Your Rhythm

by Katia Rose

  She leads us to a tiny room that looks like it’s usually someone’s office. There’s a few plastic chairs arranged in a circle and Kay’s sitting on one of them, wearing tight black pants and a jean jacket. She lifts her head up from looking at her phone and adjusts her glasses as we come in.

  Her eyes immediately flick to mine before scanning over the rest of the group.

  “Hey,” she greets us.

  I didn’t think she’d have the same effect on me with all the worries about the show on my mind. None of us were really in the mood for an interview after the disaster on stage, but having her here in front of me, after she’s been hanging around in the back of my head for the past few days, seems to wipe everything else away.

  There’s something calculated in her stare as she rests one elbow on the back of her chair and flashes that half smile I haven’t been able to forget. She takes the sight of us in like a poker player getting ready to call someone’s bluff.

  “I’m Kay.”

  JP doesn’t waste any time striding forwards to shake her hand.

  “Oh, we know that.” He gives me a painfully obvious side-eye and I remind myself to kick him later. “Bon soir, Madame. My name is Jean-Paul, but you can call me JP.”

  He sweeps his trapper hat, which he’s been wearing all day, in front him before replacing it back on his head.

  “Everyone calls him JP,” Cole clarifies. “It’s not a special privilege.”

  “Nice to meet you, JP.” He lets go of her hand and she gestures for us to sit in the rest of the chairs. “You’re Cole, right? And you’re Ace?”

  “Yeah, and you’ve already met Matt. We heard all about that.”

  I’m starting to regret ever bringing her up with the guys. Subtlety is not their strong point.

  Kay just moves the interview along. “I know you’ve got to be on stage soon, so let’s get right into things. You’re all okay with me recording?”

  She pulls out some kind of microphone from her bag and hooks it up to her phone, setting both down on one of the extra chairs and moving it into the middle of the circle. We all nod and she starts with her questions.

  “How are you feeling about the show tonight? It’s a pretty big venue.”

  “Pretty big venue to fuck up at,” Cole grumbles.

  Kay turns to focus on him. “Do you think you’re ready for something like this?”

  “Yeah, Cole,” Ace taunts, “do you think we’re ready for this?”

  “We would be, if you hadn—”

  “Guys,” I warn. “Not now.”

  An awkward silence descends until JP steps in to fill it.

  “We opened for another band here once.” He shrugs his shoulders. “Feels pretty crazy to be coming back to headline.”

  “You’ve been doing that a lot lately— headlining. What do you think has led to your recent jump in success?”

  JP answers again. “Our last album really got things going for us. I think people just really responded to the music, and it took off from there. It’s been like an avalanche, you know? Just a bit of snow fell, and then it was like WHOOSH!”

  He makes a sliding motion with his hands and I see Kay straining to hold back a laugh. She glances around to see if anyone else has something to add. All the group interviews we’ve done so far have been like this: JP talks the reporter’s ear off, I add something every now and then, and Cole and Ace sit there looking too cool for school.

  “What about Atlas? How much of the ‘whoosh’ are they responsible for?”

  I might be the only one who feels it, but the tension seems to rise another notch. I read Kay’s article in La Gare, and for some reason it left me feeling uneasy. I tried not to take the bait when she asked about how things were going with Atlas, but it seemed like she picked up on all the doubts I’d been having anyways. I don’t know why, but the whole article seemed like a warning. I just couldn’t figure out if it was meant for me.

  “En fait, a lot of the ‘whoosh,’” JP tells her. “They’ve been pretty great so far. We wouldn’t have our big tour coming up without them.”

  “Do you feel prepared for that?” Kay asks. “After what just happened on stage?”

  I see the guys go from surprised to annoyed as they process what she just said. Even I’m kind of pissed at her for mentioning it. She picks up on the reaction and starts to backtrack.

