Say it Louder (16 page)

Dave acts like a kid at Christmas, taking gleeful delight in dragging me to two different art stores. He carries a half-dozen bags of supplies cheerfully and I can’t even fathom how much money he charges on his credit cards.

It’s like I’ve made his day. (Or maybe that was just the brain-melting orgasm.) But who knew asking for help could feel this … good?

We make several trips to get all of the canvases up to my place, plus tons more paint, turps, brushes and daubers.

The late summer sun dips low and Dave leaves me to sort out the pile of supplies while he runs to a hardware store, returning with a drill and
four
new locks for my door. I blink back tears of thankfulness and hope.

Dave hums while he works, so unbelievably cheerful that I warm a bit more to this idea of letting someone help me. It’s like we’re a team. I’m cleaning caked-on paint from plastic sheets while he removes my busted lock.

“What’s that?”

Dave looks up from my doorway. “What?”

“That song?”

“Nothing. I mean, I’m not the guy in the band who writes songs. I was just messing around.”

“Maybe you should mess around with that a little more.” I smile, wondering if a little bit of my urge to create is rubbing off on him, too.

As the paint falls away and I stack up the plastic stencils, a tiny voice inside me whispers,
this is possible.

“When did it start? You doing art?” Dave speaks around the screw clamped between his lips as he works on my door locks.

“I was little.” I try to piece together an answer as I sort the plastic sheets into piles that go together. “I remember hiding in my room when my foster parents were yelling at each other. I made dioramas at first, like a dollhouse. I always wanted a dollhouse but there was no money or Santa to buy one. Then I figured out stencils made really cool shadows with a flashlight. I remember poking tiny holes in the paper with a pin.”

Dave hums as he keeps working, his movements precise and syncopated. “And painting?”

“If there’s one art supply street kids have, it’s spray paint. I ran around with some kids who just did graffiti, but then I started hanging out with people who were trying to do real images, not just tagging. So I started painting too.”

“You wanted to make your mark on the world.” Dave looks up from the locks and his gaze shoots right through me, like he’s found an essential truth.

It makes me feel more naked than I was a couple hours ago. I duck my head in a nod.

“You’re going to do it, and I’ll be damned if this thief proves otherwise.” Finished with the locks, he fishes his phone out of his back pocket and touches the screen, then puts it to his ear. When he speaks, Dave transforms from this gentle man who washed my back into a tightly coiled spring, a commanding presence across the line.

“How many do you need for the catalog shoot?” he asks, pacing as the person on the line responds. “We’ll give you seven. She’ll deliver as contracted with the full amount, but the first deadline was for the shoot, and we’ll bring those over Friday.”

Another few clipped words to the gallery and he clicks off his phone.

“What are you doing?”

“Buying you time. You’ve just got to have seven ready by the end of the week, and you’ll have another week and a half to produce the rest.” He crosses the loft to me and inspects my progress on the stencils. “Can you do that?”

“You just said I could.” My voice is thin and full of doubt. It’s a small extension, but it only moves the deadline from
impossible
to
really fucking hard
.

“You say it.”

“What?”

His squats down to where I’m seated on the floor and his dark eyes meet mine. “Tell me you can do this. Tell yourself. Just say it.”

“I can do this,” I mumble.

“Come on, believe it this time.”

I square my shoulders. “I can do this.”

That wins me a confident smile. “Say it louder.”

I feel thoroughly ridiculous but I stand up and bellow, “I can do this!”

Dave wraps me in his arms and kisses me hard. “That’s my girl. You’ve faced worse odds than this.” His lips meet mine again, his teeth tugging my lower lip, but the words
my girl
are what has my stomach doing flips. “I know you can.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“I’m a producer, not a manager,” Ravi says. He takes a long guzzle of his energy drink.

The air is too hot and too close as Gavin and I crowd into Ravi’s New York production studio and make our pitch. We need to wrap up our next album,
Wilderness,
and book our next concert series. But with Chief officially gone, there’s no one to handle the next steps.

Not true. I could handle them. But the band doesn’t trust me to do it, and considering the colossal dick I’ve been to them, I don’t blame them.

Much.

“Production is the majority of what we need,” Gavin insists. “We don’t need a slimy PR guy, we need someone who can drag this album across the finish line.”

Ravi snorts, his thick glasses glinting off the studio’s directional lights. “Nice visual. So enticing.”

I ignore the sarcasm and try to make the sale. We need Ravi to keep us on track after the shitshow of the past few months. “You wouldn’t even need to work on the stadium-show contracts,” I offer. “I’ve been working on the contracts since we fired Chief, and I can keep handling them. Just help us get the album out.”

Gavin turns and gives me a strange look. “You want to go back to planning shows?”

“If it will keep us going, hell yes.”

Ravi gives me an appraising look. “You can’t do both—be a drummer and a manager—any more than I can try to double as your producer and manager.”

“Forget it, then. It was just an idea.” I squeeze the back of my neck, trying to work out the tension that’s got my shoulders hitched up to my ears. “But I could at least book us one show to keep the momentum going before we release
Wilderness
. Something close and easy, like a homecoming concert in Pittsburgh.”

Ravi drains the last of his energy drink and stacks the empty next to a half-dozen others. His head is bobbing slowly as his long, slim fingers move across the sound board, like a pianist itching to play. “That has merit. That could be real good, actually.”

“We haven’t done Pitt in more than a year,” Gavin says, and by his tone I think he might actually like this idea. “If we did that one and blew it out, gave the hometown crowd a taste of
Wilderness
, that could even set the stage for the big stadium tour and the album release.”

I catch his excitement, and I’m slingshotted into full manager mode. “We’d do a VIP meet and greet with some of the friendlies from the music press. We’d go wall-to-wall with local radio and free tickets, pimping the new album even before it drops.”

