by Eli Lang
I felt a little odd, standing here, almost spying on them while they played. But this was a recording studio. Standing and listening to music was what this space was built for. Still, I didn’t want to intrude or be distracting. I leaned back against the wall, tucking myself away in the shadows, and listened.
Rest in Peach’s music was different than Escaping Indigo’s. No one could say that what Tuck, Bellamy, and Ava wrote was straightforward, but it was more reliably rock based, more . . . familiar in its feel. Which was effective, because by the time you picked up on the lyrics, or all the slight intricacies and oddities in the sound and the melody and the way the band played, you were already hooked. But Rest in Peach didn’t care about being familiar in any way. They were bold and aggressive, and at the same time, delicate and beautiful in their sounds. And it worked just as well to draw listeners in.
I liked them because of how different they sounded, how refreshing their songs were. And I liked what Ty sang about—being in love, or in lust, feeling left out, feeling like you were loved by your friends, being the person who was a little on the outside, being accepted. Dichotomous and opposing themes in the same album, sometimes in the same song.
I hadn’t closed my eyes, but when the song ended, it seemed like I was falling back down to earth, coming out of the music in a way, and landing here, in a dim hallway. And when I blinked and looked up, Nicky was staring into my eyes.
He was watching me. Staring right at me, like he had the very first day. No hiding it, no glancing away to make it seem like he wasn’t. He didn’t seem to care if I knew that was what he was doing. But it wasn’t aggressive or possessive or anything. It was . . . like he was curious. Like he was taking me in and trying to figure me out from a distance.
My first instinct was to look down myself. Pretend this wasn’t happening. I’d gotten involved with Nick before, and it had been . . . wonderful. But it had been a fantasy, and it wasn’t ever meant to last.
But I didn’t turn away. I couldn’t. His face was so open. His whole body was turned toward me—the angle of the drums made that happen, but there was something in the set of his shoulders and the twist of his waist that almost made it like he was holding himself open for me. For my stare.
I pulled in a harsh breath. This was . . . intense. Intense and not what I’d expected, definitely not what I’d been prepared for when I walked down this hallway. Nick was all sweaty and slightly out of breath, like that first day, and he was hot. There was absolutely no denying that. He was incredibly . . . hot. I wanted him. Watching him like this, our gazes connected, made me remember all the ways we’d connected in the past—with our bodies, by sharing a joke, by catching that private smile he had, just for me, out of the corner of my eye.
But mostly, I was obsessed with the way it felt to have his eyes and his attention on me. Solely on me. That focus, like I could feel it on my skin. I remembered that from when we’d toured together. The way I’d glance up from setting up Ava’s kit or laying out cords and find him watching me from the other side of the stage. Back then, he’d always blushed and turned away. Now he didn’t. Now, he was bold, but I wasn’t offended by it. I liked the sensation too much. It was addictive and I wanted more of it.
Nicky glanced to the side. Elliot was talking to him, drawing him into a conversation. I couldn’t make out any words. I started to turn, to walk back the way I’d come. Now that the stare was broken and I was remembering where I was, who we all were and what we were here for, I felt silly. That couldn’t possibly have been as intimate a moment as I’d imagined. But Nicky put his sticks down on his snare, balancing them carefully against the rim, and stood up. He gestured out to the hall—not to me, I was pretty sure, but that direction in general. Ty and Elliot nodded, and Danni turned away from her keyboard.
Then Nicky was coming out of the studio door before I could disappear back to our own studio, or outside, or upstairs, or anywhere that would take me away from this . . . whatever this was.
“Hey.”
“We should stop meeting like this,” I blurted, and it was a joke, but I was almost half serious too.
Nick grinned at me. “Maybe. But I kind of like it.”
I turned to face him, because I was an adult, a grown man, and there was no way I was running and hiding from a scary social situation. I gestured toward the recording room. “It sounded really good, back there. Really . . .” Fuck, I was so bad with words. I never knew how to describe anything so it made sense.