  “Look, I’m not here to critique your performance.” She pauses to laugh to herself a bit. “Well, I guess that’s exactly what I’m here for, but that’s not what I’m interested in right now. What I really want to know is how you recover from something like that. What makes you keep getting back up there even when things get rough?”

  The question catches me off guard. I’m used to reporters asking me how many pull-ups I can do or if I’m dating anyone. Kay just made me stop and actually think.

  What’s the reason we’re going out on that stage tonight? I know it’s not the contracts, or the ticket sales, or the threat of Shayla coming after us with a big stick. Those are reasons we have to do this, but why is it we’ve been down and out so many times over the past few years and still keep coming back for more?

  “Girls,” JP jokes. “We do it for the girls.”

  I glare at him and turn back to Kay. We must seem like idiots right now, like we don’t deserve any of this, but I want to show her that’s not true. I want to show myself it’s not true. I think of Kyle talking to his class about me. He deserves someone worthy of that honor.

  I can’t leave the room without making Kay understand why we got this band together in the first place.

  “We get back up there,” I tell her, leaning forward so the microphone picks up every word, “because nothing else is worth it if we can’t. You could cut off both my arms and rip out Ace’s vocal cords. You could break all of Cole’s fingers. You could burst JP’s eardrums, and we’d still crawl our way back on that stage. For us, that’s all there is. This band is who we are.”

  I swear I see her tremble.

  7 Bad Habit || The Kooks

  KAY

  “But I like, never see you, Kay. You can’t come to Ottawa and then refuse to go out dancing with me, especially after I very generously gave you somewhere to stay.”

  “Lily,” I groan, “don’t guilt me into this. You know I’m going to give in.”

  “Exactly. That’s why I’m doing it.”

  I’m sprawled on the bed in my friend Lily’s cramped studio apartment, recharging after the Sherbrooke Station show. Lily has lived here since we were in university together, and not much seems to have changed. The walls are covered in mandala tapestries, and the whole place reeks of weed.

  My travel allowance from La Gare was so small I had to choose between getting a hotel room and being able to afford to eat. Since I knew Lily would probably be up for hosting, I chose the latter. Plus, she’s right: I like, never see her.

  “Oh my god, Kay, first you don’t take me to see Sherbrooke Station, and then you make me spend a perfectly good Friday night shut up in here watching you go over your journalism notes.”

  “You can go out,” I tell her. “I don’t mind.”

  She pounces on the bed, grabbing hold of my legs. Her long blonde and pink hair tickles the back of my thighs.

  “But I want to go out with youuuu.”

  “Ugh, fine, but I’m not going to a shitty Ottawa club. We can have a beer at a bar and then I’m going to bed.”

  She sits up and pouts at me. “Sigh.”

  “Did you just say ‘sigh’ instead of actually sighing?”

  “Shut up, Kay.”

  I shift myself until I’m sitting up too. “Oh, and no bringing any girls home tonight. Unlike in college, I don’t have my own place to go back to when you bail on your offer to let me crash so you can hook up.”

  To say that Lily likes girls is an understatement. The bed I’m currently sitting on has had more women cycle through it than the Playboy mansion. Normally I’d be high-fiving her for the
accomplishment. Lily doesn’t take shit from anyone, and confidence surrounds her like some kind of mystical aura.

  The only problem is that once said aura has helped her get a hold of a hot girl, she ends up retracting the offer to let me sleep here. During our nights out in university she was always telling me I could stay at her place instead of trying to make it back to my apartment across town. Things rarely worked out that way.

  We’re out the door in twenty minutes and make it downtown just before midnight, when things are really starting to pick up. We head into a crowded pub, and it’s not long before Lily’s chatting someone up. I mostly keep to myself for the next hour, sipping on my beer and thinking over the Sherbrooke Station concert.

  I could have watched from the press section right in front of the stage, but I asked for a seat near the back. I wanted to gauge the crowd’s reaction and get a chance to interview some audience members during the intermission. Most people there were the screaming fangirls I expected to see. When half the audience spent the opening act with their asses in their seats taking selfies, I settled in to spend the rest of the night as bored as all the boyfriends who got dragged along to the show.

