by Neve Wilder
Warren nodded, and I stood, walking out of the room feeling like I’d been called into the principal’s office. I figured it probably had something to do with Mason leaving, and my conscience was clear on that. I’d thought of him often over the days after he’d left, and what I’d said to him, but I couldn’t think of anything I could’ve done differently. His demons weren’t mine to fight.
But when we walked into the front office, Hannah pulled me into her cubicle and indicated I should sit down in the chair across from her desk. I licked my lips and tried to clear the dryness from my throat, wondering if I was about to get kicked out for some reason.
“We do make exceptions to our outside contact rule on occasion, and after talking it over with your manager, we decided this would be one of them, if you want to take the call? It’s Byron.”
I nodded mutely, warily, and she picked up the handset of her phone, pressed a button, and held it out to me. Once I took it, she stood and left.
“Byron?”
His throaty, warm chuckle poured over the line. “How are ya, kid?”
I felt the sting of tears in my eyes and prickling in the back of my throat just hearing his voice. I couldn’t answer immediately. Lonely, I wanted to tell him, and sad and aching and so fucking sorry for my stupidity.
Taking a shaky breath, I tried to compose myself. “Still here.”
“I know, and I’m impressed. Proud of ya, Les.” He cleared his throat. “Listen, I’m not gonna beat around the bush. I talked to Hannah and we figured it’d be best to give you this news while you were still in, just in case, uh… well, just because.”
“I’m not a suicide risk, for fuck’s sake.”
“OD, suicide, drunk driving, all of them mean dead. You get my point here?”
“Yeah,” I grumbled, feeling even more worthless. “Carry on.”
“MGD is offering to buy you out of the rest of the contract.”
“Okay,” I said cautiously. I couldn’t honestly say I was surprised they wanted to drop me.
“And they’re offering Evan a separate deal. Possibly pairing up with Amanda Faulks.”
My heart thudded once and then split apart and sank in my chest. It felt like it dropped all the way to my toes and puddled out onto the floor. I guess a part of me still hoped Evan and I could work together in the future. A blindly optimistic part of me, but nonetheless. Somehow it was worse that he might want to work with someone else.
“Is he going to take it?” I tried to keep the quaver from my voice.
“I don’t know. He’s thinking about it. They gave him the option of you two completing the album and recording separately, but I get the idea he wasn’t too keen on that. You can contest that, though, contest for the completion of your original contract. But if he does want to go with Amanda, I want you to be prepared. I’ve been talking to some other people, and I’ve got a few other labels interested in you. Soundhouse is really interested in having you on as a writer.”
A sigh leaked out of me, all the defeat I felt contained in the breath. “So someone else can sing my stuff.”
“That’d be an option. But we might be able to get you back onstage if you wanted that. Blue Moon’s lead guitarist just quit. You’re strong enough to do it on your own, though, at this stage. If you wanted to, I mean.”
I held the phone to my ear and curled over, resting my forehead on the edge of Hannah’s desk and closing my eyes. “I can’t make that decision right now.” I couldn’t even imagine striking out on my own. I didn’t have the same drive Evan had, or any kind of business savvy. The best thing that had ever happened to my music was that Evan had appeared when I was just starting out and made me realize just how blindly I was fumbling along. Working with him forced me to focus and gave me the kind of structure I’d never been good at finding on my own. Imagining trying to go it alone without him? It felt like drowning.
“I understand.”
I groaned and wiped at my eyes. “But Evan should do whatever is best for him, whatever he wants to do. Whatever the two of you decide. I’m not going to fight the contract. Or him. I just want him to… I just want him to do whatever’s best for him. Whatever makes him happiest.”
“I’ll pass it on,” Byron said gently. “You should stay, see this through. It’s the best thing for you right now. I know it’s hard, but try and hang in there.”
“I will.” That was one thing I was certain of. I didn’t have anywhere else to be anyway.
Evan, what drew you to Les’s music?
