Chapter Twenty-One #2
I had no clue what this guy was roaring into the microphone, but I let his rage fuel me as I brought the guitar over my head—and smashed it into the ground. It cracked and splintered but still held on strong to its bones.
Fuck Marble Audio for buying me a guitar like that, one that wouldn’t even break, only to add it to their list of things I should be grateful for.
I smashed the guitar into the ground again. This time, a piece of wood shot off the side. Esra and Lucas cheered for me. Their voices blended in with the metal singer.
Fuck LJ for suggesting I should wear nothing but the guitar in the studio while he sat in the control room.
I swung the guitar to the ground again, and I started screaming alongside the guy on the song, and I swung and swung.
I felt a sharp sting on my palm as a large splinter cut across my skin, but I didn’t stop.
With each crack in the wood, I felt the emotions pouring out of me.
Years of pent-up rage over what I’d been put through and what I’d lost because of it.
I screamed even when the song ended.
Tears burned on my skin, and I swung wood into the ground until I had nothing but a stump and curling metal strings in my hand.
Only when I stopped did I look up to see three blurry shapes watching me. Lucas with his face in his hands. Esra grinning from ear to ear. And Brooks towering above them, hands in his pockets, quietly nodding.
Fuck Brooks for building a goddamn studio in my hometown.
I inhaled and readied to swing again, only to realize that I didn’t have anything left to swing with.
“Your mother called me,” Brooks explained before I could look for an alternative piece of wood to smash.
I whirled around, squinting at the next building over. I didn’t see anything in the windows, but I still yelled across the yard. “Seriously, Mom?”
“Addie.”
Thoughts were swimming away from me. My chest empty, my last grasp on reality was the rage I’d been focused on. “Why’d she call you anyway? She’s my mom. She should be mothering me. Not her baby. And you should be mothering your own kid.”
“Whoa, your mom’s preggers?” Lucas asked. “Wait, hold on, preggers, girly slang or not?”
“Lucky, shut up,” Esra mumbled.
“Come on, guys.” Brooks clasped a hand over each of my friends’ shoulders and pointed them toward my mother’s house. “Maureen has some coffee for you. That’ll help sober you up.”
He walked with them the first few steps, but once in motion, they followed the path all by themselves, only swaying a little.
Brooks turned back to me and folded his hands around mine.
His thumbs caressed the insides of my palms as he lifted the splintered guitar pieces from my grasp.
He tossed them in the pile of wood that had once been the rest of the instrument.
“Let me see that.” He checked the insides of my hands for injuries beyond the one scratch.
When he couldn’t find any, he folded his hand around my uninjured one and led me back inside.
I followed wordlessly, letting myself be sat down on the sofa and accepting the coffee he made me on the fancy new espresso machine.
While I was sipping liquid heaven, he tidied up the living room.
Didn’t even comment on the massive popcorn bucket, just put the lid back on and set it on the counter.
“Why aren’t you saying anything?” My words came out with more bite than I’d meant them to.
“Because you’re drunk and you’re angry at me. Not a good combination.”
“Ugh. So sensible. Annoying.” I rolled my eyes at him.
He smirked and loaded the dishwasher, but he didn’t let himself be goaded into talking any more.
When I was done, he pulled the mug from my grasp, switched the dishwasher on, and took my hand to pull me back up.
I let him, but only because he kissed my knuckles and gave my hand a little double squeeze.
It wasn’t much, but it was a sign that we weren’t completely broken.
In the bedroom, he peeled me out of my clothes.
I tried to wrap my arms around him, and maybe my legs as well, tried to make the most of this little nude moment and the energy swirling in my veins.
Brooks turned us, so we could fall into bed, but before I could climb on top of him, he had the blanket hoodie over my head.
“Hey!” I yelled from inside my fluffy prison.
“Add it to the list of reasons you’re angry with me.”
“Not funny!” I struggled to find the arm holes or the face hole, or anything other than white plush.
Brooks freed my face from the hoodie, cradling my cheeks in both hands. “It’s a little funny to see a short blonde drunk-raging out to screamo metal and destroying one of the most flowery guitars known to man.”
I snorted. Yeah. I imagined that painted quite the picture.
Wait. Short blondes.
“Where’s Skye?”
