by Ginger Scott
I stand and start to open my mouth to protest, feeling awkward about him offering Lane and me part of his dinner, but the words fail me at first. I’m tired, and it’s hard to articulate when I’m tired sometimes, so I stutter. The i sound of it’s okay all that I can repeat while my mouth stretches awkwardly. Casey’s eyes flinch when it happens, and I stop speaking immediately.
“You know what? They can have mine. It’s cool. I was actually about to head out,” Eli says.
His gesture is sweet, but it only makes me feel worse, because I can tell he really wasn’t planning on going out. Before I can stop it, though, Lane is already thanking them both and taking the bag from Casey to take into the kitchen.
“Your brother’s pretty comfortable around me,” he chuckles.
“Yeah,” I nod, a tight smile holding in the overwhelming need to vomit my nerves all over the living room.
Silence settles in again, and Eli, Casey, and I are standing around the small coffee table in their living room—them with hands in their pockets and me with my skirt bunched in my fists at my side. At one point, Eli actually whistles and sways forward, which makes Casey and me laugh.
“All right, kids. This looks like a fun night, so…you three have a good time, and I’ll see you in the morning, Case,” Eli says, patting his friend on the shoulder as he moves over to the wall behind their front door. He pulls a bike from a metal rack mounted on the wall and walks it outside, closing the door behind him.
“He’s going for a bike ride?” I ask, my eyes fixated on the now shut door.
“Yep,” Casey says.
“In the rain?” I ask.
“It appears so,” he says.
It takes me a few seconds to flit my eyes in his direction, and when I catch his looking over me, he turns away quickly.
“What’s in these?” Lane yells from the kitchen.
“Turkey and ham. Pick your favorite, and Murphy and I will split the other,” Casey answers, one side of his mouth raised in a smile at me. “I hate ham, so I hope he picks that one,” Casey whispers.
“I’ll take turkey. Thanks, Casey,” Lane responds, and Casey laughs silently along with me.
“Sounds great, buddy,” he says loudly through stifled laughter.
Eventually, the funny fades and his expression shifts into something more understated. There’s a hint of smile there and his eyes are sort of dancing. They can’t seem to leave mine, and the scrutiny makes me hot and fidgety until I finally have to look away and join my brother in the kitchen.
“Sorry for the surprise visit. Lane wanted to see some of your equipment, and…” I start, but Casey interrupts.
“It’s fine,” he smiles, pulling two plates from a cabinet and setting the sandwich on one to cut in half. He slices it unevenly, giving me the bigger piece, then glances up when he’s done, sliding the plate in my direction, the slight smirk back again. “You can come here any time.”
I nod, then turn my focus to the sandwich on my plate, taking a bite that is probably far too big for me and definitely way unfeminine. I have to chew with my mouth open for the first few seconds, but it’s better than locking gazes with him. He’s looking at me like he knows a secret. Or maybe…
“Are you drunk?” I ask.
He chokes on his bite and pounds at his chest with a fist through his laughter.
“Right now? No. About twelve hours ago? Definitely,” he laughs.
“Oh,” I say, looking back to my sandwich. I bring it to my mouth and take another ridiculous-sized bite, my eyes busy reading the ingredients on the back of a bottle of soy sauce sitting out on the counter.
We all chew in silence for a few minutes, and I memorize the first sentence on the soy sauce label: ALL PURPOSE, NATURALLY BREWED AND OVER 300 YEARS OF EXCELLENCE. That feels like a really long time to be excellent at soy. I’m working on the second line when my brother pipes in, folding the paper around half of his sandwich.
“I’m full,” he says, pushing the paper toward the sink. Casey grabs it before it falls in.
“That’s okay; I’ll eat the rest,” he says, winking at me. He’s hardly touched the ham.
“Can I see your recording equipment?” Lane asks.
“Lane, let him finish his dinner,” I say, mouthing an apology at Casey. He shrugs it off.
“Sure…yeah, let me set you up with something in my room. Come with me,” he says, fingering over his shoulder. My brother practically skips after him, and I follow them a few steps behind.
