Betrayal of the Band

by Sarah Tipton

  “That’s not my fault.” Sawyer hadn’t expected Zoey to break up with Justin or for her to ask him to reform their band. She belonged with Justin—as a girlfriend and as a band.

  “Yes, it is. So if you’re here to talk me into playing with you, forget it and get out.”

  “Whatever.” Sawyer grabbed the bagged sticks off the glass counter and left.

  47

  Breaking Me Again

  Playing the electric guitar didn’t quite soothe Justin. Never had. But he kept playing.

  In the corner, almost hidden, his acoustic lay inside its coffin. Every reminder of Zoey brought on a new wave of pain, and any fading of the ache since her confession seemed only temporary. He still loved her. How long until she realized she still loved him too?

  The music flowed slow and sad. He’d left the garage door mostly closed making the room hot and stuffy, because the bright sunlight felt too happy. But twilight wouldn’t fall until close to midnight, and it was barely eight now.

  Had he heard a knock? He stopped playing and ducked to peek through the two-inch opening. All he saw were purple and black shoes, but that was enough.

  He stood, catching his guitar before it fell to the floor, and hurried to open the garage bay door.

  It couldn’t rise fast enough.

  “Hi.” Zoey lifted one hand and twisted a necklace bead with the other.

  “Hi.” His heart thudded rattling his rib cage. They stood in the opening staring at each other for an awkward moment.

  “Can I, uh...” Zoey waved at the inside of the garage.

  “Yeah, sure. Come in.” He stepped out of her way and put his guitar on the rack. His movements felt jerky and unsure. He felt unsure. Why was Zoey here?

  But the why didn’t really matter.

  “You’ve rearranged.” She looked where Sawyer’s drums had been. Now the couch angled through the corner.

  “Yeah, I moved things around.”

  Zoey bobbed her head, as if she didn’t know what to say.

  He didn’t have a clue either.

  Finally, she faced him. Her eyes held the aching look that had made him fall in love with her. All he’d ever wanted was to be the one who erased the sadness. He had with music.

  “Did you want to play together?” he asked. Dumb question, since she didn’t have her bass. But she could always sing while he played. That often cheered her up.

  “Not tonight.” The corner of her mouth tipped upward. “I wanted to talk to you.”

  “OK.” He kept his voice calm. She’d already broken his heart. No other news could be that bad. But how did he know what she had to say would be bad? Maybe this was good. His racing pulse sent vibrations through his body.

  “I messed up Friday night, and Aurora Fire kicked me out.”

  “I know.”

  “You do?” She sounded surprised and also as if he’d interrupted her planned speech.

  “Yeah. Vance came into Rhythm and Notes yesterday and told me about it.”

  “He did?” She glanced away, cheeks pink. “What happened...it was really stupid.”

  “Hey.” He reached for her hand. “It’s over now.”

  “Yeah. It’s all over with them.” She gave him another almost-smile and curled her fingers over his. “And I’m playing my bass again. With that new girl, Chey Michaels...and Sawyer.”

  “Oh.” Justin jerked his hand away.

  Hurt rose in Zoey’s eyes, but she babbled on as if to hide it. “Chey heard that Poor and Loud this weekend had a cancellation, so she volunteered her and Sawyer, and then they asked me to play with them.”

  He couldn’t look at her. This was what she came to tell him? That she’d started a new band with Sawyer? His heart hardened like baked clay and sank to his stomach.

  “But we really need you.”

  She couldn’t be serious. “No. I won’t play with him.”

  “I know you’re mad at us for what happened—”

  “No, I’m not. I’m not mad at you.” He grabbed her hand again squeezing her fingers between his. He had to forget about Sawyer and focus on Zoey. This was his chance to fix everything. He couldn’t blow it. “I’m really not. I don’t blame you for what happened. I love you, Zoey.”

  “But you should be mad at me. It’s as much my fault as it was Sawyer’s.” Tears shone in her eyes.

