by E. M. Moore
I can’t imagine going through what he’s going through. He’s worried sick, and he can’t do anything from here. He’s hundreds of miles away.
“She’ll show up,” he says, like he’s followed my inner train of thought. “She always does.”
I swallow and raise my gaze to the sky. Soon, a chill starts through me. No wonder why the guys haven’t gotten the album done when the record company wanted them to. Archer probably hasn’t given a fuck about recording since putting his sister in rehab. How did I not see how much he was hurting? He wears a heavy cloak of normalcy. They all do.
He shakes his head. “It took so much to get her there. She’d hit rock bottom, you know. We’d find her passed out on the beach. My parents live in Key West,” he says, explaining to me why they’d find her there of all places. “A needle sticking out of her arm. A young kid found her this last time and screamed his head off because he thought she was dead. When she came to, she immediately got sick. Yeah, I bet that poor family never thought they’d see that on their vacation.”
“That’s awful,” I say. “For everyone.”
“Yeah, well, I guess it wasn’t rock bottom enough for her. What the fuck was she thinking checking herself out? I just don’t fucking get it. She seemed excited to go. It looked like she wanted to turn her life around this time. It’s all the same empty promises though. Time and time again.”
I just sit back and listen to Archer get this all off his chest. He tells me stories I’ve only ever heard in movies and television. My heart breaks for him and his family with each one. They want so badly to help, but they can’t recover for her. I know zero about drug use and addiction, so when he finally exhausts himself, I don’t respond. I don’t think he wants me to either. He just needed to talk. He needed to say it all, reveal his internal scars. Suffering from something other than physically is like slowly dying in silence. No one can tell unless you let it out.
For the next five minutes or so, only the sound of our breathing fills the air until he looks up at the sky. “It’s funny. I used to dream about doing this. Like, exactly this. The band. The albums. The tours.” He shakes his head. “I never thought about this aspect. What it would do to my family.”
I turn my head to look at him. His profile is strong, even severe. “This isn’t your fault, Archer. Your sister’s just addicted.”
His jaw feathers. “Sometimes I wish we’d never started this.”
“But you love it,” I say, pulling myself up to stare down at him. Call me a dreamer, I guess. I just can’t stand to hear him say he wishes this had never happened. Whatever else they are, they’ve accomplished something great.
He makes a noise in the back of his throat. “Sometimes it still doesn’t feel worth it.”
I blink at him, this new, raw side of Archer is throwing me for a loop. He looks less like the guy who finds humor in torturing me and more like a scared dog locked in a cage.
“This is what I wanted to write with you about,” he says, peeking over at me. His half-lidded eyes secret his beautiful blue irises away from me. “I wanted to write a song for my sister. Kind of like the song Ian wrote today. A song about Rachel’s struggles, but mainly about how she’ll persevere in the end. Now,” he says, shrugging. “I don’t know. No one even knows where the fuck she is.”
I take a deep breath. The fact that he would trust me with this shows our progress from day one. Even earlier, he was going to tell me about his sister because of the song he wanted my help writing. What happened now just moved his timeline up. “That’s the important part, isn’t it? It’s not that all this isn’t worth it,” I say. “It’s just that sometimes there are places you’d rather be.”
Archer turns in the sand, looking at me. “I can’t leave the beach house. We’ll never get the album done.”
Suddenly, my anger for Big City flares. The record label has basically trapped them here, giving them an ultimatum. How can they work like this? Why would they want to work like this when there are other pressing matters that have to do with family? “Sometimes you just need to do what you have to.” I point back to the house. “What would those guys say if you told them you wanted to leave right now?”
“They’d tell me to fucking go,” he says. “Ian tried to talk Big City out of this nonsense. He knew Sean and I weren’t in the right head space. We just needed a little more time.”
Though Ian sticking up for the guys surprises me at first, it doesn’t when I think about it. Of course, he would do that. He’s like the silent ringleader of them all.
