Immaterial Defense: Once and Forever #4

by Lauren Stewart

  She might have followed me through the door and down the hallway toward Trevor’s room, but I couldn’t be sure. And I didn’t look. Because I couldn’t care about anything other than my best friend right now. Anything else would be too much.

  As if the universe wanted to prove me right, as soon as I opened the curtain to Trev’s room, I saw Sara. She’d pulled the chair closer and had fallen asleep with her head on Trevor’s bed.

  “You’re in my seat.” I didn’t even try to hide the shitty attitude in my tone, didn’t care that I’d woken her up. Or maybe I did. Maybe I just couldn’t stand the thought of her sleeping peacefully while my world collapsed around me. While the life of the jerk who’d stuck with me since we were kids was still controlled by machines, only a series of beeps and lines proving that he was alive.

  She straightened and looked at me but didn’t say anything.

  “It’s good you’re here.” When she smiled, I added, “A beautiful woman is probably the only thing he’d wake up for.”

  “You should sit down. You look—”

  “Like shit. Yeah, your mom told me.”

  “She’s still here?” She blew out her breath and then shoved the chair toward me. “Sit down before you fall down.”

  I did both—collapsing into the chair, leaving her nowhere to sit down. Hopefully, chivalry would be the only thing to die tonight.

  Fuck it. I might look like shit, but I didn’t want to act like it. I got back up and dragged my ass down the hallway to the nurse’s station, ignoring Sara’s calls.

  “Can I take one of these chairs to 13B?” I asked.

  “I’ll take it for you. 13B?” A male nurse or orderly or whatever the fuck he was stood up, looking at me with concern. I stared right back, wondering how he managed being here, smothered by tears and antiseptic every day.

  I followed him back down the hall and stood outside Trev’s room while the nurse and Sara rearranged the equipment carts to fit both chairs next to each other. After thanking him, I slumped into the seat, only realizing just how small the space was when my thigh pressed against Sara’s.

  After a couple of minutes, she inched her hand closer to mine. I grabbed it and used it to pull her into me, wrapping both arms around her tightly.

  “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there,” she whimpered, her voice muffled by my shirt.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, it does. I wanted to be there. I was on my way back, but—”

  “It doesn’t matter.” I didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want to be disappointed or wonder what would happen to us. I was too tired to argue, too tired to speak. So, I closed my eyes and breathed her in. The sweet scent of her hair helping me forget where we really were, how we’d all gotten there, and where we would end up next.

  44

  Declan

  It took hours of waiting for a room to open up for Trev in another part of the hospital. No idea why it took so long, unless they were waiting for someone to croak so they could haul out his body and give his room to my friend. Honestly, I tried not to think about it too much. Because no one would tell me why Trev was being moved to begin with, and the more I thought about the staff waiting for someone to croak, the closer I felt to a breakdown.

  By the time we got settled into the room and the new round of nurses had dragged me through his entire medical history again—as if I knew, as if he’d told me anything about it lately—it was noon.

  “I’m going to go get you some food,” Sara said from the vinyl-covered couch across the room. I was still hovering at Trevor’s bedside, keeping a close eye on his chest to make sure it was still moving up and down in the same rhythm as the lines on one of the machines.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Well, I am. And you should eat something. I’ll be back as soon as I—” She stopped as soon as our eyes met. They hadn’t been doing much of that because I couldn’t deal with our shit right now. And looking at her would force me to remember.

  “You don’t have to stay here, Sara.”

  She took a few steps toward me. “You can ignore me completely.” There was no antagonism in her voice, no drama. She must have known I couldn’t take it. “But if it’s okay with you, I’d like to stay, just in case. So that if you need anything—anything at all—I’m here.”

  I sighed and nodded, breaking eye contact and looking at the tile on the floor. “I could use some coffee.”

  “I’ll get some. Anything else?”

