All the Best Nights

by Hanna Earnest

  “You’re thinking about something. Is it Aya’s wheeling and dealing or the cinnamon next to your bed?”

  Bran’s foot slipped off the ledge as he strained upwards. “What were you doing in my room?” Sun glinted off Cormac’s wrist. “Is that my Patek Philippe?”

  Cormac bobbed his head with a knowing nod. “Okay, that narrows it down. What happened with Shower Girl that she’s not here making you moussaka anymore and you’re jerking off alone while huffing ground spices?”

  “I am not—”

  “This is part of it, right?” Cormac produced the worn coaster from his pocket and Bran lunged for it, with no regard for the pilfered, wildly expensive watch on his friend’s wrist. They wrestled for a minute, knocking two cushions off the couch before Bran managed to liberate the coaster from Cormac’s grasp.

  “You can dig deep for that, huh?” Cormac propped himself up on the firepit wall.

  Bran rolled to his back on the teak floor. Again. “Fuck off. And stay out of my room.”

  Aya’s trademark cough, sharp and clear, drew their attention to the French doors off the kitchen where she stood. A man in a suit looked over her shoulder. “I need to borrow Bran for a minute.”

  His knee throbbing, Bran rose to his feet and followed her into the cool house. He slammed the coaster down on the counter. It had bent in the scuffle, one side of the circle rising up from the surface. Fucking Cormac. Bran nodded to the suit. “What’s Mr. Money doing here?”

  “It’s Moony,” said the lawyer.

  Aya put down her phone and Bran took a step back, hitting the exposed side of the deep porcelain sink.

  “I had a meeting with the label today.”

  “I thought that was next week.” He hooked his thumbs over the wide glossy edge behind him. So this was serious.

  “We moved it up. Decided it was better for me to handle it myself.” That’s what she was doing now. Handling everything herself, without his input.

  “And?”

  “And I told them they’d have an album by the end of the year and a tour next summer.”

  “What—”

  “And. They asked that I have Mr. Moony come remind you what happens if they decide you’re in breach of contract. Which you are. But I convinced them the music is coming and you’re acting in good faith to provide it.”

  That wasn’t true and she knew it. Bran frowned.

  Moony started to speak and Bran cut him off. “No, I got it. You don’t need to explain.” He roughed a hand across his head. “Is that it?”

  “No,” Moony said. “I thought it might be a good idea to discuss the Nelle issue.”

  Bran glanced at Aya, whose mouth opened and closed. She hadn’t known about that part. “There is no Nelle issue.”

  “Mr. Kelly, it could easily become a libel suit—depending on how far the girl wants to take it.”

  “Woman,” Bran corrected, rubbing at his side.

  “As your legal counsel I need to explain the risks of what it looks like if the two of you keep exchanging barbs, and you say something over the line.”

  “I won’t. I won’t say anything about her.”

  “If she wants—”

  “She doesn’t want anything from me.” He held Moony’s stare. “You can go. Have the rest of the hour on me.”

  “The label pays me.”

  “Even better.”

  When the sound of loafers had faded into the hall, Bran met Aya’s eyes. “What do we do in six months when I need more time?”

  “You won’t need more time because you’re going to write an album.”

  “Aya—”

  “No, Bran. It’s enough.”

  Cormac poked his head into the house, his attention on Aya, as usual. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine. I’m working. Apparently I’m the only one.” She picked up her phone and pointed it at Cormac. “I invested in a restaurant that still hasn’t opened.” She turned it on Bran. “And you’ve been moping for a month. You wanted me to buy time with your dad and that backfired. We tried to—” She stopped herself.

  “We tried what?” Bran said, leaning into the island.

  Cormac answered. “We tried buying it for you. But your old man’s a piece of work. He didn’t want my money or Arlo’s. He wanted you to bend or face the consequences. Said he was going to find a motivated buyer.”

  “Motivated to make money off my pain?”

  “That was poetic, write that down.”

