Stan rubbed his hand across his stomach, wishing he could read the minds of the people in front of him. Jez looked slightly less murderous. Summer was crying, tears silently slipping down her cheeks.
“Then go back to the Brixton Academy, where you broke out. That’s how you tour this next album. Not by dragging yourselves around the world, but by going home and saying thank you.”
Jez opened his eyes and raised his hand. The others still had their eyes closed, so Stan held up a finger—one moment—and Jez nodded, his expression softening.
“You’re one of the biggest bands to come out of the UK for years, but, guys… I don’t know where you go from here. And I don’t think you do either. Neither does anyone else. What if you’re not the band who keeps doing what they’ve always done, what all bands always do, but you change it up? Over the summer you can play some of the biggest festivals in the world without ever leaving the UK. And if you want to occasionally go to Coachella or Lollapalooza, then go for it. On your terms, though.
“Do you know what would really shake the status quo? If you turned up at Buck Shot one night and asked to open for whatever local band are playing. Can you imagine? Back when you were starting out? If someone like Ares now came and asked to open for Ares then. Go and play open mic nights. Go and play tiny venues all over the country with no notice. Open at Reading and Leeds, headline Glastonbury. Play the little festivals too, the ones with a few thousand people who just want to listen to live music.
“You can be the band that changed everything, not because you’re determined to keep getting bigger, but because you turned around and insisted that you know who you are. You know where you’re from. And that’s good enough.”
Summer sniffed and pushed her hands against her eyes. Geordie got up and went to her, pulling her into a hug and letting her cry against his shoulder.
Jez stuck his hand up again.
“The record label would never let us,” he said bluntly.
“I don’t see why not,” Tone said.
“Tone.” Stan shook his head.
“We’re too big to go back,” Jez said. “It sounds good, what you’re saying, but you’re forgetting that we’re pretty much owned by the record label these days.”
Stan nodded. “You’re in a five-album contract?”
“Yeah. This is number four.”
Tone raised his hand.
“This is album four,” he echoed. “They put out a greatest hits or an acoustic album for number five, and we’re done. We’ve got a shitload of unreleased material, they can do something with that.”
“We still need to tour it, though,” Jez said. “And I really don’t like the idea of half-arsing our last album.”
Stan nodded. “I think you might need to lay it all out for them in a meeting. Sit down and put together a proper proposal, one that you’re all on board with. Look, Jez, you know I don’t know the music industry. I’m not going to pretend to. But I do know about influence.”
He looked around the room at them all, the ragtag group of musicians whose careers had been born in the back room of a bar in Camden.
“If your record label thinks the options are losing Ben from the band and having to deal with the fallout from that, or keeping you all together and letting you do things your own way, well, I think they’d be willing to listen.”
“The Spice Girls were never the same after Geri left,” Tone said sagely.
Summer snorted a laugh. “And One Direction broke up after Zane quit,” she added.
“Great,” Ben muttered. “I get to be fucking Ginger Spice.”
Stan smiled at him across the table.
Summer held her hand up and waited for Stan’s nod, even though it wasn’t really necessary any more, not now they were communicating like actual adults.
“I want to keep making music with you guys,” she said. “I honestly don’t care if that’s writing songs in the basement of some shitty shared house or in a recording studio in LA. You’re all my family now. As long as we’re all together, that’s what’s important.”
Geordie wrapped his arm around her shoulder and fixed Jez with a stare. “Could you give it all up?” he asked bluntly. “I know you like working out in the States.”
“There’s no reason why we can’t all work on other projects too,” Jez said with a shrug. “I think it would be good for us.”
“Ben’s been working on an EP,” Tone said.
“Fuck off,” Ben said and shoved him off the barstool.
“Have you?” Summer asked.
“Yeah,” Ben grumbled. “It’s just for me, though. I’m not releasing it or anything.”
“But that’s good,” Jez insisted. “Why can’t we go and do those projects, work on other things, but still come back together to do the Ares stuff as well?”
“We can,” Tone said. “There’s nothing stopping us. Except the label.”
“Geordie wants to go to do his DJ house music bullshit—”
“Hey,” Geordie complained, but Jez kept going.
“There’s always been stuff we’ve written that wasn’t right for Ares, but we liked it anyway.”
“Can I say something?” Stan asked. Jez nodded and the group fell silent again. “I think it would be good for you all to go away and write down on your own what you want from the next five years. For your personal life, and for the band, and the types of projects you want to do. Going back to that influence thing… if you’re able to go to your management team and say look, this is what we have planned, then you’re the ones driving those conversations. You’re in control.”
“Yeah,” Summer said. “That could work.”
“Good.” Stan chugged the last of his water. “I need a fucking nap.”
Ben followed him out of the kitchen and silently followed Stan upstairs, back to their old bedroom.
“Can I hug you now?” he asked when Stan shut the door behind them.
Stan gave him a tired smile and curled in on himself as he leaned into Ben’s embrace.
“I missed you,” Ben murmured against the top of Stan’s head. “I know it was only a few days, but I missed you.”
“I missed you too.” Stan turned his head so he could kiss the underside of Ben’s jaw. “I’m sorry for telling you about meeting Marcus when we were on the phone. That was a shitty thing to do.”
“You don’t need to apologise.”
“No, I do.”
It had been grating on him ever since—not the guilt from meeting Marcus for coffee; he didn’t think there was anything wrong with that. But telling Ben when they were so far away from each other, when Ben couldn’t do anything about it and Stan couldn’t reassure him in person.
“I just worry about you. If anyone’s going to ditch on this relationship, it’s not going to be me.”
Stan stiffened. “I’m not going to ditch either,” he said. He stepped back, out of Ben’s arms.
“You’re the one with a whole world out there, Stan,” Ben said. “I wouldn’t blame you if you decided you wanted to go out and explore it.”