Say it Louder

by Heidi Joy Tretheway

  “Seriously?” I’m thoroughly off-balance from his sudden mood swing.

  “What? You’re doing fine. You’ll be fine.” His expression is some mix of anger and sadness, but the way he throws fine at me, it feels like a blow. Like he’s actually pissed that I’m doing OK.

  As he gulps down the water, I put my hands on my hips and stare.

  “I don’t know what crawled up your ass, but I’m serious about no negative vibes in here,” I’m so frayed from today that this about-face is about to put a final crack in my disintegrating mood. “I can hardly keep it together as it is. If something’s eating you, go work out or bitch to your bandmates. Don’t show up and dump your rich-boy problems here.”

  He gives a mirthless chuckle. “Rich-boy problems. Nice. Where’d you get that line?”

  “It’s not a line. Either you tell me what’s wrong, or you check that shit at the door.”

  Dave slams the cup down on the counter. “They fired me! OK? As in, bye-bye drummer boy, hello studio sub. They don’t want me fucking up the rest of their album.” His chin trembles and his head bows. “They don’t want me,” he whispers.

  I reel back from his shout, but the whisper is what cuts into my heart. Fired from his own band. Is that even possible? I wish I could Superman back time five minutes to erase my taunt about rich-boy problems.

  This is so much worse. This band is everything to him.

  I cross the room and tentatively wrap my fingers over his hand as he grips the edge of my scarred countertop. His head is still dropped into his chest and his shoulders heave with choked, silent sobs.

  “I’m sorry.” I try squeezing his hand, but he doesn’t respond at all. I trace the tattoos on the knuckles on his left hand that spell out love, remembering that the knuckles on the other hand spell fear. Polar opposites, just like we are. “Dave, I’m so, so sorry. For what the band did to you, and for saying that about … problems. I had no right.”

  “They didn’t do it to me.”

  “What?” I can barely hear his muffled words, spoken more to his T-shirt than to me.

  “They didn’t. I did it to myself. I did it by not being good enough. Not tight enough. I was dragging them down.” Each short sentence is punctuated by a hitch of breath, another little sob.

  I squeeze his hand, the one with love, and pull him away from the kitchen to my bed in the corner. “Sit.” I’m covered in paint so I start working the buttons on the men’s shirt and his eyes widen.

  “Willa, that isn’t going to fix any—”

  “I didn’t say it was. And anyway, I’m not stripping for you. I’m trying to keep the paint on my sheets to a minimum.” I pull off the shirt and try to ignore the desire it ignites in his eyes as I pull on a clean T-shirt.

  Because ho-lee-shit, the way that man looks at me, it’s like women didn’t exist for him before we met.

  I strip off my ratty jeans and crawl on the bed beside him in my usual nightclothes, just a T-shirt and panties, but sex is not what this is about.

  His lashes are still wet, his eyes red from the breakdown. I wriggle my way closer to him, laying us back on the bed and slipping a leg between his. I’m trying (but failing) to ignore his dick practically begging to escape his jeans, but in this position I find the closeness I need to be able to say what I must.

  “Rewind a bit. What changed that made your band not want you anymore?”

  “I couldn’t keep up in the studio. I was falling behind the beat. And when you’re the drummer, you are the beat. Fucking that up is like a singer losing his voice. You’re pretty much useless if you can’t perform.”

  “Useless, huh?” I let my fingers drift up the soft dark hair on his forearms, over a muscled shoulder, to the secret soft place behind his ear. “The way I see it, you’ve been incredibly useful. Weren’t you the one who got the gigs in the first place?”

  “For four years,” he admits grudgingly.

  “And weren’t you working on the contract to do the homecoming show in Pittsburgh?”

  “Yeah. It’s almost sold out.” That tugs a tiny smile to the corner of his mouth.

  “And are you or are you not the one who held the band together when Gavin went AWOL?”

  This question spreads his smile a little wider. “Somebody had to put on their grown-up pants and handle it.”

  “Sounds pretty useless to me.”

