Read Online #Kissing (Rock and Romance #1) by Ellie Brixton - Free Book Online

says. "We aren't topping the charts because of your charisma or talent. If I have to get it figured out myself, I will. It's one of the things I excel at, making music happen. And Chatta-whatever-the-fuck is going to see the Halos."
    There's a social media shit storm with contests and eager fans parsing out clues the four band members leave on their various platforms.
    The night culminates in a dive bar called the Pour House. Actual peanut shells litter the floor. The room is a sweaty, heaving mass and that's before the music starts.
    While Niko tunes his guitar, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth in an iconic money shot for posterity and paparazzi, I push to the front of the crowd.
    When he starts singing the chorus to the song Rock and Roll Rebellion , I go mad, out of control, flailing, and dancing, living wild. It could also have to do with the whisky from the distillery we toured earlier. I needed this release after the long days on the bus. The music flows through me, making me drunker than the booze.
    By the time they play Show us your Tits everyone's practically torn their clothes off with the fever of the Halo's music. It penetrates the layer of reality we convince ourselves we dwell in and carries us into a frenzy, into wondrous fury, transcending the point of doubt that begs us, every morning, when we fight to waking, to ask is this all there is?
    With music, there is always more. And it's always better. It's better than believing we're alone, invisible, living in tortured silence even when our lips form words and sound, yet fall on deaf ears. I know this experience intimately.
    After the set and despite our general dislike for each other, Jill and I find common ground with a bottle of whisky generously provided by the barman. Fortunately, there's plenty of it at the Pour House: malts, ryes, American, Canadian, English, Finnish, Bourbon, and blended.
    We sit on the bar, passing the bottle back and forth. Someone coaxes the two of us into playing a game called Slip it in . We take turns inserting various phrases tossed out from the crowd into sentences. I'm not sure if the point is for them to make sense or to get a laugh. We swap shots of increasingly higher proof whisky as the crowd urges us on.
    The game morphs into something beyond ridiculous or maybe that's me, slipping from sobriety and into mischief. "Let's up the ante," I say when Jill loses, taking three shots in a row. The crowd serves as the judging body and so far, they declare me the winner.
    I slide across the bar, swinging my legs underneath me to land on the other side. I survey the distilled potions in glass bottles and whisper to the bartender, "Can you make a fireball?"
    With a smile as wide as Tennessee, he says, "You're dangerous."
    I reply with a laugh that I'm sure can be heard throughout the state.
    He mixes up whisky, rum, soda water, and some kind of schnapps. With a showman's flare, he lights the surface of the liquid on fire, and sets it on the lacquered bar between Jill and me. Blue flame flickers like a distant, giant star. The room hushes. Maybe we all make wishes. Mine is that I don't implode.
    A commanding voice from the gathered crowd shouts, "Flaming beaver."
    Game back on. Apparently, that's the phrase we have to slip in .
    Without hesitating Jill says, "The flaming beaver jumped over the log and into the pond." Only it sounds more like, "Da faming diver jumped over god into the pod."
    "The flaming beaver went home to her boyfriend to get laid." I wink at the crowd. "That was for you redheads."
    They roar with laughter. Inserting sex into sexual innuendo works every time, at least with this group.
    Instead of Jill taking the shot, everyone chants, "Josie, Josie, Josie," demanding I take it. I suppose I am dangerous.
    The glass is hot in my hand, but not as much as the whisky already in my throat. I lift it over my head, knowing it'll go out any second, but instead of bringing it to my lips in my seated position, I clamber to my