Loud is How I Love You (14 page)

“You have? That’s so badass.” Joey is wide-eyed with admiration, and I can’t believe I never saw it before now, but Joey is into Julia. I must have been too wrapped up in my own shit to notice this last weekend at Carolier Lanes. Oh shit, what if they start dating and then he leaves Soft to start a band with Julia? I’m such an asshole, I actually have this thought. I can’t even lie about it.

“So is that really it for Circle Time?” I ask Julia. “Can’t you just replace Matt? Maybe spinART would be interested in you guys without him.”

“Matt wrote most of the songs,” she admits. “And you can’t replace singers.”

“Tell that to AC/DC,” Billy says.

“This is Matt we’re talking about here,” Julia says. “He’ll never leave without a fight. If anything, he’ll replace me.”

“And me,” Dan says. “Because I’m not playing with that asshole.”

“Well, let me say a few words, then,” Billy says, standing up, holding his Diet Pepsi aloft. “A rock eulogy, if you will.”

We all stop chatting and pay attention. This is serious business now.

“Some good bands come to an end before their time, and so it is with Circle Time. We’ll all remember ‘Bunny Farts’ as one of the best tributes to the grease trucks this town has ever heard.”

“Hear, hear,” we all say.

“So, what’s next, Julia?” Billy says. “Will you take a break or start a new project right away?”

“I don’t know, but one thing is for sure,” Julia says. “I’ll never be in a band with a boyfriend again. Never, ever, ever.”

“Me either,” Joey says. “I’ll never be in a band with a girlfriend, or a couple.”

“It’s too much of a headfuck,” Ron says. “That’s why I have all guys in my band, no offense, ladies.”

“None taken,” I say, and suddenly I’ve got no appetite for my french onion soup.

Travis is quiet next to me, doodling with his Sharpie on his jeans and I will never be able to look at a Sharpie the same way again. I don’t know why Cole is looking at me like this, but I don’t like it. I make a face at him, he gives me the “what?” face, so I decide not to read into it. Except it’s too late and I already have.

“It’s true, though,” Billy pipes up, and this guy isn’t even in a band. “Whenever there’s a couple in a band, it’s an invitation to drama. It just never seems to work. Outside of Sonic Youth, anyway.”

I say nothing, but feel everything about this conversation. This situation. This great loss of one of my favorite bands wrought by stupid romantic fuckery. But I say nothing at all about it. I’m just nodding my head in agreement as Travis also says nothing and keeps his eyes expressionless as he draws Hopey from
Love and Rockets
on his knee.

***

Travis and I sit in my driveway listening to the last rehearsal tape we made. As I listen, part of me is crumbling. It sounds
so good to me, and I know that this close friendship we share with Cole and Joey is why it sounds so good when we play, just like playing music reinforces this bond we have. When we’re plugged in and rocking, it’s like we can all feel what the others are feeling. When Cole lays down a bass line, we all just fall onto it like a mattress and bounce while Joey’s kick drum pushes the whole sound forward, into the onslaught of Travis and me on guitar, and when I put my voice over that it’s like I’m trying to put into words things that matter to all of us—it’s not just about me. I guess that’s what good music does, it pulls you together when you’re otherwise falling apart. You can pull four different musicians into a room and ask them to play, and it will be “music” and some will sound good, but some will become more than four people playing. They’ll become a real band. You know, Radiohead.

We’re definitely not Radiohead. Not by a long shot. But we’re a real band. We sound like one, we play like one, we dream like one. Together.

I remember first meeting Julia and Matt. It was two years ago, when they played on the sidewalk in front of Cafe News. They were so good then, and so in love. They were talking about moving in together, and they did that summer, too. They toured all over the Northeast. Now they’re going to have to find a way to pull their entire lives apart, get separate apartments, divide up the gear, and start over, and I can’t imagine the kind of hell that must be.

I feel sick now.

“What’s wrong?” Travis asks, although I know he knows exactly what’s wrong. He just doesn’t want to say it.

“Did you tell Cole about us?” I ask, thinking of how Cole looked across the table in our direction when the subject of couples in bands came up tonight.

“Tell him what about us?”

“Did you tell him we hooked up?”