Nick smiled at me, though. “Thanks. We’re happy with it, so far.” His voice was soft, almost like he didn’t want to say it too loudly and jinx anything. But there was a quiet confidence behind his words too. “We want to still sound like us, you know? But . . . new.”
I nodded. It was a simple way to put something that wasn’t simple at all. And doing that was treading on a fine line.
Nicky raised a hand and rubbed it over the back of his neck, suddenly awkward. Or more awkward, now that we didn’t have a ready conversation topic. Then he sighed sharply, as if he’d decided something, and gestured down the hall toward the stairs leading up to the house. “I’m going to grab some lunch. Want to come?”
I hesitated, but then I nodded. There wasn’t any reason not to. Nick and I had mutually agreed to leave the past in the past, and I wanted things to be easy between us again. We’d all—Escaping Indigo and Rest in Peach—gone out to dinner last night. It had been simple and fun, like when we’d been on tour together. Friends hanging out. This wouldn’t be any different. Just smaller scale.
Nicky led me up the stairs, then around to the back door out of the studio. We circled the house and came out on the sidewalk. Nick stopped and turned back to look at the place. From here, it seemed like nothing more than a big house with a slightly oddly shaped garage. Aside from the two large trailers and abundance of cars in the driveway, there was hardly anything to distinguish it from any other house on the block. No music leaked out from the studio. It was clean and quiet and calm from here. Not the raucous, rowdy party atmosphere I might have assumed of a rock music mecca. No people spilling half-clothed out of doorways. No one sleeping on the lawn. No wailing guitars, screeching into the still air of the neighborhood.
I’d bet it had seen some things, though.
“I probably drove by it when I was a kid.” Nick turned back to me. He shaded his eyes, smiling faintly. He looked almost a bit nervous, and as much as I didn’t want him to be anxious to be with me, it made me feel better to see it. Like all the emotions tumbling through me might be normal.
“Did you live far from here?”
He shook his head and started walking. “No, not far. I don’t know why I would have come down this street, I guess. But if I had—if I did—I wouldn’t have realized what was there.”
“Do you like it?” It was so bright out. Half of me wished I’d brought a pair of sunglasses to block all the sunlight bouncing off the pavement, flickering up in waves of heat. But the other half was glad I hadn’t. I had to squint to see Nicky, so I kept my eyes on the ground in front of me instead, and it made it easier to talk to him. To walk beside him.
“Oh, yeah,” he answered like it was obvious. “It’s the dream, right?” He laughed, and it sounded sharp and hard, as if there was some reason he shouldn’t be allowed to admit that. To admit he’d had a dream, and had done what he could to make it reality. “I mean . . .” He waved his hand through the air. “I didn’t honestly ever think this would happen. Ty and Danni and Elliot . . . they never believed anything else. They wanted it and they were going to do whatever it took to make it happen. Me . . . I wanted it. I wanted it so much. More than anything. But I didn’t think it would actually happen. I thought it was a fantasy.”
I was smiling now. He said it all so simply, as if it was a stream of consciousness. Like the details of his life, of how he’d gotten where he was, had fallen from the sky. Like they weren’t that important. But there was this thread of something close to awe in his voice
. As if he knew exactly how lucky he was.
I didn’t think it was all luck, though.
“But you did make it happen,” I said.
He nodded and glanced back at me. He was walking slightly ahead of me. I was okay with that. Usually, I tended to care very little about how people looked. But Nick was different. He was striking and lean, and he walked with an easy confidence that put a swing in his hips. I liked the way his hips moved a lot. I liked that confidence more.
“Yeah, we did. And now we’re recording. It gets me every time. As close as we come to immortality, you know? Making it permanent. Like putting it down on paper.” He laughed again, lighter this time. “Except not really like that.”
