by Eli Lang
“They tell you kids are exhausting,” he said, a smile still picking at the corners of his mouth. “But I didn’t really think I’d be tired all the time, when I’m with him. He wears me out. He’s like a ball of fire.”
“He’s not what I expected,” I blurted out.
Nick turned slightly toward me. Both of us were still keeping most of our attention on Josh, but Nick raised his eyebrow. “What did you expect?”
I tried to think about it, put it into words, but I couldn’t. “I don’t know. Nothing, really. Like . . . I couldn’t imagine what he’d be like at all. I didn’t expect . . .” I gestured in Josh’s direction. “So much.”
Nick laughed and nodded. “Yeah. He’s pretty awesome though, right?” He said it easily, without any vanity. Just a quiet kind of pride in his kid.
“Yeah. He is.” I wasn’t . . . saying it just to say it, to agree with him. I didn’t think I was magically cured of my confusion about kids, or that I wanted to run off and have a bunch of my own, and I thought if I spent more than a day with Josh, I might drop dead, because there was no way I was keeping up with that energy level. But he was awesome. Maybe, simply, because in a lot of ways he reminded me of Nick.
“I’m always afraid I’m going to screw up,” Nick said, softer, his voice low, and I wasn’t sure if he wanted me to hear the words, or respond to them.
The question startled me, because it so mirrored the worries that had been running through my own mind. About screwing up with Josh. About screwing up—again—with Nick. “Why? I mean, in what way?”
He looked at me, and our eyes met, and then he pulled his gaze away, back out over the park and the scruffy grass and the sand, to Josh. “I don’t know. In any way, I guess. Like I wasn’t always there, every day, so I didn’t learn everything as I went, you know? And I’m still not with him all the time, so he . . . grows super fast, and he learns stuff, and then when I see him, I have to keep catching up. What if I’m not catching up fast enough? What if I make a mistake?” He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s all vague. He’s so . . .” He flicked his hand, but he didn’t finish the sentence.
That did sound awkward, to say the least. But I figured there were probably lots of families where one parent or the other was away, for work or some other reason. Maybe not Nick’s reason, but I bet it happened. It didn’t make it inherently bad. “That’s probably more common than you think. And it doesn’t mean you’re actually going to mess anything—him—up.”
“No, but . . .” He frowned, scrunching his eyebrows together. “I’m not trying to whine about it. He wasn’t . . . he wasn’t a conscious decision, but I would never change it. I’m really grateful he’s here. I love being with him.”
“I know.” It was obvious. I didn’t have a second of doubt about it, and I didn’t think Joshua ever would, either. “And you’re not whining.”
He smiled, softly, and ducked his head, so I could only see his profile. “Sometimes I wonder if he’d be better with a normal dad. Someone who isn’t . . . Someone with a normal job, someone who’s . . . you know.”
I shook my head. “I really don’t.”
“Someone who’s respectable,” he said all in a rush. “Someone who grew up and stopped having fantasies about being a rock star. His life’s going to be so complicated already, because his mother and I aren’t together. I wonder if he’d be better with something more solid.”
I pulled in a sharp breath. I wasn’t sure why, but it hurt to hear him say that. I ached for him, but it also made me hurt for his band, and for Escaping Indigo. And for me.
“Don’t say that.” My voice came out harder and sharper than I’d meant it to. “First, he isn’t going to be . . .” I made a vague gesture. “Damaged or something because his parents aren’t together. You’re making it work, you both love him, so it’s fine.” I waited until he nodded before I continued. “Second, you are completely respectable. And you’re not having fantasies—you worked hard and you did it. You made it. You got to this point, you are a rock star. It’s not a pipe dream. It’s reality. And what you do . . .” I was working myself up, my voice getting louder, and I had to rein it back under my control. “You make people happy with your music. You make them feel something, something important. You create something incredible and beautiful. Don’t you think that’s more important than being normal, than being like everyone else? For you? Maybe for Josh too?”
His eyes were wide, and he was flushed, from his cheekbones down to his neck. “I’m just the drummer.”
