Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
The word. Every time she says it, it hits me new. Because Teague choosing to say it, in public, to a stranger, is still a decision she's making actively, a wall she's dismantling in real time, and I get to watch it happen.
"Your girlfriend." The woman looks at me with clear approval. "Welcome. First show?"
"First show," I say. "This is incredible."
"Wait until the second set. Cal does 'Rent Strike' and the whole lot loses it." She hands us two baking sheets loaded with nachos that weigh approximately six pounds each. "Eat fast. The second set starts before the food gets cold."
We find a spot near the fence, away from the main crowd, and we eat nachos off baking sheets and lean against the chain link and Teague tells me about the band.
How Britt and the guitarist started playing in a garage in West Philly at seventeen.
How Cal joined a year later after they heard him doing spoken word at an open mic.
How they've been playing warehouse shows and lot shows and basement shows for years, building a crowd that comes because the music is real, not because an algorithm told them to.
"This is punk," Teague says. She's got sour cream on her thumb and she's not wiping it off because she's talking and Teague talks with her hands now, which she didn't used to do, which I want to think that she learned from me.
"Not the label. Not the clothes or the hair or the patches.
This. People making something in a lot with pallets and tape and feeding people nachos and talking about the neighborhood. This is what it's always been."
"It's beautiful."
She laughs. "It's loud and sweaty and someone stepped on your sneakers."
"That too."
She looks at me. The work lights from the stage are catching the left side of her face and the septum ring is glinting and her eyes are soft in a way they only get when she's in her element and she's let me into it.
"You like it," she says. A statement, delivered with certainty.
"I love it."
"You don't have to love it just because I love it."
"I know. I love it because it's yours and because it's good and because that man's voice made me feel things in my skeleton."
Britt appears from behind the stage. She's tall up close, taller than I expected, with the easy physicality of a person whose body is her instrument. She sees Teague and her face opens up.
"Moran. You actually came."
"I said I would."
"You say a lot of things. Usually from behind a bar." She looks at me. "This the girlfriend?"
"Zoe." I extend my hand. "Your drumming is incredible."
"Thanks. Teague's been talking about you for weeks."
I look at Teague. Teague looks at the fence. A slight flush creeps up from her collar, pink against white skin, and she doesn't deny it.
"Weeks," I say.
"She's exaggerating," Teague says.
"I am not. She told me, and I quote, that she was 'seeing someone who made her apartment smaller.'" Britt grins. "I said that sounded like a complaint and she said it wasn't."
Teague is still looking at the fence. The flush is spreading. I am memorizing every second of this.
"We're on in five," Britt says. "Stay for the whole set. Cal's doing 'Rent Strike' and a new one about the bus route they cut." She points at Teague. "Bring her next time. She's got good energy. But...maybe we could pierce her or something?"
Britt leaves. I turn to Teague. She's still flushed, still looking at the fence, and I wait because I want her to look at me and she knows I'm waiting and she's going to make me earn it.
"Your apartment is the perfect size," I say.
"Shut up."
"Made your apartment smaller. That's the most romantic thing you've ever said about me."
She rolls her eyes but she's still smiling at me. "I said shut up."
"Britt thinks I have good energy."
"Everyone thinks you have good energy. You have objectively noticeable energy. It's a documented phenomenon."
I lean into her. She lets me. The nachos are gone and the baking sheets are stacked at our feet and somewhere behind us Britt is counting in and the second set starts with a song that rattles the chain-link fence against my back.
We stay for the whole set. Cal does "Rent Strike" and the lot loses it exactly the way the nacho woman said it would.
Bodies moving, voices joining, two hundred people screaming a chorus about staying when the landlords want you gone, and Teague is beside me singing words she knows by heart and her voice is low and rough and off-key and I love it.
I love her voice. I love her face in the work lights.
I love the patches on her jacket and the eyeliner she put on for tonight and the flush on her neck that hasn't fully gone away.
The show ends at eleven. Cal says "thank you, stay loud, rent strike forever" and Britt throws her sticks into the crowd and someone catches them and screams and the PA goes quiet and the lot starts emptying.
People drift toward the street in clusters, talking, laughing, the collective comedown of two hours of noise and heat and community.
We walk home. My sneakers are dirty. My ears are ringing. My t-shirt is damp with sweat that's half mine and half crowd. I smell like charcoal and beer and bodies and I feel like I've been somewhere important.
"Thank you," I say. "For showing me that."
Teague doesn't answer right away. We walk a block in silence, her boots on the sidewalk, my sneakers beside them.
Then she reaches over and takes my hand, which she does more now, which she does in public, which she does without the preliminary negotiation of whether hand-holding is an acceptable activity for a person who built her life on purpose.
"I've been going to shows alone for three years," she says. "Britt's shows, other shows, basement gigs, lot shows. Always alone. On purpose."
"I know."
"Tonight was better."
"Because of the nachos?"
"Because of you." She squeezes my hand once, brief, and lets go. That's enough. For Teague, that's everything.
She walks me home, kisses me, then I go inside. Not every night is a sleepover. Some nights are a show and a walk and a hand squeeze and separate beds, and that's okay. That's real.
I get home. Mom is on the couch watching her show. Dad is in the kitchen doing something to the toaster that involves a screwdriver and a flashlight.
"How was your night?" Mom asks, not looking away from the screen.
"I went to a punk show."
She looks away from the screen. "A what?"
"A punk show. In a lot. There were nachos."
She studies me. The dirty sneakers. The damp shirt. The grin I haven't been able to get rid of since the first song.
"You smell like a barbecue," she says.
I grin wider. I probably smell amazing.
"Was Teague there?"
"Teague took me."
Mom nods. Slow. Processing. She's not there yet, not all the way, but she's processing. Teague took her daughter to a thing and her daughter came back smiling and smelling like charcoal and she's processing. I wish she would process faster, but it's something. She's trying. I know she is.
"There's steak in the fridge," she says, and turns back to her show.
I eat. I shower. I get into bed and the glow-in-the-dark stars are on my ceiling and I can still feel the bass in my chest and Cal's voice in my bones and Teague's mouth on mine in the middle of two hundred people.
I text Teague: best night. cal's voice is still in my skeleton. also britt loves me.
She responds in forty seconds: britt doesn't love you. britt thinks you have good energy. there's a difference.
there's no difference.
go to sleep, Zoe.
I laugh. You first, girlfriend.
She doesn't respond to that one. She doesn't need to. I can see her in her apartment above the laundromat, reading the word on her screen, letting it sit, letting it stay.
I close my eyes. The stars glow. The sirens pass in the distance, Engine 11 heading somewhere, and I count them the way I've always counted them, one two three, and then sleep.