Chapter Fifteen
Bowie
Sunday on the couch with Pressley, lounging around in t-shirts and sleep pants, revealed his inner foodie when he pulled up Next Level Chef for us to binge.
By the second episode I was completely hooked and constantly complaining to him about the show being nothing but food porn.
I got up three times to raid the fridge, and that was just between lunch and dinner, and it was all that shows fault.
And I loved it.
I loved sprawling out with my head against his leg and his fingers in my hair.
I loved how excited he got when a team was racing the clock and the way he cheered when the team he was rooting for won a challenge.
I loved sharing a quiet day at home alone with him.
Whether Tony had it planned in advance or whether he decided to dip out after listening to Pressley and I debate which show to watch, I owed him a thank you.
I loved…
The words spun through my head in a crazy corkscrew loop that left me twitching beneath his fingers.
“Bowie, you okay?”
His voice smoothed out the shockwaves a little, though I hated putting that note of worry in it.
“Yeah, I, um…”
Stammering was always a tell. He’d figured that out early and always pressed until I spilled my guts.
I couldn’t just blurt out I love you, he’d probably scoot away and head for the kitchen to whip up a bunch of stuff it would take us days to eat.
If stammering was my tell, cooking was his.
The roast he’d thrown in the crockpot was simple, like he couldn’t wait to park himself on the couch with me.
If I tossed out the I love you card, he’d probably spend the rest of the day in the kitchen.
Since I couldn’t come up with an excuse that would get him to drop it, I sat up and spun, throwing one leg over him until I was straddling his lap.
Kisses were far easier than conversations right now, and I hadn’t gotten enough of them last night.
His fingers in my hair tugged just a little as we made out, and I was well aware of the fact that he was hard beneath me.
“Bowie…” he hissed, breaking the kiss enough to tug my hair back until my throat was bared. “You’re killing me.”
“Killing myself too,” I groaned, shifting my hips as I went right back to kissing him.
His hand landed on my lap just heavy enough to make me moan, so I retaliated by squirming again and earning a squeeze.
I was gonna come just frotting against him, and I was totally fine with that.
Apparently, I wasn’t rocking enough, because he started to rock me to the pace that he wanted me to move, and I groaned as I completely lost it.
His hands were everywhere his lips weren’t as I flew apart in his arms, shuddering against him, which threw him over the edge too.
“Now I’m really curious to know which bit of food porn brought that on,” he groaned, fingertips lightly stroking my back through my t-shirt. “Because I’m going to have to duplicate that recipe.”
“The lobster,” I moaned, out of breath and draped against him.
“Which one?”
“All of them.”
His laughter shook me until I eased off him and flopped on my back on the couch. “I’m just going to lie here and become one with the fabric.”
“After I clean us up.”
Dinner ended up being at half-past ten, because that was when I finally woke up. I didn’t even remember him coming back from the bathroom, I just dropped off hard.
“Are you ready for tomorrow?” He asked across a candlelit table, the meat so tender that we didn’t even need knives.
“Can I be blunt?”
“Of course.”
“We’re not exactly going to be going into the studio with a game plan,” I admitted.
“You kinda dropped it on us on short notice, and if we’re going to be laying down tracks, we should have had some kind of rank list prepared for the songs we are the most ready to record and the ones we need to do our final tweaks on before we record them.
That way we could plan how we want to structure our rehearsal time for after we’re done recording, or before.
None of us are going into this with any idea of how things are gonna go, and that’s kinda scary.
We’re going to need to sort those things out tomorrow. ”
“I fucked up, didn’t I?” Pressley asked, a grim look on his face.
I hated seeing that look because I knew that meant he was beating himself up.
“Just a little. It’s cool that you wanted to surprise us though, like, that really had us hyped up last night.
But when you asked me about today, it suddenly dawned on me that the band should have had a planning session of some sort before we went in there.
I should, um, probably text them and pose those questions. ”
Maybe it wasn’t the best timing, but I shot the questions to the rest of my bandmates by text, figuring they were probably still awake too. The emojis I got back were varying degrees of horrified and sobbing.
