Chapter 9
Theo
“Fucking hell, Decker, that’s you. Again.”
I’d missed my vocal for the third time in a row. Ven was rolling his eyes, Coco’s nostrils were flared, and even Ethan, usually the mildest among us, tossed a stick in the air hopelessly. It wasn’t just missed cues. I sounded blah, I was distracted, and I’d written fuck-all for the last two weeks, even though before that the songs had been coming at me from all sides.
“Sorry,” I muttered, dropping my chin so my hair hid my face.
“Uh, try dropping down an octave for the second chorus,” Coco suggested to Ven. “While we’re stopped anyway.”
“Yup, good call,” Ven said, trying it.
We had been working on this album the way we wished we’d done the last one—one song at a time, completing one before moving on to the next. Our first album we’d recorded in five days. But that was because it was all we’d been given the budget for, and we didn’t know our sound well enough to experiment. On our second album, we’d gone in with the songs pretty solidly constructed, and recorded them piecemeal, adding in tracks later as we needed them. From a production standpoint, the album had worked well, but the songs had possessed none of the soul of performing live. We’d hated how perfect they sounded, how engineered.
This time, we had the money and the time to do it the way we wanted. And not only was I too miserable to enjoy it, I was also fucking it up for the others.
The first two days we thought we were just warming back up. I’d brought in the two songs I’d written to start us off, promising I’d have more soon. But even though the songs had seemed promising when I wrote them, and Caleb had said they were great when I played them for him, once we got into the studio it all fell apart. We were missing something vital. Some energy or spark to tie the whole thing together.
“That shit comes when it comes, man,” Ven had said on day two, when I’d raised my concern. “We’ll know it when we hear it. For now, just trust.”
Ethan had nodded. “It’s true. We’ll just be playing and something will hit us that we want to pull through the whole album.”
But then day three happened, and day four, and it was crap. I was crap. And my bandmates started exchanging looks I pretended I didn’t see. Now we’d been at it for a week and hadn’t laid down even one solid track.
“Sorry, guys,” I said for what felt like the hundredth time. “I’m gonna just take ten.”
I left the studio to muttering and the feeling of eyes on my back. I pushed through the doors and slunk through the rabbit warren of carpeted hallways until I got outside. The warm breeze after the close air of the studio was welcome, and I tucked myself into a crouch against the sun-warmed brick around the corner of the exit.
Fuck, what are you doing, Decker?
I pulled at my hair, trying to get my head around what the hell was wrong with me. And I found myself wishing, for about the thousandth time in the last week, that Caleb were here.
But Caleb wasn’t here, because I’d been an idiot. I’d let my excitement at the idea of having Caleb on the album overshadow the fact that he clearly wasn’t in a place where he’d want to be in the studio. I didn’t know a lot about the specifics of Caleb’s addiction. He hated to talk about it, said he’d talked about it enough in rehab to last a lifetime. But I got the sense, from other things he’d said, that it wasn’t the real reason. The way he talked about his life as if it were over. The way he spoke about music as part of the past, wistfully, like a lover who had left him.
The last thing I wanted to do was to hurt him or make his life harder. But I hadn’t done it on purpose and he’d just…shut down. He’d pushed me away and I could see him battening down the hatches, preparing to weather the storm alone. If only he’d given me a chance, I would’ve stayed; helped. Instead, he’d made it clear what he really thought of me. That I was a kid, a fake, an egotist.
That he’d be just fine without me. It was a sickeningly familiar feeling.
If I let myself think about how much Caleb’s rejection hurt, I’d never be able to get through the rest of the day. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, playing piano on my folded knees. I ran through a few scales, arpeggios, Hanon exercises, like I always had as a kid. They calmed me. I knew their patterns, and I knew what to do next.
After a few minutes, I heard Coco call my name, and cringed, tucking myself even further into the alleyway and dropping my forehead into my hands.
“And now you’re hiding in an alley from your own bandmates,” I muttered into the safe dark cave of my arms and knees. “Great. Whatever. Maybe just for ten more minutes.”
The front door was unlocked, and I slid into the cool shade of the living room. As the door thunked shut behind me, something moved on the couch.
“Caleb?”
The figure unstuck itself from the darkness and the blanket and indeed revealed itself to be Caleb, hair messy and expression grim. The couch was oriented as it was the first time I’d been here, pushed against the wall so it formed a sort of fort you’d need to climb into. A pillow from Caleb’s bed was there in a tangle of sheets.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, voice low and rough with sleep.
“Can I come in?”
“You’re in.”
He didn’t sound angry, exactly. More exhausted.
I’d tried calling but he hadn’t answered, and at first I’d sulked. For days, I’d sulked. It felt like a major rejection over an honest mistake. But I’d also missed him. I’d missed him more than I thought was possible, because I wasn’t sure I’d ever really missed anyone before. There had been Eric, who moved away freshman year of high school. But, really, I’d missed having someone, not Eric specifically.
And maybe it made me pathetic, but I didn’t want to let Caleb push me away. So here I was.
I kicked off my shoes and climbed up on the couch so I sat on the arm, feet on the cushions, facing Caleb, who slumped back into the nest of blankets, as if being upright took too much energy.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was a dick. I didn’t mean to be, but I see that I was. About the studio stuff. I just…I got so excited at the idea of having you on the album, and getting to play with you, that I…I didn’t think about how it would feel for you. I don’t think of you as my backup. You have to know that, right?”
