CHAPTER SIX
I had just finished setting up for the day’s recordings when Jules, Nick, and Mark came into the live room, talking amongst themselves. “I’m telling you, we need to punch up the vocals on ‘Turnstile,’” Nick was saying to Jules. “But Alex won’t listen to me, and Jack’s taking his side.”
“Jack’s on the side of the album,” Jules said, shaking his head. “If you want to suggest a change, make your case to him.”
“Dan—what do you think?” Nick glanced at me as he bent over to pick up one of his guitars.
“I think it’s worth looking at,” I replied. Mark stepped behind the drum kit. “Alex has been getting all ‘artistic integrity’ though.”
“He’s on my ass about the drum sounds, too,” Mark said.
“Well he should be—you were all sloppy on the fills yesterday,” I told him.
“I wasn’t sloppy!” Mark scowled at me.
“You kind of were,” Nick countered, grinning.
“Ah—fuck you,” Mark said. Alex came into the room.
“How are we doing today, gents?”
“Got a date for Friday,” Mark said, throwing his hands up in the air.
“With who?” Nick tried a chord on his Epiphone and nodded to himself, satisfied with the tone.
“New bartender at Respects,” Mark replied. My hand slipped on the neck of my bass.
“Really?” I hadn’t mentioned my upcoming date with Sophie to Mark—I figured he didn’t need to know until after I found out if there was anything to it.
“That Sophie chick?” Nick raised an eyebrow and looked at me. I’d told him about going home with Sophie, and that we’d made a date.
“Yeah,” Mark said. “I gave her my number the other night and we’ve been texting back and forth a bit. I’m taking her to the De Sade show.” Nick looked at me again, and I shrugged—hopefully not enough that Mark could see.
“Five minutes, guys,” Jack said from the control room. “Let’s get this show rolling, shall we?”
We started in on the first track, and I tried to focus on the task at hand, but the fact that Mark had a date with Sophie stuck in the back of my mind. Mark didn’t know that I had a date with Sophie; so there was no reason for me to be mad at him—but I was. I was mad at Sophie too, probably with more reason. After all, she had made a date with me, and then turned around and made one with Mark as well. You did tell her to text him if she was interested, I reminded myself, but even then it didn’t seem like any kind of excuse. She knew that Mark and I were in a band together—and she should have been able to figure out that it would put a strain on things between us to both go after the same woman.
“We’re getting ragged in the rhythm section,” Jack said from the control room after we went through one of the new songs for the third time.
“What’s up?” Jules looked from Mark to me and back again. “You two are never sloppy like this.”
“It’s nothing,” I said. “Just tired.”
“Take a break,” Alex suggested. He turned to the control room. “We’re going to take five, Jack—I think we’re overthinking this whole thing.”
“Make it ten, get a cigarette and come back,” Jack suggested. I checked my pockets, found my phone and cigarettes, and put my bass down. I had to get out of the room—and I definitely needed to confront Sophie about what I’d found out. If she was going to play Mark and I off against each other, I’d cancel the damn date; I didn’t need that kind of drama in my life. Fuming, I left the studio and headed outside, blinking against the bright, mid-afternoon sun.
I sank down onto the grass, took my phone out of my pocket, lighting a cigarette and found Sophie’s number in my contact list. She’d given it to me before I’d left her apartment a few days before, and I’d texted her once or twice since then—mostly just how-are-you, checking in-type messages. I’d been totally clueless to the fact that she’d even followed up with Mark. Hey, I wrote. Just heard some interesting news. I tapped send and set my phone down on my knee while I smoked, trying to keep my anger in proportion.
A moment later, my phone vibrated and I looked at it. What news would that be? Something up with the album? I pressed my lips together until my throat tickled from the smoke hanging in it. I exhaled the smoke and coughed.
Actually, I heard that you have a date with Mark, I wrote back. I wasn’t about to sugarcoat anything. Anything to say about that? I checked the time; I had another couple of minutes before we had to go back into the studio and get back to work.
He asked me out, I said yes. You told me to text him if I was interested. I stubbed out my cigarette and shook my head to myself.
I also asked you out, and you said yes. I took a deep breath. And you said yes to me first. What’s the deal there? I slipped my phone into my pocket and stood up. I wasn’t sure there was even anything that Sophie could say that would matter to me at that point; the fact that she hadn’t apologized or offered any kind of justification, any kind of reasoning behind accepting dates from two guys at the same time, pissed me off.
Before I could walk back inside the complex, though, Nick appeared. “I talked Jack into a longer break,” he said, looking me up and down. “We going to have drama between you and Mark now?”
“Mark didn’t know I’d asked her out,” I pointed out.
“But she knew—at least I assume you asked her out first,” Nick said. He took his cigs out and gestured for me to sit down.
“Am I about to get a pep talk from you? Because I gotta say, the idea of getting relationship advice from a guy who until—what—a year ago was fucking everything with two legs and a vagina…”
“The two legs thing wasn’t a prerequisite,” Nick said with a little smirk. I rolled my eyes.
“Anyway: say whatever the fuck you came to say.”
“You’re pissed off,” Nick said, lighting up. “I get it.”
“You say that like most people wouldn’t get me being pissed over my best friend going on a date with a girl I’m into,” I countered.
“How many times have you and Mark ended up fucking the same girl? At least five, right?”
“That’s different,” I insisted. “Those weren’t…they were just chicks on the road.”
“Still, you put your dick somewhere Mark did. And vice versa. Hell, you’ve fucked girls who fell out of Alex’s bunk too.” Nick shrugged. “We all have. What’s the issue now?”
“So, you’re saying that I shouldn’t be upset about it because Mark and I have fucked the same groupies before,” I said. I lit another cigarette; Nick shrugged and took another drag of smoke.
“You’re pissed because you’re actually into her,” Nick said matter-of-factly. “But are you pissed at him, or are you pissed at her?” I considered the question.
“It’s alternating,” I admitted. “Even though I know I don’t really have a reason to be pissed at Mark—it’s not like he knows anything.”
“So talk to him about it,” Nick suggested. “See what he does. If he backs off—then just be mad at her.”
“And if he doesn’t back off?” Nick looked at his cig for a moment or two.
“Then figure out whether you really want to have shit with him,” Nick said. “We’ve got work to do, man. We can’t get this album done right if you and Mark are having drama and trying to point fingers at who’s being sloppy in the studio when you’re actually both out of sync because you’re not listening to each other.” Nick stood on his long, skinny legs and stubbed his cigarette out against the wall. “Finish that and come back in. We’ll get through it.”