I slid a hand underneath Mace’s chin and tilted his head up toward me. He let me, but he just raised the phone higher to keep his eyes on the game.
“Come on babe, I know I’m late, but we only have until noon before Sam kicks us out.”
“Yeah, yeah, just hold on. I can’t stop running. If I look away, I’m going to die.”
Maybe I was still a little angry about how easily he bailed on me earlier or maybe I was just a bitch, but I snatched his phone out of his hand and held it behind me.
“MAX! Come on!” He reached for the phone, but we both heard the sound of the game ending.
“God, Max, sometimes you can be a real bitch.”
For a split second, Cade’s face popped into my head, but I pushed it away.
I said, “Yeah, well, you’re a dick most of the time. Deal with it.”
There was only a little heat in my words. I tucked his phone into his front pant pocket, and used that pocket to pull him toward me. His mouth was set in a thin line like he was angry, but that didn’t stop him from sliding his hands down my back to my ass. I didn’t elbow him this time. I kissed the underside of his jaw, and he stopped clenching his teeth so tightly. He kissed me, nipping my bottom lip a little too hard for it to be comfortable.
Spencer said, “I liked it better when you guys weren’t molesting each other constantly.” Spencer and I had been making music together since I moved to Philly a few years ago. Besides me, he was the only member of Under the Bell Jar that hadn’t changed frequently.
What could I say? I had a thing for drummers.
“Can we get to playing now?” Spencer asked, shooting a glare at Mace.
He couldn’t stand Mace, but didn’t make much of a fuss because he didn’t figure the relationship would last. It would be nice if it did, though. Mace was the best drummer we’d ever had.
I pulled back and went for my guitar.
“Okay, so this is the last chance we’ll get to rehearse all together before the show next week. We need to practice and nail down the order of our set list.”
We started with a cover of “A Better Son/Daughter” by Rilo Kiley. I felt like I lived this song already this morning. The intro started soft and small. My lips brushed the cold metal of the microphone and I felt like I was home. It didn’t matter that we were in a grungy bar with no audience, or that I’d be back here tonight working until all hours of the morning, only to have to get up and pretend for my parents. It didn’t matter that this morning my love life had taken a sharp left at complicated straight into bizarre territory. It didn’t even matter that I’d been carrying this band like a yoke around my neck for years with no money and no break in sight.
When I sang, none of it mattered.
I was not an emotional person. I hadn’t cried since I was thirteen. Not really. I made a promise to myself then when my life had been awash in tears that I wouldn’t be one of those people. The kind of person who would cry uncontrollably when something bad happened, but two days later be walking around like nothing had changed. Crying was for moments of such drastic pain that you had to let it out, had to shed the dead skin on your soul so that you could breathe. I still had my life, so I refused to cry over stupid shit like boyfriends and parents. I was good at turning off the pain. The only time I let it out was when I sang.
When the strings on my guitar vibrated and notes rose from my lungs, I felt the good and the bad, the hope and the devastation. I felt it all.
Sometimes in the morning, I am petrified, and can’t move
Awake but cannot open my eyes.
I sang about the weight of expectation and toxic relationships and lost innocence. I sang about the way depression can curl over your head like a wave, pulling you under so far that you don’t know which way is up and where to go to breathe.
The song unspooled something inside of me and deflated all the pressures of the day. This was what my parents didn’t get. They wanted me to give this up, get a job, and a steady paycheck. Mom said she’d never be able to really relax until her baby girl was all taken care of, which to her meant a husband and a job and a bun in the oven. But then it would be me who was never relaxed.
They wanted me to be the perfect daughter Alex was supposed to have been. But I wasn’t Alex. I’d tried to be that for them . . . tried to fill the void she left behind. I spent four years of high school playing the good girl, the popular girl, but it was never real. I always screwed something up, and then they would look at me like I hadn’t just disappointed them, I’d somehow disgraced Alex too by failing to live up to her memory.
Just living with them had been like suffocating, like all the air had been sucked from the house leaving only grief behind.
I got so twisted and wound up and smothered by life.
Music unraveled me.
It kept me sane then, and it keeps me sane now.
After that song we moved on to one by the Smiths, another by Laura Marling, and one by Metric. We covered everything from Radiohead to the Beatles, and then moved on to our original songs. Some were Spencer’s, but most were mine. The songs were all different, but they were all honest. When we finished the first run-through, we took a quick break. I headed to the bathroom because I needed a second.
I always needed a second to get the last of the emotion out, to bring the walls back up. Spencer got it. We’d known each other long enough that he gave me the space, but Mace was still learning. He followed me into the bathroom and pressed me up against the sink, his chest against my back.
His lips found my neck, and he moaned. He rocked his h*ps into me.
