Motley Crue - You're All I Need (Vince Neil/Nikki Sixx/Tommy Lee/Heather)

61: Hold On Loosely

~ Vince's POV ~

- a month later -

Over the past few weeks, so much of my time was spent at the studio. It was probably half and half between home and the studio. I enjoyed both rather equally, depending on the day of course.

Some days, it was hard to be home. Mostly it was exhausting, Maria waking up more than ever these days. And Amanda was always so tired from feeding Maria and trying to get back into her artwork, that I tried to get up to care for her as much as I could when she cried in the middle of the night.

The studio work was also exhausting, but in a different way. We had moved on to recording the final versions of every song, nearly being done at this point. It was not our best album yet, but we all really gave it our all. Except that Nikki had this weird attitude about him lately, and I couldn't quite make out what it was.

We had gotten into a few arguments, to say the least. They were about anything from me not singing a song perfectly, to me needing to head home at eleven at night so that I could say goodnight to my girls before they went to sleep.

One night, I got so fed up with Nikki's whining about my performance, that I agreed to go to the bar with him to talk things through after we had wrapped things up that night.

"I just don't think you're putting the band first," Nikki said, ordering himself another glass of whiskey.

I knew that I shouldn't have been drinking, but I allowed myself to have a couple of beers as we hashed all of this out.

"So what if I'm not," I said hastily.

"You said you would," Nikki said in a demanding tone.

"And you know what?" I asked, raising my voice now. "I have been, but I'm fucking sick of missing out on seeing my daughter grow up."

"She's like a month and a half old," Nikki said, rolling his eyes. "Get over yourself already."

"Next thing you know, we'll be leaving for the tour," I began, leaning in closer to him and making the tone of my voice more serious now. "And then she'll be two years old."

"Not our problem," Nikki said in a harsh tone.

"I can't believe you," I said suddenly. "You weren't this harsh with Tommy when he had his kids."

"Yeah, because Tommy wasn't being a little bitch about all of it," Nikki said, ordering another drink.

"Sorry that I love my family," I said, pushing away my empty beer bottle and shaking my head at the bartender to signal that I didn't want another one.

"I love mine too," Nikki said, speaking in a humble voice.

"Oh yeah?" I asked suddenly. "And who's that?" I spoke harshly, but I hardly cared anymore. He was being such a dick to me lately that I didn't really care if I was hurting his feelings.

"You guys," Nikki said, giving me a true look of hurt now.

"I'm sorry," I said, standing up from the bar counter and leaving a twenty on the table to cover my share of the tab and a tip.

I turned away and headed out for my car, knowing that I shouldn't be drinking period, let alone drink and then drive. But I wasn't exactly in a place right now to care about that much. I got about halfway home before there was red and blue lights shining in my rear view mirror. I sighed heavily and pulled over onto the side of the road.

"License and registration," the police officer said to me after I cranked down my window.

I grabbed the cards from my wallet and handed them over, the cop looking down at them disapprovingly.