  To hold her. For a minute or a month. To feel as if I weren’t dealing with this on my own. But I didn’t say any of that. Instead, I shook my head and turned back to Trevor and his machines, listening to the soft click of Sara’s shoes on the tile, the opening of the door behind me, and the lurch of the hinge when she let it go.

  A few minutes later, I heard a knock. Since the hospital staff didn’t bother with that kind of thing, I turned around to see who it was.

  Ed stood outside, waving at me wildly as if we were across a football field from each other. I didn’t know how he’d heard the news but was happy he’d come.

  It seemed like I hadn’t seen him in forever. Although, everything seemed like forever ago to me now. I knew he and Trevor still spoke a lot. Trev was helping him put some demos together or something.

  Once I’d motioned Ed into the room, he pushed the door open. He was my height but maybe half my weight, so when his gigantic black messenger bag caught on the latch, it pulled him off balance for a second. He figured it out pretty quickly and swung the heavy bag away from the door and into a rolling tray the nurse had left there earlier.

  “Hey, man,” he said quietly, as if the guy lying on the bed in front of us was just sleeping and not unconscious.

  “Good to see you, Ed. Thanks for coming.”

  Ed shook my hand and looked down at him. “How’s the fucker doing?”

  I shrugged. “Did he ever tell you about any pain he was having?”

  “You mean from his pancreas or whatever?”

  I nodded unhappily. “Fuck, really? You knew about that?”

  He grimaced. “Sorry, man. Yeah. I forgot he didn’t want you to know.”

  “Why the fuck not?” Luckily, I was so exhausted, the question didn’t sound angry. I didn’t want to scare the kid—he looked guilty enough already. I just wanted to know why my best friend had kept something so important from me.

  “He didn’t want to fuck things up for the band,” Ed said. “He figured that once you guys had a solid contract with a label, he could quit without it being a big deal.”

  “He was planning to—” Nope. I couldn’t say shit. I’d done the exact same thing to him—kept something serious from him because I didn’t want to hurt my bandmates. No wonder he’d taken my big confession so well. He had the same fucking exit plan. Although considering how long he must have known he couldn’t keep up with the rest of us, he’d probably been planning it for a lot longer than I had.

  Ed and I stood there without speaking—me in stunned silence, and Ed fighting with whatever was in his bag, a needle in the haystack maybe.

  When he found whatever he’d been searching for, he held it up above his head and yelled, “Got it, Trev!”

  I turned toward him to see what he was talking about. He held out a red thumb drive with something written in sharpie on one side. I couldn’t read what it said until he put it into my hand.

  “What’s this?” I turned it over and read: Declan Rocks. “Cute title.”

  “My idea. Trevor didn’t even think I could put it together so fast.” Ed stood there smiling, glancing at Trevor every once in a while, with the same shit-eating grin, while I tried to figure out what was going on. “Told you I’d have it for you tonight, jackass. Wake the fuck up and listen to it, so I can see your expression while you fall in love with my superb and speedy work.”

  “What is this?” I asked.

  His brow came together. “It’s your demo. Didn’t Trev—” His mouth dropped open a c
ouple of inches. “Oh shit. You knew about it, right?”

  “I’m not having the best of days here, so could you just fill me in on…”—my volume lowered to barely a grumble—“everything?” All the shit that my best friend had neglected to share with me.

  “About a week ago, he gave me the original, acoustic versions of all the Self Defense songs. You know, the ones with only you or only you and him, before they were remixed.”

  I knew Trevor had my originals. I’d been the one to give them to him. But I didn’t know why he would’ve shared them with Ed.

  “Then yesterday, he sent me two new ones. Said they were a rush order. One was a ballad with just you and an acoustic guitar—that’s a good fucking song, by the way—and the other was you, your guitar, and some chick giggling in the background. That one was good, too, but you should fire whoever recorded them. Aside from the dual track screw-up, the mix and background was shit.”

  I nodded as if I had followed that well enough to agree with him, but inside, the information kept spinning on repeat, and I couldn’t catch a single fucking thing.

