When the Lights Come On (Barflies Book 4)

by Katia Rose

  “Why the hell would you do that?”

  “Because I—”

  He cuts himself off, and I can see him grinding his jaw like he’s biting back whatever he was going to say.

  I wait, and the longer he stays silent, the more charged the air between us becomes. I can feel the past pressing in, creeping from the corners of the room to surround us.

  “Because I want us to move forward, Paige.” He says it softly, and it’s followed by a heavy breath. “I think we deserve that.”

  It’s not an excuse or an explanation or even an apology for what he did, but maybe it’s better this way. Maybe it’s too late for any of that.

  I thought I started moving forward a long time ago, but maybe I’ve been holding on tighter than I thought. If I’d really let go, I wouldn’t be so desperate to hear him say it was all a mistake, that he was as close to saying ‘I love you’ as I was all those times we held each other, that all our dreams and plans were real to him and not a stupid fantasy he had to shed and leave behind.

  I’m not going to let myself be desperate.

  “I don’t want to owe you.” I meant to sound stronger, but I can barely manage more than a whisper.

  “That’s not what I...” He trails off and shakes his head. “You know what? Fine. You don’t have to owe me, or whatever. Let’s make a deal. Fair and equal.”

  I startle a little at the force in his tone, but I raise an eyebrow to hide it.

  “Another deal?”

  “Yes. Another deal. I play your big shows for you—”

  “How are you going to have time for that? What about your shows?”

  He glares at the interruption. “I’m not playing much this fall. My manager wants me to focus on producing new stuff.”

  “New stuff? So you—”

  “Paige.”

  A bit of the tension has worn off, and I can see him fighting not to laugh as he scolds me while I try not to crack up too.

  “Excusez-moi,” I joke.

  “Merci. May I continue?”

  I nod and make a zipper motion over my mouth. That does get a laugh out of him.

  “So, the challenge, should you choose to accept it, is this: I play your big shows for the next few weeks, and you come to my sister’s wedding with me at the end of the month.”

  My laughter fades. “What? You mean as your date? I’m not going to—”

  “Hear me out. My mom is insane about weddings and won’t get off my ass about me bringing someone for like, the symmetry of the pictures or whatever. Like I said, insane, but it’s going to make my life so much easier if I can bring someone I know. She set me up with someone for Noor’s wedding, and it was a fucking disaster.”

  “Sandra is insane about weddings? I find that hard to believe,” I say. “And—wait. Noor is married? So this is Aaliyah’s wedding? Isn’t she like, a kid?”

  He chuckles. “She’s a year older than you, and yeah, my mom is going nuts over the wedding, just like she did with Noor’s. I think it’s some repressed urge. She’s devastated my younger sister is getting married before me because apparently that suddenly matters to her? Like, you’d think it was her raised in the traditions of Coptic Orthodoxy, not my dad. She’s even been hanging out with his sister, and she never hangs out with his sister.”

  The memories flood in faster than I can stop them. Hearing these names again, watching his face as he talks about home—it’s a pang in my chest I feel ricochet all through my body.

  “So what do you say?” he asks. “Does it sound like a fair trade?”

  To an outsider, one wedding for all the work and time that goes into putting on several shows wouldn’t sound fair at all, but we both know he’s getting the better end of the deal by far. Weddings are not my comfort zone, especially not weddings where I’ll be Youssef’s stand-in date and surrounded by his entire family.

  “I...”

  I pause and scroll through my schedule again. My popularity is still riding the high of the festival season, but there’s no way to tell how soon that will drop off if I disappear. I doubt I’ll even be able to make music worth releasing online until my hand is somewhat back to normal. I’m okay with taking a little risk with my reputation as a graphic designer, but there’s no way I’m putting out a track I’m not fully convinced is perfect.

  The shows Youssef would be playing are game changers. They’re the result of a summer spent busting my ass. Some are headliners people have already bought tickets for—tickets to see me. I’d be crazy to give up the chance to at least have my name promoted onstage and a few of my tracks played.

  I really should have just taken him up on the offer before it turned into a deal, but I’m not going to back down.

  “We’ll have to see what the venues say, but...okay, challenge accepted on a few conditions.”

  He tilts his head and waits.

  “One: we tell everyone we’re at the wedding as friends. Two: if this involves staying at a hotel, I don’t just want separate beds. I want separate rooms. Three: I am not dancing.” I point at my injured hand. “I have a great excuse.”

  “Fair points.” He grins. “All right. Challenge accepted.”

  Over the next few days, we develop something of a routine. Daily life gets a little easier once the worst of my soreness is gone. I insist that Youssef doesn’t stay the night anymore, but he still shows up every morning and evening to help me with stuff around the apartment.

  “You really don’t have to do that,” I say one night after he comes back from taking the trash out. “Zach will be home in a couple days. I’m sure he’ll understand if the place is a bit of a mess.”

  Youssef shrugs, and the movement pulls his t-shirt tight against places that make me have to stare at the wall behind him before I can continue the conversation.