“Bullshit, you’re just the drummer. Without you, the songs have no heartbeat.”
For a second, he stared at me, his mouth open in an O. Then he laughed, hard enough that he collapsed forward and wrapped his arms around his middle. People turned to stare at us, he was so loud. Josh looked up, and I smiled and shook my head, pointing him back to his sandcastle.
“Sorry,” Nicky said when he could talk again. “You looked so serious. Like it was a personal insult or something.” He wiped at his eyes. He was still red, but not from embarrassment this time. His grin was so wide, it made my chest tighten, made my breath come short, the tiniest bit.
“I was. Kind of. I like your music, you know.” I was almost mumbling now, embarrassed both by what I’d said and by how he’d reacted. And by how pleased I was at his laughter.
He swiveled around on the bench. “I know.”
I sighed. “What I mean is . . . I think your job is respectable. And I think it makes you more interesting as a dad, not less. It means . . . Joshua’s going to grow up thinking he can do whatever he wants, be whatever he wants. Isn’t that better than not?”
He nodded. He was staring at my face, his gaze taking in my mouth, my eyes, searching for something, or studying me. “It is. Maybe. Hopefully.” He reached out and touched the tips of his fingers to my arm. It was such a simple gesture, after the ways we’d touched in the past. After I’d literally had my hand down his boxers and around his dick the day before. We hadn’t touched like that very often, though, and we hadn’t talked about the night before yet, either. This touch was soft and intimate and it felt like it connected us in a subtle, important way. “Thank you.”
I took a deep breath and nodded back. Josh yelled something to us, breaking the current of tension between us, and we got up and wandered over. We ended up sitting in the sand with him, letting him dictate stories to us with his toys. I hadn’t ever thought I’d be a “get in the dirt and play with the kid” type of guy, but apparently I was. Apparently, if Josh turned his big puppy-dog brown eyes on me, so similar to Nick’s, I was a goner.
“Don’t let him bully you.” Nick looked back and forth between me and Josh. “He knows exactly how to get what he wants.”
I laughed but shook my head. “I want to.” I scooted closer to Josh, who held up a car for me to use in the sand.
Nick and I spent another hour or so pretending we were kids again, building sandcastles and car tracks and whatever else Josh’s limitless imagination could cook up. It didn’t all make sense, and it flowed from one idea to another, so I was often strongly corrected by Josh when I assumed we were still in the same imaginary play game and he’d moved on. I liked it, though. I liked how he wasn’t constrained by lines of thought. How his world and his mind were open.
He reminded me of Eric in that way. He reminded me of Eric a lot. Not so much when Eric was a baby—we’d been six years apart, which was enough for me to remember him as a little kid, but not a lot. It was more that Eric . . . had always been a kid to me. He’d always been someone I’d wanted, needed, to look after. He’d always, in some ways, been my kid—our dad had left when we were young, young enough that I could barely remember him, and it had been our mom, and Eric, and me. I’d always wanted to step into that role of protector and guide and caretaker for Eric. I’d always wanted to be there for him.
I just hadn’t been very good at it.
The thought kept popping up while I watched Nick go back and forth
between play mode and dad mode, while I watched him watch Josh like he’d never take his eyes off him. I tried to push it away, because it wasn’t really fair, to me or to Nick. Our situations were completely different. Like Micah had always tried to tell me, Eric hadn’t needed me to look after him. That wasn’t why things had gone for him the way they had. But I’d never really seen Eric as grown-up, as independent. I couldn’t help thinking that maybe if I’d tried harder, been there more, done more, taken better care of him, he’d still be alive. It was different for Micah, because as close as he’d been to Eric, Eric hadn’t been his brother. I was supposed to be dependable. I had responsibilities to Eric, more than I did to anyone else. I should have been there, and I should have done better.