“Sean seems to be doing better,” Archer muses, looking up at me with a half smile.
I know what he’s getting at, and I have to tamp down the smile that wants to rise to the surface. “We just have to get you there,” I say. “Let’s go inside, wake the guys up. You need to go be with your family, Archer.”
“It’s so selfish,” Archer says, already shaking his head. “We just had a breakthrough.”
“And you won’t be able to have another one unless we do this. Come on.” I get to my feet and haul him next to me. Before we move toward the house, I look in the sand in the direction he threw his phone and see it sticking up out of the wheat colored grains. I walk over, grab it, and then Archer and I both move toward the house.
He wakes Ian up while I wake Sean and Finnick, telling them Archer needs help. With the way they jump out of bed, I already know how this conversation is going to go, and the guys don’t disappoint me. Within the hour, they’re helping Archer throw shit in a bag while Archer’s online booking a flight from his phone I rescued from the surf. They don’t want to have to wake Rex up, so they tell him to take the Mustang and just leave it in extended parking until he gets back.
The guys hug him goodbye, concern clearly etched on their faces. More and more, I see the guys who started the band when they were younger come out. They’re there for each other. Like brothers. The four of us don’t go back in the house until Archer pulls out of the driveway.
As soon as his car disappears, Finnick says, “Maybe one of us should’ve driven him.”
“He’ll be fine,” Ian says. “That fucker is strong.”
We linger in the living area with heavy hearts. They give me the backstory on Archer and his sister. As bad as being hooked on drugs is, I understand why Archer feels it’s his fault now. He sends money to his family every month. It’s kind of like a stipend to help them pay bills, but instead of using it to live, his sister used her money and went off the deep end. First alcohol, then drugs. The extra money only fueled her drug habit because she felt invincible. So, no, Archer didn’t force her to do drugs, but he feels like he has. Every time he threatens to stop sending her money, she calls him up crying that there’s no food and not enough money to pay her rent. So, he keeps sending her money until it’s all a vicious cycle of lies and trying to help when really no one is helping anyone.
When I get back to my room, I hug my pillow to my stomach. I hug it so tight, wishing I could take back every bad thing I said about these guys. Not that they deserve a complete reprieve. But they also didn’t deserve my opinion based on incorrect facts and assumptions. They aren’t just spoiled rockstars from a little town called Hollywood Hill. They’re fucking real people with real shit in their lives. Yes, they do real shit too. Hateful, hurtful things, but we’re all just human. And the ones around me, are some of the most human I’ve met yet.
24
The next morning, a text from Archer tells me he made it to Key West safely. I have to blink at it a few times because I didn’t even realize he had my number in his phone. None of the guys have texted me before even though I’d given them my number previously in one of the notebooks upstairs. I guess there hadn’t been a need to, but now that we’re separated... I fret over my lip, thinking about what to reply back with. Eventually, I settle on: I hope you find your sister soon. Keep me updated.
He writes right back, the phone buzzing in my hand even before I’ve had a chance to set it
down. Thank you for last night. I’ll definitely keep you updated.
Because I don’t know what to respond with, I read the texts again, my brain not even really believing this is Archer writing me. He’s made it known what he thought I was here for and even told me I should get out when he noticed there was something more between me and Finnick. I guess all that has changed now. Maybe I’ve proven myself to them just like I wanted.
With Archer gone, the guys are subdued. After breakfast, we drag our asses up to the recording studio again. They work on the songs they agreed to keep from the meeting before. Because they already had recording of Archer playing the bass on these tracks, they cut his parts in and lay it over the rest of them playing. It’s a little rough right now but giving the label something is better than nothing. When Archer comes back, they can lay it all down better before they have to send something to the label.
“So,” Ian says, on our first break. “Last night after Archer left, I sent the song we wrote yesterday to Marco…”
“And?” Sean asks. He has his hand on my thigh while we sit next to one another on the leather couch upstairs, and I feel it tighten automatically.
