“Okay.”
“And I don’t know how to feel about it,” I lamely concluded.
He sniffed, his mustache moving up to his nose. “What’s the gig?”
“Helping a well-known band record a new album.”
“Sounds pretty decent. Pays well?” he asked.
“Yeah, it does. But they’ve only heard me play once, and I’m afraid they’re way too optimistic about how good I am.”
“Well, you won’t know that until you try, right? Give it a go, and if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. All you’ll lose is a few hours of your time.”
I ran my tongue over my teeth. Jimmy made it sound so simple, only in my head, it was everything but. If it didn’t work out, I’d get a confirmation that I still wasn’t good enough. That I’d never be good enough. At least with the current state of things, I could have a rare good day when I played a great show or composed a sweet tune and feel like maybe I wasn’t all that bad.
“Don’t be afraid, Adeline.” Jimmy came up and patted me on the arm. “Whatever happens, you’ll come out on the other side. I don’t want to sound like one of those self-help books, but based on my sixty-six long years, sometimes they say just the right things. It’s the shots you don’t take that come back to haunt you.”
In my experience, the shots you took came back to haunt you as well, but his words nudged something in the depths of my brain. Was I afraid? Was I being a coward?
My thoughts drifted to the tattoo I had on the inside of my biceps.
Courage: the ability to do something that frightens one
When I got it done, I’d told myself I’d never cave to fear again. It looked like I needed to lift up my sleeve and read it one more time.
ABEL
Cole’s messageglowed on my screen like an accusation.
“Adeline is in. Audition/rehearsal is tomorrow. PLAY NICE.”
I didn’t play, and I definitely wasn’t nice. Cole should know that by now, and I guess Adeline was about to find out.
The thought of sharing these songs with a stranger made my skin prickle unpleasantly. It was Charlie’s last work, and we’d both gone through hell and back to write them. None of the guys knew what these notes and lyrics cost me. If I kept my mouth shut, they never would.
Whatever. Tomorrow would be an audition, and one she was sure to fail. I’d relish breaking the inevitable bad news to her and watching her face crumble in disappointment.
From the moment I saw her up on that stage, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to fuck her or break her. Maybe it was a bit of both. She was beautiful, but she reminded me too much of myself when Bleeding Moonlight was first starting out. The energy and passion that radiated from her was like a punch in the gut. Everything about her screamed young naivete, which was personally offensive to a jaded bastard like me.
It was ridiculous. She was a guitarist in a cover band, for fuck’s sakes, and I had two Grammy’s decorating my living room. I shouldn’t have had any kind of a reaction to someone like her. But then she’d started playing our song, and I’d known I needed to keep her the fuck away from our band.
She sounded too goddamn good, and I was always thinking three steps ahead of the rest of the guys—maybe not Ezra, but he was done playing Papa Bear for now. I knew exactly how this story would play out. Working with a fresh talent like her made people dream, but I knew that for us, those dreams would quickly turn to nightmares.
I couldn’t allow the rest of the guys to get ideas. After this album, Bleeding Moonlight was done.
I stood up from the couch and walked toward the floor-to-ceiling sliding door leading out to the backyard. It was raining, and there was something tragic about how the rivulets trailed down the glass, distorting the outside world until it resembled a gloomy impressionist painting. When I slid open the door, the smell of wet grass and damp earth took me right back to a childhood memory. A good one, of which there were not many.
My feet were quickly slicked with dirt and grass as I stepped into the manicured backyard. Yeah, this wasn’t quite like hiking the rough terrain along the Huss River, but the sensations felt similar enough. That two-day camping trip had been as close to a vacation as anything I’d had in my first eighteen years of life. A generous local guide hadn’t charged a cent for the adventure and had managed to convince my last foster family to let me go. There, in nature, far from the screaming and chaos of yet another temporary home, I’d finally had a chance to dream. I dreamed of many things I didn’t have, and having my own home one day was one of them.
There were still moments when I couldn’t quite believe this place was mine. My last home in River Valley had been a crumbling two-bedroom bungalow where warm dinners had come a lot less often than the beatings. By then, I’d been old enough to defend myself, but the feeling of not being safe in one’s supposed home extended far past its walls.
Not here, though. With nature at my doorstep and songbirds waking me in the morning, I felt a sense of rare peace here. This was my glass fortress, and I ruled as king.
I stepped across the backyard, looking at the tall cypress trees spearing through the sky and letting the rain soak through the cotton fabric of my T-shirt. We had come back here to bury our bandmate, but I knew that in the process, we were burying the band, too.
There was no band without Charlie.
A band needed songs, and I couldn’t write a single one without him.