  His mouth parts in surprise, then he catches my sarcasm. “You don’t under—”

  I pull away. “Oh, no, don’t you dare go there. Don’t throw ‘you don’t understand’ at me like you’re up there and I’m down here and I can’t possibly understand the demands of your rock-star life.”

  That shuts him down. “I meant … fuck. I don’t know what I meant. It’s just not that simple. It’s like finding out that you’re an impostor, and everyone knows you’re an impostor, but none of your best friends bothered to fucking tell you until it was too late. Now I’m on an international stage and I feel like a fool.”

  I touch his face gently, to keep his rant from gathering steam. “Stop right there. What I was trying to say when I blurted ‘rich-boy problems’ is that you’re missing perspective. That’s why I had you meet Nancy. I mean, there are things that can kill you inside, like embarrassment and sadness and resentment. And there are things that can actually kill you, like hunger and cancer and assholes who think the homeless are just more sidewalk trash.”

  Dave’s face is sober, thinking.

  “So which kind is it? This problem? Is this losing face, maybe losing friends, and getting your feelings hurt real bad? Or is it actually going to end your life?”

  “You know the answer.”

  “And so do you. You know it in your brain, even though your gut says this is the worst thing that can happen to you. It’s not.”

  Dave laughs for real this time and pulls me tighter against his chest. “You’re amazing. You know that? Simply fucking brilliant.”

  I accidentally yawn and it’s the kind that can’t be politely covered, it practically snaps my jaw with all the sleepless nights fueling it.

  “God. Look at you. It’s probably killing you to stay up even a few more minutes.”

  I try to shrug it away but another yawn hits me. “It’s a small problem. I’ll live.”

  ***

  Twenty-four hours to deadline. Thanks to Dave’s constant stream of food and shoulder massages, I’m not fall-apart fragile anymore. If anything, this discipline to produce is making me more resilient, like training for the New York Marathon.

  “It’s healthy, but I promise you’re going to like it,” Dave says, holding two takeout bowls and a paper sack. “I got Thai.”

  We take a few minutes away from the canvases to eat, then we’re back at it. With Dave dismissed from recording, he’s channeled all of his energy into me—washing brushes, cleaning plastic stencils, basically doing all of the grunt work except the actual art.

  We work side-by-side with my ancient radio playing in the background, but when one of Tattoo Thief’s older songs comes on, Dave moves swiftly to change the station.

  I can hardly blame him. They erase him, he erases them.

  I want to push him to open up about the other secrets, the stuff he promised to tell me in the bar, but I can’t bear to lose the time or focus.

  And sometimes I think Dave’s about to say something, but when I catch his eye he just ducks away and goes back to cleaning brushes. I think there’s some unspoken agreement that we’re going to talk it all out—after my deadline.

  His phone’s ringtone shatters our peace.

  “Sorry, I thought the ringer was off.” Dave hustles to the other side of my place so the call doesn’t interrupt what he calls my creative process, but I live in a one-room loft. You can hear everything, including the hooker next door who calls her mother every Sunday like clockwork, and like clockwork gets in a fight with her in about fifteen minutes.

  “I’m at Willa’s.” Dave says, then listens a bit. “We
signed the concert contract weeks ago. If the Pittsburgh promoters want to change the splits now, tell them that’s not going to happen.”

  Clearly agitated, Dave starts pacing, and I can’t help but pause my work to listen. “Why don’t you answer them? They contacted you, didn’t they?”

  He curses under his breath as the caller continues. When he sees me listening he hits the speakerphone button.

  “—telling you, none of us want to do this show without you.” I recognize Tyler’s voice. “The fans expect you there. I expect you there. It doesn’t matter if she can wail on the drums, I need to be able to work with someone who gets me at a glance.”

  “That’s rich. You kick me out of recording—I don’t care if it was Ravi’s idea—and then call me when things go tits-up? He’s your manager now.”

