Chapter Fifteen
Fifteen
Chicago starts to shrink as we inch toward the Cold Sweat concert, the posters slowly closing in on my block.
They spread through the city like a rash, plastered on the old brick building near my bus stop, and when I board the bus, the ads are on there, too.
Texts trickle in from old acquaintances, asking if I’m playing the show or if I’m planning to attend or, more commonly, if I can score them free tickets.
I wonder why I ever gave out my phone number.
I wonder where these messages were when my dad died.
On a particularly hot Monday morning, Aidan requests my help for setup in studio B.
He posts up in the control room, instructing via intercom while I scuttle around the studio testing mics and swapping cables.
I’ve learned so much as a studio assistant, but I look forward to when I’m in Aidan’s shoes, the one with the vision.
When he comes on the intercom with a “Hey, Alice,” I turn to make sure I haven’t crossed any literal wires.
Instead, Aidan’s brows are raised behind the glass, sincerity written into the grooves of his forehead.
“I think you should go to the Cold Sweat show.”
It’s like my spine has been surgically replaced with an icicle. Two weeks have passed since Cold Sweat’s studio session, and he’d yet to mention it, so I’d thought I was in the clear. “What?”
The look on Aidan’s face is so careful and earnest, I would hardly recognize him if not for that damn sweatshirt. He holds down the intercom and addresses me through the speakers on high.
“I’ve been thinking about it a lot,” Aidan starts. “You’re damn good at this, Alice. You’re going places as an engineer. But your old band is going places, too. The lead singer…Solas, right?”
I nod, my pulse thudding just at the sound of his name.
Solas Callaghan, an enormous redheaded gargoyle of a man, once cocaptain of Cold Sweat, now front and center without me.
We weren’t cut out to share the spotlight—I was drunk and unpredictable.
Solas was domineering and constantly cheating on his girlfriend.
It wasn’t a good look for any of us—but more sustainable in the long run for him, apparently.
“Well, Solas is a star, dude,” Aidan goes on.
“He’s the real deal. The shit we worked on is really shaping up.
I dunno what happened with y’all, but I’m just saying that if you patch things up…
they’ll be cutting an album soon, and if you could sweet-talk your way into production credit on that… that could be career-making for you.”
My grip tightens around the cable in my fist. He’s probably right, but I don’t want to hear it.
“Just something to consider,” Aidan says. “A little career advice.”
“I’ll think about it,” I say, even if thinking about Cold Sweat is the one thing I’ve been trying not to do.
That night before bed, I dive into the black hole I’ve dodged for so long.
Band interviews, singles, video clips, every publicly accessible memory I’ve missed from the last three years of Cold Sweat.
I scroll until my eyes go dry, searching high and low for a quote or a photo, a song I could twist and twist beyond recognition till I’m convinced it’s a diss track about me.
But there’s nothing. Solas does not talk about me.
Interviewers have stopped asking. There are a few mentions of me on the band Subreddit, but aside from that, it’s been largely forgotten that Cold Sweat ever had a different bassist. It’s a little heartbreaking—but a little peaceful, too.
It’s enough to trick myself into a few hours of sleep before I’m back in the studio for another shift.
Work keeps me busy, but it keeps Renee busier.
She hasn’t said much about what’s happening at the Blomquist, but then again, the wedding monopolizes most of our conversations, and work steals most of our time.
Coordinating schedules between the bridesmaids is a nightmare, but we finally land on a Saturday morning, six weeks before the big day, when all three of us are free to build centerpieces.
Chrissy arrives right on time, albeit with a yoga mat slung over her shoulder.
“I’ll have to dip out a little early,” she warns, and I’m marginally annoyed but more concerned that we’re one bridesmaid short.
Renee arrives not long thereafter, but while a ten-minute delay might be negligible for someone else, it’s awfully suspicious when it’s Renee.
At a glance, all is well; she’s put-together, as usual, in a red-and-white ringer tee and denim shorts, hair in a low ponytail with a few loose pieces intentionally framing her cheekbones.
Nothing about her is visibly off, but when she apologizes for running late, there’s something clunky about her delivery.
It’s like she’s talking to us about one thing but her mind is somewhere else entirely.