“No,” he says. “Why? Did he say something?”

“No,” I say. “But I think he suspects something.”

“I should talk to him anyway,” Travis says. “It’s probably time we let the brothers know.”

“No,” I say. “Because we can’t do this. Joey will quit.”

Travis flinches like I just hit him. Maybe he didn’t know what I was thinking. Maybe I didn’t even know I was thinking that, but now I am thinking it, and I’m saying it, too.

“No he won’t,” Travis finally says. “He’s just saying that. It’s hypothetical.”

I let out a big, heavy sigh.

“They’re right, you know,” I say. “Couples in bands are an inevitable disaster. Imagine what Julia and Matt are going through right now. They’ve been trying to break that band for five years.”

“Well, we’re not them,” he says. “Matt’s a fucking dick, for starters.”

I feel sick. My stomach has worked its way into my throat. My heart is racing like I’m staring down a demon from hell and it wants to eat my soul for a snack. My mind reels and races through all my worst fears. Very large spiders, abandoned houses, extreme heights. Running out of gas on the Turnpike at five a.m. Something happening to Mom. And scariest of all, Travis quitting Stars on the Floor.

“Travis, look,” I say. “I know we have feelings for each other, but that’s just because we spend so much time together. We really have to be levelheaded about this, think it through.”

“Levelheaded?” he says. “Is that what you think you’re being right now?”

“Yes,” I insist. “We can’t just throw everything away because we’ve got this adolescent love fantasy going on here.”

And now he looks like I just punched him in the chest. And I feel like I just punched him in the chest.

“Emmy,” he says, staring straight ahead out the windshield. He will not look at me, but I can see how tight he grips the wheel. I can see the twitch in his jaw as he tries not to react. “It’s late and it’s been a long night. Why don’t you go inside and go to bed now, okay?”

“I’m serious, Travis,” I say. “This is a bad idea.”

“I heard you,” he says. “Adolescent love fantasy. Got it.”

“Come on, don’t be like that,” I say. “You know what I’m saying.”

He gives me this pained look, and I know he’s going to be even more pissed off at me for saying what I’m about to say, but I can’t stop myself from saying it. Because I believe it, and that’s the problem.

“I think you should go out with Millie,” I say, and Travis just laughs outright. “She’s really into you, she talks about you all the time. You guys have a lot in common, and I’m sure if you spend some time with her, you’ll get over all of this. And if you’re with her, I’ll get over you. Eventually. And then everything can go back to the way it was.”

He’s not laughing now.

“It’s not like I’ll be happy about it,” I say, and I try to take his hand into mine, but he pulls it away.

“And why would we want to be, you know, happy?” he says. “When we could be miserable and perpetually frustrated instead?”

“But still in a band together,” I say. “That’s the important thing.”

“
That’s
the important thing?” he says. “Go inside and go to bed, Emmy. Your mouth is talking without your brain’s consent.”

“Travis . . .”

“No,” he says. “Don’t say another word to me right now. I’m still trying to forget the last five minutes and everything you’ve said during it.”

“Are you going to quit the band?”

He’s right, my mouth is talking without me now. It’s being chased all the way to hell and back by that demon sitting on my shoulder. Travis looks like he can see it perched there, making faces.

“What the hell?” he says.

“Are you thinking about it?” I ask. “I need to know.”

“Is that seriously all you fucking care about right now?”

“I don’t want you to leave,” I say. I feel like I’m about to fucking crack wide open and spill my guts out all over Cole’s captain’s seat. I know I’m fucking this all up, but I honestly can’t stop myself because I have no idea what else to do.

“Then stop talking,” he says. “Before you say something you can’t take back.”

For a change, I listen to Travis. I stop talking and drag my exhausted, freaked-out ass out of the van and into the house where I wait, just inside the door, and watch as he backs his van out of the driveway and rolls away.

When I call Travis the next day, George picks up the phone and tells me he isn’t home, he ran out to Sam Ash, and shit, Travis never goes to Sam Ash without calling me to see if I need something or if I want to take a ride. I leave a message for him to call me, but then I just sit next to the phone. Five minutes later I call again.

“What’s wrong, Emmy?” George says when he answers.