  “And you don’t have to come every day anymore. I really appreciate it, but I’m a lot better now that all the swelling is gone. Even my bruises are going away.”

  My face has faded from a purple splotch to a yellow-green one. It’s a great look.

  He shakes his head and gives me that smile people usually reserve for kids who just don’t learn. “You do need to eat, Paige, and now that you’re my salvation for Aaliyah’s wedding, I have to preserve your health as best I can. I don’t want you slicing up your arm trying to cut a cucumber with one hand.”

  He heads to the kitchen and starts unloading the paper bag of groceries he brought, pulling out three whole cucumbers and turning to laugh at me.

  I didn’t even remind him cucumbers are my favourite. He just knew. He remembered.

  He starts cutting one into slices, and I can’t argue that I could manage that with one hand. I give in and head for the couch. He brings a plate over a couple minutes later and sets it on the coffee table but doesn’t sit down beside me.

  “I was thinking, for the gigs I’m playing, we should go over what tracks you want me to feature.”

  All the venues he emailed for me jizzed their pants when they found out they’d be getting Youssef—or YOUSSEF, as his name is stylized in the music world.

  “I know I can’t recreate them like you do, but I could work some samples into my own set and take it from there.”

  I still can’t believe he’s doing this for me. I can’t believe he’s doing any of this for me. If I stop to think about it, my head starts spinning, so for now, I roll with the moment.

  “All right.” I lean forward and grab a cucumber slice with my left hand. “Let’s see what you’ve got, Salah.”

  He takes a dramatic bow. “The gauntlet has been thrown, Rivera. What should I use for this?”

  “You can go get my laptop and controller. I’m too poor to have CDJs.”

  “I will always be a controller DJ at heart.” He heads for the bedroom. “Hey, can I try out your Ableton Push? I’ve somehow never used one.”

  My Push is my baby. It’s what took me from playing basic club sets to really turning my live performances into something specia
l. My hesitation must be obvious because Youssef waves his question off a second later.

  “Don’t worry about it. I get it.”

  That’s something I noticed about him soon after meeting him: he’d tease me and prod me and keep at me long after other people would have given up, but he always knew exactly when to let things go. He gave me just the right amount of space, even before he really knew me.

  “The controller should be on my desk,” I call out.

  I hear him shuffling around in my room before he comes back with everything he’ll need. He starts getting set up on the coffee table, and without any warning, the sight of my gear starts making my throat get thick. The corners of my eyes burn.

  I do my best to hide it, but he must notice something because he asks what’s wrong as soon as he looks up.

  “I...I miss it already,” I find myself telling him. “When I woke up in the hospital and saw my hand, it was the first thing I thought about. I just...I know it’s only for a few weeks, but it’s me, you know? And now I can’t do it.”

  “I’m sorry.” He leans forward to reach across the coffee table and place a hand on my knee. The skin under my sweatpants heats from his touch. “I’m really sorry all of this happened. I know it fucking sucks. You’re going to recover, though. You’re going to get it all back.”

  “Thank you.” I nod and try to speak clearly enough that he can’t hear the lump in my throat. “Thanks for saying that. It helps.”

  He squeezes my knee and gives me a small smile before going back to getting the gear set up. The small touch sends my heart racing.

  “Okay, that’s good to go,” he says after another minute. “What tracks am I working with here?”

  I think for a moment and then direct him to pull up a group of files. “Those should work.”

  “Excellent. Now let me just import some stuff of my own.” He pulls out a flash drive and puts it into my laptop.

  “Wow. You came prepared.”

  He grins while looking at the screen. “I’m always prepared to impress.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  I don’t want to stroke his ego by showing it too much, but it only takes a minute of him messing around on the controller for me to be very impressed. There’s a lot of ways we’re different from the teenagers we were in his basement, but the music we make is probably the starkest contrast between now and then.

  Youssef has become a master. It’s not even a matter of opinion; it’s a fact. Very few people can play this way. It’s like he’s taken his mind and implanted it in the controller. His movements and the sounds they create are seamless, an infinite flow of information and artistry. There’s a finesse to the way he plays that I’ve never seen in anyone else, a grace and poise amidst a purposeful chaos that’s absolutely stunning to witness.

  It doesn’t matter that he’s sitting on the floor in my living room or that there’s a plate of cucumber slices beside him. The music coming out of the speaker connected to my laptop transports us both to that dimension only a truly glorious sound can take you to.

  I can’t look away. He’s snaking his head from side to side, torso swaying to the rhythm. His eyes glint with excitement and something like hunger as they dart between the laptop screen and the controls.

  Then he starts playing one of my songs, and his gaze locks with mine. It’s only for a second, but the intensity of the moment sets the air on fire. He’s going to work my sounds into something new, and there’s an inevitable intimacy to that.

  My breath stops altogether as he continues to play, forging complex tangles of both our sounds into patterns like delicate metalwork. This stuff is nothing like that EP of his. It’s the kind of music he attempted back when we were idealistic kids riding the high of how enlightened we thought we were, only now all the pretense is gone. What he creates is real and true and so powerful it makes my heart ache.