“At your mom’s. She prepared a whole presentation on why it would be a good idea for your mom to get a dog.”
“Oh. Okay.”
He kissed me, short and sweet, then tucked me against his side. “Do you know what that song was?” He pulled the music app up on his phone and navigated to the metal genre in a few taps.
“No clue. I think at some point I was screaming along about counting sheep. Why?”
“I’ll add it to my Adriana playlist.”
“You have an Adriana playlist?”
“Of course I have an Adriana playlist.” He chuckled and kissed me again.
“Here. It’s not just your own songs. It’s songs I associate with you.
Some of them you showed me. Some of them were playing in the background when we were together and they’re hardwired to those memories for me.
Some of them I just think sound like you. ”
He scrolled through the playlist. And kept scrolling. And kept scrolling.
“Brooks, when did you start this playlist?”
“The day you sat on my sofa and played me ‘Dreams’ for the first time.”
That had been only days after we’d been first introduced.
I freed the phone from his grasp and scrolled through the list myself, finding some absolute bangers and some songs I’d never heard of.
With every song, I felt myself sober up, tracing back memories of sharing stages and sofas.
“Okay, what the hell is ‘Rock Me Amadeus’? I don’t do Mozart. ”
He reached around me to hit play and an eighties synth pop melody filled my bedroom.
I didn’t even know what language that was.
Vaguely European. “It played in the diner that night between Tuscaloosa and Alpharetta. You had your hair in those big rollers, and you were beating me at the Napkin Game.”
“How do you even remember that?”
He shrugged. “I remember music and the moments that go with it. And before you let it go to your head, I have playlists for a lot of people.”
If I’d been completely sober, I would have asked for permission, but he’d dangled a bone in front of my nose.
I clicked to his profile and found the other playlists.
All his band members had ones that I quickly perused.
Skye had one but looking into that felt like too much of a privacy infringement.
Heck, even Bravetown had gotten its playlist.
Not a single one of them required more than one scroll to get to the end.
I navigated back to my playlist and gave it another scrolling whirl, but the bottom didn’t come into view. That was a whole lot of music.
With every song that played, my anger dissipated a little.
The ones I didn’t recognize, he could either trace back to specific moments or explain to me—like soundtrack songs from movies that he thought I’d enjoy watching.
This was my Brooks. The silly, mushy man who made incredibly detailed, personalized playlists.
“Sorry for today,” I mumbled and put his phone on the nightstand, letting the music play.
“You have nothing to apologize for. I kept pushing after you told me you didn’t want to talk about it. That’s on me.”
“I should have talked about it with you instead of getting drunk with my friends because you pissed me off. I don’t know how to do this, have a real grown-up relationship.”
“We can figure it out together,” he said and pushed himself up on his elbow to look at me. “I don’t have a lot of experience either.”
“Does it bother you?”
“Our mutual lack of long-term relationships?”
“That I’m so much younger than you.”
He took a deep breath, grimacing.
Wow, okay.
I tried to roll away and out of bed, but his arm locked around my waist before I could flee yet another hard conversation. He pulled me back to him. “It doesn’t really bother me. I don’t take it lightly.”
“So it does bother you in some way?”
“No, it’s not like a nagging negative thought.
It’s neutral. It’s a dynamic that I’m aware of.
Less so when we’re together like this, but when we’re in public or I’m talking to other people about you.
Skye’s parents, your mom, Noah, Jamie, my lawyers.
” He sighed. “If I were to see you in a bar for the very first time tomorrow, I’d wish I were ten years younger, so I could approach you. ”
“You wouldn’t even buy me a drink?”
“No,” he replied, his mustache twitching over his pursed lips.
“Harsh.”
“All I’m trying to say is that I’m not attracted to you because you’re young.
I’m attracted to you, period. And I like you.
You’re like music. I love making music. I’ve always made music and will always make music.
But when I make music in front of an audience, I’m suddenly aware that I’m a famous musician and there’s expectations and responsibilities that come with it.
I still love music when there’s an audience, it just puts it into a certain context.
It’s the same when we’re being perceived.
I am contextually aware that I’m too old for you. ”
“I’m like music to you?” At least my tipsy brain was good at selective hearing. I’d worry about the rest tomorrow.
“Yes. In more ways than this, you’re like music to me, Addie love.”
“God, I love the way your mind works.”