7. Lake
seven
Five Months Later
I know this studio backward and forward.
For the past year or so, when I’m not on tour the studio at Ty and Zoey’s house has become the place I find refuge.
Six overstuffed chairs in the control room. Custom acoustic panels. Racks of gear. A WS 948 Delta SSL Console Ty treats with the same reverence other people reserve for relics and dead saints.
The small chef’s kitchen tucked off to the side has better appliances than any apartment I’ve ever lived in and the Subzero is stocked with enough sparkling water to hydrate a touring army.
None of it phases me anymore.
The first few times Ty let me record here, I moved through the space as if one wrong step would get me tossed back onto the porch.
Now my guitar case sits open beside the amp.
My lyric notebook is spread across a music stand.
Mason’s hoodie is draped over one of the chairs. Evan’s bass leans against the wall.
We’ve made ourselves at home.
I stand in the live room with headphones clamped over my ears, guitar heavy against my ribs.
Through the glass, Ty sits at the console, long hair tied back, one hand resting near the faders while he watches me with producer eyes.
Linus occupies the chair beside him. Mason sprawls on the couch pretending he isn’t invested.
Evan stands near the wall with his arms crossed, gaze locked on my fret hand.
My foster brother, Diego sits in the back corner.
He hasn’t said much all afternoon, but I wouldn’t expect him to. He’s been watching me play since I was thirteen and sleeping three feet away from him in a room that smelled like mildew, old socks, and whatever cheap detergent our foster parents bought in bulk.
Ty lifts two fingers. The track rolls in my headphones.
Mason’s drums come in first, tight and nasty, all restraint until the chorus breaks open.
Evan slips beneath him with a bass line so clean I almost grin.
We recorded Static before lunch, then cleaned up a rough edge in Gravity, then spent forty minutes arguing over whether the bridge in Fault Line needed another guitar line.
It didn’t. I knew it. Evan knew it. Ty knew it too, but he made me prove it.
This is the last pass on Embrace the Silence.
I’m hoping it will be the title track.
It’s the song that broke through my writer’s block. Over a year ago, I wrote it in the back of a van on the road out of Wichita with the woman I wanted to forget still lodged under my skin.
I don’t think about her when I play now, which is strange.
For months, every chord scraped against the same question. Why her? Why couldn’t I go back to being a guy who could take what pussy was offered and leave without a second thought?
Then the songs flowed out of me. One after another.
Weight of Air in a motel bathroom in Boise while Mason pounded on the door yelling he had to piss.
Northbound somewhere outside Missoula with frost on the van windows.
Gravity was written after a show in Phoenix.
Static in my apartment at four in the morning while the city blinked below the glass.
Fault Line came out meaner than I expected and better than I deserve.
By the time Embrace the Silence evolved, it felt like the rest of them had cleared the way.
I pick the opening notes and the room disappears in pieces. The glass goes first. Then the console. Then the bodies behind it. My fingers move over the strings and every sound has room around it.
Ty’s been begging me to lose myself into the music for days. Don’t crowd the song. Feel what you’re playing. Make each note earn its place.
Normally, being told to play less would piss me off. From Ty, it’s gospel.
The man can wring blood from a vocal take. He knows when a song is hiding behind ego.
I hit the bend at the end of the first phrase and let it hang until the whole track seems to lean into it. The sustain thins. My wrist turns. The next run slides out clean enough to raise the hair on my arms.
Pure magic.
It wasn’t long ago I was digging through myself with a dull spoon, convinced I’d never write anything worth a damn again. Today, the music moves through me without asking permission. My hands know what’s up before my head does. My heart keeps time.
The guitar answers.
When the last section opens under my fingers, I pull back where I used to push. Leave air where I used to stack notes. I trust myself enough to let the silence do the heavy lifting.
The final note blooms and hangs there. I lift my hand off the strings until the sound dies on its own.
Ty doesn’t hit the talkback right away.
Good.
He heard it too.
The red light clicks off. A second later, his voice crackles through my headphones. “Get in here, brother.”
I set the guitar in its stand, roll my shoulders, and step into the control room. Nobody talks while Ty rewinds. He hits play.
The speakers fill with the rough mix. Drums, bass, rhythm guitars, the lead I just tracked, the vocal we cut yesterday when my throat was rough from too much coffee and too little sleep. Somehow it works.
More than works. It’s better than I could have ever hoped. No longer a scrap in my notebook or a melody on my phone.
Mason’s foot stops bouncing halfway through the second verse. Evan shifts his weight near the wall. Linus leans forward, elbows on his knees, phone face down on the console. Diego doesn’t move at all.
Ty watches the console until the final note fades, then tips back in his chair and rubs both hands over his face.
“Fuck me,” Mason mutters.
Evan points toward the speakers. “Again.”
Ty plays it again. Nobody argues.
The second listen is worse. Better. Both. I don’t have the right word for hearing something inside me come back through studio monitors with Ty Rainier’s fingerprints all over it and my band wrapped around it.