Ian shrugs. “I haven’t heard anything back yet.”
The guys look a little somber after that, but I immediately speak up. “Don’t worry. They’re going to love it. I smell debut single material.”
Ian’s lips curve up on one side. His face, though tinged in worry about Archer, is a lot less hard than I’ve seen it over the last few weeks.
“I agree with Aisley,” Finnick says. I tear my gaze off Ian to stare at his cousin. It’s hard not having a reaction to these guys anymore. I feel their holds on my heart tightening with each passing day. “That song’s the shit.” His brows pinch. “So, how many do we have right now then? I know some still need some cleaning up, but where do we stand?”
“Nine,” Ian says.
A sense of relief flows through me. That’s actually more than I thought they had. It turns out they had some songs from before this whole ordeal that they play at their concerts that they’ve decided to put on the album.
“We only need a couple more then,” Finnick says. “And…I don’t want to piss anyone off like last time, but I’m going to suggest the song Aisley wrote. It’s so good. You guys have to hear it.”
I glance at Ian, expecting his mood to do a one-eighty at the suggestion, but to my surprise, he’s worrying over his lip. “I actually liked it too. Still not crazy on us not writing our own songs, but…we can look at it again. As long as Aisley doesn’t mind.”
Electric shocks spark up my skin. Finnick chuckles. “That’s not even the one I’m talking about. I’m talking about the one I heard her sing, not the one Marco found in her notebook.” Finnick gives me a knowing grin when Ian stands and hands me a guitar. I tentatively take it.
“Go on,” Sean says, squeezing my thigh again. “I haven’t heard any of your songs, and you still haven’t shown me your notebook like you promised.”
My face heats with the reason for that promise, but all Sean does is wink at me.
My stomach dips as I stand. All three of them look at me full-on. The force of their gazes makes me want to sway on my feet, but I throw my shoulders back instead. If I want to do this for a living, I’ll probably have to sing in front of people a lot. I’ll have to play my version in front of artists, big-wigs, and producers. I might as well start now where I feel a little more comfortable.
I put the guitar around me and adjust the strap. I pluck at the strings, making sure they’re in tune while the guys just sit and wait patiently. Before I start, I look toward where the stars would be if we were outside and pray I don’t sound like a fucking idiot. I feel like this is a shot gifted to me, and if I don’t get it in front of two people who clearly care about me and another who seems to be coming around, when will I get it? This is the perfect opportunity.
With that thought in mind, I start. I close my eyes, singing the song I imagined when I first wrote the words. For those few minutes, I’m caught in a vacuum of time. The world hasn’t progressed or fallen behind, it just is. Finally, when I strum my last chord, I wait a beat before I open my eyes. When I do open them, Ian is the first I see. He’s sitting forward in his seat, his elbows on his knees. Time goes by slowly then, inching like a snail across the beating of my heart. Then, he smiles. “It’s really good. I kind of hate you right now.”
I’m shocked into silence, but then I burst out laughing. “What’s new?”
Sean and Finnick laugh at that, too, before Sean stands, placing his hands on the back of my neck and pulling me in for a kiss with the guitar wedged between us. “Hey, now,” Finnick says. “Just not the guitar.”
Sean pulls away, not looking the least bit sorry, but I carefully take the strap off and hand it to Finnick where it belongs. “I’m sure you can play it much better.” Then I turn to Ian. “And you can sing it much better.”
Ian shakes his head, his eyes are turning hard. I think I’ve pissed him off again before I hear what he has to say. “Don’t do that. Don’t discount yourself. It was really good.” He shakes his head like he can’t believe it, and then he withdraws inside himself while Sean throws out ideas for drumbeats, and I help Finnick play the chords I just played. He does things a little differently, rocking it up a bit in a way I know Ian would probably feel more comfortable singing to and Sean falls right into sync.
