Page 20 of Dedicated

“Yeah.” I mashed the button and took it off speaker, then flopped back onto the bed and tugged at the ends of my greasy hair. God, I needed a shower and caffeine at minimum. I’d have killed for one of Blink’s upper cocktails right about then.

“Good. You’re going to have to be the sensible one here.”

I chuckled, and it was a little bitter because I found his comment slightly insulting. I might fuck around some. Okay, a lot, but I’d put as much heart and soul into this band as Evan had. My methods were just different.

“The label is on board with this.”

I was on alert in an instant. “Did they say that?”

“It was implied.”

“Of course.” I rolled my eyes.

“I didn’t want to tell Evan because he seems to have taken that last album more personally than you, but you guys are on thinner ice than you might think, and a sales boost is going to go a long way to keeping doors open once you guys have met the terms of the original contract.”

“Yeah, if I tell Evan that right now, he’ll probably threaten to bail—”

“And I don’t need to remind you that you guys are under contract for another album. You can reassess after this next one, but it’s going to be a much smoother path, whichever way you choose to go, if it ends on an amicable note.”

Okay, so it wasn’t a threat, but a strongly worded reminder that the industry still had major pull with the media that helped send us soaring. I knew more than a couple of musicians who’d burned bridges and flamed out into nothing. I didn’t want that. And I knew Evan didn’t, either.

“I’m down with the idea, okay? And I think I can get Evan on board if you give me a little time.” A tranquilizer dart might’ve helped, too.

“Days or hours?”

“Hours. Maybe a day. Jesus, is it that critical?”

“Rina’s working on a press release right now. Timing, you know. It’s everything. We’re not going to confirm or deny anything, just fuel speculation with a general ‘no comment’ statement.”

I took a deep breath and tried to squash the fluttering in my stomach. Suddenly this felt much bigger than it had initially. Music itself was manipulation. It was playing with resonance, tapping into brain waves and the primacy of a heartbeat to provoke feeling. I didn’t write my songs and sing them in a vacuum. I did it for the love of expression, because I wanted to share. I got high off knowing that we had a good fan base, one that seemed to believe in and trust in our music and our ability to create songs that moved them. So, I agreed with Evan that it shouldn’t matter who we were with, but people wanted narratives and stories, too. I got that. It added depth to the musical experience. And really, was faking a relationship with Evan even pure manipulation if, deep down, it was something I’d dreamed of? Because regardless of what else was true, I one hundred percent wanted Evan, and one hundred percent would be with him in a heartbeat. Music was the only thing tying Evan to me. If the music disappeared, so would Evan. And I couldn’t let that happen.

The enormity of what I was about to try and convince Evan to do washed over me and made me dizzy. I closed my eyes and sucked in a breath.

“I’ll keep you posted,” I told Levi.

“Do that.” I was about to end the call when he started up again. “You know what was funny, though? Her timing. Why’d she wait so long?”

“Who fucking knows?” I ended the call, then dragged myself out of bed and headed for the shower so at least I wouldn’t smell like a back alley after last call while trying to convince my angry bandmate he should fake a relationship with me.

Chapter 16

Ineeded something to do with my hands so I wouldn’t throttle Les, so after I rushed out of his room, I went straight to the basement. It was my favorite place in the cabin for obvious musical reasons, but there was a cozy comfort to it, too, a cocoon from the outside world. The couple we rented the place from used to be in the business. They were retired and closing in on their late seventies now. We’d met them once, the first time I set up the rental. She was a writer and singer, he a producer, and they called this cabin their love shack. What studio equipment they had was woefully out of date, but both Les and I liked an organic process anyway. It satisfied our basic needs, and that was just fine. We brought our own guitars, obviously, but there was an old drum kit in one corner and a slew of other random instruments, including a glockenspiel, of all things. There was the cowbell Les had tormented me with last time until I’d threatened to secure it to his throat with a zip tie and choke him with it. The foam on the walls was deteriorating, and we always found bits of it on the floor. In another corner was a turntable that was probably the height of chic in the eighties and next to it, six stacked plastic crates of records.

I sat on one of the stools and fiddled around with my guitar for a while, but the strings weren’t gliding under my fingers like they usually did. They were biting. All the notes came out cluttered with noise and my frustration, so after a couple of minutes, I gave up.

I opened the laptop back up and read the article again, though I didn’t need to. Ella’s account was pretty accurate, and my mind filled in the discrepancies, visuals running through me like a movie at high speed. One I’d stuffed into the corner and vowed not to look at ever again the day after it had happened.

“They had this really intense connection. The same I’ve seen in the YouTube clips of their live shows, but different, more intimate. It was really strange. Not bad strange. Beautiful. It was all very natural and fluid, and to be honest, there were times when I felt like the third wheel, but it was so hot while it was happening. Les is very loose and fun, joking around, laughing a lot. Evan was more reserved, but he was into it. I mean, at least I think he was. And God, the way he looked at Les—”

I stopped right there. What the hell did that mean—the way I’d looked at Les? I reeled back my memory but found nothing too strange there. I’d been watching what was happening, sure, but who wouldn’t if they’d been in the middle of it? It’d been a surreal experience in the first place. It wasn’t like there was some protocol of where I should be looking at which moment for me to follow.

When Les came in,I was standing in front of the stacks of records, my back to him as I flipped through the old cardboard sleeves. I’d been through them so many times I could probably name half the albums and artists by heart. All the greats were represented, from Ella Fitzgerald to the Eagles, and a bunch of less-popular gems, too.

The scent of soap wafted from Les’s skin, and his damp hair spiked in twenty different directions when he heaved his arms over the edge of the crate next to me. “Who’re you in the mood for?”

“I don’t know. Is there a way to cross Slipknot and Nina Simone?”

“I think you’re talking about Evanescence. Or, how they used to be, at least.” He curled over, resting his cheek on his forearm and studying me as I pulled out Led Zeppelin’sIIIand held it up to him.