I mouth “You okay?” to her when Chrissy is otherwise distracted, but Renee doesn’t offer much—just a quick glance toward Chrissy and the promise of “later” through gritted teeth. “When it’s just us,” she whispers, and, despite my worry, I love the sound of it. Just us.
We schlep the centerpiece supplies up to my apartment—cardboard trays of succulents, slouchy bags of potting soil, and the terrariums. Our gardening project has nothing on Gin and Rishi’s landscaping work, though.
The group chat has been inundated with progress pictures of the Bhats’ backyard, transformed by hours of manual labor.
Limestone pavers and lush butterfly bushes, plus the existing cattails and prairie grass of the marsh, create a near-finished picture of a ceremony site fit for a fairy tale.
I lay out a tarp in my living room, and for an hour or two, we’re a three-woman assembly line: Chrissy fills the terrariums with dirt and rocks while I shimmy succulents out of their plastic pots, and Renee does the planting.
We’re not quite finished when Chrissy has to split for her hot-yoga class, but only after capturing dozens of pictures of us with our centerpieces.
“Don’t get up! I know how a door works!” she calls on her way out, blowing two kisses behind her. “Love ya!”
“Love ya back,” I call, and I can tell how much I mean it.
I didn’t realize how much I’d missed her all these years—that wild, wonderful enigma of a woman.
The door clicks shut, and then it’s just me and Renee.
Just us. I wait a while to see if she brings it up, whatever it is that’s weighing on her.
But she doesn’t, and a thought burns in the back of my mind: Maybe it’s me.
I have to close my eyes to ask. “Did I do something wrong?”
“What?”
I suck in a breath and ask again. “Did I do something—”
“You did nothing wrong,” Renee interrupts, and only then am I brave enough to open my eyes. Hers are dim; they drop down to her hands, and she pinches her knuckle. With her rings stowed on the coffee table, safe from the dirt, she has nothing to fidget with.
“Is it…Chrissy?” I guess.
Renee shakes her head. The tarp crinkles as she pulls her legs farther beneath her. “It’s…” She cycles a deep breath. “It’s work.”
“The Blomquist?”
She nods once, then her gaze flits around the room, resting anywhere except on me. Her eyes are steady on the ceiling when she finally confesses. “I lost my job.”
Silence. For a few seconds, my brain is entirely blank.
Then it actually registers what she said, and I don’t understand; all I can hear is the blood pounding in my ears.
Even straight from the source, my gut insists that this has to be a joke.
But the sorry, solemn look on Renee’s face, how she combs her hair back with shaky, dirty fingers, speckling her blond strands with soil…
she’s really not herself. My chest feels like it’s pressed inside a trash compactor.
I have so many questions, but for once, I don’t talk. I just listen.
“The Blomquist lost an enormous chunk of funding,” Renee starts. Her voice is flat. Detached. “Our federal grant was completely eliminated, so the board decided to restructure and…six of us got laid off. It wasn’t just me.”
“I’m so, so sorry, Renee.”
Still, she won’t look at me. She’s stiff and withdrawn, like there’s something else she’s not telling me.
“When did this happen?”
Renee hesitates. “A while ago.”
“Can you be more specific?”
Her eyes track toward the window, as far away from me as possible. “I don’t know if I want to tell you.”
“Renee.”
She huffs a small, sad laugh. Not a ha ha, that’s so funny laugh, but a ha ha, my life is pitiful laugh. Her voice stalls between a whisper and a whimper when she says, “Remember how I was late to the engagement party?”
No.
“I had to go in to clean out my desk.”
No no no.
We’re both silent as I try to strong-arm the truth into making sense.
This is Renee Roberts. Renowned overachiever and vision board manifester.
Executor of the five-year plan. From the moment I met her, I understood Renee as a woman who tied a leash around her life and taught it to heel.
And it did. It worked. She has become what she said she would become, done exactly what she set out to do.
And still had it all fall apart.
I pinch the spiky leaf of an aloe plant, trying to sort out the scramble of emotions in my chest. I’m sad for her. Confused for me. And I’m angry. She’s been lying for weeks.
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
Whatever Renee is choking back doesn’t go down easy. Her eyes pinch at the corners, damming back tears. I see how much this confession is costing her, and my anger ebbs back a bit. When Renee finally speaks, her voice is frail, each word limping out after the next.