Chapter Six
Chapter Six
“None of them?”
Two hours later, Allie, who had absolutely been planning to leave as soon as dinner was finished, was reclining comfortably in the nontippy armchair, nursing her third glass of wine. Anisha and Ryan shared the couch, their various limbs sprawled over throw pillows.
“None of them,” Allie confirmed.
“Not even Jessi?” Anisha could not believe that Allie had lost touch with all of her bandmates. “But you said she was your best friend!”
“She was.” Something about being made to talk about the band for what felt like the fiftieth time that week had defeated Allie’s defenses. Safely ensconced in this cozy apartment, with these two people who wanted her to talk, made her braver.
That and the wine.
“Okay, I admit that I’d never heard of your band until Ryan showed up excited about meeting you last week, but I’m all in now. What a story. You started touring when you were eighteen?”
“Yep. Right out of high school. My mom was kind of an asshole.” Allie paused. “Not kind of. My mom was a huge asshole. Like, bitter that my dad died, and just lonely and sad and drunk and mean. And then she got sick.” Allie swallowed. “And…she died. Cancer. But by the time that happened, I wasn’t living there anymore. We weren’t close. I was sad, but maybe not as sad as I should have been.” It was more than she usually admitted. Even to Mindy, who knew full well what a rotten parent her own sister had been, Allie was always careful to make things seem not that bad. Her mom kept her fed and clothed. She worried that she’d seem like a brat if she complained that her mom just never seemed to like her.
“When the band started to gain momentum, I basically just moved out of my mom’s apartment and into a tour van. I lived with Jessi during our downtime. And then after my mom died, I lived with Jessi all the time. Jessi’s mom was an asshole, too, but she lived with her grandma, who was amazing. We’d show up in the middle of the night after driving for hours to get home at the end of a tour, and then we’d crash and wake up at noon the next day. Jessi’s grandma would be waiting in the kitchen for us, and she’d have made us huge bowls of udon soup. After eating all the shitty food we ate on tour, I would drive all the way home thinking about that soup.”
She could picture Jessi’s grandma’s kitchen, with its bamboo placemats and bright-yellow curtains. The steam from the pots of broth and noodles fogging up the sliding doors that led to the peaceful garden out back. She and Jessi always sat in the same spots, across from each other at the shiny wooden dining table, grinning while Jessi’s grandma scolded them for not eating enough. As if they were sisters who had been sitting there all their lives.
She dragged her mind back into the present. “Anyway, soup or no soup, I was always ready to be on the road again.”
“And Jessi? Did she like being on the road, too?”
“At first.” Allie ignored the voice in her head that always urged her to clam up when she got to this part of the story. It was hiding behind a thick curtain of red wine. “But later she met a girl—Jasmine, her name was—and fell in love, and then she didn’t want to tour anymore.”
Allie met Ryan’s eyes. He hadn’t asked any questions, but he was listening intently. The open affection in his expression caused a plume of adrenaline to rush through her. She looked away from him quickly.
“But I don’t get it.” Anisha sat forward, abandoning her nest of pillows for a moment. “Why are you not still friends?”
Allie exhaled with force and looked at the ceiling. Here it was. The part of the story that hurt the most.
“I fucked it up.”
Allie looked at her new friends on the couch across from her. Anisha’s feet were tucked up against Ryan’s leg. They were both waiting for her to continue.
“I didn’t think the relationship was serious, and I told her she was messing up everything we’d worked so hard for all because of some girl. I was jealous. Not because I was in love with Jessi, but because I guess I thought that we were, like…I don’t know…”
“Platonic life partners?” Ryan offered.
Allie smiled at him. “Yeah. Something like that. Anyway…” She downed the last of her wine and put the glass gently on the coffee table. “I was awful to her. She was already getting tired of touring. She wanted to be at home near her grandma and have, like, a normal life, I guess. But I didn’t listen to her. I just said all kinds of mean and dismissive things and then told her that if she chose her girlfriend over our band, then I didn’t want to have anything else to do with her.” She looked from Anisha to Ryan and back again. Neither of them seemed to be thinking that she was an irredeemable monster, so she continued.
“Mimi and Ayla didn’t want to get in the middle of it, but they also didn’t want to be in the band without Jessi. Plus, they saw how I was acting like a shithead, so they just bailed, too. So, since I had no friends left in Jersey, I packed up my one bag of stuff and moved to Brooklyn. Mindy gave me an apartment and a job. That was ten years ago, and nothing much has changed since.”
Anisha collapsed back into her pile of pillows. “Shit, Allie. That’s intense.”
Allie nodded. “Yup.”
“You must have really loved your band.”
Allie froze. It wasn’t the reaction she was expecting. She’d thought Ryan or Anisha would say something along the lines of We all make mistakes or You were young . The kinds of things Mindy used to say before she gave up asking Allie to talk about what had happened.
