Changes

"Is she going to be okay?" Robert asked quietly.
"I think so." Mike replied. Billie just grunted. He hadn't forgotten the argument he'd had with the young singer.
"She's not...on anything, is she?" Blondie asked.
"No. She'd just been drinking. I'd've heard something if she'd been drinking."

Then silence ruled again, smothering them like a cloud.

Tony was sleeping, flushed and sweaty. Billie dropped into the chair by her bed, watching as her band, as his band drifted away.

For the rest of the night, Tony twisted and turned. Then she leapt out of bed and threw up over the balconey.

Billie just held her hair back and sang quietly to her.

And the entire time, in the back of his mind, the snatches of song he'd heard outside the club haunted him. Had that really been Tony, singing that song? Had that voice belonged to this drunken, vomiting young woman beside him?

But before he had time to ponder it any further, Tony collapsed to her knees and moaned his name weakly.

She needed him.

And, oddly, the thought was not as horrible as Billie thought it would be.