bottle of juice and went to find my band. Is it weird to refer to them as my band? Maybe my fellow band guys would be better?
I found Andy totally naked, except for a very small g-string, this wasn’t anything new, I’d seen far far more of Andy’s body than I’d ever needed too, but you learnt pretty quickly to just look away.
He was still high off the show, creeping out because they can by being Andy. He had a drink in one hand, still dancing around.
He was happy, and obviously he wasn’t feeling like me.
That’s the thing, Andy never seemed to feel like me. We were so different, and I always used to wish I could be more confident like him. Not any more.
It took much longer to find Shaun, he ended up being in a corner with that Isabelle chick. He looked awful now he’d taken all his stage makeup off, and I could see he’d been close to tears again.
As I got closer I could see he had one hand entwined in isabelle’s and the other wrapped around some sort of drink. It was so stupid, because he’d put up such a fuss about Ashley and now he was holding hands with some random reporter? If he remembered in the morning, he was going to bash himself up over it.
He was so obviously drunk it wasn’t funny, he kept slurring his words and the way he was swaying slightly was so obvious.
Seeing Shaun and Andy smashed wasn’t such an unusual occurrence for me, since they were young they’d get smashed and I’d be the responsible one left to take control.
Seeing this made me feel even worse, we were falling apart, and we were supposed to be a band.
I knew Shaun wasn’t coping, and I knew that nobody wasn’t expecting him to fall apart so damn hard and fast. He was the leader, and usually the one who held us together.
Looks like that was up to bradie now doesn’t it?
Racheal had been gone all afternoon, and I wouldn’t see her again until tomorrow night so that left me with almost zero choice of someone to talk to. There was Imogen, but she was busy with jumpnows tongue down her throat. She was my baby sister, and I’d spent so long looking for her, I didn’t know how much longer I could stand her being with jumpnow. I was so protective, and it was stupid.
But he’s happy, she’s happy so I left them alone to swap more spit.
The only other person I could find that wasn’t busy was Jimmy, we’d never been as close as he and Andy were, and sometimes he looked at me with a funny expression. It felt like he didn’t even know why I was still in this band, when I was so different from everyone else in it.
I had always been the positive one, the one who’d always be looking on the bright side, but tonight it all seemed to be catching up to me way to fast.
I was just about to talk to Jimmy when the venue manager finally gave us the green light to go out and meet fans. All negativity aside, this wasn’t about me. It was about the fans.
It was past 1am by now, over 2 hours since our show finished yet there were so many people waiting, and seeing their faces light up when they saw us still had that same amazing feeling.
