Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fourteen
True to his word, Ryan showed up to record with her the following Tuesday. Allie had predicted that he would be too tall for her apartment. She was correct.
He’d been there for all of five minutes before he attempted to stand to his full height from where he’d been leaning over her computer and his head collided with the ceiling. The thunk was alarming.
“ Sweet Fancy Moses! ”
Allie wasn’t sure whether to express concern for his head or laugh at his exclamation.
“This apartment is for short people,” Ryan grumbled. He bent his knees and waddled over to the chair by the window. Allie retrieved two cans of sparkling water from her tiny fridge, and he accepted one gratefully, pausing before opening it to press the cool metal against his sore head. “I mean, I also like it. It’s nice. Very you .”
“Oh?” Allie laughed. “I’m tiny and cold and not up to current structural standards?”
“Well, yes, all that,” Ryan answered, not missing a beat. “But also, it’s cute and welcoming and everything is tidy. I know how you like things to be kinda predictable.”
She didn’t miss that he’d just called her cute, but she tried to ignore it for the sake of her already jittery nervous system.
He was right about her liking a predictable life, though that life seemed like a distant memory at this point. Some days, she wondered what would have happened if she’d never gone on that coffee delivery to the studio and met Ryan. The idea of Ryan—and Anisha—not being in her life had quickly become unfathomable. But where her feelings were concerned, things were getting…complicated.
“I’m glad you were able to come over tonight,” she told Ryan, making sure she was looking intently at her computer screen as she spoke.
“Yeah, I’ve been busy. I’m sorry.” Ryan had been going on dates, which, when combined with his work schedule, left less free time for him to hang out. Allie hated it, but she’d tried to be cool.
“It’s no problem. How’s, uh, Sheila doing?”
“Well…” Ryan tilted his head from one side to the other. “I guess fine? I pumped the brakes on us for the time being.”
“Oh?” Allie struggled to keep her voice neutral.
“Yeah. She’s younger than me. We didn’t really have enough in common. I don’t really think I was her type. It’s fine. I wasn’t in love or anything.”
Allie adjusted the microphone so that it pointed at the xylophone, which sat on the table in front of Ryan. He held the wooden mallet in his hand, ready.
Ryan is available.
Trying to ignore her own thoughts, she positioned her headphones over her ears. “Okay, play a few notes, and I’ll check the levels.”
Ryan tentatively played the opening notes of the “Borderline” melody, and Allie stared at the bars on her laptop screen, clicking on a few of them to get the sound to be exactly what she’d envisioned. She picked up her acoustic guitar and nodded at Ryan, who played the melody again while she tested out some muted chords with an emphasis on the bass line she’d been hearing in her head. Satisfied with the levels, she handed Ryan her extra set of headphones, and he put them on. She plugged his headphones into her tiny soundboard beside hers and started the backing track that she’d made so he could hear it.
“This is amazing!” Ryan’s voice was louder to account for them both wearing headphones. “It’s perfect.”
Allie stopped the music and pulled her headphones off, resting them around her neck. Ryan did the same.
“It’s actually just a rudimentary backing track, mostly so we have the click track of the drums to keep us on time. I’m going to record my guitar part first, then you do your xylophone, then we’ll add the vocals. Good?”
Ryan nodded. “Whatever you say, boss!”
Allie smiled. She had always avoided being the boss in all aspects of her life. But something about the way Ryan said it, the way he seemed delighted and impressed that she was in charge, made her feel good about it.
—
Singing with Ryan was the best thing that had happened to her in years. It felt similar to singing with Jessi, but less urgent . In a good way. Writing songs with her band had been exhilarating, but with that kind of exhilaration always came stress. They would all write together, try things out, argue about stuff that others did or didn’t like, and then eventually end up with this shiny diamond of a song, refined from carbon under the heat and pressure of four people’s opinions.
With Ryan, she was in charge; the song was already written, and he had very little to prove. He played his xylophone riff over and over until she was satisfied, and then he sang, in his strong and steady voice, whenever she asked him to. He could hold a note while she added harmony. They sounded good together.
“I think I’m going to try to mix this right now.” Allie leaned over her laptop, her mind whirring with ideas for the final recording. “But you don’t have to stay. I know it’s almost nine.”
By that point, Ryan was stretched out on her bed, resting with his hands behind his head and his legs hanging over the side. He lifted his head to look at her. “No way! I want to hear our masterpiece in its final form.”
Allie grinned. “Okay, but you may want food. Ren should be just finishing up downstairs if you want to go grab something.”
Ryan stood up carefully. He’d already hit his head several more times. “Sure thing! I’ll go say hi to Ren and bring us up some snacks.”