I touched his ankle, the only part of him in easy reach. I heard a sigh from deep inside the tangle of bedclothes, and Caleb propped himself up. When he looked at me, he looked wrecked, and a bolt of fear shot through me that our fight had upset him so much he’d gone and used again. As if he could see the suspicion in my face, he dropped his head back against the back of the couch and raked his hands over his face, his beard, and through his hair.
“Look, this is hell, okay? Music is…it’s everything to me. And these days, it scares the shit out of me.” His eyes pleaded with me to understand, and I thought I did, but this felt too important not to be sure of.
“Why?”
Caleb looked at his hands, his palms rough, fingers permanently callused, knuckles inked.
“Because I go…deep, when I get into it. I lose myself in it. And it’s the best feeling. This exalted sense of being wrapped in something bigger than myself. But now…now I’m—I don’t know how to do it and also keep myself separate from it. It’s like if I go deep, touch the places I went before, I’m not sure I can exist there straight, you know? So I’ve been…treading water, I guess. I can see the ocean but dig my toes into the sand. And when you do shit like try and get me into the studio? I know you meant well. But it’s like a fucking undertow, man. It’s one thing if I choose it, but you can’t be the one tugging me.”
I sank down beside him on the couch and slid one of my hands into his. I knew the feeling of going deep. Of knowing that if you let yourself actually go all the way, maybe you’d emerge changed.
“I understand. I won’t push. Or, pull—whichever is the bad one. Either one. I won’t do either. I just got excited before and I didn’t think. I’m really sorry.”
“I know that,” he said, tiredly. “I’m sorry I was rough with you. I, uh…panicked a bit, I guess. It hit at my pride, and apparently that’s something I’ve still got a heap of, despite everything.”
He squeezed my hand, then moved his hand to brush over my hair.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, so softly it was just breath.
“Okay. I missed you.” I leaned in to kiss him, just a brush of lips, and he rested his forehead against mine and looked at me for a while.
“I’ve been writing,” he said. “Just bits and pieces, but it was like after you left, there was this…I don’t know, ghost of a challenge in the air. This dare. Or maybe I was just scared as hell that I was losing my mind out here by myself again.”
I tilted my chin up so I could look at him. He had faraway eyes.
“I went to Rhys’s for a few days, but after that I knew Matt wanted me gone. Can’t blame him. I was a walking grouch, and Rhys and I kept butting heads about everything. That’s what we do. But Matty’s not like that. Sensitive, kind of. It gets under his skin, so I had to take off. And when I got back, I just…started working on some stuff, and I’ve been doing it ever since. Can’t sleep much.”
“Well, that’s great,” I said. “Because I’m fucking up left and right, so maybe you can help me. I’m crap without you.” It was a cheesy line. Even an emo band would’ve rejected it as a lyric. But it was true.
Caleb brushed his thumb to my eyebrow, my cheekbone, my lip.
“What’s up?”
“Ugh, we’ve been in the studio this past week, and it’s…fucking terrible, man. I can’t seem to get anything right, and the band’s mad at me. Then I go home to that empty damn apartment and try to write, but everything’s just primary colors bouncing off the walls. I don’t want to go out, because it’s bright and sunny and people notice me more, so I’ve just been sitting there, playing guitar. And sometimes talking to Antony. Hey, I should write a song called ‘Crossword Puzzle Blues’ and dedicate it to him.”
“Eh, you’re just trying too hard,” he said softly. “You were doing fine a few weeks ago.”
“I know, but then I was around you,” I muttered. Then I buried my face in my drawn-up knees because, seriously, with words like those, it was probably better I wasn’t writing anything.
Caleb slid a hand into my hair and started scratching at my scalp, and I nearly fell on top of him with pleasure.
“The songs will come,” he said. “You’re stressing because of the studio being booked. Don’t think of that. Write the way you write when there’s no deadline, no one waiting for the music.”
I was practically purring at the feel of his hand on my scalp, and when he pulled away I protested.
“Hey, I know what will help,” he said. “Hang on. I got it from Rhys’s a few months ago because he was getting rid of it and I forgot I even had it.”
A minute later, he was back, and he dropped a beat-up old Casio keyboard into my lap.
“You can write on that, just like it was a piano.”
It had been a long time since I’d written on anything but the guitar, but that seemed so foolish all of a sudden. Piano had been what made me fall in love with music, so why shouldn’t I write on one.
I scrambled off the couch and put my arms around Caleb’s neck.
“That’s awesome,” I said. “Thanks.”
He nodded and wrapped an arm around my waist.
“Caleb?”
“Hmm.”
“Why the fuck do you put your couch like that?”
I felt his chuckle against my hair.
“When I first got here, I was crawling out of my skin. Everything just made me want to jump up and drive right back into the city—hell, to the nearest bus station—to score. Or, that’s not exactly it. Drugs…I never just sat around and shot up, you know, drugs just always went with the music for me. So I wanted to cut and run back to the whole thing. To my fuckin’ life, you know? Because that’s what it was: my life. And suddenly I had nothing to fucking do. Even sitting on the couch, I’d stare out the window and see my truck. So, then, I drove my truck to Rhys’s and told him to keep it there for a month, not let me have it. And when he dropped me back home, I turned the couch around so I couldn’t see anything but the wall. So it was work to climb out of it.”
He shrugged uncomfortably.
“Don’t really need it like that anymore, usually. I just…I was hiding a bit, I guess.” He ducked his head.