“I take it they’re up?”
“Oh yeah,” I said and turned my phone so he could see the emojis.
“Ouch.”
I put the phone face down on the table and stared at him through the flickering flames. “Sorry.”
“No, I’m the one who’s sorry. It’s one thing to have heard all the songs and felt that they are recording ready and another to look at it from a creator’s point of view and consider that there might still be some things you’d like to change about them.”
“Pressley, it’s okay, really,” I said, reaching out to catch his hand and lace our fingers together.
“We’re your first band. We’re all figuring this shit out together.
It’s not like I thought about it until a few minutes ago.
The only thing I was focused on was spending the day with you.
I needed a down day, and today was perfect.
The bookings, Rocktoberfest, heading into the recording studio, that was a lot all at once, and I hadn’t fully sorted it out yet.
Today let me do that. The guys are gonna rank the songs.
I’ll do the same after we finish eating.
I’ll compile them when I have them all and put together the final order, with the songs that need tweaking at the bottom of the list. We’ll work out rehearsal time over lunch tomorrow. That should get us back on track.”
“Thanks, Bowie.”
“No need to thank me, like I said, we’re in this together.”
He gave my hand a squeeze, then let go so we could finish eating, but he wouldn’t let me help with the dishes when we were done.
“Go get your shower, you’ve still got songs to go through,” he said. “I’ve got this.”
I took him at his word and hoped he wouldn’t stew, but he was right; I had work to do.
As a unit, we’d been up until after midnight, but we had everything set up and ready to go at the studio by ten.
Our Fuck You! anthem had been number one on everyone’s to-record list, while Desperate Aggression had been at the bottom, since we hadn’t nailed the chorus or the drum track down.
Claude was close, and each time he came back from a session with Diamond and Shadow, he got closer, it just wasn’t all the way there yet, just like the guitar riffs on Failed and Fried.
I was struggling with those. Most of my time around the firepit was spent working on them and the rest of the lyrics to Resting Bitchface.
We had everything else, including a killer duel between Tibby’s bass and my six-string, but the lyrics, which Tony had started, and I was supposed to finish, weren’t quite hitting right yet.
They called Claude in first to lay down the drum tracks, while all around me, my bandmates got comfortable. Notebooks came out, Tibby put his earbuds in while Tony put his headphones on, and I reached for my acoustic.
While we hadn’t played Failed and Fried on Saturday night, I’d been thinking about it since then, especially the bridge, which needed some of the energy Claude and I had brought to Fuck You!
. An idea popped into my head as I played through it, then painstakingly played through it backwards, having to pause a few times to check the chords.
Forward, backward, backward, forward, once, twice, change chords, and do it again.
And there it was. I added a bit of an embellishment on the end, then set to work finishing the chorus.
It flowed easier now that I’d already tapped into what I was after, though the more I thought about it, the more I felt like the intro and exits needed a bit more bass. Tapping Tibby on the leg, I got him to pull his earbuds out, which caught Tony’s attention, so he killed his music too.
“So hey, I’ve been working on Failed and Fried, and I think we need more contrast,” I said as I turned the notebook around, showing them the new chords I’d been working on.
“Claude’s got that killer funeral march beat going at the beginning, and I feel like we could really nail the tone we’re going for if we add a sick bassline to it. ”
Tibby’s eyes lit up as he stroked his chin, studying the notes I’d made, nodding a little.
“Play what you’ve got for me,” he said, once he’d read through the whole thing.
Tony leaned forward in his seat, completely dialed in to the slow evolution of the song.
Like me, Tibby had brought a backup, not to record with, just to have in case inspiration hit.
Now, we got rolling on the changes, with Tony bringing up the recording of our rehearsal session so Tibby could listen to Claude’s intro and sync up with it.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Pressley taking pictures and Stoli hovering in the doorway, watching us work. He nodded when I caught his eye, and then I turned my attention back to the new bassline Tibby was crafting. I truly get it now. What he and the others had been trying to teach us.