Chapter 3 #2
“Yeah, five fucking years and a whole fiancée ago,” she retorted, rolling her eyes at him. He glanced nervously in my direction, no doubt catching a glimpse of the proud grin I’d just barely bitten back.
“Is this ok? We can go,” Sebastian said, his blue eyes glittering under Donnie’s lights. “Sheldon said it’d be cool for us to stop by, get a sneak peek at the new album.”
The way he was looking at me made it clear that I was the only person he was going to ask permission from. The air was heavy, weighted with the expectation of my answer. He knew the others would follow my lead; I knew it too.
“It’s ok,” I told him with a quick nod. His bandmates visibly relaxed behind him as he smiled a grateful smile at me. “Why do you wanna hear the new album so badly?”
“Don’t you know, Max?” Sebastian asked as he sauntered over to me, dark lashes casting deep shadows across his face as he stepped through the lights. His full pink lips quirked into a small, private smirk. “I’m your biggest fan.”
◆◆◆
I swear, I tried to concentrate. I tried to follow the sound of Donnie’s voice, even though I could barely hear his yelled directions over the backing track.
I mimed along to the vocals, leaning into the microphone, glancing down on certain lyrics and staring up into the camera when it felt particularly appropriate.
Donnie assured me that my eyes looked soulful, I was pretty sure I just looked stupid.
But it was more difficult than I’d expected, trying to keep focused with Sebastian in the room.
He was sitting behind the camera, his slender legs crossed at the ankle.
He was dressed in shades of black; the beat-up leather of his biker boots was the color of heat-soaked tarmac, but his torn jeans were so black they looked almost new.
His shirt was made from some sort of shimmering dark mesh material – when he laughed, it rippled across his torso, almost transparent in the bright lights.
“Alright, take five,” Donnie yelled just before the backing track cut out. “We’re gonna readjust the lights.”
I nodded vaguely in his direction, pushing my guitar round to my back so I could walk over to the catering table.
I snagged a bottle of water, twisting it open a bit more viciously than necessary.
I was midway through chugging its entire contents when Mira wandered over, spinning one of her drumsticks through her fingers.
“Thirsty?” She asked, quirking a dark brow as she glanced over her shoulder at where Sebastian and Jet were talking to an excitedly gesturing Shep.
I nearly choked on the water but managed not to turn myself into a headline. I dropped the empty bottle into the bin before turning to scowl at her.
“Fuck off.”
“You seem distracted.”
“Of course I’m distracted,” I hissed, risking a glance in Sebastian’s direction.
Shep had just said something that made him laugh – his inky blue-black hair spilled across the collar of his ridiculous shirt when he threw his head back to laugh, baring the tattooed column of his throat to the worshipping lights.
“I can make him leave, if you want.”
I chewed on my bottom lip, giving it serious thought.
It’d be a shitty thing to do, Sebastian and his band mates were clearly making an effort.
They were as friendly as they’d ever been, like he and I hadn’t spent the past half decade slinging mud at each other across the front page of the internet.
Apparently, it was much easier for them to fall back into the old rhythms of those hazy days when we’d all been great friends than it was for me.
But then, I supposed Jet didn’t know what it felt like to have Sebastian sling a pale arm around your neck to pull you down into a searing kiss, mumbling all the while about how much he loves you. There are some things you just don’t forget, I guess.
“Nah,” I shook my head. “I’m fine.”
“Just say the word, front man,” she replied with a nod. I nodded back and headed over to the center of the room.
Keen for a distraction, I pulled my guitar back round and started noodling around.
I let my fingers fly over the frets, starting off with the familiar chord progression for “Run”, the single we were making a video for.
I took a detour, following a new melody down and down and down until it was all I could hear.
A familiar prickle across the back of my neck alerted me to the fact that I had someone’s eyes on me.
I looked up, not at all surprised to realize it was Sebastian.
His eyes shone under the lights, like he was drinking in all that electricity.
My bandmates weren’t phased by my fooling around with my guitar – years of soundchecks, tours, late night sing-a-longs, writing, recording, practice sessions and just generally being in my presence for more than 10 minutes meant they were used to me zoning out when I had a guitar in my hands.
