9. Zak

Sunrise was Zak”s favorite time to play her guitar on the balcony.

Sleep had always been a fickle and sporadic thing for her. The insomnia began when she was a kid in need of some alone time and worsened as she got older, juggling school and work and cramming in practice for as long as she could keep her eyes open. And with five conflicting work schedules to balance, the disordered sleep persisted.

The only way they could find time to work on music together was by lining up their days off, taking turns pulling all-nighters, and downing heaps of caffeine. Dallas swore cocaine was more effective, but the singular time Zak had tried it his way, that shit had her hands shaking so bad she was playing every song in vibrato.

Today, it was her turn to stay awake until they could rehearse as a band for the first time in a month. Her preferred method? Transposing electric guitar licks to acoustic.

For nearly a decade, the solid black Harmony Sovereign resting on her knee had been her only instrument. As a beginner, she had to figure out how to replicate the picking and fretting techniques the greats were using without any effects, and though she loved experimenting with all the tech she could afford now, making music with nothing but wood, strings, and her own bare hands quenched an intangible thirst for turning the simple into something spectacular.

The heat coasted in as the sky brightened. It warmed her shoulders and nose first, then spread down her arms and across her cheeks. Sweat beaded on her brow, from the California sun and from how hard she was playing.

She struck a groove, alternate picking with her thumb and index finger while the other three on her strumming hand finally perfected the balance between flicking and slapping the strings. Her left hand crunched up against the body of the guitar to fire off stinging high notes, and then back down into power cords, trading off workload back to the right.

Her head swirled with so many ideas that she lost concentration on the sounds she made. At some point, she was no longer replicating songs. She was pulling melodies out of thin air like they had existed all along.

This kind of creation made her fall in love with music over, and over, and over again. Some days it was tedious, and she could pour over the same line for hours without an end in sight. Others, the music flowed through her like she was nothing more than a vessel. A machine meant to convert abstract pictures and feelings into words and sounds.

On days like the latter, like today, time fell away.

It seemed like she had been out there only twenty minutes. Yet, when she finally decided to take a break, her coffee was cold, and Chase was sitting on the bottom three steps leading up to the apartment.

His expression dug up hazy memories. Brought her back to her earliest experiences with music, her last days of feeling innocently, ignorantly carefree as a child.

Her dad used to take her to his gigs when her mother had been having a bad night. And there were many of those. He would lift her on top of his shoulders, grab his guitar case, and tell her, “Watch out, ya giant!” so she didn’t smack her forehead on the doorframe on their way out.

She couldn’t remember the place he used to play at, but they had to take the bus. The first night she got to go, the bouncer didn’t want to let a five-year-old into the bar until her dad got the owner involved. A gruff, bearded man in his fifties had set her up next to the stage—where her dad could keep an eye on her—and handed her a Shirley Temple that was more grenadine than soda. The thought alone brought back the taste, all sweet and sticky and barely bubbly.

Overhead lighting and thick waves of cigarette smoke had warmed her skin. Blue stage lights hit her dad’s face as he played the guitar like he was playing it just for her ears. He had practiced at home all the time, but that night had been different. Magic. The sound from his acoustic, the one she played now, had filled the entire club, carved out a place in her soul, and remained there. Eighteen years later.

That had been the night she decided she wanted to be like him, wanted to live inside a song and never, ever return to the real world. She wanted to pick up a guitar and have the power to make something beautiful and permanent and all her own.

She wanted to make other people feel the same way she did in that moment.

Chase didn’t have to say a word because she could read every one of his thoughts. They were already her memories. But he started with, “Good morning.”

Zak broke the tether between them by peering inside to check the oven clock. “Are you always this early to shit?”

Chase checked his watch as if he had lost track of time, even though he was chronically, excessively punctual. “Sorry. Old habits.”

“Well, do you wanna come up? Or are you just gonna sit there?” She grabbed the sliding glass door handle with both hands and heaved it open over the deformed track.

“I didn’t want to interrupt.” He started up the stairs. “You looked like you were…”

“Playing guitar? Yeah. I do that. A lot.”

Zak answered the door, and Chase’s softened features were suddenly too close, too real. Admiration, written all over his face, speared through her like a blunt dagger to its hilt.

She had gotten compliments before, sure. But never one so loud and true it was still unspoken.

She was beginning to realize she didn’t know what to say when people genuinely liked something about her because of how acclimated she was to people hating her. After all, she made it easy for them. She had made it easy for Chase, too. So why did he seem to consistently not hate her? Was people-pleasing some insurmountable component of his hard-wiring?

