Brit’s eyes went wide as she took my phone and scrolled. “This is your music library? Holy shit. I’m going to need at least a week to sort through this.”
She was impressed? Okay, then. I adjusted the stool, took a seat, and twirled one of my sticks. I’m not normally a stick-twirler—I think it’s cheesy—but every drummer knows that stick-twirling is a great way to impress women. “You don’t have a week. Pick.”
“You can play any of these?” she asked.
“Play one and find out.”
She tapped it, and the opening notes of “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns N’ Roses came over my speakers. Well, now—I fuckinglovedthis song. The way it balances dark and swaggering at the same time. Its flawless construction. Its kickass beat. I could play “Welcome to the Jungle” all day.
So I started playing, and I finally got out of my head. I was shaky on the first verse because I hadn’t played this one in a while, but by the second verse I was completely in the groove. I got fancy, adding extra runs to keep things interesting, and by the time I got to that brilliant part in the second half—the drums and the bass dropping all politeness and running away with the song, sounding like seductive doom, with Axl Rose howling,You know where you are? You’re in the jungle, baby!I was so far in the zone I barely knew where I was. When the song smashed to its end, I felt like myself again.
Brit cleared her throat when the silence fell. “Okay,” she said slowly, and then she sighed. “Fine. That was kind of amazing.”
I grinned at her, twirling my stick again. I was enjoying impressing her. I’m only human, and she had those three buttons, and the drums were something I was actually good at. Like, really good. “I’ll take your adoration,” I said. “I haven’t played for anyone except myself for five years.”
Brit narrowed her eyes. “I wouldn’t exactly sayadoration.And it sounds to me like you wish you could tour again.”
“That’s a complicated question,” I said. “I love playing for crowds, but the last time I toured, I nearly killed myself. Before you ask, I don’t understand it either. Pick another song.”
She made ahmmsound and looked down at my phone again. “I’m going to pick a Road Kings song. The one we were playing in the shop. ‘Shadow of My Disgrace.’”
I nodded. “A classic. Denver wrote that one. We were twenty-five, maybe twenty-six. I still remember the first time we played it.”
“I like it,” Brit said. “It’s dark and cynical, like me. Though my favorite might be ‘Precious Metal.’ That song is pure sex.”
She had to say that, just when I’d managed tostopthinking about sex. Those three shirt buttons were haunting me. “You sound pretty familiar with our catalog.”
“Like I say, the Road Kings are played nonstop at The Corner.” She gave me one of her wry smiles, her sexy mouth pressing into a line. “You guys are pretty good, I’ll admit. Like Led Zeppelin without the toxic masculinity.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“Sort of? I suppose.”
I smiled back at her. “Again, I accept your adoration.”
She didn’t reply, just rolled her eyes and pressed the button to play the song. I didn’t even have to think about this one. I just started playing.
Brit was right—this song was one of our darker ones. The lyrics were complicated, the vocals challenging. Denver wrote about being hopeless, alone, damaged beyond any hope of repair. He wrote about knowing that your scars are permanent, that no matter what you do, they’ll always be there. One line of the chorus was,They tell me that there’s light above, but dark is all I see.
Our lead singer had had a rough upbringing, abandoned by his parents and shuttled from relative to relative, no one wanting him for long. He’d put those feelings into the song, but there was an angry edge to the guitars, the growl of his voice. Despair tinted with rage and determination. The drum track was heavy and hard, inevitable. I’d wanted to mirror the idea that your heart keeps beating whether you want it to or not, the clock keeps ticking, one second after another. When you’re low, one second seems like a long time.
When I finished, Brit said, “It sounds so different when you actually play.”
“We’re a live band,” I reminded her. “The studio changes our sound. Though if we recorded now, we’d do a better job than we did before. Neal’s been working as a session guy since we broke up. He could probably turn a studio inside out by now, get any sound we wanted.”
Would we ever record again? Suddenly I missed touring and recording, both. I missed writing music. I missed my bandmates. Fuck, Denver lived in my neighborhood, five minutes away. But we never saw each other and we rarely talked.
I’d let myself miss all of it in a vague, removed way, but now I let myself miss it sharply, the way you miss someone who broke your heart. Someone who hurt you so badly you’d had to stop thinking about them for a while just to stay afloat. I’d had to protect myself—get away from the music business, from that life. I’d had to switch my focus and get my shit together.
And now? Now I missed all of it, hard.
“Play another Road Kings song,” I said. “Let’s see how much I remember.”
TEN
Brit
I worked at The Corner on the day of Christmas Eve, until we closed at six. Aunt Ellen and I were having a quiet night in, our only plan to cook a nice meal together. Christmas Day would be quiet, too. Ellen had made a firm rule that neither of us would buy Christmas gifts, that each other’s company would be enough of a present. She said it was because she was too old to tolerate the Christmas shopping crowds, but I suspected the real reason was that she didn’t want to make me spend my money.