Next to Me

by Veronica Cochrane

  By six o’clock we were all fried. Exhausted and emotionally burned out from working so much for such little reward. I invited the guys over to my place to grab some food and chill in the hope of taking some of the stress off. We would all have to go hard for the next few days.

  All three of my bandmates, Beau, Dean, and Asher, agreed to come home with me. We got there about an hour later with pizza, beer, and a new racing game to load up on the Xbox. We all relaxed into the game, enjoying the food and drinks, and equally enjoying shit-talking each other’s lack of driving skills. It was a good idea, and some of the constant stress of the past week began to lessen.

  Dean and Beau were super competitive with each other and won the majority of the races. I held my own, but Ash was terrible and got his ass kicked nearly every game.

  “What’s wrong with you? How are you so bad at this?” Dean started yelling at Ash after one particularly bad round.

  Ash was equally worked up about the stupid game. “Fuck you! The buttons keep fucking me up. I forget which one does what. This game is too fucking complicated. Just give me a joystick and let me drive!”

  “You play the drums. Aren’t there, like, a million of them too? How can you remember which drum to hit but you can’t remember the A button is for Accelerate?” Dean threw his hands up in the air in exasperation.

  Beau and I were dying laughing at their exchange. It felt so good to be back with the guys, focusing on something that wasn’t music or our failure in the rehearsal hall this week. We needed to do this more. We’d practiced, played, and relied on each other for so many years while we tried to break into music. We’d lived together on the bus for so many months on tour. Somewhere along in the process, we’d forgotten how to be friends.

  I had gotten up to grab a couple more beers from the fridge when there was a knock at the door. I didn’t think any of the management team I had invited were going to be able to make it, but if they had decided to come late, the more the merrier. I opened the door to find my beautiful boyfriend standing in front of me.

  We hadn’t spent much time together over the past week because of my rehearsal schedule and his upcoming exams. We had been texting, but even that wasn’t consistent, and I missed being with him regularly. I broke into a grin when I saw him standing there, excited he felt secure enough in our relationship to stop by unannounced and looking forward to finally introducing him to my bandmates.

  “Hey, sweetheart.” I leaned in to kiss him. “What are you doing here?”

  “Hi, C. I think I may have left a book here last weekend. Have you seen it around?”

  “Umm, I don’t think so. What does it look like?”

  “It’s a big textbook. Blue with some big uglyass photo on the front of a conductor and orchestra. It’s for my twentieth century music history class.”

  “I haven’t seen it, but let me help you look.”

  Chase walked a little farther into the foyer and noticed the guys still yelling at each other over the stupid game.

  “Oh shit. I didn’t realize you had people over. I can come back,” Chase said, turning toward the door.

  “Nah,” I said, trying to sideline his fear about barging in. “It’s just the guys from the band. We had another rough day today, so we needed a little decompression. Stay. I’ll introduce you to them, we’ll find your book, and then you can hang out. I want them to get to know you.”

  “I dunno….”

  “Please? Have you eaten? There’s lots of pizza. I’ve talked about you nonstop. They probably think you’re my imaginary boyfriend who’s way too good for me.”

  I couldn’t seem to stop blathering. Now that he was here, I realized how much I’d missed having him with me this week and was determined to convince him to stick around for a little while at least.

  “Fine,” he agreed. “Book first, then pizza.”

  “Hey, guys!” I said loudly to pull their attention away from whatever they were currently arguing about.

  The room finally went silent. Ash took the opportunity to pry his controller back out of Dean’s hands after Dean had apparently decided Ash wasn’t good enough to deserve it.

  “Guys, this is my boyfriend, Chase. Chase, that’s Dean, Beau, and Asher. Ignore them fighting like children.” I was proud to introduce all the most important people in my life to each other.

  “Damn, man. You didn’t tell us how cute he was. What the fuck is he doing with your sorry ass?” Dean asked, shaking Chase’s hand.

