Love Struck

by Laurelin McGee

Eli already knew the answer. He could state it in one word—Jax.

  While Jax was definitely the charisma of the band, he was also the drama. He turned their art into a statement. Perhaps it was the reason for their success. But sometimes Eli wondered if they’d done so well despite Jax, not because of him.

  He’d always thought he was a musician who worked better in a group, but since the last album, Eli had wondered if maybe that wasn’t true. A hundred times, he’d thought about branching off on his own. He had the talent. He wrote almost every song the band ended up using. He played enough instruments to be able to handle a solo album at a reasonable cost.

  What he didn’t have was the guts. Right now, if something the Blue Hills did failed, he could blame someone else. James’s bass line. Wes’s overlay on the drums. Jax. Going solo would mean all the risk would be Eli’s and his alone. It wasn’t just scary, it was petrifying.

  So Eli stayed with the band.

  Besides, he didn’t want to push Jax. Not after what Jax had gone through in the last year. Jax needed Eli, whether he knew it or not, and Eli felt obliged to that. Especially because, despite all the trouble, Jax was very much like a brother.

  A spoiled brother who always got his way.

  “Whatever, man. If that’s what you really want.” Eli caught Wes’s eye over the drum set and made a tiny face. Wes gave him a sympathetic shrug and twirled a stick. Turning back to his singer, Eli sighed. “Then I guess we can do that. Should we take it from the top?”

  “You’ll see, Eli. This is going to become our signature moment. I can feel it, right here.” Jax gestured to himself in a manner that could have suggested either his gut or his crotch. Considering this was undoubtedly a strategy to collect more starry-eyed groupies, he really could have meant either one. When Jax talked about connecting with his audience, he invariably meant eye-fucking the front-row chicks.

  Regardless of the origins of Jax’s mysterious intuition, Eli was forced to accept that yet another of his songs had just gotten dumbed down and mangled, and also that the audience would unfailingly respond to it. It was undeniable, the magnetism Jax exuded onstage. If he’d sing the songs the way they were intended, he’d nail them. And they’d be good. But he had his own style and adapted all of Eli’s work to fit it at one point or another. It was probably a miracle this song had lasted two months already.

  With another deep breath, Eli picked up his instrument and signaled to the guys. The rest of practice passed in a blur of the usual. Long rehearsals were fairly routine this close to a tour, and with long rehearsals came tension. It was unavoidable. Musicians weren’t meant to be locked up in a studio, listening to themselves play. It was fun for a while, but just like sex, it was better with a partner. In this instance, the partner being the audience.

  But rehearsal was necessary. Mostly it was making sure the newer songs were tight, but also making sure everyone remembered how to do the older ones. It was always a little surprising how songs they’d written themselves, played a hundred times, and perfected could somehow grow fuzzy in their memories after a year’s absence.

  When it was over, Eli packed up as quickly as he could. His banjo and mandolin went in the passenger seat, and he went back to help Wes pack up the van. He rushed, glancing at his phone every three seconds to check the time. Practice had gone late, and he had a date.

  Well, date-ish.

  Well, a regular thing.

  Well, he had a thing, anyway.

  Okay fine, he was supposed to be online. This was exactly why he hadn’t told anyone about his friendship with LoveCoda, because there was no real way to explain it. He was the first person to get judgey when his friends signed up for online dating. He’d grown up with the Internet, but even as a preteen, AOL chat rooms had held no appeal for him.

  All those people misrepresenting themselves, even more than they did in person? No thank you. Give me an evening of beer and board games any day, and I’ll tell you who someone really is.

  But the Internet had proven a useful networking tool, and when he’d discovered the SoWriAn forum, he was instantly smitten. A thousand people, just like him, writing down their feelings in a form that rhymed. No one was concerned with what they looked like, or how old the person they critiqued was—and not just because that information wasn’t allowed to be disclosed. It was just artistry in its purest form.