  Why would Trevor have given all of my songs to Ed? If I stretched my limited imagination, giving him the original versions of the Self Defense songs made sense—maybe Trevor wanted to experiment with something new and decided to go all the way back to the beginning for some reason.

  And sure, Trevor sending Ed my brand-new, pity-me ballad made sense if I accepted that Trevor was a big fucking liar who’d gone back on his promise not to share it with anyone.

  But the last song he’d mentioned had to have been the one I’d written for, and with, Sara. How’d Trevor even know it existed?

  Oh shit. I was an idiot. “When Trevor sent you the last two, they were overlapping, weren’t they?”

  Ed nodded. “Yep. Recorded as two separate tracks instead of two individual files. The one with the girl laughing was hidden, but all I had to do was extract it and move it into its own file.”

  I wasn’t sure if Ed had figured there was a reason I’d done it like that, or if he’d just decided I was an idiot who’d done it accidentally. If he’d guessed the latter, he’d have been right. When I recorded the new song yesterday, I must have accidentally connected the tracks together on my laptop, stacking them on top of each other without realizing it.

  So, when I’d given the new song to Trevor, Sara’s song had been hiding underneath it.

  I had a flashback to the day I made that recording with Sara. I hadn’t pressed the record button to have a track of the song, or even to be able to listen to her laugh whenever I wanted to. Why would I need a recording of something I heard every day?

  I’d recorded it because, in twenty years, I wanted to be able to hear the way we talked to each other while we were falling in love. So that whenever I annoyed her, I would be able to pull it out as proof that she used to love my voice.

  I’d recorded it when I was one hundred percent sure we would have a forever. Back before I realized that nothing was forever.

  “I worked on them all yesterday and last night,” Ed said. “Didn’t even hear what happened to him until an hour ago.” He’d worked on them?

  “Explain what that means, Ed.”

  “Um...” He rubbed his cheek and glanced at Trevor.

  “I’m not mad at him.” I chuckled. “Not for this, anyway. I know he wouldn’t have given you something he promised he wouldn’t show anyone unless he had a good reason.” I gestured to the guy who might never be able to explain it to me. “He can’t tell me that reason, Ed. But I really need to understand something right now.”

  “You really didn’t know anything about it?” He looked at me oddly. “I figured you guys had decided to do it together, since you were the one who wrote them.”

  “If we’d done this together, I doubt my head would be this close to exploding.” I rubbed my eyes with both hands and then brushed my hair back.

  “Okay. So, uh...” Ed rummaged around in his satchel again, pulled out a bottle of Advil, and handed it to me. “Basically, Trevor asked me to remix all your songs, so I could start playing them in the clubs and on my social media pages. I tested a couple of your early ones at a gig last weekend, and people went ballistic over them.” He smiled at the memory. “I posted the newest one with just you and the guitar on YouTube around four o’clock this morning—just the music with a black background, not the kind of thing that goes viral, you know? When I left my place, it already had over 25k hits, and aside from a few fuckhead trolls, people are loving it, man. Congrats. No idea what it’s up to now, but we need to figure out the financials before I put out any more. I don’t want anyone to feel like they’re getting screwed.”

  “Financials?” I scrubbed my hands over my face a few more times. Might’ve helped more if someone slapped me a few times.

  “Yeah. For the site hits, royalties, and what we sell at the online retailers once we put them up.”

  “You and Trevor figured all this out?”

  He shook his head. “It was all him. Remember? I thought you two were doing it together.” After he set down his laptop on the rolling table next to Trevor’s head, he clicked open his Internet browser. “Sound quality won’t be the best through the speakers, and I bet the hospital Wi-Fi is crappier than dirt, but it’ll have to do.”

  I slumped down on the arm of the couch and waited for the page to load.