“I’ve never heard someone shred on an acoustic like that.” He stepped inside and dug out his wallet and keys to set on the counter.

“You’ve lived in Southern California long enough to know what flamenco is,” she said, fighting off the squirmy sensation in her chest that made her want to toss him back out.

“I know what flamenco is, and that was something else. That was…” he searched for a word, but shook his head and came back with, “Shit, that was insane, Zak. You killed it yesterday, but—”

Oh, great. She’d heard every variation in the book, and then some. “But you thought I was just campfire sing-along good? Cover band good at best?”

“No.” A seemingly pent-up amount of impatience leached into Chase’s tone. “That’s not what I was going to say.”

Maybe not, but she didn’t care. Whatever it was, it was going to blow.

“You killed it yesterday,” he continued, “but it’s different hearing you create your own music.”

“Oh.”

A normal person probably would have thanked him for the compliment, but Zak was too busy trying to figure out what was going on. Were they supposed to hang out here in the kitchen like pals? How was she supposed to talk to someone she didn’t like without being rude about it? She was terrible at that. It was a miracle she’d ever been hired after a job interview.

Even more miraculous, Chase was still interested in talking to her.

He sat down on the same bar stool he had occupied yesterday. “And you taught yourself?”

“Mostly.”

“You’ve gotta give me more than that,” he pressed. “I thought your fingers were going to catch on fire out there.”

Zak turned her back to him and washed out her mug in the sink. It wasn’t that she disliked talking about her absent parents—the past was the past. She just hated having to assure people she was fine and thank them for saying “I’m sorry,” even though those words were meaningless.

“My dad was a musician. He gave me his guitar before he left, when I was seven. I’d learned how to read music from him, a few chord shapes here and there, but for the most part, I didn’t have a clue. I just messed around until something sounded good.”

She had kept the instrument in pristine condition. Better than her father had left it, even, with a light refinish and some polishing along the way. But she could never bring herself to fill in the place where her name was inscribed on the ground-facing side of the neck.

The shallow carving was only the size of a dime. Zak, where the a looked more like a dot and the Z and K intersected crookedly. She couldn’t remember if her dad had done it himself or if she’d gotten a little overzealous when she was learning to spell her name, but some part of her wanted to believe that he’d once loved her enough to deface his own guitar in her honor.

Chase sat patiently with his elbows on the counter. Waiting for her to keep talking about her favorite thing in the world like he couldn’t be more invested in her story.

So, she kept going. “When that got boring, I found a music store on my walk home from school that had TVs hanging up with these live concerts playing. And I figured out I could teach myself by watching what the rock stars were doing on TV. I went there every day, and I stayed as long as I could get away with it until the guy at the counter kicked me out. Eventually that guy, Daniel, felt bad for me I guess, because he restrung my guitar for free and offered to show me some tricks during his lunch break.

“So sometime around seventh grade, I started cutting class. I had a system. No more than two periods, and not the same class more than twice a week, or else they would phone home and report me absent.”

“I knew it,” Chase said under his breath, looking so self-satisfied she accidentally smiled at him.

“And here I thought you had more important things to pay attention to than my whereabouts.”

“When the seat in front of you is empty all the time, you notice,” he said. “Then you notice patterns. Not that I’m surprised. I always knew you were too smart to get yourself held back for skipping.”

No one had ever called her smart before, let alone passively. As if it were some universal truth. And, seriously? Was she still smiling? She forced herself to yawn just to get it off her face.

“Well, Daniel let me play any of the guitars in the shop, and then I talked him into letting me practice a few other instruments. Did that for about three years until he closed down Strings ‘N Things and moved to Colorado. But he sold me a Stratocaster and a bunch of customer-returned gear for like twenty bucks, all-in-all, before he left.”

“Sounds like a nice guy.”

“He was.” Figuring she met her weekly quota for talking to Chase, she nodded over her shoulder. “The guys will be out any minute. There’s coffee. It sucks, but you’re welcome to have some. Or water from the tap, just use the pliers by the sink to turn the knob.”

“Uh, no.” He rebuffed her offer with a satirical chuckle. “I’m good. Thanks.”

She snapped back to reality.

All of Chase’s disgusted looks and patronizing comments came crashing in, sinking the more positive memories that had popped to the surface of her mind. The blips over time where they had worked well together. The jokes, the talks that always started awkward and ended up… somewhere else.

For a second there, she’d fooled herself into thinking she and Chase would be able to get along, but who was she kidding? They’d spent all their adolescent years unwittingly glued to each other’s hips and a friendship never blossomed out of it.