  He’d be embarrassed to admit to his real-life friends how many online friends he now had. And yet, these were people who understood him in ways the guys he’d gone to school with never would. Who better to discuss the impulse to write that pulled him out of a dream at four in the morning and sent him to his notebook? No one else would get hiding in a bathroom at a party because something a drunk girl said sparked a chorus that had to be captured before it was forgotten.

  Writers were a different breed, and no one would ever get it except other writers.

  On SoWriAn, Eli could talk about the chaos that came with reaching a certain level of success. He could bitch about the time and energy it took to chase a dream without seeming ungrateful. It was also the only place he could vent about Jax and share his dreams of going solo. Eli vented and shared there often. Well, he vented and shared with one person there—LoveCoda.

  LoveCoda and he had been spending basically every night talking music since they’d met almost ten months ago on the Write or Die boards. It had been casual at first, talking to each other only in group forums. Then it was an occasional note sent with a question, maybe, or a recommendation of a new album to check out. Over time, they’d gotten closer, and now they private messaged each other every day.

  Truth be told, if Eli ever got the balls to cut a solo album, it would be because of LoveCoda. She encouraged him and supported him. She also seemed to accept his reasons for staying with the band, even though he’d never told her all of it.

  In return, Eli had been strength for LoveCoda through her writer’s block. Just because he didn’t know the source of it, man did he know the feel of it. The few occasions in his life he’d been blocked he felt like a fish out of water, just gasping for the life force that normally surrounded him.

  But, though the heart of their talk centered on their music issues, they had a connection that went far beyond. At least, Eli thought they did. Their conversations were the highlight of his days. Things she said online, comments she made clung to him through the rest of his life.

  Tonight, they were trying something new. They were going to watch a movie “together” while messaging. They both had Netflix. They just had to choose something from their library and push play at the same time. Like a weird, postmodern blind date. Through the Internet.

  Woot. Next level shit, right here.

  But even as he ridiculed himself in his head, he was superexcited. This chick—even if it wasn’t obvious from her profile, she’d made it clear she was of the female gender on many occasions—was so intelligent that he knew she’d have tons to say about whatever they chose.

  So maybe it wasn’t exactly a date. It was songwriting related, after all. The idea was to watch each other’s favorites, and write songs about them. It was a plan he’d devised to help her with her block, but he was actually really looking forward to the creative possibilities it opened for him as well.

  The songs Eli wrote for his band had a certain style, a brand even. It had been ages since he’d written a song for himself, something that was just his, the way the poems he’d jotted down as a teenager had been special and private. Those should clearly never see the light of day, but it was the feeling he wanted to recapture, that of something rare and precious nailed down like an Amazon explorer discovering a new butterfly. It belonged to its environment, and yet the display made people gasp in recognition of beauty.

  So with his innate talent for capturing emotion and nailing its wings down—to continue the disgusting metaphor—he figured this would be the best writing exercise he’d had since college. He was supposed to choose first, and he’d been thinking ab
out it all day, but still hadn’t narrowed anything down.

  For an artist, no matter the genre, it was always going to be difficult to pinpoint a favorite movie. As a songwriter, he was kind of obsessed with Once. As a psych major, it was Memento. As a dude, The Dark Knight. As a childhood remnant, he still found Return to Oz terrifying and inspirational.

  But were any of those choices inspiring to her? Would they be enough to spark the perfect words in her brain, the plot and characters enough to rattle her block out of place?

  Anything it takes, he had said, but what exactly would it take? He was afraid it might take a lot. The boards were meant to be entirely anonymous, and they really were, but he did know this about LoveCoda—she had suffered a loss. A deep loss. And that was the cause of her block.

  The other thing he knew about her was that she was insanely talented. Most people wouldn’t get how he could know that when he hadn’t read anything she’d written recently, but she’d shared a few older pieces, and they were good. Damn good. Make-him-want-to-pick-up-his-mandolin-and-add-a-line kind of good.