  “Completely unbiased here, but they came out amazing. Except the ballad. I mean, it still sounds great sped up and with REC’Ed’s signature old-school techno sound behind it. But I think Trev was right—you should release that one mainstream alternative, at least initially. Then, after it’s really hot and before everybody starts begging to remix it for you, we release my version. And boom, we both need to start storing our cash in the Caymans, know what I mean?”

  No. Kind of. Maybe a few parts, but definitely not the majority of it. “I’m going to need you to explain all of that again. Because I’m still lost. Trevor gave you my songs and told you to release them as dance music? All of them?”

  He nodded. “Aside from the ballad. You’ll make a fortune if you leave it more mainstream. Listen to this.”

  I leaned closer when the music started and closed my eyes to block my other senses out. He’d obviously sped up the chorus a little, but I recognized the notes and the lyrics. “That doesn’t even sound like me.”

  “It actually sounds exactly like you. Just not the way you sound when you’re singing Self Defense songs, and that’s kind of the point, right? Trevor told me you didn’t want anyone to know you were still writing.”

  “He really said that?”

  “That’s what he told me means, Dec. Yeah.”

  I wanted to listen to more, but before I could stop him, he clicked away from that window and opened up another.

  “This is the other. I like it, but I’m not crazy about the chick giggling in the background. Does it symbolize something too deep for me to get?”

  45

  Sara

  “The laughing symbolizes Declan’s incredible patience with a girl who knows nothing about music,” I said from the doorway.

  Luckily, Declan had been too confused, and the other guy too excited about the deal to hear me come in. I’d been standing just inside the door for the last few minutes, eavesdropping. Not proud of it, but I definitely didn’t want to interrupt what sounded like great news for Declan. Because he so desperately needed some good news right now.

  I held out the tray when they turned around and finally noticed me. “But he’ll definitely take her out.”

  “Hey,” Declan said.

  “Hey,” I said back. “Yours is the one on the right.” It was decaf. I knew it was dishonest, but seriously, the last thing he needed was caffeine. The first thing he needed was sleep. So, I’d made an executive decision he was better off not knowing about.

  “Thanks.” Declan’s face was so pale, the circles under his eyes so dark. He walked over to me and took the coffees o
ff the tray, so I could unpack the bag I’d been holding tucked between one arm and my side.

  “I’m wrecked,” the other guy said.

  Until he pulled the bottom of his T-shirt out to show off “REC’Ed” written in airbrushed graffiti, I thought he was referring to how he felt. And was about to tell him we all feel that way.

  “But during daylight hours, you can just call me Ed.”

  “Sara,” I said, shaking his hand. “You can call me that twenty-four seven. If I’d known you were here, I would’ve gotten you a cup of coffee, too.” I could’ve given him mine, but I needed it too badly to let it go.

  “Thanks, but I don’t drink coffee—it messes with my temple.” After slapping his hand on his chest, he helped himself to one of the many cafeteria pastries I’d dumped onto the tray.

  “I can see that,” I said as I watched Ed finish his first in two bites and reach for another. Then I held them out to Declan, hoping one of them would be so appealing he wouldn’t be able to refuse it. Unfortunately, it seemed he was the only one in the room—besides Trevor—who could refuse it. Hell, I’d planned on eating at least half the tray by myself. Carbs, especially sugar, help refuel the emotional well in times of stress.

  “So, you’re the giggler?” Ed asked.

  “Not something I imagined would be part of my legacy, but, yeah, I guess I’m the giggler. Sounds like a rejected comic book villain.”

  “Ed,” Declan said, “if I agree to this plan, I don’t want to show my face.”

  Ed laughed. “Because you’re so ugly?”

  “I’m serious, man. Not on posters, albums, promotion, or onstage. You can do all of that shit, but no one ever knows it’s me who’s writing or singing.”

  A nurse opened the door and peeked into the room. “I’m sorry, but a bike messenger dropped this off a bit ago. It’s for Declan Hollis? She said it was a legal document and was”—she rolled her eyes—“very insistent that the sender wanted someone give it to you right away.”