I wait at the entry to his room, watching while he twists my brother toward his desk and shows him his headphones. He pulls a mic forward next, unwinding the cord and plugging it into a jack on the side of his laptop.
“You can sing or talk or make whatever sound in here, then this…” he pauses, dragging his finger over the touchscreen to open up a set of files, “is where you can mix it with other sounds. If you find something you like, hold it like this…and drag it down here. When you think you’re done, hit the play button and put these on to see how it sounds.”
“Awesome,” my brother breathes out, his feet kicking nervously under the chair he’s sitting in.
It doesn’t take Lane long to begin, and Casey eyes back toward the kitchen with a smile. “I have a turkey sandwich with my name on it,” he grins. I giggle and follow him out of the room, leaving my brother’s heartfelt but off-key vocals in the room with the door mostly closed.
“Thanks for doing that,” I say, picking at the edge of my bread. I’m not really that hungry, but I don’t want to waste the sandwich Eli gave up. I’m picking at it to make it look like I gave it hell.
“Of course,” he says. “If he wants, I can take him to a gig sometime and show him how I mix for a club.”
“He’d like that,” I smile at him. His eyes linger on me again, like they have since we’ve arrived. It’s arresting.
“Are you…okay?” I ask, partly to turn the focus away from him looking at me.
It works, and his gaze falls to his plate, where he’s now picking at the edge of his bread too. He tears away a piece of cheese and pokes it in his mouth, nodding slowly. Eventually, he pushes the sandwich away, and I feel double amounts of guilt. Two sandwiches wasted.
“My dad’s sick,” he says, his eyes narrowed and his attention on the smooth counter before him. He runs his hand along it, pushing a few small crumbs into the sink.
“Casey, I’m so very sorry,” I say, remembering everything I saw on his phone.
“Don’t be. It’s…it just is what it is, I guess,” he says, looking up. His eyes hit mine like stones through glass. There’s the hint of tears in them, but he laughs them away quickly with a sharp guttural sound. “It’s…cancer, I guess. I don’t really know much. I…we don’t…talk.”
He leaves that thought in the air and closes his lips tight, keeping his gaze on me. My head falls to one side as I imagine how that’s even possible. My father travels between here and Dallas a lot for the few rental properties they have. He’s the handyman for them. But he always comes home. I can’t imagine life if one day he just…didn’t. I can’t imagine what it would be like for my mom.
“Casey—” I begin, but he starts to talk again.
“I never really wanted to beat to his drum,” he says, his gaze falling back to the counter, where his hands push together, his fingers forming a diamond. “My dad’s an engineer. So’s my mom. My sisters are all successful, all…you guessed it…engineers,” he chuckles once, but his mouth remains a flat line. “Except for my oldest sister, but that’s because she’s a lawyer. And her path was…I don’t know…acceptable?”
He glances up for a moment and shrugs.
“I’m sure it sounds petty and stupid. I mean, every parent wants their child to be successful. It’s not cruel; it’s wanting something good for your kid. But…”
He stops mid-sentence and purses his lips, taking in a long deep breath as he drags his fingertips along the counter, rounding it as he walks a path toward th
e couch. I follow him, sitting on a chair opposite him. His eyes lock on mine, and it feels sort of like he’s waiting for me to give him the answer to some riddle.
“My grandparents were serious people, and my dad’s never really said anything, but I know his dad was always pretty strict—like a drill sergeant. This part I only know because my mom told me once. My dad wanted to be an artist,” he says, his eyes moving from the floor to my face, his mouth open and aghast as if he’s hearing this himself for the first time. “Fucker was apparently this brilliant painter. When he met my mom, he painted her portrait and gave it to her as a gift. I’ve seen the painting. It’s wrapped up in sheets in their attic. I’m pretty sure he has no clue my mom still has it.”
“Why would he hide it? I don’t understand,” I say.