  Then nearly all the lights cut out and an eerie, pulsing synth beat started up. I caught myself squeezing the armrests of my chair, not even sure what I was bracing myself for as the whole room went silent and then got so loud with screaming that for a second, my brain was nothing but noise.

  A ‘Sherbrooke Station’ sign made to look like a Montreal Metro stop flickered to life in the darkness, and that’s when everyone stood up and absolutely lost it. The entire audience rushed the stage the second the spotlights switched on, painting the band in blue and green lights as they launched right into ‘Split Knuckles.’

  I stayed in my seat long after the second encore ended, watching the diehards beg roadies for set lists and guitar picks. I’ve been to enough shows in my life to recognize a rocky performance when I see one; I noticed the scowls the guys were all shooting each other for missing queues, and how JP and Cole kept ducking off stage between songs. For most of the show Sherbrooke Station sounded like four people all stuck inside their own heads, but when they did manage to get their act together, they were a tidal wave of sound. Their music was something unstoppable, a force of nature that leaves you standing there staring in terror and awe as you’re swept up into the current.

  Ace worked the room like a hypnotist, drawing every eye and a sea of stretching hands whenever he got close to the crowd, but I couldn’t look away from Matt. He was wild on stage, sweat soaking his hair as he played with a fury I could feel all the way down to my bones.

  “That’s her over there, being antisocial.”

  I look over my shoulder to see Lily with her arm slung around the waist of a petite brunette girl who looks way too innocent to mess around with the constant disco rave hurricane that is Lily, but she always did go for the bashful type.

  “Say hi, Kay!”

  I give them a wave and pull out my phone to avoid getting called in to be Lily’s wing-woman. That’s when I notice I have a text from Matt:

  You snuck away pretty fast. Didn’t feel like coming to our glamorous, star-studded after party?

  I text back, asking if there’s seriously a star-studded after party in Ottawa, one of the most boring capitals known to the world. He answers right away.

  Okay, I lied. It’s shit. It’s just us and the crew at a pub downtown. I’m going to bail soon.

  Coincidentally, I reply, I’m at a pub downtown too, and also probably going to bail soon.

  He asks me what the place is called and it turns out he’s just across the street. I haven’t even typed out another message when he tells me to give him five minutes.

  I did just tell you I’m about to bail, I text him, but okay.

  At exactly the five minute mark, Matt Pearson comes striding into the room.

  He seems to glide through the crowd like it’s his superpower. People slide out of the way and watch him from over their shoulders. I don’t think any of them even know who he is; he just seems to move with a rhythm that’s impossible to ignore.

  I swallow down the last of my beer and brace myself for Mission Impossible.

  Rule Number Two, I chant to myself as he walks up and leans against the wall beside me. Remember Rule Number Two.

  “You know when I said I was going to bail, I meant I was going to bed.”

  Great. One sentence into the conversation and I bring up the topic of going to bed.

  “I did too, but I figured we could at least bail together. Seems less pathetic that way.”

  “Are you calling me pathetic?”

  “Not directly.” He shifts to face me, bracing one forearm on the wall above his head. “Although, when I see a cute girl standing alone in a corner at a crowded bar with an empty beer, I can’t help getting sympathetic.”

  “Maybe I like standing alone in corners.”

  I ignore the ‘cute’ comment, and how he’s so close I can feel the heat of him on my skin. That damn eyebrow piercing is doing things to heart rate.

  Matt chuckles. “You should hang out with Cole. That’s all he ever does. Where are you staying, anyway? Did La Gare put you up in some fancy suite?”

  “Ha,” I bark. “La Gare barely gave me enough money to get here. I’m staying with her.”

  I gesture over to where I last saw Lily, and find her with her tongue down the brunette girl’s throat as every guy in a ten-foot radius leers at them. I’m going to have to step in soon if I want a place to sleep tonight.