People didn’t change. Not in any meaningful way.

She shook her head, disappointed in herself more than anything. “I bet.”

Chase stiffened. “What does that mean?”

“I’m sure you’re used to nicer things, that’s all.”

“Things that aren’t broken? Well, yeah. But it doesn’t matter what I’m used to.”

“You’re right. Nobody’s asking you to move in.”

“I meant because I don’t care,” he clarified. “Do you really think I’m judging you for what your place looks like? You think I would do that?”

“I don’t know what to think about you. At the reunion you were all buddy-buddy with the guy who stuck his hand up my skirt junior year, and now you’re talking to me like we’re best friends.”

“Who did what?”

“Oh, sure. You didn’t know about all the pranks they used to pull, the comments they used to make,” she said. “I was a sixteen-year-old girl living with a bunch of eighteen-year-old guys. I seem to remember you acing pre-calc, so do the math.”

“I wouldn’t know, because they weren’t my friends. They probably didn’t say anything because they thought I was friends with you.”

Zak couldn’t contain her laughter. “No? They were just people you happened to be around all the time?”

“Yes,” he said straight-faced. “That’s how being on a sports team works.”

“Which should mean you’ve had enough practice to perfect your whole nice-guy act. And yet, you still had that condescending attitude about my band playing at Jerri’s. Like you couldn’t believe we’d be good enough to book a gig at an actual music venue.”

“If I made a face about Jerri’s, that is not—”

“And now, you’re all chit-chat and compliments until bam. You’re right back to grossing out about my apartment.”

Chase opened his mouth.

“And look, I get it,” she cut him off. “This place sucks. But not everyone is magically born into a loving family with money to make all their problems go away and all their dreams come true.”

His face paled, but he tried to play it off like she hadn’t struck a nerve.

“We’re different people, that’s all. Always have been.” Zak wished she had shut up minutes ago. Better yet, she wished she had never started talking, because now she could tell she was making things worse, but didn’t know what compelled her to keep going. “I don’t have to like you, you don’t have to like me. Plenty of people work together without seeing eye to eye.”

Things would be better that way. She could stop sabotaging her band’s future, stop hyper-analyzing every little thing Chase did and said, stop worrying about if he would decide this wasn’t for him and ditch them in a few months, and focus on the music.

Chase stared at her, stupefied. She wished he would just nod or something to confirm they were finally on the same page, but he seemed stuck. Then, any chance for closure disappeared entirely as the rest of the band filed out into the living room.

“Can you please try not to scare the guy off, Z?” Edge said as he entered, towel drying his sopping wet curls. Steam followed him from the bathroom.

Dallas, who she could have sworn had been snoring the entire time, said, “Yeah. And don’t think she speaks for all of us. You seem like a pretty alright guy to me.”

“You think the meth dealer outside the pawn shop on Alameda Street is an ‘alright guy,’” Zak pointed out.

“He is.” Dallas sat up in his bed. “I’ll take a meth dealer over a politician or a Jehovah’s Witness any day of the week.”

There were many, many levels of morality beyond meth dealers, politicians, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, but Zak dropped it.

“Are we practicing yet?” Alex joined them. “‘Cause I’ve got work in an hour.”

She gave Chase one last glance. She hoped she had made herself clear enough that he wouldn’t be showing up early expecting small talk and eggs benedict, or whatever the fuck prim people ate for breakfast. “Yeah. Let’s practice.”

Once was an accident. Twice was a coincidence. Three times made a pattern.

Chase arriving fifteen minutes ahead of time for everything? That was a ritual.

Punctuality normally wasn’t a negative trait for other people. Fine. But when Zak habitually adjusted arrival times forward by thirty minutes to account for how late she was to everything, it meant Chase was actually forty-five minutes early to band practice. Every. Single. Day.

Zak threw on some clothes and shoved a toothbrush in her mouth when she heard the knock. Waiting a few minutes wouldn’t kill the guy.

“Krispy Kreme needs to cool it with the morning-person thing,” Dallas complained.

“It’s almost noon,” Edge said from somewhere in the kitchen. “I’ll let him in.”

The door opened, and the sound of Chase’s uneven footfalls came down on the linoleum entryway. There was some low talking and laughing, a clank, and then the sizzle of coffee being brewed. Zak could smell the fresh donuts from here. Anotherritual of his, transparently designed to win everybody over through their stomachs. And so far? It was working.

Hair unbrushed and piled into a bun, last night’s mascara and eyeliner smudged beneath her eyes, she padded to the living area. She was already in a bad mood thinking about how Chase would be all chipper and perfectly put together when she got there, and predictably, he was.

