I pulled my hand away. “You think I’ll be more okay sitting in my empty house, wondering what the hell I’m doing with my life? It’ll be fine once the tour starts.”
He sat back. “Am I allowed to ask why we’ve kidnapped an escort?”
“Maia,” I snapped. “Her name is Maia.”
I could feel his look without actually seeing it. “Oh-kay… Am I allowed to ask why we’ve kidnapped Maia?”
“Because I wrote a song last night.”
He went still. “Like asong, song?”
I stopped trying to explain it and got my guitar. The song needed some polishing, but when I was finished playing, I looked up and his mouth was hanging open.
“Does she have a wait list?”
I chucked a pillow at him.
“I’m serious,” he said, rubbing his temples. “I haven’t even seen her awake and I think I’m infatuated with her.”
Get in line…
“Time out. Is she…” He looked thoughtful and I could tell he was piecing it together. “This isn’t the first time a woman has inspired music for you. Does it happen to be the same woman?”
I dropped my head into my hands, knowing how dumb I looked.
“Zane. Do you remember how fucked up you were? Because I do and it wasn’t pretty. I don’t care how good the sex is or whether you get ten more albums out of it, nothing is worth seeing you like that again.”
I got that he was watching my back, but he didn’t know the whole story or how I was feeling. He only saw the aftermath last time, but he shouldn’t have been complaining because it was how we met.
The shows I had to play with the boy band right after Maia ripped my heart out were brutal for too many reasons and it threw into stark relief just how badly it wasn’t what I wanted to be a part of. The manufactured hits they gave us to play were effective at creating a meteoric rise to fame, but it felt hollow.
New music poured out of me when I couldn’t sleep. Most of it sentimental garbage, but some of it felt like it could really be something. I looked like hell and felt like half a human, but the catharsis was the most powerful creative experience I’ve ever had.
I stayed late in the studio one night after the others left, not wanting to go back to a hotel room I had to share with Johnny, and I was tired of having to go sit on the roof of the parking garage to play.
I let the pain come out in the music, just playing in an empty back room by myself thinking no one was there. As it turned out, Kelly was there working the night shift as a janitor and the sneaky fuck listened to me play. He could’ve just gone about his business and pretended not to hear, but instead he knocked on the door.
I was embarrassed someone heard me pouring my heart out like that, but he just smiled and said, “That would sound better with drums.”
So we moved to the room where the instruments were set up from earlier and as it turned out, the motherfucker couldplay.
We jammed together for hours, putting beats and melodies to the songs I’d been writing for weeks. When we finally called it a night, I helped him finish cleaning since I’d eaten into his work time and didn’t want him to be there all morning.
In silence, we finished all of his tasks and locked up the studio. The grey predawn light told me just how rough the show that night was going to be if I didn’t get some sleep, but I felt lighter after playing with him. For the first time since Maia left, I lost myself in the music.
For the first time ever, I’d written something that felt true.
We didn’t say anything at all when we parted ways that morning, but that night I stayed late again and there he was, ready to play like we’d made a plan to meet again.
Kelly brought me back to life and reminded me why I loved music. We found our bassist Dan through mutual friends, and Travesty was born.
From where Kelly was sitting, Maia threatened everything we built together in our career. He was worried she could make it all crumble because that’s what she’d done to me before. He didn’t understand that I was about to crumble all by myself and she was what got me on this plane to start the tour.
I set the guitar down. “A couple of days with her to keep my mind off things, and then our shows start and I’ll be too focused to worry about all the background noise.”
He shook his head in frustration. “The background noise being…your life?” He looked at me with his stupid hazel eyes that always saw too much.
“Yeah. All the shit besides music that doesn’t matter.”
