The next morning, I made Reid eggs with chorizo and fried potatoes. Because of the heat, we both decided to stay in and do nothing until our shift. Reid was at his counter eating a second helping while I dug through his lyrics.
“Oh, I love this one. God, Band Nerd, you really are a poet.”
“Which one?” Reid said, shifting on the counter to glance at the notebook.
I thrust the notebook at him. “‘Trust’, I love it. It’s really good.”
“I have to rename that,” he said. “And I don’t like the guitar riff I wrote with it. It’s too mainstream. I have to have Rye work that out.”
I gave him my best snooty French accent. “And zee guitar riff is too mainstream.” I picked at a non-existent piece of lint on my T-shirt and flicked it before I deadpanned, “Could you be any more pretentious? And, hey, Ace, when are you going to learn to take a compliment?” I faced him head-on as he smiled before he took a mammoth bite of his eggs, his hair covering his dimple. I hated when that happened. But I loved it when he smiled.
“Well?” I said.
“God, you love to argue,” he chided as he threw our dishes in the soapy water I had waiting.
In a few days, I’d be in my own place, and I savored every moment we played house. I was under no illusions our living situation was permanent. We’d been forced together, but I had to admit, we were thriving under those conditions.
Take that, Paige.
“Change of plans, we have to hit the music store. I need a new set of sticks.”
“Oh,” I said as I moved to my duffle bag. I threw on my Vans and a John Lennon “Imagine” T-shirt.
“Let’s roll.”
Reid eyed me through the head hole of his fresh T-shirt.
“You spend the least amount of time getting ready than any female I’ve ever met.”
“I dress up when the occasion calls for it. It’s August in Texas. I can either go fresh-faced or end up looking like I just left a funeral.” I pulled out my peppermint lip gloss, coated my lips, and smacked them at him. “Happy?”
“You’re so rough around the edges, my little Latina. You should have been a man,” he said while he stared at my glistening lips. “But fuck if I’m not glad you aren’t.”
We walked through the store like a couple. It was our first official outing together, though no words had been spoken. It was a given, especially since we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. It wasn’t so much hand-holding as it was body language. He would lean into me as we walked down the aisles. We’d share an intimate smile. He’d grab my wrist to get me to stop while he browsed. He didn’t want me far away, and I didn’t want to be. When we made it to the display aisle, Reid paused in front of a set of DW drums.
“Drummer’s Workshop,” I said, “these are kind of like the Cadillac of drums, right?”
“Fucking Ferrari,” he said, eyeing them with appreciation. I glanced at a white plastic table in front of them. There was a fishbowl full of narrow strips of paper.
“They’re giving them away,” I pointed out and gripped the pen. “Let’s enter.”
“They’re gathering email addresses,” he said. True to form, he looked at me with a raised brow.
“Fine, if I win them, I’ll give them to some other drummer.”
“The hell you will.” Reid gripped the pen and filled out the form, tossing his own entry in.
We walked out twenty minutes later with a fresh pair of sticks, and I caught Reid’s smile as he looked over at me once we were seated in the truck. I was rummaging through my tiny backpack when I felt his hand on mine. “Hey, Stella?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re beautiful.”
Later that night, I was in The Garage as Rye worked out a new riff for the song Reid had brought to the studio. It was the one I picked out. They wanted to have it ready for a show the following week. While Rye went through a slew of chords, I sat on Reid’s stool, his new drumsticks in hand while he was behind me trying to teach me the basics after a five-minute lecture on how to hold them.
I pressed the pedal and tapped the snare as he chuckled. “Try again. Bass drum on the first, snare on the third, cymbal with the right on all four.”
“This is painful to watch,” Adam said with a glib tone as Ben laughed and threw out a word of encouragement. “Come on, woman, you’re half Mexican. You were born with rhythm.”
“I’m Latina,” I corrected. “And I have rhythm. Shut up.” After a few minutes, my shoulders slumped. “This is kind of hot,” Reid whispered as I growled at yet another false start.
“Nothing hot about a girl who can’t play,” I said, discouraged.
“You wanted to do bass anyway. What do you say, Adam?” Reid asked him with a chuckle.
“Hell no, she scares me,” he said as he protectively covered his bass with his arms. “She looks like she’s ready to blow.”
“You ready to blow, Stella?” Reid whispered playfully as I turned my head and glared at him. “Enough with the jokes. I can do this. Back up,” I said with a heated whisper. “And you two, shut up,” I said to Adam and Ben. Ben cracked a beer and took the couch as Rye really began to dig in.
I counted in my head and started again and again. It seemed like an eternity until it finally clicked and I nailed it. I sat, stunned, as Ben raised his beer and grabbed his mic. Rye grinned over at me. “Okay, Latina, let’s see what you got.” He started the familiar guitar chords of Sublime’s “Santeria” and Adam and I joined in on cue, which I think surprised us all—well, at least the fact that I jumped in at the right time. Elated but afraid to lose my count, I kept my head down in concentration as Ben sang. I kept the beat steady, but I was bursting inside as I tried to carry it through, tapping the cymbals when the song called for it and then grabbing the beat back. With hopeful eyes, I looked up to see Reid smoking on the couch, his eyes mixed pride and amusement as the rest of the guys looked back at me with ironic smiles.
“That was good, right?” I asked, beaming.
“Oh, hell no.”
“Horrible.”
“Really, really bad.”
I laughed so hard, I had tears in my eyes as Reid moved to take his sticks from me. “Thank you,” I whispered. “I don’t think you know how much that meant to me.”
“Yeah, I do, because you told me. You talk a lot. I’m still trying to recover from last night’s nightmare I heard about for two hours. Now hand me the sticks, so no one else gets hurt,” he whispered. His eyes reached deep and swept me away to the point of no return. “And I’ll play you later,” he said with a wink.
“You are so in for it,” I promised. We were that sickening new couple and we both knew it.
“Cut that shit out, now,” Ben said into his mic. “I’m fucking jealous.”
I pulled back with a laugh and resumed my seat on the couch as they collectively showed me what good was.