Why bother practicing when no audience would care what their music sounded like as long as they had him to focus on?

“I was just asking Chase if he wanted to stay for pizza after practice,” Edge filled her in. “We can probably see some of the Fourth of July fireworks from the balcony.”

As if he hadn’t spent enough time around here already during his two-week tenure as lead singer. “Surely he has something more important to do with his time.”

Like grilling burgers with a bunch of forty-year-old men at some kitschy suburban block party. Or hitting up some ritzy club and bringing home a knockout wearing American flag booty shorts and a cowboy hat.

“More important than pizza and fireworks? I don’t think so.” Chase smiled.

Smartass.

“Were you going to hang around this time?” he asked.

It wasn’t Chase”s first thinly veiled attempt at getting her alone long enough to hash out the unresolved issues she had dredged up on day one, but thus far, she’d managed to sidestep them all. By now he should know her avoidance was in his best interest, considering the deeper she got involved in anything, the more she fucked it up.

“No. Hope the four of you have fun, though,” she said, refusing to take the bait. “I’m working tonight. It’s going to be packed, the tips are gonna be off the chain. Save me a few slices, Edge. You know what I like.”

Edge gave her a thumbs up and resumed talking to everyone’s newest object of fascination: Chase. “You could invite your sister, too, if you want.”

“Hell yeah, you could,” Dallas whooped.

Zak plucked her right slipper off her foot and threw it at him. “Pig.”

“Prude.”

Chase laughed. “As entertaining as that would be, I haven’t exactly told her yet about this whole thing. And I’m sure she has plans of her own.”

Of course he hadn’t. This was a silly life experiment for him. His face had already been broadcast to the world plenty of times, there was nothing special or life-changing about Amped. He just didn’t know what he wanted to do yet, and they were his in-between. The terms had been established from the moment he said yes.

This wasn’t how she had envisioned unveiling her band to the world, with one singer dead and the second on his way out, but for now, it was all she had. C’est la vie.

Edge handed Zak a cup of coffee she didn’t bother to look at before drinking. Only this time, the coffee didn’t suck. It was the best she’d ever had. She examined the inside of the cup. No floating grounds, consistent coloration. Witchcraft?

“I didn’t think you were able to fix it.” She looked at the coffee maker and found it wasn’t fixed at all.

It was gone. Replaced by some shiny stainless-steel contraption that could brew enough cups in one run to keep her awake for two weeks straight. How out of place it looked, in an apartment where she and her friends were the newest items in the building.

“What’s that thing?”

Chase—the one person who could afford a huge machine with a 12-cup carafe and a frankly intimidating number of buttons—shrugged. “Looked like you needed a new one.”

Zak surveyed the room, where everyone was calmly enjoying their pastries with a caffeinated beverage that, for once, didn’t taste like hot dirt. Ass-kisser. “I guess when you’ve got the personality of a personal injury attorney, buying friends is the only real option.”

Chase smirked, and she hated herself for the way that small movement made her heart throb exactly once. Hard. Some part of her knew she’d keep giving him a hard time for as long as it elicited that reaction from him. “Blackmail makes for a decent backup, though.”

“Blackmail me and see what happens, Payton.”

“Who said I wanted to be your friend?” he tossed back with an expression that wasn’t unfriendly per se. She wasn’t sure what it was.

“The coffee maker. All the breakfasts and lunches you’ve been buying.”

“Didn’t realize they were so talkative.”

“I didn’t realize you had jokes.”

“You would if you’d talk to me for longer than five minutes without looking for an excuse to pick a fight.” Chase set his mug on the table. “Did the coffee maker happen to mention it was a peace offering for whatever I’ve done over the years to make you think I’m a raging asshole?”

“No peace offering needed. I’m feeling perfectly peaceful.”

“It’s true, that’s what peaceful looks like on her,” Edge said through a mouthful of donut.

“See?” She gestured to her friend, thankful for the support because she never got away with lying. But right now, that was exactly what was happening.

Chase shot her an unconvinced look, but let it go.

Time to change the subject. “That”s a long enough coffee break. Let’s hope you suck less today than you did yesterday.”

Even though he didn’t suck at all yesterday, or the day before, or the very first day he had been there. Not even a teensy, tiny, gratifying bit.

On the contrary, she wanted more. Wanted to push him harder, to hear everything he was capable of. There had to be anger and hurt and real emotion somewhere within him to fuse with the music and bring it to life.

Chase clinked the side of his coffee cup against hers. “Feel free to fire me if I don”t.”

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