Despite all my dreaming, I wake up alone.
I cling to the haze of it for a few seconds, the sleep-warmth of hope before I turn over to find the other side of my bed is empty and the back, the face, I'd dreamt of tracing my fingertips over is god knows where.
Amsterdam. They'd played a show in Amsterdam last night.
There was a mole, just to the left of his spine, a few inches shy of the tattoo across his shoulder blades. The way that running my fingers over those lines had felt was dimmer sometimes, but I knew that small, dark spot in the expanse of pale skin and black ink. That was my favourite place to drop my lips. It always tasted like salt and whatever cigarette ash was lingering in my mouth.
The wrench through my chest leaves my throat tight. If I asked, I wonder if I could do it again. Just once. Just enough to leave that memory pristine, so I could run over it for the rest of my life.
"Evening luv," I look across from my pillow to where Cam is inconveniently at eye level, messy hair curling out from under his beanie, extending a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. I take a long swallow, longing for the days when I kept something stronger under my pillow for the mornings, before reaching out to take my usual pack of Reds and the latest in a long string of lighters. I always seem to have a working one and I can't really bring myself to thank whoever provides me with the tools to continue my vices.
Vices. Fuck.
Cam is pulling the kind of face he always does when it takes me too long to answer and he can guess exactly what I'm thinking about.
The sour taste in my mouth and the dull throbbing in my temples confirms what the empty bottle of whisky at the foot of my bed is saying. There's likely a pen and my notebook scattered somewhere. It seems that's the recipe for success. Fuck yourself past oblivion, pour the worst parts of your soul out and the world will call you a genius and scream for you to bleed, catching all the blood as it falls and calling it art and not caring what it takes.
"Fuck off," I mutter, as it takes me a matter of seconds to get one between my teeth and flick the wheel I'm sure has calloused my fingers more than my guitar. Even so, that first drag is such sweet relief I shudder with it. Too long without the nicotine some days and my hands start to shake. That's what they take out of all of their photographs and magazine shoots. No one sees the smoke haze or any of the pain that lingers, the pain that makes the songs they all love to scream the words to.
"We're almost to Stockholm and Claire's phoning later, wants to talk to all of us," the words are pointed, "you need to decide on a title soon."
"Yeah, yeah I'm working on it," which Cam well knows means I have no idea, "how long before we're there?"
"Three, four if you're quick," I nod and take a long drag that I feel the whole way to the bottom of my lungs. It's enough time that maybe the nicotine will kick in before I have to figure out what to do with myself.
I should ask him what he does now that I'm spending my nights drinking too much alcohol and scrawling words on every available piece of paper and on skirting boards in hotel rooms. I'll do it when I've gotten all the music out. But the reminder that Cam is happy with his girlfriend and actually has his shit together will either make me scratch out everything I've written or just stop writing anything altogether. Instead, we've reached the agreement that when we start counting time in cigarettes instead of minutes that nothing needs to be said.
"She said to tell you you're in the studio for a couple days when we hit our city. Time for a few dozen smokes and whatever all of this ends up as."