Evan: The first show I ever saw live was Ben Folds. The venue was tiny, and we were all crammed in close to the stage. I could almost hear the sound of his breathing, and he had this quirky presence about him. Great fucking musician, and when he sang, I felt the words. It’s hard to explain, but I went to plenty of shows afterwards where it was just a band playing or someone singing and there wasn’t anything extraordinary about it.
Anyway, I’d heard about this college dude, Les Graves, who was making the rounds, so I went to catch his show on a random Wednesday and… it was one of the few times since that Ben Folds show that I got the shivers. I could feel the lyrics like they were hanging in the air in front of me. There was this immediacy to his music that hooked me. What?
Les: I don’t think you’ve ever told me I got to you the way Ben Folds did. Damn, you’ve been holding out on me. I’d like to request my own tour bus now, since I’m clearly a precious commodity.
Evan: [laughing] That’s exactly why I’ve never told you.
Chapter 38
“I’ve been hearing some rumors,” Leigh said when I answered her call.
“Yeah, what else is new? I’m nothing but rumors at this point.” I tucked the phone against my shoulder, balancing a stack of mail under my arm and shifting my guitar case around as I fit my key in the lock and opened the back door to my house. Rita tipped me an upnod as I came in, then rushed to take the mail from my hands.
“Meant to get that on the way in and forgot,” she muttered. Rita had been my PA for going on two years. It felt weird to call her a housekeeper—which was what I’d originally hired her for—because she did so much else, like handling my mail and bills while I was gone, so I just called her my PA.
I told Leigh to hang on and set my guitar case down. “Anything important I need to know?” I asked Rita, muffling the receiver.
“It’s hot as hell outside and you’re wearing jeans.” She grinned, the thick wrinkles at the corners of her eyes deepening.
“Yep, thanks for that,” I deadpanned, and she waved me off with a wink.
“I’m fixing to do the bathrooms and kitchen, then head out for the day.”
I nodded and headed into the spare room I used as an office.
“Sorry about that,” I said to Leigh. “So, rumors. Rumors you want corrected, or…?” I hadn’t spoken to Leigh since her phone call to me at the cabin the first time the shit hit the fan.
“I don’t know. I guess it’s none of my business. But I have something I want to show you. If you’ll be around later, I could stop by?”
I dropped into my desk chair and sprawled, lifting my T-shirt up to the top of my chest to cool off. Jeans really had been a bad idea. Just the walk from the driveway to inside had me dripping sweat.
“Sure,” I answered. I didn’t have anything else going on. I’d been practicing some with Amanda but was pretty certain I couldn’t work with her as a long-term replacement for Les. She’d been cool about it, or seemed to be, and said the only way she’d sign with MGD was if it was with me. But I just… I just couldn’t fucking do it. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I was leaning heavily toward doing my own thing and letting the label package me as a solo artist. I didn’t feel great about that choice, either, but it was all I had at the moment.
Leigh said she’d stop by around five, and when I ended the call, I tossed the phone onto the desk and leaned back in the chair, commencing a stare-down with the contents of a manila folder that had arrived yesterday.
It contained a single sheet of lined notebook paper littered with ballpoint scrawl, the frenetic penmanship unmistakable. The top of the paper was dated and time-stamped, 3:00 a.m. The night after the hookup with Ella that felt like eons ago now. The song, “Blue.” Through the lens of verse and choruses that didn’t make it into the clean copy Les had presented me with, his longing was evident. He’d passed the song off as being about an old girlfriend, and any telling clues had been swept clean in the final copy, but in the original it was clear who he was writing about. Looking at his scrawl made me ache in ways I didn’t think I could. At the bottom, he’d attached a yellow sticky note: It was real for me, and it always has been. Whatever else you doubt about me, please don’t ever doubt that.
It was amazing—scary, even—how a handwritten note like that could take all my anger and crush it in a fist of regret until all I was left with was a sad kind of emptiness.