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  She wore the sad, forlorn look she’d had when they’d met in eighth grade. Back then, he hadn’t known how to cheer her up, but he’d wanted to. Now he did know, and it wasn’t working.

  “Zoey.” Justin wrapped his arms around her shoulders pulling her close and breathing in the scent of waffle cones that never quite washed out. She melted against him fitting where she always had. “I forgive you. It’s over. Now everything can go back to the way it was.”

  She stiffened against him. “Justin, I’m sorry.”

  “I know. Like I said, it’s OK.”

  “No, no it’s not.” She sniffled and pulled away. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes this summer—ditching you and Sawyer to sing with Aurora Fire, drinking with Bailee...other stuff.” Her voice broke and tears overflowed again. “But breaking up with you...I don’t think that was a mistake.”

  “Zoey, don’t say that.” The clay ball that was his heart cracked and crumbled.

  “I care about you, I really do, and you’re like my best friend, but I don’t think that’s enough.”

  “Of course, it is.” He reached for her again, but she moved away. “Couples are always saying how they married their best friend.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Her cheeks were wet, tears dripping from her jaw.

  Justin couldn’t look at her. He’d been wrong—there was worse news than breaking up. He faced his guitar fingering the tuning pegs and fighting the sting in his eyes.

  “There’s one more thing.” Zoey’s voice shook. “The music we’re playing, it’s all your stuff and if you’re not playing with us...”

  He twisted the peg. Did she think he’d sue her for the rights to the music they’d written together? “It’s yours too.”

  “Thanks.” A few seconds later, her footsteps faded out the door.

  Justin kept twisting the peg, around and around, tighter and tighter, until the string snapped and curled into the air.

  48

  One Thousand Apologies

  Sawyer rang Zoey’s bell and waited a few seconds. Practicing at Zoey’s was still weird. Should he walk inside? Walking into Justin’s garage had always felt easy, natural. And not like he was invading someone’s house. But playing in Zoey’s basement was invading a house, and he couldn’t bring himself to just enter. Not yet.

  “Hey.” Zoey flung open the door and sucked in a breath that took the oxygen out of the Arctic entry before bursting out with, “Justin said no.”

  “He did?” Sawyer shouldn’t be surprised. Not after his conversation with Justin yesterday. He knew Justin wouldn’t want to be anywhere near him. But he’d hoped anyway. Especially if Zoey did the asking.

  “Actually, he said he’d play with me, but not you.”

  “Oh.” That sounded right.

  Sawyer followed Zoey downstairs.

  “I told him that wasn’t happening.” Zoey spun to face him, and Sawyer nearly knocked her off the last step. “He can’t blame you and not me.”

  “Sure he can.” Sawyer blamed himself more than Zoey. Never should’ve crossed that line.

  Zoey squinted her eyes as if she wanted to argue. But then she shrugged tossing her black and green hair and her thoughts aside. “Anyway, I’m not getting back together with him, which he thinks will happen. So I guess it’s just the three of us.”

  “We should quit.” Sawyer moved to his spot behind the drums. The three of us wasn’t making music.

  “Quit?” Chey spoke from the stairs. Sawyer hadn’t even heard the door open. Guess Chey felt comfortable enough to let herself in.

  “Justin refused.” Zoey plucked mou
rnful notes on her bass.

  “So we’re giving up?” Chey walked over to her keyboard and glanced at them, her expression fighting between disappointment and determination.

  “There’s not much point.” Sawyer wanted to offer something more, something that would erase the disappointment completely. But he had nothing.

  “Is my playing that bad?” Chey said this as if she was joking, but a hint of a tremble gave away her worry.

  “No.” Sawyer played a rhythm on one of the drums. All he had was rhythm. Someone else had to find the melody. “But without Justin, we’re missing something. Something important.”

  “Didn’t you tell me you performed without Zoey?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She’s the vocalist—isn’t that an important part too?”

  “Yeah, and we weren’t all that great.” Truth.

  Zoey’s mouth knotted, and she ducked her head.

