by KE Payne
It had already been prearranged for us all to meet up at the studio to start recording “Perspectives” for the album. Irony sucks. And of course, just to make matters even worse for me, Alex was already there when I arrived, shortly after ten.
She didn’t look at me when I came in, though. Didn’t even acknowledge my presence as I stumbled in through the door, dripping wet, then took off my coat and shook the rain from it.
I didn’t know what I expected. A text the night before might have been a start, though—an Okay, we so need to talk about what just happened text. But there had been nothing, and the minute she saw me, she started acting all weird, refusing to speak to me or even look at me, and now I was sure Robyn and Brooke were acting weird around me too.
They knew. It must have been written all over my face.
Did it matter? Would they freak if they knew Alex and I had kissed?
I slipped another look to Alex. The trouble was, with Alex being all strange like she was, and refusing to speak to me, Robyn and Brook would think me and her had fallen out, and then Alex would leave, and Be4 would split, and…
“So did your delivery come yesterday?” Robyn.
I looked at her blankly. Alex was standing not far away. She was looking tanned and glowing from her afternoon round the pool and was wearing board shorts and a short-sleeved hoodie, despite the rain outside. On anyone else, it would look ordinary. On Alex, like everything else, it looked perfect.
“Yeah. Delivery. Yeah, it came.” My words came out more as a sigh than anything else.
Alex moved away, into the shadows of the studio.
“Have you spoken to Alex today?” I asked Robyn.
“Nope.” Robyn pulled a pot of something from her bag. Lip balm or something. I neither knew nor cared. I just needed to know if Alex had spilled. “Well, only to say hi.” She opened the pot and rubbed something from it on her pouting lips.
“She say anything about yesterday?”
“Why should she?”
“I just wondered if she’d had a good time, that’s all.” I let my wonderings get lost in a forced yawn, elicited in a sad attempt to cover up my unease.
“I think she left just after you, actually,” Robyn said, putting her pot back in her bag. “I saw her a few minutes after you’d gone, packing up her bag.”
“Was she okay?” Now I was acting weird.
Robyn looked at me strangely. “She was fine. Why?”
“She seemed a bit down when I was talking to her, that’s all.” The lies flowed easily. “I wondered if she was okay.”
“You can ask her yourself.” Robyn nodded to the sound booth. Alex was now inside it, staring out at me.
Our eyes met and held, and in those few seconds, it was all I could do to not shove Robyn out of the way and go up to her and explain myself to her. But I knew I couldn’t in a room full of people; I needed to be alone with her, tell her I was sorry for what I’d done. Tell her I’d made a mistake.
As I looked at her, a snapshot of the day before came to me with such clarity, I drew in a shaky breath.
Alex, achingly close to me, then her lips, warm and sweet against mine, our bodies finally melting into one another’s.
It hadn’t been a mistake. I’d wanted it more than I’d ever wanted anything.
And by the way Alex was now looking at me again, it was clear she’d wanted it just as much as I had.
*
I didn’t know how I was supposed to concentrate. The music played, I sang. Ed grumbled. I sang again. My head hurt and my eyes constantly drifted to Alex, willing her to look at me, to acknowledge I was even in the same room as her. But each time our eyes did meet, she’d look away and cut me dead.
I wanted her to keep her eyes on me, though. I wanted her to see that I was hurting just as much as she was, that I was as confused as she was. I wanted her to see in my eyes the reason I’d done what I had, for her to reach into my mind and understand me.
The day just went on and on. Faces came and went in the studio; some I recognized, some I didn’t. Awesomely, we wrapped on our first recording of “Perspectives” without any major hitches, or shouting, or re-recordings. The evaluation CD was burned, high-fives were planted all round, and before I realized it, the studio was rapidly emptying of people until suddenly there was only me, Ed, Brooke, Alex, and some sound guy whose name I couldn’t remember, left standing in the middle of it. Robyn had gone ten minutes before, talking loudly as she left about her dinner date with Nate. I don’t think anyone was listening. I sure wasn’t.
Alex was hanging back. I was certain of it. As the others gathered things and collected bags and papers, Alex sat perched on the edge of a stool, making a meal of tightening the laces on her Vans, and searching in her bag for something that caused her to frown and delve deep into it. I knew what she was doing. She was stalling for time because she wanted to talk to me, once everyone else had gone, and the relief I felt that she wanted to hang out with me and talk was tangible.
“You coming?” Brooke asked me. “We can Tube together to Oxford Street if you like.”
I looked at Alex, still rooting around in her bag.
“I’ll wait,” I said. My mind had already wandered in the other direction up the line, towards Kensington. I knew an awesome coffee place there, where the owner constantly called me Tilly but I never minded because he always directed me to one of the more discreet booths where no one could see me. It’d be the perfect place, I figured, for me and Alex to have a heart-to-heart.
I’d ask her. I would. I’d ask her out for coffee, then maybe over a latté and muffin—did Alex even like muffins?—I’d tell her I liked her, because I really did, but that… But that, what? She wasn’t as important to me as Be4? The truth was, I had no idea what I was going to say to her. All I knew was I couldn’t leave things as they were. I couldn’t bear the awkwardness between us, when before we’d been so comfortable around one another.