  There’s a beat, then Tyler’s voice goes an octave lower, almost pleading. “That’s not how it was supposed to be. Ravi didn’t consult any of us. Do we need his help finishing the album? Absolutely. But we need you, always have and always will. If your stupid pride is making you blind to that, I don’t know how else to make it clear short of handcuffing you and dragging your ass back to Pittsburgh.”

  “You’re all agreed?” Dave asks warily.

  “Yes. We talked it out after recording, the three of us, but what’s missing is you. We agreed that the decision has to be unanimous. You’re still the drummer, so nobody’s going to change that.”

  Dave blows out a breath and throws me a look, some strange oil-and-water mix of triumph and defeat. “Then when do we leave?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Two clocks are ticking, but one is strangely more important to me. Tonight is the last night before Willa’s deadline, and tomorrow the band’s bus leaves for Pittsburgh.

  Our connection is too new, too fresh, to complicated by my recent breakup to call it a relationship, yet here I am, cutting rags and cleaning paint trays at three in the morning as Willa races to finish her last canvas.

  The gallery’s transport service will be here in seven hours.

  I watch Willa work from the kitchen, her face silhouetted by the lamp, her wild hair faded to soft pink and paint-streaked with random rainbows.

  I watch her shoulders move beneath the shapeless button-down shirt, her hand hovering over the canvas for an instant as she decides whether to commit this color here or move the stencil.

  She chews on the pointed end of her brush for a moment and then turns to me quickly, catching me staring at her. Her lips quirk in a little smile. “What are you looking at?”

  There’s so much want bound up inside me, but I have no idea how to start. “Just you. You’re almost there.” I cross the room and sit on the floor next to her, pulling her into my lap and ruining yet another T-shirt with paint in the process.

  Like I care. I’d ruin just about anything for this girl. She’s like her own weather pattern, ever changing—soft, threatening, stormy, sunny. Tonight her eyes are the saturated blue of a late summer sky.

  “You ready for bed?”

  She looks up quickly, her eyes darkening with the double meaning. “You coming too?”

  My brows pull down with regret. “I want to, but I can’t. Some asshat named Ravi decided we should take a bus to Pittsburgh, which is a freaking six-hour haul instead of a nice little one-hour flight. I hate that guy.”

  “You don’t really. You just hate the decisions he’s making.” Willa snuggles into the circle of my arms and for a moment I think she might even fall asleep on my chest.

  “I wouldn’t make those decisions if I were manager.”

  She looks up. “Maybe you would. I think you’re just pissed that you’re not the one calling the shots. But at least you got what you want. Ravi can’t replace you with some other drummer.”

  She leans in for a kiss and I want to lose myself in her, in this, but my brain forces me to shut it down before my body takes over. “I have to go back to my place and pack. But I promise I’ll be back before your opening. I’ve got a ticket for the first flight from Pittsburgh to New York on Sunday.”

  “Thank you. Because I don’t know how I’m going to even walk in the gallery without some help.”

  I chuckle. “Whoa. That doesn’t sound like my I-don’t-need-anyone kickass girl. For a moment there, you sounded mortal.”

  “Even superheroes need a sidekick.” She nudges me in the ribs, but her face is thoughtful. “Facing the crowds and critics scares the shit out of me. You’re used to crowds. You can show me the ropes.”

  I tick off a list on my fingers. “Dress to kill, don’t drink more than two, and give the cameras some love early on so they’ll leave you alone the rest of the night. Oh, and bring a rock star as arm candy.”

  She laughs, this gorgeous warm sound that feels like basking in a spotlight. “Why would I want one of those when I’ve got this hot studio assistant?”

  She offers me a quick kiss but I take it deeper, more insistent, show her exactly what I crave. When we first met, she was intriguing. But now that I’ve seen her soft and fragile layers, she’s addictive. Somehow this balance of badass and beautiful, strong and guarded, is so potent that I’m lost in her.

  There is no going back. And I resolve to tell her—and to lay my secrets bare the moment I return—so that there can be no more walls between us.

  When I finally break off the kiss, she’s breathless. She pulls my hands close, kissing each knuckle in turn, first the one that reads fear, then love. “Why these?”