As much as she’d enjoyed having Ryan in her apartment for the evening, Allie relished this moment alone. She closed her eyes and thought through the song and the way she wanted the final product to sound. Absentmindedly, she picked up Ryan’s mallet and tapped a few notes on the xylophone. She was still tapping out this new melody when Ryan returned, holding a plate with two huge slices of pecan pie on it.
“Hey, that’s pretty. What’s that from?” He set the plate down on the table next to Allie and handed her a fork.
“Nothing, I don’t think. I’m pretty sure I made it up.” She played it again and hummed another melody over top of the notes.
“Well, I like it! Make some words!”
Allie laughed. “I don’t have a wand that I wave to conjure lyrics.”
“That’s not how it works, huh?” He grinned at her.
“It kind of used to work that way, to be honest. When we were writing as a band, I just used to shout out these sentences, and Jessi would come up with alternate verses. We could write a song in a matter of hours. But also, we had the dumb confidence of teenagers. Now I’m too in my head. I haven’t written a song for a decade. Every time I try, I just talk myself out of it.”
“That why you’re doing the cover song project?”
“It’s part of it, yeah.”
“What’s the other part?” Ryan was halfway through his piece of pie, and Allie hadn’t touched hers yet. She took a small bite and sighed. Without having to get up, she nudged the crate of cassette tapes toward Ryan with her foot.
He looked down at it, confused. “Are these the cassettes from your tour van? The ones fans made?”
Allie shook her head. “No. Jessi took those. These ones were my dad’s.”
Ryan met her eyes and then reached toward the crate. “May I?” She nodded.
Ryan slowly took out various cassettes, one after the other, looking at each and then making tiny stacks on the table.
“Cyndi Lauper. The Bangles. The Go-Go’s. Your dad liked these bands?”
“So much.” Allie picked up a Pat Benatar cassette and rubbed her finger over the warped and banged-up plastic of the cover. The plastic squeaked as she opened it. “I assume this was his favorite. It’s definitely been handled the most.” She pulled the tape out and carefully removed and unfolded the insert. Ryan leaned forward to look at it.
“These things always feel so fragile to me. Like you could listen to them three times and then they turn to dust.”
“Yeah, I’m lucky to have all of these. My mom got rid of most of my dad’s stuff when he died.”
“How old were you?” Ryan’s normal exuberant fidgeting had turned to stillness.
“I was seven.” She reassembled the parts of the Pat Benatar cassette and laid it on the table. “Old enough to remember him. But just barely.”
“And what was he like?”
“He was nice.” She smiled. “My mom’s family was always—Well, that’s where I get my prickly side you like so much.” She glanced at Ryan and found herself fighting a blush in her cheeks. “I mean, you’ve met Mindy, so you probably already knew that. But my dad was sweet. Easygoing. Not perfect; he drank too much beer and played his music too loud late at night. But when it woke me up, I’d go to the top of the stairs and watch him, and if he saw me, he’d look so happy. Like he was lucky I was there. And he’d make me come down and dance with him for a while, and then he’d take me back up to bed.”
“How did he die?”
Allie swallowed. “Car accident. He was drunk. Didn’t hurt anyone else. Just himself.”
“And your mom?”
“Cancer. When I was eighteen. Likely also aggravated by drinking and hating everything and everybody.”
Ryan exhaled. “Wow. I’m so sorry.”
This was the point where Allie usually brushed it off. She never wanted to dwell, to be seen as a victim of a bad childhood when there were so many other people who had it worse. But this time, she just looked into Ryan’s eyes and nodded.
“Thank you. It was pretty shitty. My mom died when I was on my first tour with the band. It was just Mindy and me and a handful of randos at the funeral. I cleaned out the apartment, junked all of her crap and then officially moved in with Jessi at her grandma’s place. Jessi’s parents weren’t great, either, but she’d been living with her grandma since she was in third grade. She had a lot more stability than I did, and I just—” Allie sighed. This was starting to feel more painful. “I just needed that so much. Her grandma had been so good to let me live with them whenever we weren’t on tour. No questions asked. Anyway.” She picked up three of the cassettes and absentmindedly assembled them into a small tower. “Things would have been easier with my dad around. He kind of kept my mom in check. She was a grouch, but he was always pretty happy.”
“So the covers project, it’s kind of for your dad?”
She nodded again. “Yeah. It’s like I get to go back to that living room, to listen to those songs again with him. It’s the next best thing to having him here to listen to these new versions with me. Music was such a big deal to him. Even when I was a kid, I wanted to be a part of that.”
“I get it.” Ryan started gently placing the tapes back in the crate. “Anisha teases me about singing church songs around the apartment, but I love those songs. They’re my version of your dance party memories. My whole family and me, with my brothers and sisters all too young to know any different, standing in church to sing to the Lord together.”
“Hallelujah,” Allie said softly.
“Hallelujah, indeed.” He held her gaze.