It was an idea that floated around in my head all afternoon. By the time we were ready to go, Josh was tired and getting whiny—although, not nearly as much as I’d expected from a two-year-old. I was sure he had his tantrums, little-kid moments, but while I’d been with him he was so happy all the time. We packed up the stuff, and Nick invited me back to his place for dinner. And then, somehow, I ended up carrying Josh back to Nick’s car. Josh was sleepy enough that he laid his head on my shoulder, and he stayed there, a heavy, warm lump, his fingers curled into the fabric of my shirt, my palm against his back, until Nick took him to buckle him into his car seat.
Nick’s house was big, and it was in a nice neighborhood. Rest in Peach had been doing really well over the last couple of years, and it showed in what they were able to afford. Nick caught me gazing around the huge entryway, the living room with its giant, cushy couches and vaulted ceilings, the kitchen I could see off to one side, the hint of gleaming granite countertops and stainless steel.
“It’s crazy, right?” he asked me, that grin back on his face. He looked slightly uncertain, though. “I grew up in a shithole.” He glanced down immediately, to see if Josh was close enough to hear his foul language, but Josh had already run off into the house.
I nodded. “Me too.” I still didn’t live anywhere nearly as good as this place. Not that Escaping Indigo didn’t pay me well. I could have moved, probably. Out of my old neighborhood and into something nicer, something closer to the rest of the band. But I . . . hadn’t.
Nick wandered into the kitchen, kicking off his shoes as he went, and I followed. Josh had disappeared into a corner of the living room that was packed with toys.
“Sometimes I’m like, yup, this is my house,” Nick said over his shoulder. “And sometimes I can’t believe this is actually where I live. Like, what karma did I have in my past life that I got this, you know?”
I joined him in the kitchen. He was standing at the island, his hands flat against the edge of the stone. I took him in with the place, the roughness of him, of his drumming clothes, against all those sleek, smooth, expensive surfaces. But he didn’t not fit here. He actually fit really well. He was angular and fine-edged, and instead of making him appear small as a house like this would have done for me, it made Nick look shiny and perfect. It made him look like he was at home. Because, I reminded myself, he was.
Nick made Josh lie down for a nap for a while—I had no idea that kids had to have naps, but Josh, after a bit of initial whining, seemed pretty into the whole thing. And Nick was good too, cajoling him gently into settling down. He was so practiced at all of it, as if he’d been taking care of a toddler his whole life.
When he came back after getting Josh to sleep, Nick and I cooked together. He told me he’d do all of it himself, but I didn’t want to sit there and do nothing. So we made a super-complicated lasagna, messing up more than we were successful, probably. It looked good when we got it in the oven, though. Cheesy and full of herbs, all the layers just so. Then Nick got me a drink and we sat at the island in his kitchen, waiting for Josh to wake up. All of it was so . . . domestic. So family-like. And so comfortable and easy. I could imagine myself slipping into this role, this spot. Being here, with the two of them, or having them at my place. It felt so good. So warm and welcoming, and there was a big part of me that wanted that.
But it was terrifying at the same time. Overwhelming and big and too much. There were so many ways and reasons for it to go so wrong.
After dinner, I offered to do the dishes. Nick argued that I was a guest, and I argued that he’d now fed me twice, and all I’d done was buy lunch for them this afternoon and help him lay out sheets of pasta. We ended up doing them together, me washing or stuffing things in the dishwasher, Nick drying, until Josh came back into the kitchen and told Nick in no uncertain terms that he wanted to drum now.
It was evening by then, and I should probably have been going. But Nick was grinning at me, and I couldn’t help grinning back. I didn’t want to leave quite yet.
“You want to drum too?” he asked, his voice playful and teasing.
I laughed and nodded, and the two of us dutifully followed Josh to a room at the back of the house. It was small, and soundproofed. Maybe it had started life as a bedroom or office, but now it was a drum room, with two kits set up in it, and a third stacked in a corner.
I closed the door behind us, and Nick started adjusting one of the kits for Josh, moving everything closer so he could reach to hit stuff. He picked Josh up and Josh wiggled around on the seat, his hands going right for the sticks resting on the floor tom.