“I know what you mean, I think.” Eric and Micah had never recorded like this, with a producer and techs in a fancy studio. But they’d paid for studio time at a place near our house, and they’d recorded stuff in the garage by themselves. I had a lot of those recordings, and sometimes, when I was feeling either particularly strong or particularly lonely, I took them out and listened to them. Listened to my brother’s voice coming through headphones, right into my heart. Listened to the sound of his hands sliding on guitar strings. Listened to the things he had written, the things he had created. The things he had left behind.
It was immortality, in a way. It was like . . . no matter what, he’d brought something true and purely him into the world, and it was still here, would still be here, with any luck, for years and years. For as long as it was saved. After I was gone. After Micah was. There might still be that music.
“Do you really think so?” I asked. We’d been walking along, neither of us speaking, while I turned those thoughts over in my head. We were passing under an orange tree that hung over the sidewalk. It was in bloom, and when I stopped, I could smell the scent of the flowers, thick and sticky sweet around me. “About making music being like some type of immortality?”
Nick stopped too, and turned around to face me. His expression had gone serious and I wondered how my voice sounded, to make him look like that. But I was having . . . a thing, a thought, something was going on in my mind and my heart, and I wasn’t sure I was entirely in control of what came out of my mouth.
He nodded, slowly. “Yeah. I really do. Quinn, are you okay?”
I didn’t know why, there, under the shade from the orange tree, with the heat from the sidewalk pooling up around us, the smell of exhaust and white petals, I could say what I hadn’t been able to before. What I’d struggled so hard with yesterday, and all the days prior. Maybe it was simply the right moment now. Here. Maybe I couldn’t hold it in one second longer.
“My brother died.”
My focus snapped away from whatever thoughts of Eric and whatever ideas about music I’d been having, and into myself, as if saying the words had released some tension. I came back down in time to see Nick’s face go through a range of emotions. Shock and sadness and horror and fear and confusion and pity. He settled back on sadness, and I was relieved. If he’d gone with pity, I wouldn’t have been able to stand it. I’d had enough of that to last a lifetime.
“When?” he asked, and it was another surprise, a good one—he didn’t say he was sorry or offer some platitude. He went for the facts first. I liked that, especially coming from him. I already knew he was kind. It was good to know he was logical too.
“Right after the tour when you and I met. I went home, everything was fine. Or I thought it was fine. And then he overdosed and he was dead.”
Nick paled, maybe at how bluntly I’d put it, but I kept talking, determined not to give him a chance to say anything until I’d gotten this all out. I’d started—I might as well finish it.
“It was an accident. Just . . . an accident.” I swallowed. “That’s why I didn’t return your calls. Why I didn’t ever reach out. I didn’t know how to say it. I didn’t know . . .” The air in front of me shimmered, and I swayed. I’d forgotten what it was like, to say all of that out loud. Like I was making it more real, cementing the truth of it, by putting it into words.
Nick took a step forward, so he was nearly in my personal space. Not quite. But close enough I imagined I could feel the warmth of him, despite the hot Los Angeles breeze between us. I liked it, even if it was an illusion. “I had no idea,” he said.
I smiled at him. It was probably lopsided and wrong, because I wasn’t in a smiling mood at all. But it had been a relief to tell him. That was a surprise. “I know. I didn’t want you to. I figured you’d have wanted . . . to do something for me.”
He nodded and frowned. “I would have, yeah.”
“But we didn’t know each other well enough,” I replied, trying to explain.
“If you mean you fucking me silly didn’t equal us knowing each other, I’m gonna have to beg to differ.”
“That was—”
He held up a hand before I could finish. “Say it was ‘just sex,’ and I’ll walk away right now.”
I sighed, and slumped. “No. It . . . wasn’t.” It was good to say that. To get it out there. I hadn’t been sure, really, whether it had only been me who’d felt that, at the time. Like whatever small thing we’d started had been something important enough, something it seemed like we could build on it. “But we really didn’t know each other well. Not in any other way. We were . . . friends, maybe? And I didn’t think you needed . . . I didn’t want to get you involved. I wasn’t your responsibility.”