For the first time, Ravi flashes teeth. He digs this idea. “No wonder you used to be manager. That’s all good stuff. I’ve been going over your session recordings. We’re close, but we’re not there yet.”

“How much time do you need?”

“Two weeks. One more recording session to run cleanup on some tracks, and one more song.”

Gavin holds out a fist to fist-bump Ravi, then me. “You sound like our manager.”

“Interim,” Ravi clarifies, and his grin is contagious. “If Dave will set up the Pittsburgh show, I’m willing to step in. Think you guys can keep from killing each other or jumping in front of the bad-PR bus long enough to finish your album?”

Gavin pulls out his phone, ready to schedule another recording session. “We’re in.”

***

We go to Tyler’s loft for practice with the news—Ravi will serve as our interim manager, focusing on production, and I’ll book us a show back in Pittsburgh as a lead-in to the album drop and a larger tour. Handling contracts is TBD.

“That’s cool,” Jayce says, and it’s the first time he’s made eye contact with me and
not
looked like he wanted to kill me since Kristina sold out Violet. “That’s really good, man.”

“A few days in Pitt before the album drops works for me.”

It all feels so easy. I made a few calls before practice and all but confirmed the hometown show, and nobody’s giving me shit for being pushy. They seem … grateful.

It’s a good place to be and I zone out, fully in sync with Tyler’s bass line during practice on a high that things might actually fix themselves. The band will stop hating on me. Our album will hit the charts. And Kristina and Chief will scuttle off into my past.

And Willa. I’ve been riding that high since I left her place stocked with paint and canvas. I want to go to her, but I’m afraid being there will just distract her from her mission: to create.

“Ravi wants one more song. Something different,” Gavin tells the guys when we take a break. “What do you got up your sleeve, Jayce?”

Jayce demos a cool lick on his guitar, full of subtle half-steps that show his musical prowess. As he’s playing, Gavin drops a few chords on the keyboard and they seem to go. I try to catch the beat but only end up messing up the magic and they finally stop in frustration.

“I’m sorry. Do your thing.” I hang my head and go take a piss, angry at myself for trying—and failing—again to be part of the creative process. I know I’m background, by no means the main attraction in terms of our music, but it sucks that they drive it home.

“It’s not you,” Tyler says when I hang back by the kitchen bar instead of resuming my place behind the drum set. “They’re just doing their thing.” He drains a tall glass of water and watches Gavin and Jayce play off each other.

“That’s supposed to be my thing, too.” Resentment creeps into my tone. “I don’t want them to just see me as backup.”

Tyler squares his shoulders to face me. “Remember when I asked you to sit in for practice?”

I nod, thinking back seven years ago to my junior year in college. Tyler was a skinny, awkward sophomore with a setup in his mom’s garage. Jayce was his bro, and they’d plucked Gavin off a street corner where he’d been busking. I was the last one to join them, and I guess I’ve always felt like the odd man out. Like I have a bit more to prove than the rest of them.

“It wasn’t for your drum skills,” Tyler says.

That stings. “Fuck off.”

“Listen, you dumbass. I’m not riding you for your music. We do good stuff together. I just don’t want you to think that’s the only thing.” Tyler’s voice is low so the other guys can’t hear, but it feels too loud in my ears. “We never would have gotten big if you hadn’t been the biggest part of our hustle. If you hadn’t been getting us gigs and thinking beyond the music.”

“I’ve always been about our careers.”

Tyler gives me a gentle push that sets me off balance. “Exactly. So stop bitching about what you can’t do, or what you aren’t, and do what you do best. Nail down this show. Help us get
Wilderness
done. And stay the hell away from Kristina.”

Even her name sours my mood. “Easier said than done.”

Tyler jerks his head toward the couches, a safe distance from where Gavin and Jayce are jamming. He picks up a bass guitar from its cradle and sits opposite me.

“So what do you got?” Tyler plucks a few chords.

“My drum kit’s over there.” I jerk my thumb over my shoulder toward the other guys.

“No, gimme something I can work with.” He plucks a few more chords and they fit with the song I was humming at Willa’s.

I try a few bars, and Tyler’s guitar makes them bigger, more important than the simple little melody in my head. So I fish my phone out of my pocket and scroll to a note where a few lyrics have been taking shape.

I hum a bit more, then try to sing it.

If you want me/ Say it louder

If you need me/ Show me more

If you’re ready/ Then I’m willing

Open up/ unlock the door

If you tell me/ I’m listening

If you show me / I’ll follow you

In my dreams/ you’re in my arms

I’ll sacrifice to make that true

If you love me/ Say it louder

Let me hear you/ let me feel

If you crave me/ Give in to the need

Say it louder/This love’s for real

My voice trails off and Tyler does some riff tricks, layers on the melody. I can tap out the rhythm, but hardly put notes to it. The song feels alive in his hands, in his instrument, and I just sit back and let him roll.

“What was that?”

I whip my head around and Jayce is leaning over the couch, practically drooling as he watches Tyler.

Tyler smirks. “Our new song, I think.”

“I want it in,” Gavin says. “Where were you hiding that one?”

Tyler tips his guitar neck toward me. “I wasn’t. That was all Dave. I just gave it a voice.”

Jayce and Gavin both zero in on me and suddenly I’m bashful. “I was just messing around with something I said to Willa.”

Gavin puts a solid hand on my shoulder. “That’s not a mess. That’s good stuff. Can we try it out?”

He comes around the couch and sits with his guitar, watching intently as Tyler picks out the chords.

“Give us the beat,” Jayce says, and for once I don’t feel like a musical fuckup. I fish my sticks out of my bag and tap it out on my knees and the couch cushion beside me, syncopation for a rock anthem.