I ducked my head as Sebastian ambled over, only looking up again when his shadow fell across my feet. His boots looked pretty cool up close, I had to admit.
“I forgot that you do this sometimes,” he said, voice hushed like he was telling me a secret. Maybe he was – revealing that he’d pushed away his memories of me as much as I’d pushed away my memories of him.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, the way you just…music just flows out of you. I forgot how magical it was.”
“That’s me,” I replied, pushing the words past the dryness in my mouth. “A regular magician.”
“And always so modest.”
“Well, you have a big enough ego for the both of us, Sebastian.”
I was rewarded with one of those laughs, surprisingly loud considering how slender his frame was.
When Sebastian laughs, other people laugh even though they’re seldom in on the joke.
They want to be, though. One look at him, at the mischief sparkling in his eyes and the blinding brightness of his smile, and they want in.
“What were you playing?” He asked, gesturing at my guitar. He’d stepped into my space and I’d unconsciously stepped forward too, following the relentless tug in my gut. He was so close that when he’d gestured in my general direction, our fingers almost brushed.
“Nothing, really,” I answered, trying (and probably failing) to shrug carelessly.
“It sounded like something. Something really gorgeous. You should hold onto it.”
I nodded, struck dumb by another relentless wave of memory.
Back when we’d toured together the first time, I wasn’t as disciplined about song writing (or touring, or eating, or drinking, or falling in fucking love) as I’d become in later years.
It frustrated me no end, how I’d be messing around on the guitar, picking out awesome riffs and winding melodies, but after an incredible set, four beers, and a sneaky hand job round the back of the bus that never failed to make me weak at the knees, I’d forget it.
On the rare nights we got to stay in a motel, I’d sneak into Sebastian’s room with my guitar, fuck around with him for a while (purely for inspirational purposes, I told myself) and then sit on the edge of the bed trying to recapture whatever I’d been stupid enough to let slip through my fingers.
He’d lie on his back, breathing smoke at the ceiling, rotating between laughing at my frustration and soothingly rubbing my back.
“You just need to hold on to it,” he said knowingly one night, like he’d been writing songs for years.
(He had been by that point, motherfucking know-it-all.)
“It’s not that simple,” I told him through gritted teeth, letting my eyes drift closed in the hopes that the warm smell of his clove cigarettes would trigger some sort of muscle memory because by then, all my songs – even the half-written ones – were somehow about him.
“Sure it is,” he shrugged. “When you stumble onto something really gorgeous, just wrap your mind around it and hold on to it as tight as you can.”
I turned to look at him, letting my eyes catch on the silvery moonlight spilling across his pale torso. Everything about him seemed so magnified when we were alone – his smiles were bigger, his skin paler, his eyes brighter, his hair wilder.
I’d wrapped my calloused fingers around his wrist, holding onto him as tight as I dared, feeling his baby bird bones creaking in my grip. His smile went slick as he leaned in, curling his little pink tongue so he could lick playfully at my frowning mouth.
“Yo, frontmen, you’re holding up production here!” Mira yelled as she clambered over her kit.
Sebastian and I blinked owlishly at each other, like we’d both been snapped rather rudely back into the present.
He flashed me another smile, smaller and more sincere than most people ever saw on his stupid handsome face, before making a hasty retreat.
Donnie stepped back up to the camera, seemingly happy with whatever tiny adjustments they’d made to the lights.
I looked into the blank camera lens, grateful to escape the knowing in Sebastian’s eyes.
◆◆ ◆
It was Abbey who broke the news to me when I got home that night.
The shoot had run late, so Sara was already in bed by the time I got there.
I forced down the pang of regret that a whole day had gone by without me seeing my daughter.
I missed her so much it was like an ache in my bones.
Or maybe that was just from carrying the weight of Sebastian’s gaze around all god damn day.
Burning Bright had said their goodbyes around dinner time – their label had made them a reservation at some pricey restaurant in Hollywood.
A journalist from one of the big British broadsheets was doing a profile on the band and so the label had been determined to show them a good time.
Sebastian had actually looked kind of bummed out about it, like he’d rather spend the evening in our darkening warehouse practice space, hearing the same song over and over until Donnie had filmed us performing it from every angle known to fucking man.