“No, I get it,” I said, wanting to validate his feelings. This seemed like the healthiest thing he’d done in ages, and I didn’t want him to feel bad about it.
“But I haven’t gone in my grandpa’s bedroom yet. I don’t know when I’ll be able to tackle that. It was hard enough making coffee the first time.”
“But you’re doing okay?”
“Yeah. I mean…it still fuckin’ hurts. But packing stuff up has helped me focus.”
I exchanged glances with Braden and he seemed to be feeling the same way I did. No, this wasn’t what Zack had needed, but maybe it was keeping him sober, maybe as a tribute to his grandparents. Whatever the case, I knew his grandpa would have been proud of him now—but I wasn’t about to say that, because I didn’t want to remind my friend of the guilt he’d felt.
Cy said, “Don’t take this wrong…but could you use a roommate?”
Zack’s expression was one of mild but pleasant surprise. “Yeah, actually. I think I could. That way I wouldn’t have to cough up all the money for expenses on my own.”
“Would your mom be okay with it?”
“I don’t think she’d even notice. But I’ll tell her so she doesn’t freak out if she sees your car here when I’m not.” Then he shifted his focus to Braden, then me. “What about you guys—like old times in Denver?”
It would have most definitely been easier to practice if I were in Dalton instead of Nopal, but I wasn’t going to put myself that close to Zack. Going on tour and being in his orbit again would happen soon enough. My relationship with Braden was still fresh and new, and I didn’t want to jeopardize it. So I said, “I kind of like being in my old bedroom and spending time with my mom.”
It was slight, but I could see what I thought was a touch of relief in Braden’s eyes. “Me too.”
“You like being around your dad?”
“I like being around my mom and sisters—and they need me.”
“Okay,” Zack said, his voice carrying a dubious quality. “But let me know if you change your mind. There are four bedrooms here, so plenty of room for everybody.”
“What I like is this garage,” Braden said.
“Yeah, well, we better get good at these tracks before July, ‘cause I promise you won’t like it then.” On that note, we went through every single song twice, more than we’d ever done with the new songs before.
And it was easy to believe we had another successful album on our hands. We just had to get good enough to head into the studio to record it.
We hada festival date in California scheduled in mid-June where we hoped to test a couple of our new songs so we could see the crowd reaction when mixed with old favorites. We knew that, after the costs and our per diems were taken off the earnings, we’d hopefully break even, but we were hoping to clean up with merch. Zack still hadn’t had the money or the opportunity to switch the way merch was sold which would make more money for us, but there hadn’t been time.
We were excited about getting back in front of fans and eager to see what they thought about the new tracks.
Now that we’d started practicing, I’d discovered that the lyrics of a few of the songs got uncomfortably close to home. Like “Burned It Down.” That felt like Zack’s confession to me, that he’d royally fucked up what we had and he was asking for my forgiveness…and asking me to stay. The way he sang it, like his heart was on his sleeve, brokemyheart. It was the power ballad I’d complained about when we’d first heard the tracks…and I knew our women fans probablywouldlove it, a man saying he’d fucked up but wanted his woman to stay because he needed her…and he was a better man now.
Nice try, Zack.
When we played that song, I never looked up from my drums—not at Zack, not at Braden, and not even in Cy’s direction. I didn’t want to give anything away.
Then there was the song called “The Grind.” It was clearly about life on the road and his words captured exactly how it had felt to me. Get up, brush your teeth, get on the bus, go a few hundred miles, perform, then rinse and repeat. The song “Crumbling” clearly told the story of Zack falling apart as he gave into his addiction, and I suspected it would never be a single but it would be another fan favorite. Zack’s voice hadn’t sounded this good in months. He’d be ready to record when the time came.
But there was one other song that was like a punch in the gut. It was the song called “Freezing,” the one I’d loved the music for. The lyrics were again about a relationship gone wrong and how he felt like he was dying, left out in the cold, because I’d—or, rather, the woman in the song—had left him. They were more poetry well-suited to the bluesy, mourning feel of the music itself.
If nothing else, Zack was a brilliant artist, thanks to his ability to express himself not only through music but words as well. Maybe not so much in real life face-to-face with people, but when he had to create, when he was forced to put emotions on paper, he did it far better than anyone I’d ever known.
Part of his rock God persona was well-deserved, and he had to know it—and maybe that was part of why he was getting lots of ink…so he looked “legit.”
At the end of one rehearsal, Cy was talking about it. “I’d like to start getting some tats, but not until I can afford to not work other jobs during my downtime.”
“Nobody cares if you’re tattooed anymore, man,” Zack said.
“Maybe not in the jobsyoudo and maybe not even all the jobsIdo, but if this shit doesn’t work out, I still need to figure out how to pay the bills.”
Braden said, “If you wear suits, you can cover a lot of them up.”