He didn’t pull back, but it seemed like he stepped away somehow anyway. “I get it.”
“It wasn’t personal, Nicky. I didn’t do it to hurt you. I wanted to . . . I didn’t know what I was doing. For a long time.” I pushed my hair back with my fingers. It was sticky with sweat at my temples. “I still don’t.”
He nodded. “I do get it,” he said, softer this time.
His voice was so gentle. At some point, he’d touched his fingertips to my elbow, as if he was anchoring me, or anchoring himself, and he hadn’t let go. And for some reason, the gentleness, the tenderness in the gesture and the words, made me think I might cry.
I hadn’t cried in . . . I couldn’t remember how long. Not when Eric died. Not when we had his funeral. Micah had cried. I’d heard him, in his apartment, when he forgot to close the windows. I’d stood outside, a floor down, and listened to the sound of his grief pour out. But I hadn’t let mine. There had been too much to do, too much to take care of. I’d had to be steady for my mom, for Micah. I’d had to be strong so the band wouldn’t know. I had already fucked up the most important job I’d had—taking care of Eric. Being there for him. I wasn’t going to fuck up any more, if I could help it. The band would have seen me differently, especially in those first months. Tuck would have tried to make me take time off. I couldn’t have handled that, not then. I needed them, the band and my role with them, to be normal. Crying in front of them would have ruined that.
But there was something about Nicky, some closeness he made me feel, that put me right on the edge.
“I’d like to hug you, but I think I might break if I do,” he said, and it was so perfect and so what I was feeling that I laughed out loud. The laugh was watery and strained but it was honest, and it was good.
“Sorry.” I took a deep breath, trying to center myself. “Sorry. I really didn’t mean to blurt all that out. Lay it on you like that.”
He shook his head. His hand was still on my elbow, the touch light against my skin. I hoped he wouldn’t move. “Probably the best way to do it, really. Like taking off a Band-Aid.”
I told myself I was okay. This was fine. I straightened my spine and met Nick’s eyes. “Do you want to go get that lunch?”
“Yeah, but . . . in a minute.” He slipped his hand down my arm and wrapped his fingers around mine, our palms pressed tight together. Then he pulled me over to a patch of grass. “Sit with me for a second.”
The grass was shaded by a different tree, and the cool, deep green of it was tempting. But I was pretty sure it was private prope
rty. “I think this is someone’s lawn.”
He waved his free hand through the air. “It’s fine. It’s only for a minute. We’re not going to do anything but sit.”
He was so eager and earnest about it, I did as he’d asked and sat beside him. The grass was tucked in front of and between two houses, ending at the sidewalk. If I stretched my legs out, my heels hit pavement. There was a low, decorative stone wall behind us, and it shielded us. We were in plain sight, but I didn’t think we were actually on display if anyone glanced out their window.
Nick still had my hand in his. He twisted his fingers through mine. “I just . . . wanted to talk to you for a second. And I didn’t want to do it at the restaurant or whatever.”
I started to shake my head. This was some big emotional thing for me to have said, yeah. But this was enough. I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Everything in me rebelled at the idea.
He must have seen the expression on my face, because he smiled. Still gentle, but a little bit teasing too. “Don’t worry. I get it. I’m not gonna go all Dr. Phil on you.” He squeezed my hand. I wondered if he was conscious of how connected we were there. How electric it was to be skin to skin. Or if he was as open and tactile with everyone. I couldn’t remember. I remembered the ways he’d touched me when we’d worked together, the brushes of fingers, or shoulders against shoulders. I’d tried to memorize each one. But that had been flirting, and I hadn’t noticed if he was that way with anyone else.
“Thought you might want a minute before we walked into a public place too,” he added.
I nodded. That was thoughtful. And probably true, although I didn’t really want to admit to it.
“How old was he?” Nick asked softly.