Then again, I’ve spent fourteen days staring at the walls of my house, applying for jobs online, and watching my cats lick their own butts.
But if I’d spent that time journeying to the most incredible spot on earth, it still wouldn’t be half as beautiful as the man before me.
His eyes crinkle at the corners. When he laughs like that, he smiles with his whole face.
“I can’t wait to show you everything. Should we go in?” he asks.
“They just left it unlocked for you?”
“The door has a code. I’ll be able to let us in. Let me get your bag for you.”
I want to protest, but he’s already heading to the trunk. I pop it with the button on the fob and let him shoulder it. I make sure I walk in front of him so I don’t pop a hardcore lady boner over those damn pants. He gives me the code and lets me type it into the keypad. The door lock whirrs, and the big metal door opens easily when I try the handle.
In my head, I have a pretty good idea what a studio looks like. I’ve spent some time deep diving the internet. I even looked up what the equipment does in the control room. I know the part where the artist performs, with all the instruments, is called the live room, or the actual studio part of the building. But I didn’t realize there are often individual rooms for things like drums.
Learning the technical terms and studying photos online did nothing to prepare me for the straight-up magic that I walk into. Granted, the large control room with two long rows of equipment, huge speakers in the corners, a flat screen TV above a massive window that opens into the live room, two giantleather couches, and gorgeous hardwood floors and overhead lighting that bathes the room in gold is breathtaking, but it’s not that much different from what I saw online. It’s just the fact ofbeinghere. Me. In person. With Wilder.
It’s just us, and all the instruments glittering in the sealed-off studio.
The microphones, the incredible grand piano, the array of guitars, the drums in the far corner of the room, and an ornate organ on the opposite side—all of it is expensive and pristine, beautiful beyond anything I’ve ever dared to touch. It’s a different world. Wilder’s world. He made this happen. He wanted to open it up to me and give me this gift.
Even if we just sat on that couch all night and stared at the place, it would still be one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. I’ve seen a lot of backstage stuff—almost all of it, actually—but this is sodifferent.
“Please tell me you don’t hate this. If you don’t want to record any of the songs, we don’t have to. We don’t even have to turn any of the equipment on. We can just play. Or not. We don’t even have to do that. We can just sit here, look at the walls, and breathe each other in.”
Fuck.
Breathe each other in.
That sounds like the best possible time.
But studio first. I can act like an adult and control my hormones for at least an hour. It’s a nice fantasy to think aboutdoingthingsin here, but it’s so pristine that I wouldn’t dare go past being close to Wilder. But being close to him leads to kissing him, which leads to jumping him. And doing that led to a mess in my kitchen at home, one uncooked dinner, and my mom walking in on us.
I still wouldn’t trade it for anything. I’d just order a few events differently. Minor changes. Like picking up our clothes and locking the bathroom door.
“Do you want to go in? As I said, this is our time. We can do anything in here that you want.”
I move to the glass window and take in the majesty of all the beautiful instruments. They glisten under the lighting, almost as though they’re just there for display. Some of them appear as though they’ve never been played.
“I… what if… I’ve never played anything so nice. What if I put fingerprints on the piano? Or that guitar? Oh my gosh, I can’t imagine how much one of those would cost.”
Wilder has nice guitars, but they’re the ones he’s had for years. He could afford a new one every day if he wanted one, but he’s attached. Same with Matt. Their guitars tell a story. They don’t want something shiny. They want beat-up, scratched, played hard, and loved even harder guitars.
“You don’t have to worry about that. I asked for specific guitars, and they’re here for us to play because I couldn’t sneak my own out with me. It doesn’t matter if we leave fingerprints. That does tend to happen when instruments have to be touched in order to produce a desired sound.”
He grins, but he’s not making fun of me. It’s more like he’s laughing with me.
“We don’t have anyone to play drums or bass. Even if we both played a guitar and then you recorded the piano after, that’s still all there would be. You don’t do acoustic.”
“Correction. I would love to do acoustic, so I think that statement should be, ‘I haven’t done acoustic yet.’”
I know Matt’s famous line was that the band wasn’t a country group, and they weren’t some pop duo, so acoustic songs, sob stories, and romantic bullshit could piss right off. I heard him say it over and over throughout the years. Most of the time,I thought he was joking. I didn’t realize this was an argument between him and Wilder.
What the guys were saying by the end, about Wilder being in the spotlight and the band being all about him, I think maybe it went deeper. They didn’t want him up there, alone on the stage, just his voice and a guitar. I’m not sure anyone could have stood up to keeping their heart intact if he’d done something so intimate.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean for that to come across as bitter. I’d like it to be a hopeful statement. I’d love to try recording some of these acoustic, but if that’s not how you see them going, then I can play bass and drums.”
“I’m sorry, you can what?”