  “Why not? I love contradictions.” Like her.

  I take Willa’s hands that are still grasping mine and place them around the back of my neck, wrapping her around me. “I got them in college. I found an old journal from junior high when I was cleaning out my house after Dad died. This lead singer from my favorite band had these cool-ass tattoos on his knuckles that showed up in every picture of him singing when he grabbed the mic. I wrote that I was going to be in a rock band, and that I wanted to make a statement like that too someday.”

  “And you have.”

  “That’s debatable. What if that babysitter girl is the real deal? The band said keeping me in or out has to be unanimous, which really means it’s my choice. What if I’m not good enough, but can’t admit it?” My throat closes as the reality of that sinks in. “Considering I’ve spent my entire adult life in this band, that really fucking sucks.”

  Willa tightens her hold around my neck, her lips dropping to my cheekbone and then my jaw. The siren song of temptation to just roll into Willa’s bed and sleep for a few hours is deafening, but I’m not going to be that guy who holds up the bus.

  “I really should go.”

  She opens her mouth to say something, but I interrupt her.

  “I promise I’ll be back for you. As long as you’ll let me, I’ll be here for you. So you never feel alone.”

  Willa smiles, sweet sad eyes brimming with gratitude. “Now I just have to freak out for the next four days until the show.”

  “No need. You made art that’s exceptional.” I give her one last, lingering kiss. “I’ll go rock Pitt, and then you’re going to rock the New York art world.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  I’m barely in the door of my brownstone when Kristina’s angry slur spins my head. She’s dressed to party in a strappy little dress, but her makeup is smeared and her hair is in tangles.

  She hiccups.

  “How about, what the hell are you doing in my house?” I slam the door and stalk over to the kitchen bar where a bunch of beer bottles—empty—stand next to her dumped-out purse.

  There are pills. A lot of little orange bottles with prescriptions I don’t recognize. She holds up her phone in accusation. “I texted you, like, a hunnred times.”

  I fish my phone out of my pocket and sure enough, I’ve gotten dozens of texts and a handful of calls from her in the last couple hours. I switch the ringer back on. I never looked at my phone beca
use the only person in the world I wanted to talk to was right beside me in her Lower East Side loft.

  Making art. Taking a shit hand she was dealt and making something even better out of it.

  I gotta take a page from her playbook.

  It doesn’t take a genius to conclude that Kristina’s here to make trouble. I repeat myself, very slowly. “Kristina. Why are you here?”

  “I think we should talg,” she slurs, her K’s becoming G’s. “This”—she gestures to the space between us—“it got all shitty, I dunno. But you can’t just end us. I didn’t talk to the press. Jus’ like I promised.”

  I turn away from her in disgust, yanking open the hall closet door to pull out my suitcase. “Believe me, it’s over. You want to know how it got shitty? You want to know why? Take a look in the mirror. You made this. You threw Violet to the wolves. You cheated on me. I did nothing but give you half of everything I’ve earned. But I still have the power to end this.”

  She slumps over the counter, her head in her hands, and moans. It would be pitiful if she weren’t so fucking evil. I go to the bathroom and grab my toiletries, toss them in the suitcase, then when I’m pretty sure she’s fallen asleep on the counter, I go upstairs and grab the clothes I’ll need for the concert.

  I zip up my bag, drag it downstairs, and check how much time is left before I’ll need to call for a ride—two hours, enough for a quick nap—and Kristina stirs again.

  “I loved you, you know.” With sleep-creased eyes and reddened cheeks, she looks innocent for a moment. “Everything I did, even collecting the secrets. It was all for us. To help you manage the band.”

  I snort. “Nothing that you’ve done was for me. Don’t lie to yourself or to me about that. You’re only out to protect you. And now you’ve crawled in here because … why? Because something didn’t go right at your party tonight?” I snatch her keys from the counter to ensure I get back her key to my house.

  “I came to say I’m sorry!” She’s crying and this time I’m pretty sure it’s real tears, not just the shit she pulls when she wants something. “I saw you with that street trash and I—”