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29
Weston
It wasn’t until the initial rush of excitement over officially joining the band began to wear off that everything hit me with the worst bout of depression I’d had in years. I’d managed it with music, growing up, but the only song I wanted to play now was “Nora’s Melody.”
Even my music had turned against me.
Apparently, I would just suffer for my choice. I’d read Crime and Punishment in high school and never understood Dostoevsky’s point about how guilt could cause such mental anguish that a person would deteriorate. But I certainly understood now, I couldn’t go on like this. I just couldn’t.
So, I’d given up on trying to be okay.
I went to the studio. I still felt strange about walking into a booth this fancy with or without the rest of the band. But it felt necessary. I’d been avoiding the song for long enough.
I sat at the piano and began to work out the full tune to “Nora’s Melody.” It flowed like it had been held captive for weeks. A trickle turning into a stream and then a deluge.
The door creaked open behind me, and my fingers stilled.
“Hey, man.”
I found Campbell in the doorway with his hands in his leather jacket and a look of confusion on his face. “You came.”
“Cryptic message,” he said, entering our sanctum. “After that, how could I not?”
“I need you to do something for me.”
Campbell arched an eyebrow. “What’s that?”
“Listen to this song.”
He toed the door closed behind him and nodded. “All right. What you got?”
Nerves bit into me fresh and raw. I wasn’t sure if I was doing the right thing here. But no matter how many people said that I’d made the right choice, I knew it wasn’t true. Because it wasn’t a choice at all.
It was a theft.
A coward’s way out.
And I’d been a lot of things, but never that.
So, I cleared my throat, prepared for everything that would follow by the end of this. All the consequences to my actions. And I sang.
No one had ever told me that I should be a lead singer. It had always irritated me that I could play ten instruments, but my voice would never match the tunes I could play. But I’d fallen so in love with music that I never really cared. And truthfully, it didn’t matter for this song that I didn’t have Campbell’s crooning voice.
The earnestness to the song made up for the rough vocals. I’d been holding it all back for so long that the song erupted out of me. A volcano pouring lava down a mountainside, flowing freely for the first time in ages.
And by the time I let the last note fade away, I felt as if I’d been exorcized.
We were both silent for a minute. My eyes closed as I held the sustain pedal down to let the last notes linger in the air. A mourning quality to the piece that had never been there before I royally fucked up.
The note finally ended, and I opened my eyes to find Campbell thoughtfully staring at me. My cheeks reddened, and I removed my hands from the piano. “What do you think?”
“You’re a little pitchy,” Campbell said with a smirk.
I snorted. “More than a little.”
Campbell held his hands up. “I wasn’t going to say it.”
I stared down at the keys and released the tension in my shoulders. “I wrote it about your sister.”
“Ah,” he said softly.
“Ah?” I asked, jerking my head back up to look at him. “That’s it? You’re not going to punch me?”
Campbell shrugged. “I could if you’d like me to?”
“Uh, no. No, thanks. I just…I don’t understand.”
“Well, I’m not stupid.”
I blinked at him. “You knew that Nora and I were together?”
“I had my suspicions. You’re not exactly sneaky. Did you think you were being sneaky?”
“Uh…yeah,” I said slowly. “I thought you were going to kill me. You said to my face that you’d kill anyone who touched her.”
“Oh, I know,” he said, dropping into a chair across from me. “I had every intention of doing just that. I was even halfway to your house one night when Blaire helped to talk me down.”
“Blaire knows, too?” I ran a hand back through my hair. “Jesus, does everyone know?”
“Hollin doesn’t know or else you would have a black eye.”