“Use these, buddy.” Nick pulled a pair of shorter, bright-blue sticks out from a pile.
He reached for some noise-canceling headphones too, and handed me a pair. “He doesn’t hold back,” he warned me, and I laughed. Josh laughed too, wild and happy. Nick plopped a smaller pair of headphones on Josh’s head. Then he stood behind Josh and let him go to town.
The headphones blocked out a lot of the sound, making the snare and toms thumpy and muffled, muting the sharp, cutting crash of the cymbals, but it didn’t stop the noise completely. And it was basically a cacophony. Josh, being two, had zero sense of musicality or rhythm or anything that made listening to a bangy instrument non-painful. It was awful. But Nicky stood behind him with the biggest smile on his face, and watched him with absolute pride, and I couldn’t help smiling back at both of them.
God, they were perfect. Ridiculously, impossibly perfect, and I could see myself falling in love with them. Falling in love with the love between them. It was as if, standing here, watching them, I was falling, like I had tipped right over the edge of a cliff and was rocketing to the ground. Like I couldn’t get my breath fast enough, like everything in me had tensed for impact, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted it to end or go on forever. I couldn’t tell if it was a good feeling or something to be frightened of. Or both at once.
Josh paused, finally, and Nick clapped out a slow, easy rhythm of a few beats. Josh copied it pretty closely by banging away on the drums. They repeated that a few times, with Nick changing the rhythm slightly each time, and Josh copying him.
“All right, kiddo,” Nicky said after the last time. He gently pried the drum sticks out of Josh’s hands. “Probably time for you to start getting ready for bed.”
Josh put up a fight, arguing and demanding to play more, but Nick shushed him and, when that didn’t quite work, he talked over him, directing his words to me. “I’m gonna go put him to bed. It’ll probably be a few minutes to get him to calm down and sleep. Do you want to wait for me? I’ll be back in a bit.”
I nodded. Nick scooped Josh up, told him to say good night to me—Josh paused in his wailing argument and said good night very seriously, and then started his demands back up again—and they disappeared down the hallway.
I wandered back out into the living room and sat on the couch. I wanted to lean my head against the overstuffed cushion, but a full day with Josh had worn me out, and I was afraid that if I did, I’d nod off.
Nick came back after about a half hour. He leaned over the back of the couch, so his face was next to mine, chin resting on his folded arms. He was close enough that I could feel the warmth of his skin, could smell the clean, fre
sh sweat scent of him. I didn’t have to turn my head to see the tired, lazy smile on his lips.
“Hey.” His voice was a soft, low blur of sound, rumbly and private. “Sorry that took so long. I shouldn’t have let him wind himself up before bed. I lost track of time.”
I shrugged. “It’s fine.” And it was. I hadn’t minded sitting there. I hadn’t tried to listen to Nick and Josh while Josh got ready for bed, but their mingled voices had drifted down the hall, the quiet sounds of bedtime—teeth brushing and story reading—just reaching me. It had been comforting in a way I hadn’t thought of in a long time. That strange, familiar childhood warmth of family and being with people you loved. It reminded me of being on the tour bus, hearing the quiet, murmured conversations between people settling in for the night, the deep, long breaths of sleep, the snuffle-y swish of sheets against pajamas. Being close. It reminded me of my mom and Eric, of the way our house had been in the evenings, all of us together, even when the three of us, all introverts, were in our own bubbles.
“Is that how you teach someone to play drums?” I asked, because I’d wondered in a vague way while I was watching them and it was the first thing that came tumbling out of my mouth.
Nick shrugged too, his chin bouncing on his forearms. “Sort of? It’s more complicated than that, but that’s the heart of it. Copy stuff until you know how to do it, until it’s all muscle memory, and then start playing with it.”
I turned toward him a bit, so I could see him better. “I wouldn’t know. I’m the least creative person ever.”
He studied me for a moment, really intently, his expression serious. “I doubt that, Quinn.”
I shook my head. He straightened, standing up, and held out his hand. “Come on. I’ll show you.”