  “We can’t give up now.” A spark ignited in Chey’s voice. “Let’s keep practicing and praying. God can help us fill in the missing parts—with or without Justin.”

  The spark caught hold inside Sawyer too. And another, familiar feeling. He looked at Zoey. “She sounds like him, doesn’t she?”

  “You’re right, she kind of does.”

  “I sound like who?”

  “Justin.” Sawyer had missed that insane optimism. Living inside his negative head got depressing. “That’s the kind of thing he’d say.”

  Chey gave him a funny look, then shook it off her face. “So are we going to keep practicing for Saturday?”

  Sawyer beat his sticks in the air for a few seconds. A concert guaranteed band practice. And band practice guaranteed Chey would stay in his life. “Why not?”

  “If he’s in, I’m in.” Zoey sounded confident, a complete change from her attitude two minutes ago.

  “Good.” Chey let out a sigh, as if she needed their band as much as any of them. “Then let’s practice.”

  “But—” Sawyer stabbed a drumstick toward her. He finally knew what he had to offer—a challenge. “If we’re going to play without Justin, you’ll have to learn the melody.”

  “Me?” Her voice squeaked. “Why?”

  “Because despite our awesome—and still not official—name, playing with a CD won’t work so well. And I can’t play the melody on the drums.”

  “What about Zoey?” Her panic fanned the flame ignited earlier inside Sawyer. It wasn’t her fear so much as the challenge of pushing her to prove herself. Chey was talented, and if she needed their band, she’d have to put her talent on display, for success or failure.

  He wouldn’t let her back down. Or fail. “You’ll have to do it if you want us to play.”

  She narrowed her eyes and jutted her chin in that way he was becoming familiar with. A way that said she would rise to his challenge, whether he challenged her to never touch his drums or to play the music she heard inside her head. “Fine. I’ll learn it.”

  For five hours, they worked on two different songs. Chey struggled to match the melody on the CD, and Sawyer threw out encouragement and criticism. Couldn’t let her get too confident if they wanted people to like what they heard on Saturday.

  Finally, they had to quit so Sawyer and Zoey could get to work.

  Sawyer followed Chey outside.

  “You coming to the devo tonight?” Chey asked.

  “No. Work.” He let the screen door slam shut.

  “Right. Think you’ll ever be man enough to face Justin again?”

  Where did that come from? “I don’t make the work schedule.”

  “But you used to ask for Thursdays off, didn’t you?” She spoke in that odd way she had of sounding curious and accusing. But not offensive. At least, not to him. But he was the most offensive person in the world, so maybe he was immune.

  “Sometimes.”

  “So when will you ask again?”

  “I don’t know.” He scowled. She was right. He didn’t want to face Justin. “I talked to him yesterday.”

  “You did?” Chey straightened and her voice went high as if she was shocked. “You asked him to play with us?”

  “Not exactly.” He tapped his foot on the edge of the concrete driveway. The hairs on his arm prickled. “I tried to apologize for...things.”

  “By things, you mean kissing Zoey.”

  Why was she always saying it? It was as if she didn’t want to forget.

  “That’s probably hard to get over.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” His insides swirled around. Was it hard for Chey to get over too? “I better go.”

  “I’d offer you a ride, but I saw your bike,” Chey said.

  “I don’t have to be to the store for a couple of hours.” He wasn’t ready to say good-bye to Chey. Never was. Which was a strange feeling. One he wanted to explore. Like maybe as a date. An official date. Assuming Chey was interested in him beyond his band connections. Big assumption. “If you wanted to hang out, I could come back for it later.”

  “Hang out? Where?”

  “I don’t know.” He drummed his fingers against his jeans. “We could get something to eat.”

  “We could. Are you hungry?”

  “I can always eat, if I’m not playing.” Why did this feel so hard? He glanced around looking everywhere but at Chey, his fingers drumming faster and faster.

  “Would we be getting food because we’re hungry or would it be like a date?”

  From that question, he couldn’t tell what her interest was. And he couldn’t bring himself to be direct about his own. Not if she threatened rejection. Look where that had gotten Justin and Zoey. Dating relationships destroyed a band.