  Chase blushed bright red and giggled nervously. Dean was absolutely straight and was the opposite of me in the “falling into bed with willing groupies” category. But we loved him just the same. He was well intentioned, if a little slutty.

  “Chase is a composition student at Julliard,” I boasted. “He came by to look for a book he left here.”

  “He brags about you constantly,” Ash confided to Chase with a wink. “You’ve got him under some fierce spell.”

  After a few more minutes of ribbing, Chase and I excused ourselves to look for his textbook.

  “Suuuuure. Looking for a ‘textbook,’” Dean said, throwing in air quotes for comedic effect. “Where’s the book, Cart? Buried in his a—”

  “Okay!” I cut him off loudly.

  I really did not want to go down that road with Dean, especially since Chase and I still hadn’t actually done that. Dean and the other guys were laughing hysterically at finally having the opportunity to razz me about my previously nonexistent sex life.

  “Back in a minute!” I called over my shoulder as Chase and I hightailed it out of the room.

  Chase

  CARTER and I looked everywhere, but we couldn’t find my textbook, which was a really big deal because I had an exam in that class on Monday, and the stupid thing had cost me over a hundred bucks and had a bunch of my notes in it.

  “Still no luck?” Beau called to us from down the hall.

  “No, can’t find it anywhere!” I called back.

  “Okay, boys. It’s time to step in,” Dean said.

  They all got up from their seats in the living room and came into the music room to help us search.

  “What’s this?” Beau asked after a minute or two of hunting with no success.

  He was standing next to the piano, looking at the music to one of the songs Carter and I had been fooling around with last weekend. I had completely forgotten that it was there and hadn’t thought to tuck it away before the band came barging in.

  I didn’t know how Carter felt about sharing what we had written with the guys. I had assumed it would be too soft to be something he thought the band would be interested in. Most of the Thorns were of the rock/heavy rock persuasion. While Carter and I had combined our styles for the music we had been toying with, it was definitely not as hard core as the music the band usually played. Well, with the exception of “Next to Me,” the one ballad Carter wrote for me.

  “Oh, um, nothing.” I tried to grab the sheets out of Beau’s hand before he could look too closely, not wanting to embarrass Carter with the band finding out we were writing something they might make fun of.

  “No, it’s not.” Beau kept the sheet music away from me.

  Why am I always the shortest one in the room? I thought to myself. I didn’t know much about Beau, but from the way Carter talked about him, I got the impression they were closer than Carter was with the other guys in the band.

  Beau looked at the written music intently and then switched his gaze between me and Carter. Carter and I made eye contact across the room while Beau was looking at the pages. I threw him a panicked look, silently willing him to let me know what he wanted me to do. Carter shrugged, seemingly unbothered by the situation.

  “Cart, what is this?” Beau repeated after studying the rest of the pages for a bit. If he read music like I did, he was hearing the notes on the page clearly in his mind. “Have we seen this one already?”

  “No,” Carter answered nonchalantly. “Chase and I have been collaborating
a little in our spare time. Playing with some melodies and shit for fun.”

  “Guys, this is really good. Why haven’t you shown us?” Beau sat on the piano bench and put the music back on the stand in front of him.

  He started to play the song Carter and I had written. This piece was still in progress. A couple of others we had been working on were closer to being done, but C and I were both happy with how this piece was coming together. We had titled it simply, “Lost.” The lyrics were about being turned around in the woods and struggling to find the way out, a metaphor for the mental struggle of finding oneself.

  Beau’s style of playing was very different from mine. I wasn’t a concert pianist like a lot of my colleagues at Julliard by any stretch of the imagination, but I was classically trained and could hold my own in a formal setting. Beau was a professional musician in a completely different genre than the people I was used to being around. His fingering was a little clunky, and his carriage movements were stiff, but the passion behind each note was invigorating. It was like he was making a point of not following the rules, focusing on the music instead of the technique. There was something incredibly exhilarating about that.

