Chapter 13
(Rebel)
“Shouldn’t you be resting?”
Kit’s voice startled me, and I raised my head a tad too fast, causing the world to spin again.
Holy shit, was this ever going to end? While I hadn’t missed any shows yet, I would miss one tomorrow and it had me pissed off enough that I couldn’t sleep.
While I knew Kayden would do an amazing job filling in for me for tomorrow’s set, it sucked that he’d have to pull double duty, but I’d do the same for him if he ever needed me to.
Being on the road together, jumping in and out of each other’s sets to thrill the fans, meant that we’d all learned enough songs by the other band to stand in for someone in case of accident, illness, or random acts of stupidity like I was prone to.
Stitches sucked, and itched. It had taken seven to close the gash I’d gotten when I’d hit the door frame trying to help Kit to his room after it had been reopened in the mosh pit.
In hindsight, I should have said something that night, when I’d started getting nauseous while working on the song, and had to cut the session short so I could lay down.
Low grade concussion. Joy of joys. I’d pretty much known that was the case when standing on stage had resulted in a sea of sideways faces.
Sitting helped keep the spinny feeling at bay.
Staring at my fingers and the cord by my boot gave me something to focus on.
Water would have been nice if I hadn’t been afraid of puking all over the stage.
Somehow, I’d pushed through it, but everything changed when Johnny helped me stand so I could leave the stage.
It was like the whole thing was pitching and heaving while I couldn’t remember how to put one foot in front of the other without feeling like I was sliding off the edge of the world.
“I’ve been resting for the past three days,” I grumbled. “Never thought I’d complain about not being able to do a radio appearance, but I’d have loved to go today.”
“It was fun.”
Grumbling, I scooted closer to the end of the couch and drew my knees up, wiggling until I’d made plenty of room for him.
A plush sofa lined each side of the bus in our mobile living room, but I’d really prefer if he’d join me over here, rather than on the other side of the slim coffee table. “Just rub it in, why don’t you.”
“Sorry, I wasn’t trying to.”
“Why aren’t you resting?” I asked, taking in his disheveled hair and wrinkled t-shirt.
“I was until I heard the TV come on,” he replied. “Then I decided to see who was up and what they were working on.”
“I love the additions you’ve made to the new song.”
“We still need a name for it.”
"Yeah, I never did come up with one when I was working on it,” I replied as I flipped through movie options on the streaming service.
I hadn’t been out here long enough to figure out what to watch, so I hoped he was prepared to stick around and help with that.
“How’s your head?”
“Fine as long as I don’t brush my hair, rub it with a towel, or attempt to lay down on that side,” I admitted.
“You should have told someone when you got hurt.”
“And we’re back to you rubbing it in.”
“No, that was just me stating the obvious. You scared the fuck out of everyone.”
“Waking up in the hospital was no joy either,” I admitted. “Let’s chalk it up to a lesson learned.”
“Does that mean you’ll tell someone the next time you gash open a body part?”
“It was my head, which I’ve been told is hard enough to withstand a rhino stampede,” I said. “Figured it would just scab over on its own, which it did.”
“Uh-huh.” Kit said, shaking his head at me. “Can I ask you something?”
“Only if you sit down first. Trying to stare up at you is making my neck hurt.”
“Sorry about that,” he muttered and sprawled in the opposite direction, so our heads were practically touching.
The slightly curved ends meant more space on each couch, which was exactly why we’d chosen them for our bus.
There were narrow end tables behind each end for drinks, with the coffee table in the center used specifically for weed and writing.
We’d learned early in our life on the road that one wrong bump could be a cataclysmic disaster for a song we were still in the process of working on.
The arguments that had ensued during the rewrite of Fatal Dreams had been epic and resulted in a three-day standoff between Dash and Ozzy in which they refused to work on their parts of the song until certain words were changed.
In an act of ultimate defiance, Johnny had rewritten the whole damned thing, replacing the contentious words with ones neither of them had chosen.
In the end, we’d wound up with a way stronger and more concise song than the one we’d been piecemealing together, ending the silence between Dash and Ozzy when they both agreed that Johnny’s version was the one we needed to run with.