I gave Leigh a tentative smile as I opened the door, but the warmth of hers erased my hesitation as she leaned in for an embrace. It was good to see her again, and though I’d initially been upset, all things considered it had been one of the easier breakups in my life. Whether it was because we’d been friends long before dating, I wasn’t sure, but I was glad there didn’t appear to be any lingering animosity on her part.
“Well, you look good,” she said as I greeted her and ushered her in.
I snorted and led her into the kitchen, where she eyed the pot on the stove skeptically. “Don’t tell me you’re cooking just for me.”
“Technically I made myself dinner, and I’m inviting you to share it.” I wasn’t very domestic, but I knew how to cook. My mom had insisted that everyone needed to know how to make at least five things: spaghetti, meatloaf, pot roast, chicken and dumplings, and dressing. Tonight I’d gone for spaghetti.
“How generous.” She grinned and slid onto one of the stools at the island, dropping her shoulder bag on the floor and removing a large, thick envelope that I eyed warily. I was starting to distrust envelopes. What came in them besides bills and reminders of my own mistakes?
“Some photos,” she explained, when she noticed my cautious survey.
“I guessed that part. Of what?” I turned back to the stove and flipped the burner off, then stirred the sauce and let it sit while I pulled two bowls down from the cabinet.
I heard her fiddling with the envelope while I scooped noodles and sauce into the bowls, and when I turned around again, I froze. Spread over the island were dozens of photos of Les and me. I hadn’t seen his face in weeks, had all but forced his name from my mind for just as long, so the sight of him multiplying across the countertop was a visual assault that stabbed into my lungs and left me breathless.
I brought the bowls with me to the island and set them down absently as I grumbled, “Could’ve used a little warning.”
“That bad, huh?”
I didn’t confirm her remark, just stirred my finger through some of the photos. Les and me backstage. The two of us onstage. Les making a stupid face. Me making a stupid face. Les scowling at the camera. Me scowling at something out of the frame. Probably Les. Me smiling at something out of the frame. Also probably Les.
I sighed.
“I’ve probably taken thousands of photos of you guys since I first saw you play at Jensen’s. And after I talked to you at the cabin, God, I was still so upset.” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her nibbling at her lower lip, watching me shuffle through the photos. “But you’re my friend, you know? Before we were anything else, we were friends, and it hurt that you didn’t feel as strongly about me as I felt about you when we got together.”
I started to interrupt to explain, to apologize again, but she shook her head, cutting me off. “That night I went back through all of my photos of you two. All of them. From that first show you guys did together at Jensen’s to the one in Detroit two weeks before you guys went to Gatlinburg. And then it all made sense.”
“What did?” I sounded blithely ignorant but couldn’t ignore the prickle of knowing over my skin.
“See if you see it like I do.” She dug through the photos, carefully sorting through and selecting them, then presented me with a stack. She put one elbow to the counter and her cheek in her hand, then nodded at me to go through them.
“Jensen’s,” she said of the first. Les and I stood on the tiny stage looking out at the audience with wild grins on our faces. Our posture mirrored each other. I flipped through a few more of the early shows and saw the shift in the photos she’d taken after we’d dropped the first album. More interaction between us, more shots where we were grinning at each other or watching each other. There was a friendliness and a sense of connection that came through. I drew in a deep breath when I got to a photo from the last show in Detroit that she’d been at. The intensity of Les’s stare trained on me, that gaze I knew—the hungry, aching one.
Leigh pressed her lips together, arching her brows, like she’d caught me out on something and was waiting for me to fess up. When I didn’t, she pressed, “It’s so fucking evident Les is stupid over you that I can’t believe I never gave it proper credit before.” She shrugged lightly, somewhat ruefully as I dragged my eyes away from the picture and met hers. She stared at me evenly, then pushed her bowl aside and plucked another photo out of the pile, dropping it on the counter in front of me. It landed like an anvil around my heart. The picture was post-show, backstage. I couldn’t tell where—the rooms mostly looked the same—but I knew it was on our last tour, probably close to the middle of it. In it, Leigh had captured me sprawled on a couch, hands behind my head, a lazy, goofy, satisfied smile on my face, my gaze on Les and clearly transfixed by him as he tried to step in front of the lens, his wide grin a blur of white.
