After a few hours, we took a break. I left the rehearsal room to get a bottle of water from the vending machine down the hall. I was halfway there before I noticed Liam following me.
I turned around in the middle of the hallway to confront him.
"If you’re going to try and make me talk about last night…" I began to say.
Liam cut me off with a shake of his head. "If you don’t want to talk about last night, you don’t have to," he said. "I want to suggest an idea for the set list."
"What did you have in mind?" I asked "I've thought hard about our set list and carefully chosen each song."
"What if instead of starting withKneel Before Us, we start withNineteen?" he asked.
My shoulders immediately tensed. "We always start withKneel Before Us."
Liam blinked at my strong reply.
"Any particular reason why?" he asked.
"It’s a fan favorite," I said. "It gets the crowd pumped up."
Liam nodded. "Exactly," he said. "Your fans love the song. It’s one of your earliest hits. That’s why I think it would be a great idea to end with that instead of starting with it. Leave them on a high note, you know?"
I pressed my lips together firmly. It wasn’t an awful suggestion, but something about Liam’s confident tone made me bristle.
"We end withNineteenbecause it has that emotional impact," I said.
Liam looked at me skeptically. "Ending with that song is kind of a downer, isn’t it?" he said.
My eyes narrowed at his tone. Liam didn't know anything about that song. He didn't know anything about the meaning behind it, the significance of it.
"I think I know my fans better than you," I said.
"Maybe you’re just too close to it," Liam suggested. "There’s nothing wrong with an outside perspective."
A shivery coil of darkness slowly unfolded in my stomach. Of course I was close to the song. I'd composed it. I'd written it about—
I slammed shut the mental door keeping my memories at bay.
"Why don’t you leave the creative decisions to me?" I said. "I didn’t hire you for your input. I hired you to back me up on guitar. That’s it."
"Are you always this resistant to new ideas?" Liam asked.
"When it comes from people who don’t know anything about my band, yes." I crossed my arms over my chest.
I didn’t know why I was so against the idea of switching songs. There was just something about the way Liam had suggested it. As if he knew more than me.
Maybe he did.
Maybe I was too close to the situation.
But now that my hackles were raised, I wasn’t inclined to listen to him. I was being stubborn, and I knew it, but I couldn’t make myself stop. The idea that someone might know my songs better than me, that he might know my fans better than me, was infuriating. The fact that it came from Liam—someone that I already felt vulnerable around—made it worse.
"We need to get back to rehearsal," I said. "The others must be getting impatient."
"Alright," he said. "I’ll go back to being your silent backup guitarist. No more suggestions from me."
If it had been anyone else, I would have said the tone of his voice was sarcastic. Maybe that was just me projecting. I knew he thought I was being unreasonable.
Some part of me deep down agreed with him, but I’d already let my guard down around this man too many times. If I started giving in to him, even if it was just a song selection idea, I might start to give in in other ways.
I turned on my heel and as I walked back to the rehearsal room.
I felt Liam’s eyes on me the entire way.