“Because it makes him weak,” he laughs, stopping quickly, his face falling into a serious expression. “He got into this really great art school in Rhode Island, and he was going to go there, study, and maybe try painting in Paris or London for a semester. And then he told his father the plan.”
“He didn’t approve?” I ask.
His eyes find mine again, and they grow dark.
“He beat the shit out of my dad. Hit him so hard he lost sight in one of his eyes. He ruined him. My dad tells everyone that he was born that way—even us kids. But my mom knows the truth,” he says.
“And she told you…” I fill in.
“She told me,” he repeats. “She was trying to explain why he is the way he is, why he’s so set on me becoming an engineer, why he basically kicked me out of his life when I wouldn’t bend to his rules.”
“Why would he do all that? Wouldn’t he be just the opposite? Wouldn’t he want you to follow your dream since he wasn’t allowed to?” I ask.
Casey breathes a short laugh and leans forward, folding his hands in front of him with his elbows on his knees.
“I guess there are a lot of ways broken people heal. For my dad, he twisted everything around in his head—probably focused on some of the shit my grandfather had said when he was hitting him. You know what he said when I told him I was going into deejaying and sound mixing?” Casey pauses, his eyes sweeping toward me slowly.
“What?” I whisper.
“He said ‘dreams are excuses for not doing what needs to be done in life,’” he says, chewing at his bottom lip as his eyes trail away from me again.
I don’t have an answer for him. I wish I did, but that kind of dynamic, that style of parenting—my family is as opposite as it could possibly be from the Coffield house. Dreams in the Sullivan house are fluid—growing, and changing, and always reachable. Limits are hurdles you just jump over. Unless, of course, you’re me and your fears loom larger than life. But even my fears are things my parents have always believed could be overcome. I guess I am overcoming them. I guess they were right.
“You want to see something?” Casey asks, bringing my attention back to him. He’s leaning forward and looking at me from the side, his head tilted and his smile crooked. There’s a light in his eyes, and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen it.
“Yes,” I smile.
He nods and sucks in his bottom lip, looking back down at his folded hands, his thumbs tapping together nervously, almost as if he’s working up nerve.
“Okay. Come with me,” he says, directing me back to his room.
Lane looks at us when we walk in, the music playing loudly in his headphones. He gives us both a thumbs up, and Casey reaches his knuckles forward for Lane to tap with his own fist. My brother does and laughs loudly, louder than normal, thanks to the volume in his ears. He turns his attention back to the computer and begins moving more sounds into the timeline to play. I glance over his shoulder and realize he’s moved about fifty of them in there, and my eyes grow wide. Casey places a hand on my shoulder and looks over with me, stunning me and quickly turning my attention to the feel of his breath so close to my neck.
“Wow, he’s really into farm sounds, huh?” he laughs.
“Ha ha, yeah…I guess,” I say, the words coming out robotic.
Casey’s hand drops from my shoulder quickly, and slowly I unfreeze and become human again. I spin and see him reaching into his closet for a small box on the top shelf. He pulls it down and sets it on his bed, nodding for me to come sit next to him. On his bed. Which is poorly made and has sheets that look so very masculine along with this fuzzy blanket with tiger print and…yeah…just as I figured, the bed is soft.
“You okay?” he asks.
I shake off my teenage jitters and clear my throat before scooting back and folding my dress under my leg so I can tuck one under the other. “Uhm, yeah…just getting comfortable,” I lie.
Casey leaves his gaze on me for a second, his eyebrows dipped just enough that I can tell he’s not completely believing my bullshit.
“What’s in the box?” I ask, changing the subject.
It works. He raises the lid, setting it to the side, and pulls out a few brochures and design schematics along with a stack of business cards that read LEAP RECORDS. I hold one up and turn it to face him.
“What’s Leap Records?” I ask.
“That’s my studio,” he says, his lip raised on one side.
I stare at him for a few seconds—waiting for him to say he’s kidding—then turn my focus back to the card in my hand. There’s a logo, a phone number, his name. I set the cards down and flip through some of the other things, stopping when I get to a photo of an old gas station with boarded-up windows and busted red pumps out front. I turn it toward him, and he grins, taking it from my hand and laying it flat on the bed between us. He pulls out the roll of blue prints and opens one up, lying it down next to the photo.
