Adam turns at that, his arms crossed, looking seriously unimpressed. “Whatever you’re insinuating,” he begins loudly, “is probably true.” And he grins, like he’s so damn proud of himself.
He’s looking at Kat — but Kat, red-faced, avoids his eyes. It’s a curious thing, and I observe this interplay — or lack thereof — between the two with fascination.
“I’m gonna head upstairs to train,” Adam drawls, still staring at Kat.
I raise an eyebrow. “You’re not eating?”
He shrugs. “I’ll build up a sweat.”
Kat’s eyes flicker slightly at that, like she’s replaying his words over in her head.
“I, uh,” she starts, dropping her spoon to the bowl with a clatter, “uh, I’m going to grab my camera. To test it out.”
And she rushes off into her room, slamming the door behind her.
The moment she leaves, I ask him, “What’s the deal with you two?” I’m aware that I’m way outside the zone of regular talk. This seems more serious, somewhere I don’t belong.
Adam shrugs. “She’s the one who doesn’t look at me. Ask her.”
That isn’t fair; Kat looked at him loads when his back was turned. “You don’t look at her.”
“I do.”
“Yeah, when she’s not looking at you. It’s weird, man. I think she’s just shy.”
“She’s not shy around you. What the hell were you two talking about last night, anyway?”
I smile at him grimly. “MCM.”
“Ah.”
Kat reenters the kitchen again, armed this time with a large, impressive-looking DSLR. Her cheeks are still red. The camera has several attachments, like a flash and a microphone and a lens as long as my, uh...
She twiddles a few sliders on the screen and says, “I’m about to record you, if that’s okay?”
As I nod, she slides on a headset and hits the record button.
I sit there, not really sure what to do. Kat motions at me to say something but words have somehow failed me. It’s not often I’m the one with the camera trained on me. That’s usually Adam. In my peripheral vision, the man himself is waving his arms behind Kat, trying to distract me.
“Hi, Adam,” I say, smiling widely down the lens, my eyes not leaving his.
Kat whips round and sees Adam performing his attention-seeking jazz hands. She picks up the camera and turns it on him. A vague sense of relief runs through my veins.
“Is there anything you want to say?” she asks, surprisingly more confident when she’s looking at Adam through the lens of a camera.
I wonder...
Adam, at home on camera, raises his middle fingers and declares in a strong voice, “Fuck MCM.”
Kat sighs, echoing my own. “Is there anything you actually want to say?”
“MCM are a bunch of robbing, thieving, draconian, segregationist, neo-lib, capitalist cunts who prey on the hard work, talent, and vulnerabilities of hardworking musicians to exploit them for every cent they earn.”
Holy crap.
Kat leans back into the table, apparently in shock from the ferocity of Adam’s tirade. She peels her headphones back from her ears. “That’s, uh... that’s certainly tested my sound levels out. I think we’re okay.”
“Wait, wait,” Adam says, gesturing at Kat to switch the camera back on. “I have one more thing to say.”
Hesitantly, she raises the camera up to her eyeline and presses record.
His face blooms into focus, occupying the whole of the screen so that I can see every pixel of him as I stand behind Kat’s shoulder.
“I really wish you’d look at me one of these days, Kat Galbraith.” His smile is wide, even when the camera almost slips from Kat’s grasp. Adam catches it at the base single-handedly.
Smooth bastard.
Kat appears to have frozen entirely on her chair. She draws her camera down to her lap and pulls off her headset, still not acknowledging Adam or his words. Adam looks amused more than anything.
“I think we’re good,” she says quietly, before sliding off her stool and returning to her room.
I glare at him. “What was that?”
He looks so damn pleased with himself. “What?”
“The only girl we’ve met in ages and you go chase her off with whatever creepy shit that was?”
He laughs. “Not creepy. Necessary. I get her now. She’ll come round, don’t you worry.”
Apprehension prickles through me. “Come round to what?”
And Adam leans into my ear and whispers, “Us.”
He’s got a plan, and I’m not sure I’ll like it.
FOR TWO HOURS EVERY day, there is mandatory fitness training on the upper deck of the tour bus. We can take it either in one whole block of two hours, or split it up an hour each session. I don’t disagree with the need for some basic exercise — we spend the majority of our time on this blasted tour bus, after all. I do object to having to write down our shifts every day in an exercise log.
In a previous meeting, MCM suggested installing CCTV cameras so they could keep track of our regime. We shot that down pretty swiftly, but had to negotiate away all our game consoles for the privilege.
It’s things like this that really mess with you. You’re thinking you’re the star here — and a thousand different media sources and millions of fans would agree with that. But it’s this faceless corporation in the corner that really has all the control. Adam’s right: fuck them, seriously.
Tarek’s early morning ritual is to go big on the weights. From one pound to one hundred pounds and more, he’ll do them all a hundred times over. Adam’s favorite is pull-ups — he does bodyweight training and thinks it’s more natural than lifting. Leon is weirdly into yoga and all that stuff. When we hit civilization, he rents out a pool for a couple of hours for an intense water-based workout. At first I thought it was him talking out his ass to barter with MCM so he didn’t have to work out as often in the gym, but when I finally saw him swim... guy’s like a flipping dolphin.
Conor tries to get away with doing the least amount of work. He hates it here in the gym. He’s the skinniest out of all of us and isn’t into any kind of weight training. He once asked MCM for a trampoline — I guess because he thought it’d be fun — but MCM said it was too dangerous; if he banged his head on the ceiling — and Conor would — there would be grounds for an insurance claim. Adam also pointed out that jumping while on a moving vehicle would be a disaster, according to Newton’s third law of motion. Adam talks a lot and thinks he knows a lot, but I’m sure he just makes most of it up.
Me? I prefer the bikes. It’s gentler for sure, since you’re on your ass most of the time, but the heat in your calves when you get going is a pain that borders on addictive.
MCM want us in tip-top shiny boy band condition, which is why we have the best fitness equipment this side of the Olympics.
“You know what we need to do?” Tarek says, slowly easing down the giant barbell he’s been hoisting for about ten reps.
Leon glances up at him from his half-moon pose.
“We need to take down MCM.”
Adam drops from the bars with a puffed-out laugh as he lands on his feet.