“Whatever you two are or aren’t, there’s something there, and if you try to deny it, I’ll call you a liar.” She gave me a look. “I’ve photographed a lot of bands, Ev, and no one else, no one else that I’ve ever worked with comes close to the vibe between you two. I mean, it’s glaringly obvious now. Maybe I just didn’t want to see it because I wanted you, too, you know?”
I sank down onto the stool next to her, resting my elbows on the counter, my forehead to my fists. “Fuck, I don’t know what to do. It’s driving me crazy.” I still felt the sting of betrayal, but I couldn’t deny the component of me that missed Les intensely, just as I couldn’t deny the part of me that worried about what he’d do next. It was a catch-22. “Just because there’s a connection, though, doesn’t mean it’s healthy or… or viable in the long run.”
“Yeah, I know, but if it’s true you’re going out solo… I don’t know.” She bit her lip, glancing down at the photos again, then back up at me, her voice softer this time. “I know you. You’re miserable.”
She did know me. And I knew her. She was stable and safe, creative and intelligent, more than a little attractive. So why couldn’t I have felt for her what I felt for Les?
Sighing, she swept the photos aside and propped her chin on her fist. “I just hate the idea that you guys can’t work out your differences.”
“It’s more complex than that.” I drew in a breath and tried to explain it to her. I told her everything, beginning with how our tour had started falling apart after the thing with Ella, pausing when she winced for the third time. “Sorry, I can stop. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“No, it’s not that.” She waved her hand through the air vaguely. “I mean, yeah, it kind of is. It’s just that… you know, I wish you’d been that into me.”
“Believe me, me too.”
The sad expression on her face made me grimace.
“Is it just because he’s a guy that you have these hang-ups?”
“No! It’s because it’s fucking Les. Les, who can’t keep it in his pants. Les, who never met a bottle of booze or a pill he didn’t like. Les, who fucking told someone it was okay to sell my sex life. Pick your poison, because he’s all of them.” I realized I was gesturing vio
lently and folded my arms over my chest tightly.
Leigh shifted on top of the stool, her expression shading thoughtful. “That girl could’ve sold that story anytime. She never needed permission from either of you. That she even asked is shockingly considerate, really. And kind of sad. She must really like you two.”
I knew Leigh was right about Ella, but it didn’t help. “That’s not the point, though. The point is he didn’t tell me either way. In fact, he actively hid it from me because he knew he’d fucked up.”
Leigh inhaled, seeming to give up, and shook her head. “I think you should talk to him. He’s out of rehab.”
I knew that, but I wasn’t sure how she did. She seemed to predict the question from the glance I turned in her direction. “I had coffee with him two days ago. He wanted to make amends.”
“For what?” I picked up my still-full bowl and took it to the sink, my appetite gone, then lingered there with my back to the island so I didn’t have to see those damn pictures up close anymore.
“I don’t know, actually. He seemed to think that time he made a pass at me early on really pissed me off. It didn’t, but I dunno… he said he had a long list and wanted to do it right.”
I shook my head. “I haven’t heard from him since his meltdown in Vegas.” By design. I knew Byron had told him to leave me alone and let me approach him when and if I wanted to. I was undecided on that, too, though the longer I sat there with Leigh and those pictures, the more my resolve wavered and flickered inside me like a lightbulb on the fritz. I kept wondering how he was doing, what he was doing. Was he holed up in his house writing? Doing nothing? What did he plan to do next? Had he talked to MGD?
“He asked about you. How you’ve been. I told him I had no clue, because I didn’t.” She sniffed and fiddled with the ends of her hair.
“Sorry about that. I’ve basically blacked everyone out of my social life since I’ve been back.” Except Rita and Byron. “How’d he look?” I tried to mask my interest with a bored expression, but the twist of her lips as she considered me said she wasn’t buying it.