Chapter 18
QUEEN
At this hour, Soundwave’s quiet.
I step off the elevator,
my sneakers squeaking against glossy tile.
City lights pour through the glass,
carving shadows into the dark.
I don’t touch the lights.
I like it better this way—
dark, cold, and Raymond-free.
When I reach my office,
I drop my bag,
sink into the chair,
the computer glowing bright,
opening its eyes,
and sit there,
staring blanketly at the screen,
not knowing what the fuck to do.
This was Dad’s gig. Not mine.
It takes thirty minutes to find payroll in the finance logs. I scroll through rows of numbers that all start to blur together.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Until it hits:
Trash Romance: $75,000—PENDING
My stomach turns over.
There're no notes or dates or explanation.
No reason why musicians scraping by
have to wait months for more scraps.
Eli doesn’t deserve this.
None of them do.
Not after three years of cigarette lungs
and blistered hands,
of turning trauma into tracks,
of clawing their way up from dive bars,
sleeping in vans, bleeding into mics,
touring half-dead
just to stay alive in this game,
and now they’re supposed to wait?
I toss my phone onto the desk,
rub the spot between my eyes that always pounds when I smell bullshit,
knowing how this ends:
I’ll go digging,
find out it’s some processing delay.
Then wait for Raymond to say he's looking into it.
Or…
I bite the inside of my cheek,
turning in my chair, from side to side,
then open another tab
and log into my personal bank account.
My balance glares back.
There's more than enough to fix this.
I could end this in seconds,
wire the full amount,
have Eli and the band paid before Raymond even gets his key in the door.
It could be illegal—
I don't know, I'm not a lawyer.
All I know is,
wiring money from my account to cover corporate payroll is a gray area—the messy, shady shade where lawsuits fester.
I close my eyes,
asking the ceiling, the silence, the ghosts.
“Help me out here, Dad. If you’ve got somethin' to say, now’s the fuckin’ time. ‘Cause I’m knee-deep in a fire, and I got no fuckin’ clue what I’m doin’. This is your shit. Not mine.”
In my mind, he's leaning back in his chair,
cigarette drooping
from the crook of his mouth,
ash hanging off his cigarette, watching me,
waiting to drop some advice that’ll burn long after he's dead.
It’s the same look he’d always give me
right before he sat up,
rolled his chair closer,
hunched over his desk,
elbows on the wood,
yanking the cigarette from his mouth,
dragging the ashtray toward him,
tapping once,
then pointed the cherry right at me,
smoke curling around his face,
his eyes locked.
“Sonny, look at me. This is important…
“You ever loan somebody cash? Treat it as a gift.
“Or you’re just askin’ to get pissed off.”
“Once it leaves your hands, kid, it’s gone. Don’t sit around waitin’ for a thank you or payback. If you can’t afford to lose it, don’t hand it over. Distance, lies, sex, and money—those four’ll ruin damn near anything.”
He said it as if it bled straight from scars.
I glance at the photo on my bookshelf.
Dad’s arm is swung around Eli,
both frozen mid-laugh,
both legends in their own heads.
Eli couldn’t have been more than eighteen.
Baby face. Big hands. Bigger voice.
Dad flew all the way to Jacksonville after one blurry-ass video of Eli in an overgrown yard with a car backfiring in the over the music.
“Kid’s got it,” he told the whole damn board.
Trash Romance.
Rock. Heart. Tears-on-the-mic kind of shit.
Music that makes you want to throw a chair, then write a poem about it.
Music that tears through your chest,
then leaves the wound like an open grave, all slashed and torn.
“Writing pain with a pulse,” Dad said.
Eli grew up in bad home that could be mistaken for hell.
A kid who had worse odds,
but still clawed himself out.
After Dad found him,
it took Eli five years to drop his first album.
And when it hit, it hit big.
Dad would’ve lost his fucking mind if he'd been here to see it.
Dad didn’t just love music.
He loved the fuck-ups.
The long shots.
The ones who should've quit and didn't.
He had a soft spot for the hopeless,
kids with nothing but
a four-track and a prayer.
Those were the ones worth betting on.
He said,
“Real music dies the second you stop fighting for the ones who bleed for it.”
So he took in every stray with a voice,
a story,
and no chance in hell.
Dad didn’t build a label.
He built lifeboats out of faith and middle fingers.
But now it’s a fucking yacht for thieves.
If he knew?
He’d march into Soundwave with a can of gasoline and a lighter, and burn the whole fucking building down himself.
I hover over the transfer button.
One click between doing the right thing,
and not screwing myself in the process.
…Doing the right thing. Jesus. As if I wasn’t trying to fuck the failure outta my own bloodstream an hour ago.
Guess that’s the plan now:
throw money at other people’s problems,
get fucked from behind
to run away from my own.
‘Cause I’m a coward.
I call it fixing the problem,
but I’m just hiding from them.
To scared to storm the boardroom,
so I play Robin Hood with my own goddamn savings.
Too scared to face feelings,
so I punish myself for feeling anything at all
instead of just… fucking feeling.
And then Andrew’s voice crashes in again.
Eyes bleeding navy,
the skyline all lit up behind him—
“…You’re fuckin’ brave.”
“No, I’m not.”
“…Yeah, you are…”
I shake my head.
Wasn’t brave enough to be honest.
Wasn’t brave enough to stop you.
Wasn’t brave enough to confront feelings
just because I had no control of them.
Never thought him walking away would be our last dance.
Always thought it would’ve been the other way around.
I lean forward in my chair,
fingers drumming the desk.
I can’t fix what happened with Andrew.
I can’t text him.
I can’t write a simple rap.
I can’t change who I am,
my past,
or this life I built.
I can’t deny that orgasms hold me together
and break me apart.
I can’t stop vomiting after sex
like a fucking normal person.
And I can't leave the system—
what's been built out of the bones of my fear
has become my shelter.
But I can do this.
I can make sure Eli gets what he earned.
I can fix this one fucking thing.
So I hit send on the transfer
because it’s the only thing
I have the power to do.
I fall back into the chair,
staring at the computer screen while
lights and sounds of the city below pierce through the glass window—ambulances, honking—until the screen fades black and I'm sitting in the dark.
Minutes later,
my phone is blowing up.
Eli Stone
I don’t know what magic you pulled, but we just got the payment.
You’re a lifesaver. Seriously. Thank you.
I owe you a drink. Or ten. I got you in Cali!