“I did. I did love my band.” Allie’s throat got thick, and her eyes burned. She coughed and straightened in her chair.
“I loved your band, too.” Ryan stood up and walked toward a shelf between the two windows that held an impressive record collection as well as the record player itself and two large speakers. He flipped through some of the albums and then pulled out the first Jetskis record. The cover showed them all standing around the Jet Ski from Jessi’s grandma’s garage. They’d pushed it out into the street and taken the photo at sunset. The suburban Fort Lee neighborhood stretched out behind them. The streetlights had just come on, and the sky was orange.
Ryan pulled the album out of its sleeve and held it above the turntable. “Do you mind?”
Allie shrugged. “Go ahead, I guess.”
Anisha sat forward, excited. “Amazing! Play it!”
Taking care not to touch the grooves, he laid it on the turntable, lowered the cover and pressed a button on the front. Allie heard a few seconds of static from the speakers, and then the first notes of her lead guitar riff for “You’re So Strange” filled the room.
She hadn’t heard their songs for years. Jessi’s loud, aggressive vocals filled her with a fizzy excitement, and then, as her own melodic voice came in as the backing vocals, she felt instantly wistful for the way their voices worked in tandem. They hardly ever had to talk about it. The songs just worked .
Anisha looked at her with wide eyes. “You were good .”
Ryan, who was still standing by the record player, nodded. “Damn straight they were good.”
Allie didn’t know what to say. She smiled and sat still, listening to the album for the first time in years. They’d only had enough money for one day in the studio, so they hadn’t spent much time correcting takes unless an error had ruined a song. The tiny mistakes they made during the recording were now so familiar they seemed like intentional parts of the songs. The album was a time capsule, all of their emotion and excitement frozen on vinyl forever. She’d thought it would hurt more to hear it. But Anisha and Ryan were right, it was good . Listening was a sweet kind of pain, like a mouthful of sour candy.
They listened in silence for a few songs. Anisha offered more wine, and Allie declined, already feeling too buzzed from what she’d consumed.
“You know…” Anisha leaned forward to fill her own glass and then flopped back onto the couch and took a long sip. “Ryan’s always wanted to be in a band.”
“Yeah?” Allie looked at him, her eyes full of questions. “What do you play?”
“Nothing!” His strong, husky laugh filled the room. “But in my daydreams, I learn the drums.”
“Because of ‘Doctor Worm.’?” Anisha nodded.
“?‘Doctor Worm’?” Allie looked from Ryan to Anisha. “What’s that?”
“?‘Doctor Worm’!” Ryan seemed to think repetition would explain it. “You know the song by They Might Be Giants? About the worm who wants to play the drums?”
Allie laughed. “Wait, I might actually know that song. I think it was on one of the mixtapes we used to play in the van on tour. Doctor Worm isn’t a real doctor, but he is a real worm?”
“That’s it!” Ryan smiled. “ I’m not a doctor or a worm. Or a drummer, for that matter.”
“I’m sure you could learn if you wanted.” He looked like a drummer. She could easily imagine him, brow furrowed, sticks in hand, cheeks pink from the exertion. His large, firm hands holding the sticks, muscles flexing in his forearms. Was she blushing?
Nope. This is not going to turn into a crush.
“Maybe someday.” Ryan winked at her, and her insides turned to goo.
No.
She had enough problems.
When the album ended and she discovered with a shock that it was nearly 11 p.m., she collected her jacket and purse and said thank you and goodbye to Anisha.
“I can walk you home,” Ryan said, reaching for his coat.
“No!” Allie protested quickly. “I mean, it’s an easy walk, and the streets are still full of people. Not dangerous at all. And to be honest”—she held up her phone, headphone wires cascading down—“I kind of like to walk and listen to music after, uh, busy evenings.”
Ryan nodded. “I get it. You need some introvert time. But just—Can I see your phone for a minute?” He held out his hand. Allie slowly placed her phone in his palm. He tapped on the screen and then typed something with his thumbs and handed it back.
“I know you said you didn’t want my number, but I really do need you to text me to let me know you got home safe. Otherwise, I’ll feel weird.”
Allie felt a heat gather in her chest, and she bit back a smile. “I suppose that’s okay.”
“Good,” he said. He put his hands in his pockets and rocked back and forth on his heels.
“Good.” She bit her lip. “See you. I mean, maybe.”
He smiled. “See you maybe.”
The idea of Anisha and Ryan becoming her friends was less terrifying than she expected. They seemed to actually like her, even after she told them how awful she’d been to her bandmates. As she left the apartment, a wave of cautious happiness washed over her. Opening the music app on her phone, she searched “Jetskis” and clicked Play. The ghost of her past self filled her ears as she stepped out into the lively nighttime streets of Brooklyn.