  There was a sudden crash from inside the freezer, like ice cracking directly off a glacier and falling into a frozen sea. Bran flinched, Cormac jumped, and Arlo yelled through the open door, “I told you it was loud!”

  Bran ignored the incredulous look from Cormac. The ice machine wasn’t his biggest problem at the moment. “I’m not writing, Aya. I can’t make that deadline. You can’t just—”

  “No, Bran. You can’t. You can’t just stop. I’m going to keep doing my job and making plans for you, and if you don’t want to embarrass yourself—” she motioned to the deck, cluttered with Cormac’s weights and resistance bands “—you’re going to get to work.”

  Bran gripped the counter. She was betting on his vanity. And that might have worked for the advertising campaign she’d signed him up for, but it couldn’t override his writing block.

  Arlo pushed past Cormac to grab a Guinness from the fridge and Aya continued. “I know you’re heartbroken—”

  “I’m not—”

  “You told me to remind you to listen to me. And I say: write some sad songs and move on.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  Beer fizzled as Arlo popped the top off a bottle using his fist and the countertop. “She didn’t say it was easy—she said you had to do it.”

  “Okay, summer lovin’, I don’t need this shit from you too. Or you can check out of Hotel Kelly.”

  “Easy,” Cormac warned.

  Easy, easy, easy.

  Fuck. It was so hard. It was so hard to try and not know if he could do it again. Writing alone and touring alone and being alone—

  Bran looked around the room at the three people who were staring back at him. People who had been there for him and were still there for him and had tried to help him even when he hadn’t asked for it. Maybe that’s what all this meant.

  His palms grew warmer, like he was getting close to some hidden key. “Okay. Let’s get the band back together—”

  Cormac groaned and Arlo shook his head, mouth secured to his upturned bottle.

  Aya pinched the bridge of her nose. “That’s not the answer.”

  Bran held out his hands. “Why not?”

  “Kelly,” Cormac said, “you can drag me back on tour again when I’m fifty, thrice divorced, and strapped for cash, until then, I will happily collect my royalty checks from the comfort of home while you caravan across the globe singing your gypsy heart out.”

  “Don’t say that.” Arlo set down the beer and hooked his hands together over the hoop he wore across his bare chest. “The Traveler community has been—”

  The hoop rattled as Cormac took hold and yanked him back. “And obviously A has school, where they don’t mind him being absolutely insufferably woke.”

  “They encourage it,” Arlo clarified.

  Bran looked them over again and his three friends—his real family—no longer looked like the Avengers assembling to help. The set of their faces juxtaposed with the soft concern in their eyes looked a whole lot like an intervention—if you ignored the half-naked man wearing a Hula-Hoop and holding a Guinness.

  “Your dad—”

  But Bran cut Aya off. “Who?”

  “The man formerly known as your father—”

  “Better, but we don’t have to talk about him. Ever.”

  “What if he—”


  “He won’t. I took care of it.”

  Cormac scrunched up his face. “You offed your pop?”

  Bran threw up his hands. “What is the deal with people assuming I’m out here on a murder spree? I didn’t ‘off’ him. I ended our association.”

  “You did?” Aya looked unconvinced.

  “He called. I answered. I finished it.”

  It had been a few days after he’d gotten back from London. And he’d figured he was already scraped up, why not cut all the way to the bone? But he’d stared at the caller ID so long that when he picked up to silence on the other end, he’d thought he’d missed the call.

  Then his dad’s whiskey-soaked voice had scratched out his name. “Bran?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know I had to—”

  “No. You didn’t.”

  “You wouldn’t—”

  “No. I wouldn’t.”

  Something crashed on his father’s end of the line. “You gonna keep interrupting me or let me talk?”

  Bran’s grip on the phone intensified. “I’m gonna let you listen. I’m done. I’m done with you. You made your profit, you got what you wanted from me. Now cross me off your list. I’m not someone you know anymore. We’re through.”

  “Oh, we’re through?”

