Girls Who Play Guitars

•no more rules, okay?•

~PORT LAGAN BEACH~

Ellie and Kim sat close together on the sand below the balcony, hugging their knees, away from the crowd. It was the only place they wouldn't be interrupted. It had taken them an hour to get outside once they'd wrapped their mini-set and Ellie had been hugged and made a fuss of by friends and family and people she kinda, sorta, didn't really know or remember.

"What are you gonna do when you get back to Melbourne?" Ellie leaned her head on her arms and looked at Kim sideways under the wavering patio lights, the cool breeze from the ocean playing across her cheeks.

Kim shrugged and pulled the collar of her denim jacket around her neck. "Check everything over with Brenin. Go over our finances. Make sure everything's in order before we start the tour again."

"Just take a break," Ellie suggested. "You don't need to do all that by yourself. Meg and me will be back in a few days."

Kim looked at her hands; stretched her fingers. "I need to keep busy."

Ellie nudged Kim with her elbow. "Why'd you shave your hair off? I mean, it looks awesome. But why? I would've done it for you."

"There's no way I'd let you anywhere near my head with a pair of scissors," Kim stated, then shifted her gaze out to the inky blackness of the sea in the distance. "When you weren't in your hotel room  ...  I just thought  ...  fuck it."

"I'm sorry."

Kim glanced at her. "You don't have to be sorry. I'd had too much to drink. Too much weed. All I wanted to do was piss my parents off. They kept going on and on at me on the phone about my hair being purple. So I thought, stuff ya. If I rock up with no hair, they've got nothing to complain about. They went psycho. Blamed it on you, actually."

Ellie shook her head, picturing Kim's dad's stern face. The whole time she'd known him, he'd whinged and moaned at her about being a bad influence on Kim. Broken record, Ellie used to say back to him under her breath. "Got a smoke?"

Kim pulled a packet of cigarettes and lighter out of her jacket pocket and offered them to Ellie. "Nothing I've ever done is good enough," she sighed.

Ellie glanced at Kim as she flicked at the lighter, cupping her hand around the flickering, glowing flame to light her cigarette. "You don't need to think about them anymore. Once you're out of here, all you need to do is create some sick drum licks for our new tunes."

"They want me to get married, you know? Have kids. 'Settle down'."

"Is that what you want?"

Kim snorted. "That's not what I want at all. The total opposite."

Ellie breathed in the acrid cigarette. It filled her with a harsh burn at the back of her throat, but it was what she needed right now. "What do you want?"

"To make music. Play drums. Hang with you and Megsy. Get shit done."

"I want that too." Ellie breathed out a satisfyingly long cloud of smoke and turned to look at Kim. "But some things have to change, Kimmie. You know that, right?"

Kim chewed on her lip; her eyes focused far down the beach on the shadowed roll of waves. When she said nothing, Ellie put her hand on her arm and didn't say anything either, just sucked on the cigarette again and watched the sparks fly away with the breeze as the faint, foamy waves sloshed across the rocks on the headland in the distance.

Hugging her knees closer to her body, Kim rested her forehead on them and Ellie wrapped her arm around her friend's shoulders, pulling her close; felt Kim shivering in her hold.