“So um, can I?”
“Huh?” I said, finger still absently scrolling past movies, so lost in memories I’d forgotten to pay attention to what the options were. “Oh yeah, ask away.”
“How’d you write that song?” he blurted.
“Pen and paper.”
He let out a snort that morphed into a chuckle. “I walked right into that one, didn’t I?”
“Naa, you jumped in with both feet while wearing a kick me sign.”
“Never heard it put that way before.”
"Because it’s a line I’ve been fiddling with.”
“For how long?" he asked as I slid the remote his way.
“I’ll talk to you about songwriting until the sun comes up if you want, as long as you find us something to watch.”
“Any specific genre or…”
“Dude, if I had any idea at all, do you think I’d have passed you the remote?”
“I guess not,” he replied and took over scrolling.
When he stopped on Prom Night, I settled in to enjoy an old classic.
“You fit in perfectly with this crew, I hope you know that,” I said as he laid the remote on the coffee table.
“I take it you approve of my movie choice?”
“Oh yeah,” I replied. “As for the line, it sorta popped into my head while I was waiting to get discharged from the hospital. Well, what actually popped into my head was jumping in with both feet, blindfolded, but when I really started to think about it, it seemed like I was saying the feet were blindfolded, only feet don’t have eyes, so then I flipped it around to "blindfolded and jumping in with both feet," but something about that still didn’t pack the punch I wanted it to. I played with a few more variants of that one, then started to make notes to myself about what it was I was trying to say.”
“Okay, and what are you trying to say with that?” Kit asked.
“That you’re taking the plunge knowing the consequences will fuck you up.”
“So, a kick me sign is you saying they’re doing it already knowing they’ll be kicked in the teeth?”
“Or the feelings.”
“Yeah. Yeah, okay, it can be doing it knowing they’ll be mocked too,” Kit said.
“Exactly.”
“It can be taken a bunch of different ways,” Kit said. “There are all of these images in my head, different results, but born of the same line.”
“Which is what we want,” I explained. “A good song is like an inside joke. Some people are gonna get it, some people are gonna scratch their heads, some are going to wonder about the phrasing and try to pick apart every word, and some are gonna walk away disappointed because they didn’t get it.
A great song, however, is like ripples of wildfire, hitting people in different ways, sparking thought, conversation, and debate, but most of all, forging connections.
There’s nothing wrong with a good song; those are fun, but it’s great songs that create legacies. ”
“Kinda brings me back to my original question,” Kit said.
“How’d I write the song?” I asked, wanting to be certain I was following the conversation correctly since there was still a dull throbbing in my head that could be distracting.
“That one specifically started with the chords for the chorus. It was just me trying to give a particular sound to what I felt at the time. By the time I smoothed it out, I had some words to go with it. Did a bit of brainstorming and some self-analysis, tweaked the chorus, and branched out into the verses. Those took rearranging and fine-tuning before I could work on the intro, bridge, and exit to bring the whole thing together. After that came a fuckton of polishing before I brought it to the table.”
He was silent as children chased one another through the abandoned building on the screen.
“So, it started with a feeling that time,” he muttered. “And the one you’re working on now started with a line.”
“Yup. I take my inspiration wherever I can get it,” I admitted. “Especially these days when it feels like we’re living on lockdown.”
“Is that another line for the song?”
“Naa…but now that you mention it, maybe it should be,” I said and reached for the notebook on the coffee table, immediately writing it down.
“Wait, did we just do the thing you guys are always doing?” Kit asked.
“What thing?”
“The thing where one of you says something, then someone else piggybacks off of it until you’re all grinning and scribbling in notebooks.”
“Oh yeah, that thing, we've been doing that forever,” I admitted. “Johnny and I would sit around the table in the high school cafeteria filling our notebooks with shitty songs.”
“Sounds like way more fun than all the creative writing classes I took,” Kit said.
“It’s kind of soul-crushing to have to stand up there in front of the class and then have them rip your words to shreds.