  But that wasn’t enough to stop him from pushing Chey a little to find out what she thought. “You could call it that, if you wanted.”

  “And what would you call it?”

  “Whatever you called it.”

  Chey crossed her arms. “Well, this is a fun conversation.”

  He grinned. She didn’t really mean it, but he did. This was kind of fun.

  “I like you, but I’m not ready to date you, Sawyer.”

  “You’re the one who brought up dating.” His grin slipped slightly, but he forced it not to fall off completely. Couldn’t let her see he cared. “I just asked if you wanted to get food.”

  “Yeah, I’m not all that hungry.” She smiled, but it didn’t look quite sincere, before turning away toward her car. “See ya later.”

  She was leaving. But she hadn’t turned him down, had she? Not exactly.

  “Will you let me know when you are?”

  Chey froze, her hand on the car door. She kept her back to him. “You want me to let you know when I’m hungry?”

  “No.” The car window reflected Sawyer’s head above her shoulder. His heart felt ready to explode. What was he doing? Was he actually asking a girl—Chey—out? But one thing he’d figured out about Chey, she liked honesty. Upfrontness. Truth. “When you’re ready to date me.”

  She faced him leaning against the car door. “I think we need to be friends and get past all the crazy stuff that’s happened this summer.”

  “You mean Zoey and me kissing.”

  Chey swallowed, as if buying time before responding. “That and other things. Besides, there’s a lot about me you don’t know.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like pretty much everything.”

  “I know a lot about you.”

  “OK, drummer boy, then what is it about me you like?”

  “I like...” Several seconds of silence followed. Should be an easy question. But he couldn’t put into words what it was about Chey that set his pulse racing and his blood on fire. Something about the way she refused to let him get away with anything. How she forced him to speak up or risk her walking away. How she stuck to her convictions. How she gave him a second and third and fourth chance to mess up, as long as he was willing to apologize.

  “Exactly.” Chey pronounced the final judgment on the
silence. “I don’t think we should date until there’s something more than lust between us.”

  “Lust?” He laughed. “You think awful highly about yourself.”

  “Bye.” She opened the car door.

  He had to tell her something. Put his feelings into words. “That’s it, right there. That’s what drives me crazy about you.”

  She paused, one foot in the car, one still in the grass.

  “You’re always walking away. Most people I’m trying to run off after five-seconds of being around them, but you leave before I’m ready.”

  Chey hesitated and then put her other foot in the car and pulled the door closed. She didn’t answer, but she wasn’t rejecting him.

  Sawyer finally recognized her actions. She was running.

  And he’d finally found a relationship he wanted to chase.

  49

  Unraveling of a Tragedy

  After the devo Thursday night, Justin piled a plate with food and found a spot on a brown couch. Alone. The only reason he’d bothered coming was because his parents insisted. Even after confronting Mom the other day, he couldn’t get grounded from youth group. Not that she’d grounded him at all, which had been a surprise.

  Chey crossed the room, heading straight toward him. But after last week, she couldn’t possibly want to sit by him.

  He was wrong.

  “So it’s just you and me again.” Chey plopped down sounding as if she wanted to be his new best friend.

  Justin wasn’t ready to fill the vacancy, but when he was, it wouldn’t be with Sawyer’s girlfriend.

  “How’s it going?” She crunched into a carrot.

  “Fine, I guess.” He put no energy in his voice and shifted into the arm of the couch. Maybe if he was quiet, she’d get bored and find someone else.

  “Good. I’m doing OK too.” Chey kept talking, upbeat and happy. “A little freaked out about Saturday. This band thing is fun, but scary.”

  A chill climbed up his back. If he had to listen to her talk, it wouldn’t be about the new band. He searched for a safer topic. “You like living here?”

  “It’s not so bad. I think I’ve met people faster here than anywhere else I’ve moved. But maybe playing the keyboard with people instead of trying to talk helps. Common interests instead of saying something stupid.”