  He keeps going for another few minutes, and then he starts leading into a track I recognize from the first beat. My heart stops.

  He wasn’t supposed to have that. It must have got imported by mistake with all the other stuff I told him to use.

  I want to tell him shut it off, but I’m too caught up in the moment to interrupt. No one else has ever heard this before, and it’s like watching someone stumble across your secrets to see him pause and sit back while the track keeps playing on, exactly how I created it.

  It’s got more of a deep house feel to it than my usual stuff, and it’s a lot more lyrics-focused than I tend to lean, but that’s not what has me bracing for the first verse.

  When my songs have vocals, I either use sample packs or find a singer online who will record the part for me after I write it myself. That’s what I do when I’m ready to release the song, at least.

  Before that, I sing and record it myself. I even practice playing with live vocals at home whenever Zach isn’t around. It’s tough to do, and it took a lot of work to sound even semi-competent at it, but I never feel more alive than I do when I’m using my voice and my gear at the same time. My music never feels more alive than it does then.

  It’s an even deeper secret than the box of makeup under my bed. My voice lives in a box kept somewhere far more dark and hard to reach than that. Nobody has heard me sing since I was sixteen, when I finally snapped and said no more auditions. Youssef has never even heard me sing.

  Until now.

  The intro finishes, and my muscles clench as my voice fills the room.

  “We make our own truths

  Set them like sails

  Close ourselves in coffins

  And use them as nails.”

  Youssef is just sitting there, letting the track play while he stares at the computer screen. I can’t tell if he knows. There’s really no way he could know. My singing voice doesn’t sound much like my talking voice, and there’s nothing in the file name to give it away.

  Still, I find myself perched on the edge of the couch, my heart pounding as I wait for him to give me some sign he’s figured it out.

  We get all the way to the chorus before he moves at all, but it’s just to shift his position as he keeps sitting there with an unreadable expression.

  “You found your truth in the dark

  So what are you gonna do when the lights come on?

  Who are you gonna be when the lights come on?

  When the lights come on?”

  The drop hits, and he starts tapping his finger against the table’s edge in time with the beat. It’s a small gesture, but I feel a swell of satisfaction. I’m more proud of the production on this track than anything else I’ve made.

  He lets the whole song play through to the end and hits the pause button once it’s faded to silence. It’s so quiet I can hear both of us breathe.

  “That was... He looks at me for the first time. “That was incredible. You’re incredible, Paige.”

  The warmth in me changes from a glow to a roaring blaze. I still can’t tell if he knows it was me singing, but even if he’s only talking about the production, his praise means more than most of the compliments I’ve received in my entire career.

  It means something because he means something.

  And that’s the inescapable truth: he means something. He always has, and I’m starting to think he always will.

  Thirteen

  Paige

  REMIX: An alternate version of a song that introduces new elements or alterations

  The next few days alternate between flying by and dragging on for eternity. My bruising has calmed down enough for me to leave the apartment and go for walks, but there’s not much else to fill my time with besides catching up on new music, watching Netflix, and making fumbling attempts at graphic design that have forced me to accept it’s going to be a while before I can take on any new projects.

  I also sleep a lot. At minimum, I make it through half the day before my body decides to sabotage me with its newfound need for naps.

  On the day Zach is supposed to get ba
ck, I watch Youssef put on his shoes and jacket in the entryway after his morning check-in, totally unsure of what to say.

  I haven’t been sure of what to say to him since he heard ‘When the Lights Come On.’ Something shifted between us, something I can’t put back where it was no matter how hard I try. He knocked down a layer of my defences, the one that let me tell myself I could ‘move forward’ and leave him behind.

  There are things I need to say. There are things I need to hear him say. I want an explanation, but I haven’t figured out how to ask for one, or how to face the pain it’s going to bring.

  “So Zach should be good to do dinner tonight,” I say after a couple moments of silence. “I texted him about the accident, so he knows what’s going on.”

  Youssef straightens up from tying his shoes and nods. “Cool.”

  “I, um...I know I’m kind of an asshole, especially about the whole needing help thing. As much as it pains me to say it, I don’t know what I would have done without you. Thank you so much.”

  He smiles, but there’s a heaviness to him, one that presses down on me too. This is feeling more and more like a goodbye.

  “It was my pleasure, even when you were an asshole.”

  “So now...”

  “So now,” he repeats when I don’t go on.

  “Yeah, um, I don’t know. This feels like the end of a journey or something.”

  He nods again. Neither of us moves.

  “I was thinking,” he begins after clearing his throat, “maybe we could have a meeting about the gigs. There are still some details we should go over, and my manager will probably have stuff for us to cover too.”

  He does that scratching the back of his neck thing, and my heart leaps into my throat for a second.

  “Day after tomorrow good?” I ask, a little hoarsely.

  “That would be great.” He takes a step closer to the door. “You know you can call me whenever, if you need something. I know your roommate can do stuff now, but I mean it.”