“Did Travis tell you what happened last night?”

“He hasn’t said much at all today, but he’s being a real prick so I figured something is up.”

“I told him he should go out with Millie.”

“Oh?” George says, his voice full of bewildered judgment. “What the fuck for?”

“Because, you know, look at what happened to Circle Time. They were well on their way to a deal with spinART, too.”

“It’s a shame, yeah, but what does that have to do with Trap and Millie?”

“It’s very simple,” I explain. “If Travis hooks up with Millie, I won’t be able to hook up with him, and then we won’t fuck up the band.”

“Ah, I see,” George says. “You’ve got a real cock-up on your hands, right?”

“Right.”

“But for argument’s sake, let’s just say Travis does go out with Millie. Won’t that bother you? And wouldn’t that fuck with the band?”

“I won’t like it, but I’ll just have to deal with it.”

“You know he’s not going to hook up with Millie,” George says. “You’re nuts if you think he’d do that.”

“I know. That’s why you need to talk him into it.”

“Come on, Em. You know Travis better than that. He’s not going to rebound you with Millie Vagaboss. He’s not that big of a dick.”

“Maybe someone else, then, it doesn’t have to be Millie. Maybe one of the rugby girls?”

“You’re insane.”

“No, I’m not. Just tell him it’s like getting your wisdom teeth pulled. It’s painful but ultimately it leads to something not fucked up, right? Travis can understand that, especially if it comes from you and not me.”

“Let me give you some advice,” George says. “If you don’t want to be his girlfriend, then just give him some time to get over it. He will, eventually. He’s a big boy.”

“He never asked me to be his girlfriend, you know.”

“I know,” he says. “Because you would have said no.”

“That’s right.”

“So, if you want to save the band, give him a chance to save face, all right? Give him space.”

This sounds like really good advice and I should probably take it. I should wait until rehearsal this week to talk to him again so I can give him time to cool off. I probably shouldn’t call him.

But fuck that, I call him back again at around dinnertime. He finally picks up the phone when I’m in the middle of leaving a rambling message on his machine. It probably sounds so crazy and painful to him he can’t stand to keep listening to it.

“What’s up?” he says, very bored sounding, but he can’t be bored, so he’s obviously still really pissed off.

“Are you going out to the soccer party on Baldwin tonight?” I ask. “Crown the Robin are playing with the Holy Hobbies. I think the beat brothers are going.”

“No, I’m not going out tonight,” he says.

“Are you actively avoiding me?” I ask.

“Yes,” he answers.

“Why?”

“Because you keep pissing me off,” he says. “And I don’t like being pissed off at you.”

“You never used to get pissed off at me before,” I point out. “See? That’s exactly why—”

“That’s not true,” he cuts me off. “I’ve gotten pissed off at you plenty of times.”

“When?”

“What did you call for?” he asks. “Because I’m about to get pissed off all over again.”

“God, now you’re acting just like an ex-boyfriend.”

He’s quiet on the other end. For a long time.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean that. Bean?”

“I have to go,” he says.

“Wait,” I say, as that tight, panicky feeling grips me by the throat again.

But he doesn’t.

***

I sit in my room and play my guitar all the rest of the day and well into the night. It occupies me enough that I don’t call and bug Travis again, but it doesn’t really make me feel any better. Playing guitar alone makes me sad that Travis isn’t here to play with me. I wonder how much space I have to give him, for how long. When will he get over this so we can go back to how it was two weeks ago, before all this amazingly great sex happened to us? And how exactly did I fuck up my closest friendship, my entire band, and what feels like my entire life in only two weeks?

That was some pretty powerful fucking, I guess.

I do realize that it’s under twenty-four hours since I told Travis he should date someone who’s not me, and only a few hours since I called and then called him an ex-boyfriend (oh my God) so, in terms of space, this really isn’t very much at all. But it’s still enough space to feel completely lost in.

At nine o’clock at night, Sonia comes in and plops herself down on the bed.

“What happened?” she asks. “And don’t say ‘nothing,’ because you’ve been playing that same riff for an hour. It’s not even that good.”

