Chezdon

Blood’s pissing down my arm like it’s on piecework, a sticky, throbbing line from the Hard Rock to this grand Mediterranean wank palace they’ve slapped the Hyatt logo on. My skull’s a bonfire, pounding like I’ve necked a litre of unleaded, and my legs are firing like I’m a mangy fox legging it from a Micra full of lads twatted on Stella. The lift stinks of piss, stale fags and a decade’s worth of Lynx Africa. Some city tosser in a salmon shirt clocks me, shoves his dolled-up missus into the corner like I’m Jack the Ripper on work experience. Their kid — proper gremlin face, snot caked like Pritt Stick — gawps up at me like he’s seen the Devil in JD Sports. I bare my teeth, proper feral grin, blood spraying the stainless steel like I’m finger painting with AIDS. “Don’t cry, sunshine,” I rasp, voice shredded raw. “It’s only contagious if you lick it.”

The Sydney rooftop doesn’t feel like Melbourne. In Melbourne, parties are messy, stupid, loud — here, they’re slick and dangerous, all glitter and teeth. Jeremy’s already swallowed a pill someone handed him in the stairwell. He doesn’t even ask what it is, just grins like it’s a dare. By the time we hit the roof, he’s on some bloke’s lap — the guy’s thirty if he’s a day, suit jacket off, Rolex flashing under the fairy lights. Jeremy’s playing the clown, cigarette dangling, but the man’s hand doesn’t move off his thigh. I clock the phones immediately. Always filming. Always waiting. They want the Sunrise boy drunk, high, shirtless — anything that’ll play viral tomorrow. “Jayden! Do the weather!” someone shouts, and the crowd laughs. I force a grin, point at the skyline and toss out, “Cloudy with a chance of regret.” They roar. I keep it quick, keep it safe. No swearing, no skin. Never give them the clip that’ll kill my career.