  “It looks like she might have forgotten about that, though,” I mutter.

  Matt follows the direction of my gaze.

  “That’s disgusting,” he says firmly.

  My jaw drops open and I jump away from him. “Excuse me?”

  He looks confused for a moment before understanding passes over him and he rushes to explain himself.

  “Not them. Jesus, Kay, I’m not a monster.” He points towards the crowd of guys surrounding Lily and her conquest. “I mean all those douchebags swarming around them. I just want to go over and tell them all to get a fucking life.”

  His fists clench, and he looks like he’s about ready to go and do just that. I stare at him for a few seconds, feeling a touch of the same awe I did after his speech during my interview this evening.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” I tell him, after getting my composure back, “she’s perfectly capable of doing that herself. I am kind of pissed, though.”

  I fill him in on Lily’s track record with hosting me. He laughs at my expense and then agrees that it is pretty shitty of her.

  “She has good intentions,” I explain. “It’s just when boobs come into the equation, she kind of forgets about them.”

  Matt grins and looks away. “Well, I can’t blame her for that.”

  I’m trying to think of a comeback when the song filling the bar switches and ‘Bad Habit’ by The Kooks comes on. Matt starts tapping the beat out on the wall, mouthing along with the words.

  I give him a once over. “You like The Kooks?”

  “Who doesn’t? I’ve seen them play four times.”

  “Four? Lucky. I’ve only caught them once, at Osheaga one year.”

  We slip into a conversation about the band that leads into one about another band and then another, until eventually we’re discussing the entire current state of indie rock in Britain. Matt turns out to have impeccable taste, and I even enjoy when we disagree over a few groups and fire off insults at each other until we find someone else to discuss. I don’t even notice the time flying by until Lily lurches over with the brunette in tow, both of them giggling.

  “Me and Emily are heading out now, Kay.” She leans forwards to whisper to me in a voice that comes out loud enough for everyone around us to hear. “She’s nineteen, Kay! She still lives in a dorm, so we have to go back to mine.”

  I lean forward too, mocking her secretive tone. “Actually Lily, you ca
n’t take her back to yours. I have to go back to yours.”

  “Oh riiiiight,” she groans. She glances beside us and spots Matt trying to hold in a laugh. “Just go home with him.”

  She wiggles her fingers at Matt and he wiggles his back.

  “Yeah, Kay, just go home with me,” he whisper-yells.

  Lily beams at him and I glare.

  “Lily, you’re seriously doing this to me?” I demand, not caring if Emily overhears us anymore.

  Matt cuts in. “Actually, Kay, we have two doubles at our hotel. From the looks of things at the pub, I don’t think Ace is coming back tonight, and I don’t mind crashing with JP and Cole, so you could have the other room.”

  I don’t hesitate. “I’m not taking your hotel room.”

  Lily doesn’t seem to have heard my answer. “Awesome! We’re gonna go now. Have fun, Kay. He’s hot.”

  She turns and grabs Emily by the hand, stumbling away before I can give her a firm ‘no.’

  “Wait!” I shout. “Lily, get the hell back here! LILY!”

  Matt’s having a laugh attack behind me. “She,” he chokes out, “is something.”

  “Oh she’s something all right,” I mutter darkly. “I’m going after her.”

  “Kay, wait.” He reaches for my elbow. “Why don’t you just take the room? You can yell at her for being a shitty friend tomorrow. I’m pretty sure it’s not going to make much of a difference right now.”

  “I’m not taking your hotel room,” I repeat. “I’m not kicking you out and taking an entire double room for myself just because Lily is the worst host ever.”

  “So don’t kick me out, then.”

  I blink. “Are you... Are you sugge—”

  “Calm yourself, Kay.” He gives me a look that makes me anything but calm. “I’m suggesting you take one bed and I take the other. Or you take both and I room with JP and Cole—whatever you want. I’m just not leaving you in a bar with nowhere to go.”