I slid a hand underneath Mace’s chin and tilted his head up toward me. He let me, but he just raised the phone higher to keep his eyes on the game.
“Come on babe, I know I’m late, but we only have until noon before Sam kicks us out.”
“Yeah, yeah, just hold on. I can’t stop running. If I look away, I’m going to die.”
Maybe I was still a little angry about how easily he bailed on me earlier or maybe I was just a bitch, but I snatched his phone out of his hand and held it behind me.
“MAX! Come on!” He reached for the phone, but we both heard the sound of the game ending.
“God, Max, sometimes you can be a real bitch.”
For a split second, Cade’s face popped into my head, but I pushed it away.
I said, “Yeah, well, you’re a dick most of the time. Deal with it.”
There was only a little heat in my words. I tucked his phone into his front pant pocket, and used that pocket to pull him toward me. His mouth was set in a thin line like he was angry, but that didn’t stop him from sliding his hands down my back to my ass. I didn’t elbow him this time. I kissed the underside of his jaw, and he stopped clenching his teeth so tightly. He kissed me, nipping my bottom lip a little too hard for it to be comfortable.
Spencer said, “I liked it better when you guys weren’t molesting each other constantly.” Spencer and I had been making music together since I moved to Philly a few years ago. Besides me, he was the only member of Under the Bell Jar that hadn’t changed frequently.
What could I say? I had a thing for drummers.
“Can we get to playing now?” Spencer asked, shooting a glare at Mace.
He couldn’t stand Mace, but didn’t make much of a fuss because he didn’t figure the relationship would last. It would be nice if it did, though. Mace was the best drummer we’d ever had.
I pulled back and went for my guitar.
“Okay, so this is the last chance we’ll get to rehearse all together before the show next week. We need to practice and nail down the order of our set list.”
We started with a cover of “A Better Son/Daughter” by Rilo Kiley. I felt like I lived this song already this morning. The intro started soft and small. My lips brushed the cold metal of the microphone and I felt like I was home. It didn’t matter that we were in a grungy bar with no audience, or that I’d be back here tonight working until all hours of the morning, only to have to get up and pretend for my parents. It didn’t matter that this morning my love life had taken a sharp left at complicated straight into bizarre territory. It didn’t even matter that I’d been carrying this band like a yoke around my neck for years with no money and no break in sight.
When I sang, none of it mattered.
I was not an emotional person. I hadn’t cried since I was thirteen. Not really. I made a promise to myself then when my life had been awash in tears that I wouldn’t be one of those people. The kind of person who would cry uncontrollably when something bad happened, but two days later be walking around like nothing had changed. Crying was for moments of such drastic pain that you had to let it out, had to shed the dead skin on your soul so that you could breathe. I still had my life, so I refused to cry over stupid shit like boyfriends and parents. I was good at turning off the pain. The only time I let it out was when I sang.
When the strings on my guitar vibrated and notes rose from my lungs, I felt the good and the bad, the hope and the devastation. I felt it all.
Sometimes in the morning, I am petrified, and can’t move
Awake but cannot open my eyes.
I sang about the weight of expectation and toxic relationships and lost innocence. I sang about the way depression can curl over your head like a wave, pulling you under so far that you don’t know which way is up and where to go to breathe.
The song unspooled something inside of me and deflated all the pressures of the day. This was what my parents didn’t get. They wanted me to give this up, get a job, and a steady paycheck. Mom said she’d never be able to really relax until her baby girl was all taken care of, which to her meant a husband and a job and a bun in the oven. But then it would be me who was never relaxed.
They wanted me to be the perfect daughter Alex was supposed to have been. But I wasn’t Alex. I’d tried to be that for them . . . tried to fill the void she left behind. I spent four years of high school playing the good girl, the popular girl, but it was never real. I always screwed something up, and then they would look at me like I hadn’t just disappointed them, I’d somehow disgraced Alex too by failing to live up to her memory.
Just living with them had been like suffocating, like all the air had been sucked from the house leaving only grief behind.
I got so twisted and wound up and smothered by life.
Music unraveled me.
It kept me sane then, and it keeps me sane now.
After that song we moved on to one by the Smiths, another by Laura Marling, and one by Metric. We covered everything from Radiohead to the Beatles, and then moved on to our original songs. Some were Spencer’s, but most were mine. The songs were all different, but they were all honest. When we finished the first run-through, we took a quick break. I headed to the bathroom because I needed a second.
I always needed a second to get the last of the emotion out, to bring the walls back up. Spencer got it. We’d known each other long enough that he gave me the space, but Mace was still learning. He followed me into the bathroom and pressed me up against the sink, his chest against my back.