I should feel exposed.
Instead, I feel absolved. Empty in the best possible way.
The song ends again.
Linus exhales through his nose and picks up his phone. “No more takes, it’s feckin’ perfect.”
Ty glances over.
Linus taps his screen. “This is the record that’ll break Lake wide open.”
“We’re fucked, right?” Mason lets out a laugh with no humor in it, only disbelief.
“In the lucrative sense?” Linus’s mouth curves. “Aye.”
Evan’s face barely changes, but he turns to me and nods once. Coming from him? It’s fucking fireworks.
Ty stands and crosses the room. For half a second I think he’s going to hug me. Instead, he grips the back of my neck and presses his forehead to mine, quick and solid. Let’s go before either of us feels weird. “You did it.”
My throat burns. I grab a bottle of water and take a drink.
Diego catches my eye from the corner. The look on his face cracks something open I wasn’t prepared to face.
He’s proud. But, there’s something else there too. Brighter. Bigger. Inspiration with teeth.
I tip my head toward the kitchen. He follows me out.
It’s empty except for takeout containers from Lil’ Woody’s, a cup of cut-up lemons for Ty’s tea, and a stack of plates Zoey must have left before disappearing upstairs. I grab two burgers and hand one to Diego. We sit at the small table near the guest room.
Diego unwraps his burger and stares at it skeptically.
“Vanessa feeding you too well now?” I say with a mouth full of beef.
His smile spreads slowly. Married life looks good on him. He’s softer around the edges without being squishy. “She’d murder you for implying eating healthy is a bad thing.”
“Tell her to take a number. Mason’s been trying to turn me vegetarian for months.” I gesture to the plant-based burger on the counter.
He laughs, takes a bite, chews for a while.
The song plays faintly behind the wall again. My voice leaks through the house, muffled and strange, singing words I wrote about a woman who nearly ruined me and somehow ended up here.
Diego wipes his mouth with a napkin. “You sound fucking amazing in there.”
“Thanks.”
“No.” He points at me and all joking evaporates from the room. “You sound free.”
I stare at the burger in my hands.
Trust Diego to walk straight through the one door I didn’t know I’d left open.
“Feels different,” I manage.
“I can tell.”
Silence between us doesn’t need filling. It never has. Diego and I survived plenty of precarious situations by knowing how to keep quiet.
Keeping quiet allowed us to stay together despite the many punishments we endured in silence.
Diego glances toward my left shoulder. I know he’s picturing the scars hidden under black cotton, as if he can see the marks through it. “I was thinking about Spanaway today.”
“Don’t.” The burger turns to sand in my mouth.
“I know.” He sets his food down. “I won’t go there.”
Except he is. We both are. It’s impossible not to remember once the subject is brought up.
The house with light-blue bathroom tile. A lighter. The smell of butane and skin. The warning. Tell anybody and they’ll split you up.
When Diego aged out with nothing but a duffel bag, he managed to send for me before the system swallowed me whole.
“You got me out,” I sigh. “Without the Rainier Foundation grant, who knows what would’ve happened to me.”
He shakes his head. “You were brave and got on the bus.”
“You bought the ticket.”
“You carried the guitar.”
“That you glued together after he smashed it.”
His mouth twitches. “Badly.”
“I played it for years.” I shake my head. “I had no choice.”
“Damn right.” He reaches over and ruffles my curls.
The track behind the wall reaches the chorus. My recorded voice fills the space.
Diego listens for a second, eyes fixed on nothing. “When I was sitting in there watching you, I kept thinking about how many kids are down there right now with nobody to help them.”
I nod because I realize how fortunate I was.
He leans back, thumb rubbing the edge of his wedding ring. A new habit. One he probably doesn’t realize he’s adopted.
“I’ve been talking to Vanessa about something. Nothing crazy.” Diego’s eyes dart back to the booth. “I think the Rainier Foundation needs a branch in Tacoma, but it’s not like I know anything about how a non-profit is run.”
“You know more than most.” I lean back in my chair.
“Well, I know the South Sound where talented kids disappear before anyone realizes they’re worth anything.” He looks back at me. “I don’t know how to approach him. Or whether I should.”
His question hovers between us, wrapped in the remaining chords of sound of the song I was able to record because Ty Rainier once heard a foster kid play a glued-together guitar and decided to invest in my future.
Diego doesn’t ask for much. He never has. Not even when he should.
I stand and grab my jacket from the chair.
He stands too. “Wait, where are you going?”
“Come on.” I nod toward the control room, where Ty’s voice cuts through the monitors as he says something to Linus I can’t make out.
Diego’s eyes narrow. “Now?”
“Yeah.” I gesture for him to follow me.
“Lake.” He puts his hands on his hips. “You’re in the middle of recording.”
“All the more reason.”
He follows, slower than me, hope making him cautious.
I turn, clap a hand on his shoulder and steer him toward the studio.
“Let’s go talk to Ty.”