  Even if someone else could dismiss LoveCoda as just a hack, though, as someone who wrote a couple of ditties in high school and that was the extent of her songwriting repertoire, Eli knew better. He’d sent her tabs and lyrics on about fifteen of his own songs and she’d sent them back with the most incredible feedback. A hack couldn’t do that. From advice on single notes to the absolutely brilliant one-word changes that made his songs almost sing themselves, he knew this girl had It. The elusive It that everyone was after.

  At eleven thirty-one—a minute past their intended meeting time—Eli pulled up both browsers on his laptop, with SoWriAn on one and the movie rental site on the other.

  Hey, you. It was his standard greeting, but it never failed to make him a little nervous. So stupid, this faceless, nameless girl giving him butterflies. But yet.

  Hey yourself. How was practice? The standard non-greeting, that still gave him that excited feeling in his stomach.

  Meh. Changed a song I was really happy with. Less happy now, but what can you do? Well, he could do plenty, but not if he wanted to stay in the band. And the band had been the best thing Eli had going for years now.

  What?! Which one? Anything I know?

  Godric’s Hollow.

  Shut. Up. That song was brilliant. Tell me it’s just pitch changes. He smiled big at the screen. That song he’d workshopped with LoveCoda until it was one of the best he’d ever written. She had a vested interest in it.

  I wish. The band thought the chorus should go. “The band” wasn’t exactly the truth, but the band wasn’t about to cross Jax, so it was still mostly the truth. Also, it was kind of embarrassing to admit how much he rolled over for his singer. He had a feeling that even if he explained his reasons—very valid reasons—it would come out lame. And it was heavy conversation for a girl you were trying to impress. Or—not impress, maybe, but inspire. Yeah. Inspire.

  Uhhhh … Go? Like … what do you do instead of a chorus? It’s called a chorus because it is a chorus. I’m utterly lost. She understood the pain of having someone else screw around with your emotions.

  I completely agree. And I thought the chorus was the thing that made the song, but we’re moving it to a call-and-response type thing instead. We’ll see how people like it. If it sucks, I’ll get to change it back. If it works, it works, yeah?

  If it sucks, how do you know they won’t want to cut the song altogether? Good question. Sometimes, honesty sucked.

  I guess I don’t know that. But we’ve played it a number of times in rehearsal and it felt good, so I assume we can go back to that.

  Oh, God, I don’t mean to make you feel insecure! I just worry about you.

  Eli grinned at the monitor again. She was absolutely right the first time. If the “yeah yeahs” didn’t work, Jax would likely eighty-six the entire number from their shows.

  She was so easy to talk to that he could go on about his own troubles for hours. He even bet that she’d understand about Jax if he ever got the nerve to explain. And he would. One day. Just not tonight.

  He poised his fingers over his keyboard and typed. Let’s not even worry about that. If I recall correctly, we’re having a moment about YOU right now. Ready to start watching? There are new songs to be written.

  I was hoping you’d forget. ☺ Not really. I’m just nervous. This is a really good idea, but I might not be able to—what if I mess it up?

  Shut up. How would you mess it up? He was the one who should be nervous. What if he mucked it up by choosing a movie that didn’t hit her at all creatively?

  I feel like the only songs I can write right now are silly. Remember Glen Hansard’s Broken Hearted Hoover Fixer Sucker Guy? Yeah. Me.

  You shut up. That song is kind of brilliant. It expresses every single thing he’s feeling, in an unconventional way. And you know the movie Once. And that makes me so happy. Maybe this was a sign that it was the flick to choose.

  One of my favorites. Doi.

  Yeah, LoveCoda was pretty much perfect.

  And he suddenly changed his mind about what they should watch together. He was surprised he hadn’t thought of it earlier—a sappy classic bound to inspire anyone. Plus it had a songwriting B character that he just knew LoveCoda had to admire.

  So tell me, Love, how long has it been since you’ve seen Say Anything? He held his breath while he waited for her answer. It would be fine if she said she’d never seen it, but what if she hated it? That would put a dent in the image he’d created regarding this mysterious stranger.