“Have you thought any more about writing that letter to Rachel?”
Ryan shook his head. “I kind of put it out of my mind right after we talked about it. Maybe she doesn’t want anything to do with me, and I don’t think I’m ready for that door to be completely closed.”
“Wait a minute.” Allie was distracted by a sudden thought. “Ryan, Rachel…Are all of you R names?”
Ryan laughed. “Ronnie, Rayann, Ripley, Robert, Rachel and Ryan. I guess they thought it would foster some kind of connection between us. Also, it was pretty common in our town, like a weird viral baby-naming trend.”
“Oh wow.” Allie’s eyes widened. “Did people, like, make fun of you?”
“Not for that. But for lots of other things. Let’s save my childhood disillusionment for another night, shall we? I’m going to get out of your way so you can edit our song and then play it for me.” He stood up, taking care to slouch so as not to make contact with the ceiling, and moved back over to her bed.
Allie looked at him for a moment. “No.” She shook her head. “Tell me.”
Ryan shook his head and opened his mouth, as if he was about to dismiss the subject again.
“I want to know.” Allie held his gaze. After a moment, his shoulders fell, and he stopped shaking his head.
“I’ll tell you the short version.”
She nodded.
Ryan let out a long, noisy breath. “Kids made fun of me for all the things you’d probably expect. For them, I was too fat, I was bad at sports, I was friends with girls instead of boys. I was arty. I cried once when we watched a documentary about veterans with PTSD getting dogs to help.”
Allie smiled at him, tenderness welling up in her heart.
“And because I was the oldest, I didn’t have anyone to defend me or watch out for me. I had all these siblings and all kinds of cousins and stuff in town, but I was the oldest out of everyone. No one ever really helped me out. I had to fight through it all on my own. And then I had to make sure it didn’t happen to any of my siblings or little cousins. It was damn hard. It all sucked. One of the nice things about living here is not having to be responsible for all kinds of people who don’t even really seem to care if I’m happy myself. My life was exhausting before I moved here. Trying to protect myself and everyone else. Here, I just get to be who I want to be.”
Ryan, who always seemed so friendly and open, had never actually been that honest with her about his personal life. It felt special being there with him, as if the singing had opened some imaginary door she’d previously been unaware of.
“Allie?” Ryan’s voice snapped her out of her fog of thoughts.
“Yes?”
“Can you edit the song now?” He wiggled his eyebrows up and down.
Allie worked quickly. She already had a vision for the song, and the parts they’d recorded were perfect. She put on her headphones and hunkered over her laptop. Within an hour, she had a finished version pieced together.
“Are you ready?” she asked. Ryan sat up from where he’d been lying on the bed, looking at his phone to pass the time.
“It’s done?”
“I think so.”
“Oh man, yes, play it! I can’t wait!”
Allie hit Play and went to sit beside him on the bed. The first notes of the xylophone riff, recorded alone without any other vocals or instruments, poured from her small but powerful speakers. After a moment, her muted acoustic guitar joined in, then the drum loop and finally the vocals. She was pleased to note that she’d mixed their voice tracks perfectly. They sounded good. Great , even.
When her vocal track slid into a harmony, Ryan held out his bare forearm for her to see. “Goose bumps.”
Allie nodded and held her arm up beside his, barely touching. “Me too.”
When the song finished, Ryan collapsed back on the bed. “That was…amazing. How are we that good?”
Allie laughed with relief and collapsed back beside him. “I don’t know! We’re greater than the sum of our parts, I guess.”
Ryan angled his body toward Allie and propped his head up on one arm. “Allie?”
“Hmm?” She took a deep breath and raised her head so her face was level with his.
They were definitely too close to one another. Or just close enough.
He swallowed, held her gaze for a moment and then averted his eyes. She could feel his breath when he exhaled before speaking.
“What you said about your dad, that he seemed like he felt lucky to have you around. He was lucky. We all are.”
Allie was sure he could hear her heart beating. It felt like a panicked bird trapped in her chest. She took a deep breath, staring hard, watching his eyelashes flutter as he blinked. Oh boy, she loved those eyelashes. His lips were curved into a nervous smile.
Ryan moved his right hand to her shoulder, silently.
Allie’s mind swirled with anticipation and anxiety. She could barely breathe as he slid the hand up to her neck and gently pressed to move her head toward his. As her face got closer, she closed her eyes.
The crash was huge, like a tray of dishes hitting the ground. It echoed up from the kitchen, directly below where they were sitting.
Her eyes flew open. They both sat up.
“What was that?”
“I don’t know.” She was on her feet. Ryan followed her to the door of the apartment, where they both stood still.
Ren would have gone home ages ago. Mindy never came in after hours. It wasn’t a noise that would have come from a random dish shifting in the drying rack. There had to be someone there.
Shit.