“It’s fine. If you need some time off, no worries.”
Well, damn. I gave up.
There was really no point arguing this with him. Obviously, he planned to pay me whether I worked or not. Whether I was even here or not. It wasn’t like he was unaware that he hadn’t given me any work to do. He’d insisted on paying me the same as the other assistant I’d helped him hire. And clearly he didn’t care that I wasn’t actually doing anything to earn it.
He’d probably let me do anything I wanted or nothing at all, and it would be fine with him.
He probably didn’t even want an assistant anyway. Like my schooling and the fancy car, this was just another way for him to throw money at me to lessen the burden of guilt he might feel about rarely spending time with me.
It sucked, but I knew it was true.
“So… do I get to hear the new album yet?” I asked, looking to change the subject. “I mean, does your assistant get early access? I’d love to hear it.”
“It’s not ready yet. But when it is, my assistant will be one of the first to know.”
Unfortunately, I kinda doubted that.
“How’s the band?” I asked. “Are they happy with it? Is everything going well?”
“Yeah, they’re good. They’ve finished recording, mostly. We’re just tinkering around, making it great.”
And that was a non-response, if I’d ever heard one.
Goodandgreatweren’t really in my brother’s musical vocabulary. Nothing short of utterly exceptional would be acceptable to him.Goodorgreatwouldn’t even get you in the studio door with Cary Clarke.
He didn’t even produce Steel Trap.
Xander and Dean were two of his closest friends, but their band didn’t make the cut with my brother.
I could understand why. I was no musical genius like Cary, but even I knew Steel Trap wasgood. They had a couple of radio hits, but they weren’t exceptional. Not like Alive was.
“Well…” I told him, “if you ever want to bounce anything off me… you know, see if it’ll be a hit with the cool kids, I’m your girl.”
He smiled a little. “Yeah. I’ll let you know.”
He wouldn’t.
I looked around, starting to feel uncomfortable. It was always like this with Cary—at least, the last four years had been like this with Cary. Awkward conversation. And me, generally feeling like an imposition. An interruption.
Gone were the days of my big brother playing tea party with me, or taking me to rock shows, or making popcorn and hot chocolate so we could hang out and watch scary movies together.
We never did stuff like that together anymore.
Not like I hadn’t tried to make it happen… but Cary was never game. Always too busy. Buried in his work.
I tried anyway.
“Want to watch Netflix or something?” I suggested. “Hang out? I’ll let you pick the showandhave the remote.”
“I would, but… I can’t. I have a ton of a work to do tonight.”
“Oh. Okay.”
I looked around again. I would’ve been happy to hang out and just watch him work, listen to whatever he was working on, but there was no way he’d go for that, and I knew it.
He used to let me do that. When I was twelve, I got to sit in while Alive recorded some of their songs for the album in-studio. They even recorded my laughter on one of the tracks.
But that was a long time ago.