“This is the building I want. It’s been vacant for years—since I was a kid,” he says. “I’m going to earn enough to buy it, then I’m going to gut the insides and build out a recording studio. I had the blueprints done a year ago. A guy I know from school, he was studying architecture—he did them. And Houston’s girlfriend, her name’s Paige—she made me a logo and designed these cards for me. She’s got an eye for things like that,” he says, his smile pushing dimples into both of his cheeks.
I watch as he pulls out a few more things, telling me his plans, where he wants to put things, why he loves this building. When he was little, they had to pull over into the parking lot once to look up directions to some office building in the city where his oldest sister had an interview for a scholarship. Casey started wandering around the vacant parking lot, peeking his head through small cracks in the boards to see inside. At the time, he thought the building was just the perfect place to play ditch ’em with his friends. But when he was in high school, and started to get into house music, the studio idea hit him.
“Casey, this is amazing,” I say, picking up each drawing, each scribble of an idea. I continue to look for a full minute before glancing up at him, his happy eyes waiting. His prideful expression turns into bashful, and his cheeks actually begin to redden, which strikes me even more. It makes him human. It makes me like him. It makes me really like him.
“Anyway,” he says, rolling his head to the side and looking down at the things all on display. He rubs his hand on his neck, and some of his happiness begins to disappear, his smile fading fast. “It’s just this stupid dream.”
All traces of the youthful dreamer from seconds before are gone. He begins to roll up the plans and tuck the photos and cards back into the box. The only thing left is a hat with the logo Paige designed on the front. I grab it in my hands before he has a chance to put it away, and when he looks up at me, I stuff it on my head.
He blinks a few times, but slowly, the smile starts to reappear. It’s not as big as before, but there’s a hint of it on his lips.
“That looks good on you,” he says.
I giggle.
“Thanks,” I say, pulling it off and pushing my stray hairs back behind my ears.
I fold the back of the hat into the f
ront and hand it to him, but he keeps it out of the box. After a few seconds, he looks at my brother, a kind of calmness shading his face while he watches Lane build the world’s most complex farm-animal anthem and layer it with old-school Tupac.
“They’re setting him up with hospice,” he says. I can tell he’s still watching Lane, so as badly as I want to look at him, to engage him while he shares this with me, I don’t. I think he needs to focus on anything else in order to keep talking. “That’s what the texting was about. My mom—she wants to have us all over, to have a semi-normal dinner like a family or something…while we can.”
“That…that makes sense,” I say, knowing he doesn’t want to hear sorry.
We both watch Lane, and the few times my brother turns around, we give him encouraging gestures—raising thumbs, clapping and waving. We watch him in silence while my brother’s ears are filled with his own soundtrack. All we hear is his clicking and the occasional overflow from his headset. The quiet doesn’t seem to bother either of us, and it isn’t uncomfortable. It just is.
“Will you come with me?” Casey asks finally.
Part of me knew he wanted to. I have a feeling he’s been thinking about asking me since he walked in and saw me in his apartment. We’ve only spent a few hours together over a handful of days, but already I see how codependent he can be. My mind has been working in the background this whole time to find a way to tell him no when he asked. I can’t take this on for him. We’re friends, maybe. Business partners for sure, but now…maybe friends. And it’s all still new. I shouldn’t be at their table for something so personal when I don’t even have a splinter of understanding. It wouldn’t be fair to any of them.
I don’t answer right away, instead letting my brother turn to me one more time, pull his headphones free and unplug them so we can hear his masterpiece. We both praise him, Casey even going so far as to clap along with the surprisingly spot-on beat my brother managed to build into his strange little song. When the music finishes, he turns back to his computer and replaces the headphones, going in to add more.
Casey’s attention is still on Lane, but I can feel him grow more tense at my side. He’s anxious, and he’s scared. I can’t be that crutch though.