When finally the room emptied, and there was only me and Alex left, I picked up my guitar, looped it around my shoulder, and, stepping over some cables, wandered over to her. She was standing now, one hand in her pocket, her phone in her other hand, her face a picture of concentration, and I just knew she was choosing songs to listen to for her Tube ride home. And I knew it would be Motown. Because, I figured, I was beginning to know everything about Alex.
“Today went okay, didn’t it?” I was the first to fill the silence. “The recording.”
Alex looked up from her phone.
“I guess.”
Silence then. I looked expectantly at her, hoping she might say some more, but when she didn’t say anything further, I said, “We should talk.”
“About?” Alex stuffed her phone into her shorts pocket.
“You know what about.”
She pulled a face. “Nothing to talk about.” Her voice was calm when she spoke.
“But…yesterday,” I said. “I…wanted to apologize.”
“Apologize?” she repeated.
“For…you know.”
Alex blew the hair from her forehead and sighed with what sounded to me like exasperation.
“Yeah, okay. Apology accepted,” she said with faint sarcasm. She pulled her phone from her pocket again, then brushed past me and headed for the door.
“I thought we could maybe go and have a coffee.” Even as I was saying it, I knew what her answer would be.
Her feet slowed, and for one moment I wondered if I’d been wrong. She turned and looked back at me and, after the longest silence, just said, “Sorry. Busy,” then yanked the door open and left.
Guess I was having that latté and muffin alone then.
Chapter Twenty-one
I wanted to text her. So many times I came close to picking my phone up and sending her a message, but I didn’t. Not that Alex texted me either. And the longer the silence between us went on, and the longer neither of us could talk about what had happened at the pool, the worse everything became.
> It was only going to be a matter of time before Robyn and Brooke noticed too. We were right in the middle of recording songs for the new album, which meant hours and days cooped up in the studio together, so I had no time whatsoever to get Alex on her own. It had been a week since the pool party, and in that week, I think she and I had barely said two words to one another. Every time I tried to get her on her own, Alex magically had something else to do. Each time I thought I’d mustered up enough confidence to explain myself to her, my confidence slipped away when I knew I couldn’t even begin to explain anything.
Alex’s coldness towards me was affecting my singing too. How was I supposed to concentrate when all this was hanging over me? Yet I still had to stand next to her in the sound booth and sing with her, gel with her, be comfortable around her.
We were on our fifth take of “Missing You,” a fairly short folky sounding ballad which had been written by a freelance composer, which Ed thought would make a good filler song for the album. This was our second album—the dreaded second album—and there had been too much stressing over it, since everyone knew a band’s second album had to be way better than the first, if they were to keep their fans happy.
I didn’t get “Missing You.” It was just a three minute song, which was going to be squeezed in between “After the Rain,” and “Perspectives.” Whether it was because I hadn’t written “Missing You,” so I didn’t feel it, or whether it was because it seemed like only yesterday we were recording “Perspectives” and now we were recording something completely different, it was difficult to get my head around it, I didn’t know. Standing in a tiny booth singing a ballad with Alex, trying not to stand too close to her, trying to make sure our bodies didn’t touch, didn’t help at all. All I did know was I didn’t want to be there. My head was too messed up to be singing words such as knowing you don’t love me and this pain is all too much, and that was making me apparently unable to sing even a single note properly, which was making Ed cranky, and Robyn sigh, and Alex look at me like she’d been looking at me since the pool party.
I wanted to tell them all to fuck off. Alex included.
“What’s the problem here?” Ed spoke to me from out on the floor.
I’d taken my headphones off after my third failed attempt to hit a C convincingly.
“Not getting it.” Apparently I’d engaged spoilt brat mode.
“What don’t you get?”
“Everything.” I shook my head. “The song, the vibe.”
“Tally,” Ed said, approaching the booth, “we’ve been here three hours already.” He screwed up his nose. “It’d be good if we could get this one down by the end of the day.”
Like I didn’t know that?
“The instrumentals are done,” he said, “you’re not needed on guitar, so can you just…sing?”
I really loathed him sometimes.
I rattled a look off to Robyn, who replied with a similar expression, then flipped my headphones back on. We started singing again, and Alex, of course, as cool as a cucumber, nailed her vocals. How did she do it? I wanted to look at her, to see if she really was as calm as she was making out. I wished I knew her secret; every movement from her, every soft whisper from her voice sent my focus flying out of the window. I couldn’t concentrate; her presence, the fact she was breathing the same air as me, messed with my head. When I did glance at her, memories from the pool came rushing back at me with such stark clarity I repeatedly missed my cues.
What was going through Alex’s mind? I wish she’d speak to me, even if it was to tell me that kissing her was messed up and that I was a head-fuck and that she hated me; at least then I’d know that I wasn’t the only one that hated me for what I’d done to her. Alex’s silence was driving me mad. She was driving me mad.
I was done.
I threw my headphones off again and stumbled from the sound booth, nearly tripping over some cables in my haste to get away, and muttering something about idiots leaving cable lying around and me needing a break before I screamed.