I put the guitar down in the stand and flop down on my bed, face-first. I pull the pillow over my head, trying to disappear. Sonia rubs my back and I curl up into a ball and take long, slow breaths into my comforter, trying to get a grip on myself before I sit up and face her.

“I told Travis we can’t be together and that he should go out with Millie.”

She looks some combination of sad and worried that I hate because I don’t know how to interpret it. Like, yeah, I’ve
really done something fucked up, and this is as bad as I think it might be.

“Why?” she finally says.

“Because it’s going to fuck up the band,” I say.

“And you think that telling him this
won’t
fuck up the band?”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“
That’s
what you’re afraid of, Emmy?” she asks, speaking like someone who’s never been in a band before. “Seriously?”

“Yes,” I say, speaking like someone who’s a fucking idiot, because I’m really afraid right now. Like, as afraid as I’ve ever felt of anything. I’m afraid that I’ve already lost him and fucked up the band, and that I can’t get things to go back to the way they were before. And nothing makes you dumber than fear.

“Come on,” she says. “We need to go drink.”

She pulls a black dress out of my closet—it’s a vintage mini shift that was my mother’s in high school—and convinces me to change and go out with her to the soccer party on Baldwin. This is the last thing I feel like doing tonight, but I go because everyone we know will be there, and part of me hopes that maybe, just maybe, Travis will end up there too. You never know.

We get there and they’re charging five dollars to get in. I take out my cash when a tall, adorable soccer player who lives there sees me and says, “That’s Emmylou from Stars on the Floor—let them in, no charge.”

“This is why I love going out with you,” Sonia says.

Being me doesn’t have a lot of perks, but this is one of them. This and getting rides from food-poisoned truckers at four a.m.

The soccer player’s name is Eli and he’s a forward, and I don’t know a thing about Rutgers soccer, but he’s really quite nice, so I pretend to be interested. He has perfect olive skin and thick, black hair and is very, very cute, but oh God he’s awkward. He’s an accounting major and Sonia has had a few classes with him. He tries to make conversation and asks me about my major and my family and things like that. He gets me and Sonia drinks and we get decently drunk watching the Holy Hobbies play. At around twelve thirty during Crown the Robin I’m dancing near the band like a fool with Eli and Sonia and maybe forty other people in this crowded living room, sloshing some college grain-alcohol-laced Kool-Aid, when I see Travis, Cole, Millie, Joe, and Bailey walk in the front door. I’m too drunk to pretend my heart doesn’t flip around in my chest
like a mackerel on a fishing line when I see Travis with Millie trailing right behind him.

“You have to talk to him,” Sonia says, because she sees Millie put her arms around Travis’s neck and whisper something in his ear the same time I see it and I guess I look about ready to kill a very good friend of ours. Eli is talking to me but I can’t hear him above the rage that’s ringing in my ears.

“And say what?” I say.

“Tell him the truth,” she says.

“I have told him the truth,” I say. “That’s the problem.”

“You have to tell him how you feel about him, Emmy,” she says.

“He already knows that,” I say. “And here he is, with Millie. Can you blame him?”

“If you think Travis wants to go out with Millie, you’re out of your mind.”

“He’s here with her, isn’t he?” I say, and now that this possibility of Travis hooking up with Millie is real to me again, I decide nope. George is right, I can’t handle this. No way.

“He’s here with like seven people, so stop being an ass,” Sonia says. “For five minutes.”

Millie and Travis are walking back into the kitchen where the beer is, and they haven’t seen me yet. I guess this enormous soccer player I’m dancing with is blocking me from their view. But I see them as Millie grabs Travis’s arm, and I can’t deal with this. If I was sober, I’d probably just leave and not be a witness to my own tremendous life fuckup.

But I’m not sober, so what do I do? I stomp my way into the kitchen, shoving past the hopping bodies under the Kmart disco ball and Christmas lights in March. Millie has Travis cornered by the back door. She’s leaning in really close—her hand is on his arm and he’s making eye contact with her, listening intently—and fuck. This. Fuck it. Travis sees me, finally, and he looks some mixture of glad and pissed off all at once and I guess I can see how I would inspire that type of reaction. I don’t know what to do now. Should I turn around and forget the whole thing? His eyes are right here on mine and I can’t read his face, but when I see Millie lean in to say something else to him, I can’t turn around. I don’t even care if Millie is going to be pissed, I walk right up to them and tell Travis I need to speak to him. Right now. Millie gives me some look I can’t read and he hesitates, then tells Millie he’ll be right back.