  The familiar heckling tone made Bran’s throat dry. He sucked in air through his mouth like he was running for home. If he kept talking, there could be no reconciliation—he’d have to give up hope for a cathartic spirit-dad game of catch. He paused, pulse pounding. He didn’t have the hope to waste.

  “Bye, Pat,” he’d said and ended the call.

  From across the island, Aya watched him carefully. “I know the house was a blow.”

  Bran gripped the counter. “I don’t care about the house, okay? The house is gone. It’s gone and I can’t get it back.”

  “What can you get back, B?” Arlo cocked his head to the side and Bran was surprised he didn’t stroke his beard.

  “Back off, Freud.”

  Cormac maneuvered to the fridge for his own beer. “Yeah, tell the doctor what hurts.”

  “My knee.” Bran shifted his feet, as if to shake off the weight of their combined gazes. Three against one. It wasn’t fair.

  Fair? Really? He couldn’t forget the hot anger in Nelle’s voice.

  “What isn’t gone?” Arlo said, interrupting Bran’s thoughts. He sighed when Bran refused to answer. “You want our help? Let’s say it on the count of three. Come on, everybody, to assist our favorite lead singer on his journey to enlightenment. One, two, three—”

  Aya was checking her phone again but didn’t miss a beat. “The money.”

  Cormac swallowed in time to say, “The beer.”

  Bran guessed a second late. “The music?”

  Arlo shook his head. “The girl.”

  “The girl is gone.” Bran stuck out a hand, palm down. “Trust that I’m certain there.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I gave her a ring—”

  “Bran,” Aya and Cormac said in unison, their tones expressing varying degrees of disbelief and concern.

  “Like an engagement ring?” Arlo asked, his eyebrows high.

  “No. It wasn’t an engagement ring. It was...” A wedding ring. “It was simple. Silver with like a—” Bran drew a V in the air. “It doesn’t matter. She stopped wearing it. And I don’t need you all in my house and in my business and in my fridge. I need space and time—and my watch back, Cormac, seriously.”

  Aya’s phone buzzed in her hand. She glanced at it and then at Bran. “You’ve had time. And space. Now you’ve got a deadline. And I need to get back to the office. Get to work, call me if you need help booking a studio.” She headed for the door, glancing back to confirm with Arlo, “Drinks this week?”

  He nodded. “Saturday.” When she was gone he looked sideways at Cormac. “Do I need to put you on this meeting docket? You okay financially? Why is Aya investing in your place?”

  “So I have a reason to stop by her office every week,” Cormac countered. “She talk about me when you two meet up?”

  “I can only handle one of your love lives at a time, and B is mid-surgery, so can we—” Arlo gestured at Bran and Cormac nodded. “Tell us about the girl, Kelly.”

  Bran’s heart pulsed faster at the thought of Nelle. The girl. Singular. The woman. The only one that mattered. “Why?”

  “In the last year, when have you been closest to writing—what have you wanted to write about?”

  Bran held the heels of his hands to his eyes. He lowered his face into the counter so the answer echoed back up at him. “Her.”

  Arlo picked up the coaster, bending it back the opposite way, and laid it flat. He spun the circle so the words Bran had scribbled were right side up. “So start with this. What does it mean—get specific.”

  Cormac nodded. “With details.”

  “Not sexual details.” Arlo glared at Cormac.

  The drummer wiped beer from his lip. “To hell with that.”

  Arlo pressed on. “She turned midnight. That must mean something. She signals change, she has power—she’s special?”

  “Yeah, she’s special.” Bran’s sweaty forehead stuck to the polished surface. “She’s a genuine one-in-a-billion superstar.”

  Cormac clapped his hands together. “Look at you go! That’s a neat metaphor. You could get a chorus out of that, right?”

  “And I fucked it up.” Bran moaned into the counter. He couldn’t hold it in anymore. “I fucked it up,” he repeated, punctuating each word. “Being with someone like that—someone so fucking sure of herself—it was like her light pushed through my cracks, you know? She’s so smart and has so many levels, I could barely keep up.” He lifted his head, his hair sticking up. “It was supposed to be one night but that one night was all banana pudding and midnight hot dogs—”

  “Are those euphemisms?” Cormac whispered to Arlo as Bran spiraled on, spilling everything out.