I run downstairs to get my notebook with the lyrics written down while the guys go into the booth to lay it down. Finnick will play it once with the guitar and once with a very hesitant bass just to get an idea, and then when Archer gets back, he’ll make it what it needs to be.
Hours go by as I sit fascinated, watching them work my song into what they want it to be. When they replay the track from start to finish with the bass in there, a huge smile takes over my face. It’s really, really good. Still rough, obviously, but that’s what their producer is for, and when Archer gets back, he’ll do his thing with it too.
“It’s good,” Ian says, looking over at me as soon as the sound fades. I can tell he likes it. I could already tell from the way he looked when he sang it.
My face heats. Instead of telling them it sounds better when they do it, I take his compliment as what it was meant for. “Thanks,” I tell him. “It sounds amazing.”
“So, that’s ten,” Sean says, clearly relieved to be solidifying another track for their new album.
“As long as Archer agrees on this song,” I say, pulling my phone out to see if he’s texted me more updates. What I see is a barrage of texts from him. My heart immediately skips a beat as my mind goes to his sister, but I relax as soon as I read the first text.
Holy shit. That’s your song??
You wrote that?
Why is no one answering me? Fuck you guys.
When I give my phone a weird look, Finnick speaks up. “I videoed you singing and sent it to him.”
I look at him over my phone. “Why’d you do that?”
His smile spreads. “Because I knew he would love it.”
“So, I’m guessing he’s on board then,” Ian says with a short nod, and I feel like he just mentally slid this song into a slot on the album. His phone starts ringing in his pocket. He pulls it out and after he reads the screen, he turns it toward us. I read it and realize it’s Nolan calling him. His body goes rigid, something that comes hand-in-hand when Ian has to deal with their manager. He answers it and then puts it on speaker. “We’re all here, Nolan.”
I bite my lip when I realize Archer’s not here, and Nolan would be super pissed if he knew he left. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. They should be allowed to go handle something if they need to. It’s unfortunate that the label doesn’t see it that way.
Nolan gets right down to business. “Marco played me the song you guys sent him last night. Loving it. We need more like that.”
Ian’s jaw feathers. “We’re up to ten. We just need a couple more.”
“Better late than never, I guess,” Nolan sighs.
I sneer at the phone. I’m so over his haughty fucking attitude, and the guys all have similar expressions for him too.
“When can you send me the rest?”
“We can send you what we have right now,” Finnick suggests. Though most of his body seems relaxed, I realize he’s white knuckling it, his hands in tight fists at his side.
“Do that. I’ll get together with Marco and make sure everything sounds good and we’ll go from there.”
“I’ll send everything in a bit,” Finnick says.
Ian doesn’t waste any time after those last words. He ends the call. “Fucking asshole.”
I’m beginning to agree with him. He doesn’t know how to read a room at all. I can still understand that the label needs their album, but they don’t need to be dicks about it. Right? Or is that just my naivety talking? Or maybe my feelings for the guys coming out? I know I have a protective streak.
“Let’s get something to eat,” Sean says. He checks his watch. “Christ, it’s seven o’clock. Let’s just go down to that place at the end of the street.”
“Sounds good to me,” Ian says. “Meet everyone downstairs in ten?”
They all disperse, and I walk down after them, Ian’s voice still in my ears as he sings my song and the others as they play my notes. When I get to my room, I freshen up a little and then pull my cell out to text Archer. Sorry. We got busy recording. How are things there? Then, after I send that, I send, I’m glad you liked the song.
Rough, Archer responds. No sign of her yet, and my parents are sending me jabs about giving her money to feed her addiction. They’re also failing to give me any credit for paying for her rehab either. We’re meeting the people at the rehab in a little while to see if they can give us any clues as to where she might be.
I frown at the screen. His parents are acting like it’s his fault? She has a problem. He didn’t put the drugs in her hand, he was only trying to help. I say as much in my next text along with the words, That’s fucked up.