  I was mesmerized listening to Beau play our song. The other guys clearly felt the same way. Everyone slowly drifted closer to the piano, and we were all in a small circle with Beau in the center by the time the last notes rang out.

  Ash broke the silence when Beau finished playing. “Holy shit! Are there lyrics?”

  “Yeah,” Beau said before Carter or I could respond.

  He read the words like a poem. His phrasing was different from how it would have been if he sang it, but he got the point across nonetheless.

  “Fuck, guys. That’s better than any of the bullshit we’ve been working on this week. And you wrote it just like that?” Dean asked.

  I hesitated. “Well, this one’s not done yet. We’re still working on it.”

  “There are more?” Dean exclaimed.

  C and I nodded in unison.

  “Why the hell haven’t we been playing this?” Dean asked again.

  Beau reached out from his seat and touched my arm gently. I was getting a gay—or at least bi—vibe from him but had no idea what his deal was. He was cute in kind of a boy-next-door-turned-rocker way but in no way compared to the beauty of my actual boy-next-door-turned-rocker.

  “Chase, this is amazing. You’re a composer?” Beau asked.

  “Yeah. Well, I want to be.” I decided to go with the full explanation once I got a sense Carter wouldn’t be upset with me for saying something. “We wrote this together, though. It wasn’t only me.” I looked at Carter with affection. “It’s just… not the usual type of stuff you guys do. I didn’t want to overstep or assume my stuff would be anywhere near good enough for you.”

  “You’re right. It’s better than what we do,” Beau said. “It’s not as hard, but Ash can throw in a crazy beat. Maybe speed it up a little?”

  Ash nodded enthusiastically. Beau looked through the music again to find the chorus. His fingers brushed the keys, and he started to play, faster than before.

  As an adult, I had never been overly possessive about the music I wrote. I had appreciated getting constructive critiques from mentors and other collaborators. I think that’s why Carter and I were working so well together these days. We wrote like a team. No ego, no objections to well-intended feedback, just the focus on making the music the best it could be.

  Beau played with the song over and over, making slight changes each time until he found a tempo he was happy with. I actually liked it more that way than as the slow ballad it was when we began. It was less predictable, more original, like something I had never heard before.

  Carter grabbed his old acoustic guitar off the wall. We had only written the piano chords, but he started to jam along with Beau, making up the guitar part on the spot and singing the lyrics we wrote from memory.

  C didn’t have a full drum set at home, but he had a couple of handheld drums and other percussion instruments. They were more for show than for use, but Ash pulled one of the djembe’s off the top shelf and sat down on the floor next to the piano. He tested the sound of the djembe with his open palms, looking satisfied with the variety of tones he could produce on the small drum. The beat was rough without a full kit, but it added to the pace of the song and gave an idea of what it would sound like.

  Finally, Dean sourced out the one bass guitar in Carter’s collection. He got a feel for the weight of the unfamiliar instrument and found a small amp to plug it into. He spent a few minutes tuning, as it had been sitting unused for a long time. Then Dean joined in with the other three, adding the lower register and bringing the song to life with a steady heartbeat.

  The whole makeshift session came together quickly. It was inspiring to see them fooling around on somewhat foreign gear but still replicating what they wanted to do when they got their regular instruments back in their hands. They read each other well. When one moved to solo or do something fancy, the others would back off a little quite naturally.

  The song started to meld into shape—a guitar solo came together for Carter, and backup vocals were first tentative and then became more sure, adding depth to the lyrics. I was standing next to them all in awe, listening to the music swirl around me.

  While I had fancied myself an amateur composer for a lot of years, I was completely out of my depth. Despite the fact that I was dating the lead singer, the band was made up of Grammy Award winning professionals. I was just a student with a big dream, and I had no idea if it would ever amount to a career.

  The music was like nothing I had ever worked on before. They made it their own, yet it stayed remarkably true to what Carter and I had written. The goose bumps and the happy tears were right below the surface while the guys got more and more into the song. My music, our music, was coming to life before my eyes on a professional scale. I was inspired and grateful, proud and motivated to keep working.

