In My Hour of Need

Chapter 10

After firing the two fuckers, me and Junior left them in Demark and flew back to L.A. The plan was actually to fly straight to our next gig, which was in Paris, but that wasn't until October 8th, and we had to find a new guitarist.

When we arrived in L.A. it was already October 1st, which meant that we only had a week to find a guitarist who could learn all our songs in a matter of days, and was willing to play with us in Paris. Damn. Why did the rock-star life have to be such a dick to us? Anyway, while thinking of all the people we knew who could just be a replacement until we found a better one, me and Junior wasted time drinking coffee at our place. "How about Kerry?", Junior suggested. I looked at him. "Nah, Kerry's got Slayer now", I said, "How about Kirk?" Junior started laughing. "Kirk? I thought you hated that guy!", he giggled. "I do", I laughed, "That's why I was ironic, dumbass". We laughed at Metallica for about 5 minutes before continuing our extremely serious conversation about guitarists. Then I thought of a guy I knew called Jay Reynolds, whom I met in context with Chris. He also knew his ways around a guitar, and I thought it would be a good idea to make him join. So Junior and I called him up, and met with him about an hour later at his place. Jay said he wanted to join, and if he really went in for it, he could be able to learn all our songs in that one single week he had. This was perfect.

We stuck around at Jay's place for a while, and then after some hours, what I at first thought was a really ugly girl, appeared. It turned out to be a guy though, a guy called Jeff Young, who was actually Jay's teacher. "He's your teacher?", Junior said, raising an eyebrow. "Yeah", Jay answered, and turned to Jeff, "He's currently teaching me some guitar stuff, and I called him up to help me out with your songs". I rolled my eyes. Wow, this guy seriously needed someone to help him play? That's so not metal, dude. It turned out, however, that his teacher, Jeff Young, was actually a better guitarplayer than Jay himself, so we talked him into joining the band permanently, instead of Jay.

Some hours later, the four of us, me, Junior, Chuck and Jeff were on our way to Paris, to spend the rest of our week there instead of in fucking lame Los Angeles. The flight took almost 12 hours, so we had quite a trip in front of us, and Junior and I were already fucking tired of traveling across Europe and America. Around midnight I turned to Junior. "Dude", I whispered, to not wake up Chuck and Jeff. Luckily for me, Junior's a light sleeper, so I only had to say it once. He slowly opened his eyes, rubbed them, and turned to me. "Hm?", he said with his dark, tired voice. "Dude, I'm bored, stay awake with me", I said. I didn't realize at the time how much of an asshole I was being, but Junior was actually kind enough to talk with me through the night. As we talked, I realized that he mattered more to me than I had thought before. I actually cared for him. After a while, though, he fell asleep on my shoulder, probably exhausted after sleepless nights and too many concerts, too close to eachother. He didn't even snore. I just carefully listened to him breathing, and I could feel his heartbeats. I rested my head on his, and finally fell asleep too.