“God, you’re so hot when you sing. Let’s end practice early and go back to your place. Then I can make you sing on your bed, on the table, against the wall.”
All my emotions were still too close to the surface. The weight of him against my back felt crushing, and his hands on my wrists were like shackles. I met my own gaze in the mirror, and my eyes were wide and panicked. More than that, they were vulnerable . . . breakable. They were everything I never wanted to be. I squeezed my eyes shut and something in me snapped. I pushed my elbow into his middle, turned, and shoved him backward. He wasn’t expecting it, and he stumbled back and slammed into one of the stall doors. The noise echoed through the bathroom, and Mace yelled, “What the fuck, Max?”
I stood there blinking, my mouth hanging open. I knew I should be sorry, but I wasn’t. I was breathing and in control and that was what mattered. Mace stood and brushed off his pants. His mouth was a thin blade, and his eyes were bullets. “Well?” he yelled, and I battled off a flinch.
I couldn’t talk about it, couldn’t explain why. Damn, if he knew me even half as well as Spence, he would know to stay the hell away. My breath still came strong, like I was catching up. I said, “You can’t come over. My parents are still in town.” I didn’t say that technically they were at a hotel. I just needed space for the night.
“So you f**king push me? What’s your deal today?”
The same deal as every day. Singing just opens me up, and I can’t hide it as well.
“Mace, I’m sorry.” Sorry that I was so f**ked-up I couldn’t have a simple conversation. “I just . . . I need a couple minutes to myself. Do you mind?”
He shook his head, bewildered, and said, “Sure, take the whole damn day. I’m out.”
“Mace, I—”
The door to the bathroom slammed, and the sound echoed off the tile walls. I closed my eyes, and worked to close myself off, too. I should have been upset, but mostly I was relieved. I’d call and apologize to him later. We’d be fine.
And I’d tell him the set list for the gig, since it looked like we’d be deciding that without him. I splashed some water on my face and pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes until the black behind my eyes was as black as it would go.
Then I went back outside.
Spencer had already packed up our things and returned them to the storage closet that Sam let us use. I didn’t have to say anything. Spencer had probably heard it all. Sound carried in this place. It was why I’d begged Sam to let us use it in the mornings before the bar opened. Great acoustics. Good for music, not so good for arguments.
“You okay?” Spencer asked.
I rolled my eyes and said, “What do you think?”
“I think you’re fine.”
“And you’d be right.”
Boys were boys. I had enough other things tying me into knots without worrying every single time Mace blew a gasket.
Spencer said, “Because you’ve got balls of steel.”
I hated when people said that, like it assumed strength and being a male were synonymous. There was strength in being a woman. “Spence, I don’t have balls. Good thing, too, because they’d look terrible in the lingerie I’m wearing.”
Spence adjusted his bow tie and put on a goofy smile. He said, “Lingerie, huh? Poor Mace is going to be sad he stormed out.” He sidled closer and placed his hands on my hips. He wasn’t hitting on me, not with that Zoolander-style Blue Steel face. We weren’t like that anymore. Spence might be the only guy I’d ever slept with and managed to maintain a friendship with afterward. As such, we were a little more touchy-feely than most friends.
I slid out of his reach. “He wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near it today anyway, and neither will you.”
He crossed a hand over his heart, and looked pained.
“You’re cruel. Vag**a-of-steel.”
I laughed so hard I had to steady myself on the table next to me.
“That’s even worse. Let’s just say my private parts are made of the usual private part bits. In fact, let’s just never talk about my bits, okay Spence?”
He smirked. “Fine, but I make no promises when I’m drunk.”
I sighed and started gathering my things. “Deal. You coming in tonight?”
“I think so. I’ve got a new song I’m working on. So I might come in and grab food and work on it, maybe run it by you on your break.”
“Sounds good.”
“You want to hear what I have so far? It’s a work in progress, but it goes ‘Your boyfriend’s a dick, a prick, take your pick. But you should take his drumstick and—’ ”
“—Point proven, Spence.”
He fit a fedora over his head. “I’ll believe that when you do something about it. See you tonight.”
I said, “I’ll save you your usual table,” but he was already out the door and on his way.
I used the spare key Sam gave me to lock up, and put Mace out of my mind. I had just enough time to make some ramen and catch a nap before coming back for work tonight. I pulled the hood of my jacket up over my head, and it helped to block some of the wind from my face and ears. I set off walking toward my apartment, quietly singing one of the songs by the Smiths from our set.
There is a better world
Well, there must be . . .
7
Cade
Milo’s apartment was the quintessential bachelor pad, complete with two weeks’ worth of takeout scattered all over the counters. He shoved aside an empty box from a Chinese restaurant and said, “You overthink things, hermano. So, I’m going to help you out.” Milo opened his freezer and slammed a bottle of tequila on the counter space he’d just “cleaned.”