  After about half an hour of playing around with the song, it reached a point of consistency. The cracks had settled, and a couple of the sections Carter and I were still having difficulty with had ironed themselves into a shape that both we and the rest of the band were happy with. Carter walked to the kitchen to grab some water for everyone.

  “Chase, that’s a seriously cool song,” Dean said. “You guys are crazy talented together. You never wanted to write rock music? You could totally do it, you know. A ton of bands would kill for shit like this.”

  “Absolutely,” Ash chimed in. “You could sell it super easily.”

  “So, guys, are we all agreed this goes on the album? This is our single, right?” Beau asked the band when Carter came back into the music room.

  “Absol-fuckin’-lutely,” Dean responded emphatically.

  “It’s Chase and Carter’s song. They haven’t even said if we can use it yet,” Ash said. “But if they’re cool and it sounds as good as I think it will with the full kit, I’m down with it being the single.”

  Carter looked at me, questioning if I was okay with this. I nodded subtly at him, trying to convey my enthusiasm and telling him everything he needed to know with my eyes alone.

  “If you guys like it and Chase is in, I’m on board,” Carter agreed.

  “Chase?” Beau looked up at me.

  “Of course I’m in. It sounds unreal, guys,” I said, trying to not blubber and yet wanting to emphasize how completely into them using the song I was.

  “Then it’s settled,” Beau proclaimed. “We have a single. Now… show us the rest of them!”

  Chase

  THE guys spent the next several hours going through every song Carter and I had written in much the same way as they’d done with “Lost.” There were one or two that they decided didn’t fit, but for the most part, they loved what we had done, and with some minor tweaks, the songs sounded like the Thorns.

  They played through the night, stopping only a few times for snacks and short breaks. W
hen the temperature dropped, Dean reached for his jacket, which was draped over an end table, inadvertently revealing my long-forgotten misplaced textbook. He apologized over and over, but I paid him no mind. Without that mishap—a simple chance encounter that delayed me from finding my book—one of the greatest evenings of my life would have never taken place. Sending up a silent thank-you to fate, I got my ass back to work.

  I pulled up a chair next to the piano Beau had commandeered, and as much as they wanted to keep their identity, they surprised me by how much input they asked me for. It wasn’t ever like they were taking my work away from me. It was a team effort, and I was as much a part of it as any of the bandmates.

  Somewhere around 4:00 a.m., we all started to get a little hazy, and Ash decided we should call it a night. The progress over the course of the evening had been insane, and they were all stoked to try it out with their full gear and show it to the higher-ups the next day. The guys finally left Carter and me alone in his condo, and he wrapped his arms around me as soon as he had locked the front door.

  “I am so proud of you, Chase. You were amazing tonight. Are you sure this is okay? It’s your work, and I don’t want you to feel pressured to let the band use it.”

  “It’s our work,” I stressed. “And you and I may have started writing it, but you guys made the songs come alive. They sound like Inevitable Thorns and like us, and I couldn’t be happier about this. This was an amazing night.” I kissed him softly.

  “They loved you,” he said with a yawn as we quickly got ready for bed.

  “That’s good, because I love you.”

  “I love you too, baby. So much.” He turned off the bedside lamp and snuggled me close, spooning me from behind. I didn’t think I had ever been so happy.

  Carter

  I WOKE up the next morning when Chase said goodbye before he left for class. We hadn’t gotten more than a couple hours sleep, and while I didn’t have to be at the rehearsal hall for a while yet, Chase had an early start on Fridays at school. I felt bad for keeping him up so late the night before, knowing he was stressed about his studies and was in the middle of exams. He’d sworn he didn’t mind and wanted to stay with us the handful of times I’d asked him if he needed to go to bed, but I felt guilty for it nonetheless. I went back to sleep for another hour, drifting off as soon as he left.