Outside in the corridor, I regretted my hasty decision. I braced myself against the wall, looking back to the studio door, expecting it to open any second. It didn’t, and I could imagine them all inside talking about me, grumbling about me. About how I’d had another hissy fit, just like I had when we’d been rehearsing in Walthamstow.
When the door still didn’t open, I finally pushed away from the wall and stalked down the corridor, away from them.
I was so done.
*
The buzzing of my intercom wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I’d left the studio and come straight back to my apartment, stopping off at the corner shop on the way home to buy the biggest block of chocolate they had. The fact I also bought a six-pack of beer while I was in there was entirely coincidental; I’d be eighteen in five weeks’ time, so I was practically legal already. In all the time I’d been going in there, the shop owner had never known who I was, and I figured he wouldn’t care if I was Lady Gaga herself, as long as I handed over my money.
My intercom buzzed again. I was halfway through a box set that had been unopened since Christmas, two empty beer bottles at my feet, the screwed up chocolate wrapper still on the floor from where I’d tried to throw it in the bin from the sofa, and missed. When the intercom rang a third time, this time without stopping, I paused the TV and got up.
I yanked it from its cradle.
“All right, already,” I said into the phone.
“You always take this long to answer?”
It was Robyn.
“Are you going to buzz me up then?”
Still there.
I sighed down the phone, which Robyn must have heard, because she gave some caustic comment, but buzzed her up anyway. I flopped back down onto the sofa, unpaused the box set, and waited for her.
At the sound of the click of the door, I rolled my head backwards to see Robyn standing in the doorway, and lifted an arm, heavy from the beer, to signal her to come in.
“So this is where you’re hiding, is it?” Robyn shut the door and came in.
I paused the box set again. It didn’t look like I was going to get to finish it today after all.
“Who’s hiding?” I asked.
“You are.”
“Whatever. Beer?” I nudged a socked toe to the four remaining bottles on the floor, then waited as Robyn came closer.
She picked up a bottle, slapped my leg to get me to move over, then fell onto the sofa next to me.
Then, just as I knew would happen, silence. Robyn, I guessed, was waiting for me to speak. I didn’t feel like speaking.
“So?” Robyn was the first to break. She never did like long silences.
“So?” I repeated.
“Come on.” Robyn looked bored. “What’s up? Why did you disappear like that?”
“I just didn’t get it.” I shook my head. “Got frustrated.”
“No kidding.”
“Did you carry on?” I asked. “After I left?”
“We got our vocals down, yes,” Robyn said, “so you’ll be recording yours alone, I guess.”
“Is Ed angry?”
“He’ll be all right.”
That was a yes, then.
“It wasn’t…” Robyn took a breath, and I knew she was thinking about how to phrase her question. “It wasn’t Alex, was it?”
Adrenaline shot through me.
“Alex?” I asked, hoping that Robyn couldn’t hear the tremble in my voice. “Why her?”
“Well I thought you’d sorted your shit out with her.” Robyn picked up the bottle opener from the floor, then opened her beer. “Now I’m beginning to wonder if you two still don’t have a problem with one another.”
She had no idea.
“I’ve not got a problem with Alex,” I said. “Why?” I asked, looking at Robyn. “Has she said something?”
“No, but”—Robyn pulled a face—“she did seem upset that you’d gone,” she said, “so if it’s you that still
has a problem with her, don’t you think you ought to sort it out?”
“I already told you,” I said, hating the idea of an upset Alex, “everything’s fine with me and Alex. It was just the song that I have a problem with.”
“It’s a good song.” Robyn shrugged. “Okay, it’s not one of ours, but…”
“I won’t have a problem with it next time.” If I could sing my vocals alone, without having Alex standing next to me, it wouldn’t be an issue.
Robyn looked dubious.
“Well,” she said, “I also came over to tell you something which should put a smile back on your miserable face.” She leant over and bumped against me.
“Hit me.”
“Ed said he wanted to tell us all together,” Robyn said, “you know, when we’d finished recording together.” She rolled her eyes. “Until you spoiled it.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Enough with the guilt already.
“It seems,” Robyn began, and I could practically hear the excitement in her voice, “that ‘After the Rain’ is predicted to go to number one tomorrow.”
“Seriously?” Now that made me smile.
“Yuh-huh. Ed said current CD sales and downloads have outstripped anything else this week.”
I wiggled myself up straighter on the sofa and tucked one leg under the other.
“But that’s awesome,” I said, shaking my head. “Did he say how many sales?”
Robyn shook her head. “Over a million.” A grin spread across her face. “We’ve done it, Tally. Our first number one.”
I launched myself at her and threw my arms around her, nearly knocking her from the sofa. We rocked and laughed and whooped in each other’s arms, and the craziest thing was, all the time I was doing it, my mind was thinking about Alex, and how pleased she would be.
“Everyone must be stoked.” I tore myself away from her and sat back down. “What did…Brooke say?”
“What do you think?” Robyn’s face was flushed. “She’s over the bloody moon.”
“And Alex?”
“Ludicrously happy.”