I started changing the way I wrote by the last one, just so I wouldn’t catch so much shit from everyone. ”
“You need to change back, reclaim the voice you were comfortable with, and when you’re ready, bring something to the table. No one is going to cut you down if it’s rough. Polishing a song together is what makes it the band’s rather than one individual’s.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s shitty that the teacher let that happen,” I said. "It's even shittier if the teacher helped.”
“They helped.”
“Then they can go fuck themselves. Hate when people think they can teach something by being mean.”
“Do you guys ever bring something to one person to kind of go over it with them before you bring it to the whole band?” he asked.
“All the time.”
“Would it be okay if I did that with you?”
“Hell yeah. Ozzy and I worked things out plenty of times before bringing the rest of the band in on it. Sometimes it was because we had a very specific flow in mind and other times because we were building off similar thoughts. The longer you’re with us, the easier it’ll be for you to just know who you need to take something to so you can bring the full vision to life. ”
“I want to start with you.”
“Works for me,” I admitted. “I like hanging out with you.”
“I was beginning to wonder, at first, when I joined back up with you guys. It kind of felt like you were avoiding me.”
“Naa, I just had something going on with someone. It’s over now.”
“Is this one of those times when I should say, I'm sorry or good for you?"
Sighing, I tucked my hands under my head only to feel his fingertips searching until he’d tugged one free so he could hold it.
“I’m sorry,” I admitted. “It wasn’t my choice, but it was my fuckup.
He was so far out of my comfort zone, yet exactly what I needed in so many different ways.
Funny though, when I think about it, there was still this whole part missing, which is probably why it didn’t work. ”
“I think you lost me there.”
“Meh, I lost myself a long time ago trying to figure it out,” I replied. “So, I don’t expect anyone else to get it.”
“I might if you’d explain it to me.”
As a van plummeted off the cliff on the screen and erupted into an orange ball of fire, I lay there with that dull throbbing in my head growing worse the longer I tried to piece together fragmented words.
“I guess basically it boils down to me being an attention whore,” I said when no other words came to mind. “That’s not everyone’s cup of tea.”
“Been called needy, myself, so I know what that feels like,” Kit admitted.
“We could always be needy together,” the words flew out of my mouth, his sharp intake of breath a sure sign that I’d shocked him.
I’d shocked myself too. The words were out there, though; I had no desire to take them back. In the silence, I realized that he was holding my hand tighter, and I didn’t mind in the slightest.
“Y-you mean that?” Hesitant, unsure, with a hint of awe and a wistfulness I wished to erase with certainty, that’s the way his words tumbled out.
I wanted him to see my eyes, even if it meant sitting up and risking another bout of dizziness.
Maybe if I did it slowly. Had to let go of his hand, though.
His breath hitched when I did, so I rushed a little and slightly threw myself off balance when I turned so I could see him and run my fingers through his hair.
“A thousand percent,” I said. “Come on, sit up for me.”
He moved so fast a few of the strands twisted around my fingers, one or two snapping and left dangling from my hand as he turned to face me.
The light from the screen was the only source in the room, dingy looking and fully rocking that whole late seventies-early eighties vibe.
It left me wishing we were by the ocean again, where I could see the full depth of the shades in his brilliant blue eyes.
“I’d love to collaborate with you,” I told him. “You’re bringing in a fresh voice and experiences we haven’t had. You can’t hone your skills in a notebook. Jagger tried that and would have robbed the Saints of some amazing songs if Draven hadn’t intervened.”
“Intervened how?”
“Well, the story I was told was that Jagger and Kayden got drunk, then they started playing tug-of-war with Jagger’s notebook, then they fell over on the lawn and Kayden passed out on Jagger, who really had to pee, so Robbie helped him in, and the notebook sort of got abandoned on the lawn where Draven found it. ”
Grinning, Kit shook his head at me. “Damn, that’s just…fucking hilarious, actually.”
“Right.”
“Look,” I said, holding his gaze. “I’m an asshole; seriously, consider that the only warning you’re going to get. But if I say I’m gonna do something, then you can count on me to do it to the best of my ability.”
“Having heard your songs, I know I’m in good hands.”
Chuckling, I shot him a glimmer of my trademark smirk. “You’ll always be in good hands with me.”