He follows me upstairs where there are a few bedrooms and a bathroom. This is a soccer party so everyone upstairs is smoking weed, but there’s an empty room so I walk right inside and flop down on the bed, sort of maybe forgetting that I’m in this really short dress and it’s just ridden way up my thighs. I pull it down as Travis stands there with his arms crossed in
front of his chest, judging me. Asshole.

“Are you drunk?” he asks.

“Maybe,” I say.

“Who’s driving you home?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Somebody.”

“Who?”

“Who knows?” I say. “I only know like twenty people here with cars.”

“Fine,” he says, practically growling at me. “What did you want to talk about?”

“I’ve started planning the summer tour,” I say, sitting up. My head is a little spinny but that doesn’t stop my mouth, oh no. “I think we should probably plan to head out to Seattle. I’m pretty sure Cole can get at least a three-week break from work . . .”

“Are you kidding me?” he says. “This is what you want to talk about?”

“You’re graduating in May,” I continue to drunk-babble, and of course this isn’t what I want to talk about but I can’t handle the other thing I want to talk about, so I’m just moving to safe, or what I think is safe territory. I dig my heels into safe territory here. “We need to make a big push this summer. If we can get some gigs in Seattle, maybe we can make a Sub Pop contact. I think Ron’s cousin . . .”

“Emmy,” he says, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

“What?”

He cocks his head to the side like he’s trying to figure me out but ha, good luck with that.

“I got an Eagleton Fellowship,” he says.

“What.” I say it like that, not like a question because I know what a fucking Eagleton Fellowship is—it’s a graduate program at Rutgers in public policy. But, I still don’t have any idea what he’s talking about. I feel like I need to clean my ears or something because no he did not just say he got an Eagleton Fellowship. No he didn’t.

“I got into graduate school,” he explains.

Here’s the part where I just want to slap the clapperboard down and yell, “Cut,” because no he did not fucking apply to
graduate school and not tell me. No he did not.

“Well, you’re not accepting it, are you?” I say, simply flabbergasted over here. I mean, what the hell?

“Of course I am,” he says. “I got a free ride. I thought you’d be happy.”

“Happy? How could I be happy about that, Travis?”

Travis shakes his head in frustration and lets out a big, exasperated sigh, and I don’t get it. He’s the one person in the world who’s always on the same page as me when it comes to the band and what we need to do to make it. And now he hands me this? Graduate school?

“Just so you know, I got into UCLA and UVA, too,” he says.

“So?”

“So?” He looks at me like I’m completely stupid. “I’m staying in New Brunswick.”

“Of course you are,” I say. “You can’t play in Soft if you’re in LA or Virginia, can you?”

“You’re unbelievable,” he says, and then turns to leave.

“Are you here with Millie?” I blurt out just as he’s reaching for the door. He turns around and glares at me.

“Are you out of your mind? Or are you just trying to drive me clear out of mine?”

“Are you?”

“You’re drunk,” he says. “And I’m not drunk enough to deal with you right now.”

He walks out of the room and goes back downstairs and I follow him, but he’s so done talking to me now. And what does he do? He gets two beers, and then heads right back over to Millie and hands her one and I know now that I’ve lost him. He’s going to quit the band to go to graduate school and then he’ll probably marry Millie, too. I fucked it all the way up here, royally.

Eli finds me again and hands me a fresh drink, just what I need. I’m feeling very pissy now as I watch Millie go back to making time with my guitarist, and I watch Travis lean in all close. He’s talking into her ear, leaning against the wall with her like—fuck. Like he’s hanging on her every word. And I start to think this is really it. He’s finally realized that Millie is a much better bet than I’ll ever be. I know this is my own fault and I’m not in any position to be jealous, but God damn it, I really am jealous. Intolerably jealous. And I’m mad at Travis, for no actual good reason except that I’ve been drinking tonight. Liberally. And this can’t be good.