“Not if it means fucking you guys over,” Waylon says, and I realize they’re talking about this upcoming weekend, when I’m due to visit.
I already told him multiple times that I understood if he needed to work—that we’d still find time to be together.Alone.
But he was insistent.
“It’s only two days, Will. Two fucking days. They can work around me. I’ll just make sure I’m caught up on my parts so they don’t need me.”
I rolled my eyes at that. As if they couldnotneed him.
But I know he meant recording. It’s different from writing or practicing—when they’re rehearsing with the sole intent to either perform, or to find their rhythm to hash out whatever might not be working.
Recording is a far more isolated process, apparently. It’s just them, their instrument, or their voice, and the guy behind the glass barking orders at them.
Despite how much the guys didn’t want to rely on machines to piece their music together, they kind of have to when it comes to slapping their songs on an album to be distributed to the masses.
“Babe, it’s o—”
“It’s fine,” he cuts in quickly.
That’s how manyfinesnow? Three?
Shaking my head, I try again. “Way—”
“Look, I gotta go. They wanna clear the table.”
“Are you—”
“I’mfine,Will,” he says. There’s a heaviness to his words now that wasn’t there before. A pointedness, almost like he’s pleading with me. To believe him. To drop it. To accept what we can’t fucking change right now.
He’s there.
I’m here.
Thousands of miles away from each other, with nothing but a phone line to tether us.
And all I can think is,that’s four.
“I love you,” I tell him, instead of what I want to say.
I’m not fine, Way. I’m not fucking fine, and neither are you, and this, right now, saying goodbye to you, knowing just how not fine you are, but not being able to see you, kiss you, touch you, and breathe you in…
It’s straight up agony.
But I don’t say any of that.
I just let those three little words slip into his ear, and silently pray the weight of them is enough to compensate for what I can’t show right now. Not for three more whole fucking days.
Hearing his gulp in my ear, I know this is just as hard for him. But like me, he’s trying to be strong. “I love you too. You’ll call me in the morning?”
I smile thinly. “You know it.”
After we say our too-quick byes, I let the phone drop to the bed next to me and bury my face in my hands.
The television is still playing in the living room, but the droning sounds of an infomercial ain’t cutting it anymore.
The place feels like a tomb.
This room, this apartment…