  It’s been ages. There was a pause before her next words appeared. But it’s definitely a favorite. So are we watching?

  He was wrong. LoveCoda wasn’t pretty much perfect. She was completely perfect. He was grinning as he typed his response.

  Already got it cued.

  Chapter Six

  “I wrote…” Lacy sang a capella before tearing into the guitar, “sixty-three songs about you. I’m gonna play them, whoa, all tonight.” Nope.

  That wasn’t even lyrics. That was just taking lines directly from a movie and attempting to put them to the most generic chord pattern possible. Blocked or not, she was better than this.

  She moved on to “Take Nineteen,” though she was pretty sure she’d hit “Take Nineteen” several times over now. “It’s all working out like we planned, it was all working out like we planned, until it stopped working, and now, hey isn’t life grand.”

  Double nope.

  Maybe she needed to retune. She adjusted her G string before trying something else. “A little ditty, bout Lloyd and Diane…”

  Hopeless.

  It had been a great idea, and an even greater night. Watching Say Anything with Folx had been fun and maybe even a touch romantic. She’d completely forgotten about her childhood crush on Lloyd Dobbler. The movie was, at its heart, as Folx reminded her, about honesty, about letting go. Two qualities he clearly noticed she was lacking in her songwriting.

  And that was exactly her hang-up here too. How could she write a song about honesty? About letting go? She’d been so tightlipped about Lance and his death that she hadn’t even shared the story with Folx. But it’s not because I’m holding onto anything. There was just no reason to jump into that drama.

  Which was fine for her to understand, but it didn’t get her anywhere with a freaking song.

  She set her guitar down.

  Then she picked it up again. She wasn’t going to let Folx down. Or herself. “I’m afraid to fly, I’m afraid. I’m afraid to die, on a plane.”

  Blech.

  It just wasn’t coming to her. She stopped trying for lyrics, and started playing Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” on Lucky instead. One riff led to another, and next thing she knew, she was just jamming out. At least I can still play.

  Playing wasn’t enough, though, and it wasn’t the point of the exercise. Her fingers weren’t blocked, after all. Blowing out a deep breath, she tried aga
in. And again. Nothing was coming.

  Maybe if I watched it again.

  She cued up the movie, and sat in front of it with her guitar. As the familiar scenes played out, she strummed along, here a major, here a minor. Ninety minutes later, she had half a dozen viable chord progressions.

  Not a lyric in sight.

  Again. She restarted the film, this time with a notebook to copy down her favorite lines. Halfway through, the movie was starting to seem as trite and boring as the stray couplets she’d managed to scribble down here and there. Also, half the day was gone, and she hadn’t even eaten. She tossed her notebook aside and wandered out to find her sister.

  Andy was lounging on the couch with a book in her hand. “There’s leftovers in the fridge. I had Chinese with Blake earlier.” Lacy padded over to inspect the contents. Sesame chicken, score. No crab Rangoon, crap. Crab, crap. Crab crap. Five times fast. Could that be a song?

  Stop thinking and eat; you’re delirious.

  “I’m a little surprised you aren’t with him, actually. Isn’t Sunday normally your lazy day together?” Lacy stuck the box in the microwave and stared at it rotating through the little window, as if that would speed up the timer.

  “Yeah, but I wanted to finish this book. It’s better than I thought it would be.” She vaguely gestured to the copy of A Woman’s Education next to her on the cushion.

  “Noah’s book!” Their downstairs neighbor, Noah, was an in-the-closet erotic romance writer. Lacy had read his book as well, which often made it hard to make eye contact with him in the corridor. “It really is good. Why can’t you read during Lazy Sunday?”

  Deciding she didn’t care about heat so much as just shoving something in her mouth, Lacy pulled the box out early and snagged a pair of chopsticks from the silverware drawer.

  “It just seems rude.” Andy patted the couch beside her for Lacy to join.

  Lacy didn’t get it. When Lance was alive, they spent plenty of time together not focused on the same thing. She plopped down. “You guys are engaged.”

  “Yeah?”