  “And then we decided to keep it going and, god—after the Note Awards, Van Morrison was playing and the olive oil was gleaming and I was in so deep, right there—”

  “In deep literally, right?”

  Arlo silenced Cormac with a look so Bran could continue, as if he could stop now that he’d opened the floodgates.

  “—but also figuratively because it’s not even the sex part. I can’t stop thinking about the way she had me. She was always calling me out and making me crazy. Making me—” He stopped.

  “Making you what?” Arlo asked.

  Bran’s head connected with the counter again, his voice muffled by arms folded over his head. “Making me fall for her.”

  Arlo raised a toast. “There it is.”

  Cormac held up a hand. “Yeah, I’m gonna need you to back up to the kitchen-themed sexy Mad Libs—”

  “I love Nelle.” Bran let the last of it go. He couldn’t keep it secret anymore. Not that there was anything left to protect between them.

  Shock opened Arlo’s features. “Nelle? Nelle Nelle?”

  “Nelle. Nelle. Nelle,” Bran chanted, falling to a squat behind the island, even as his glutes burned. “She didn’t want anyone to know.” He sank lower, landing back against the stove. How could he blame her? Who would want to be associated with a soon-to-be-has-been mess like him? He hadn’t been good enough for her. He hadn’t—he hadn’t tried. Hope sputtered to life in his bent abdomen.

  Just like with Gran’s house, he hadn’t tried anything with his dad. He’d frozen up, stood silent, refused to break away from the pattern. He hadn’t fed the fire, but he hadn’t attempted to put it out either. He’d hoped his dad would Kelly up—they were family. With real family, he thought, looking at Arlo and Cormac, each offering a hand to pull him to his feet, you didn’t have to hope they’d be th
ere for you. They just would be.

  He resisted a moment, two. He was supposed to do it on his own. But if he pushed their hands away, he’d be on the floor for another hour, feeling sorry for himself, feeling heavy. How much was he expected to carry on his own?

  Cormac had asked him: How can you write if you won’t let anything go?

  Arlo had challenged: What’s the point if we can’t support each other?

  And Nelle, she wanted him to fix himself, but she’d also been the one to tell him: There’s nothing wrong with trusting people to help you.

  Bran let his friends pull him up and when he’d found his balance, he shook out his hair, smoothed it back, and took a deep breath. “Now what?”

  Arlo shrugged. “Now you write it down. And if it doesn’t come—”

  Bran knew the answer, felt it warming him, different from the hot prickle of his sore body: softer, golden—like amber eyes glowing in the dark. Fear blocks flow. The fear of failure that stopped him before he started. The fear of trying to write a hit and not being able to do it again. The fear of no Nelle. Without trying he’d succeeded in living the failure, and it blew. It was time to tell fear to fuck off.

  He yanked the junk drawer open, searching for a pen. “Then I’ll go get it.”

  @BKgreen71k tweeted: got tickets to the jingle jam but it won’t be as good as last year. anyone else feel like they wish whatever was going on with @theBranKelly and @nelle23 would end so we could have more magic like that performance? like, dude, get us the collab we deserve.

  @theBranKelly tweeted: I tried. Been left on read since I wished her a happy birthday.

  @nelle23 tweeted: Read 2:23 pm.

  @werkerB tweeted: anyone know if the girl who posted this is okay?

  @BKgreen71k tweeted: she’s not. this is her ghost.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Nelle had spent six months dancing onstage in four-inch thigh-high boots, but she tripped on her way into the restaurant in her oxfords wedges like it was her first time out of flats.

  Bran Kelly was sitting at the bar. His back was to the room, but she’d know that head of coiffed hair anywhere. His fingers traced the rim of a half-empty old fashioned and she stood frozen in the aisle, following the circles and growing dizzy.