32. Fade Into You
THIRTY-TWO
FADE INTO YOU
Halle
I’m trying to make it through the last hour of my shift at Jubilee without Cade distracting me from the recording booth. He’s sitting in there alone, looking beautiful as ever. Less than an hour, Halle, then you can lock this place up and hang out with him . It’s been a slow night, too, so it’s been hard to find things to keep me occupied besides watching Cade through the glass.
I’ve already gotten used to my new normal. I get to go to my regular coffee shop, listen to my favorite music at work, watch my favorite band write and practice new songs, and go on late night drives with Cade. After about a week of being home from tour, we were both missing the daily drives together, so we had to bring them back. We don’t do it every night, only going after band practice a few times a week. We came up with a little route around the city, designed to go on the roads with the best views for a late night, music up, windows down kind of drive.
As soon as I watch the clock change from 9:59 to 10:00, Cade cracks open the studio door and pops his head out. “Off the clock?” he asks, like he had been counting down the minutes as much as I was.
“Almost,” I call out as I finish typing in my time-punch into our digital system. I hustle over to the studio as soon as I finish. “Okay, I’m all yours,” I assert as I shimmy my way through the door.
“All mine? Is that right?” He smirks.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” I make out through a laugh, “but I also didn’t not mean it like that,” I add, trying to be more communicative of my feelings.
As much as I let go of the whole “just friends” thing when tour ended, I haven’t been rushing to be an official couple either. I want to get back to where we left off naturally, “slow-burning” as Mel keeps calling it.
Sure, we’ve gone on all those drives, and have been spending a bunch of time together still, but we haven’t been on another date in the month we’ve been back. I think that’s what’s been missing for me to go all-in again.
“So, what I’m hearing is you’d be free to go out with me, say, in a few weekends?”
Is he reading my mind? Did I accidentally say something about wanting to go on a date out loud?
“Mmm, depends.” I try to act serious while I pretend to contemplate my availability.
He sees right through me. “Don’t make me retract my offer, Valentine.”
“You wouldn’t!” I gasp. My stomach is doing flips from all of this flirting. There’s something supercharged in the tension between us, and I’m remembering how fuzzy my brain starts to feel whenever I’m alone in this studio with him. I have no control over my brain, not able to focus on anything but him.
“You’re right,” he admits, even though we both know this is all jokes. He reaches out toward me and grabs my hand, leading me to take a seat on one of the stools next to his desk chair. “You don’t want to know what we’d be doing on this date?” He raises his eyebrows.
“I’d be happy doing anything as long as it’s with you,” I gush, “but that’s cheesy, and I do want to know.”
He reaches under the keyboard on the table behind him and pulls out an envelope. “Here, open this,” he says, holding it out to me.
I pull a postcard out from the envelope, and it doesn’t give me any immediate answers. “Vancouver, British Columbia?”
He motions for me to flip the card over, and when I do, I find his handwriting on the back.
Valentine, I miss exploring new cities with you. Please do me the honor of joining me for a fall weekend in Vancouver October 24-25.
“Yes?” I’m excited but confused at the same time. “Why that weekend?” It’s so specific, I feel like there has to be something else he isn’t saying.
“No reason.” He shrugs, and I can tell now that he’s definitely hiding something.
“Caaade,” I draw his name out like a threat.
“Halle,” he rolls my name off his tongue with a smirk.
We’re fully locked in on each other now with the strongest eye contact I’ve ever experienced. My cheeks get hot, and any words I was ready to say next are stuck in my throat.
He lounges deeper into his chair, calm and collected, unlike how I’m at the edge of my seat. Either he’s doing a good job at playing it cool, or this conversation isn’t having the same effect on him as it is on me. Am I not flirting as much as I feel like I am? Maybe I should turn it up a notch, see what it takes to get him to blow his cover.
“What if someone else asks me to do something really cool that weekend?”
“Like who?” His rebuttal is so fast that I realize he might be much more prepared to hold down his side than I am. To be fair, he had time to prepare his little secret, I came into this blind.
“Mel or Ruby,” I suggest.
“They won’t.”
“What?” I scoff. “Why not?”
“Because they already know that you and I have plans,” he says with a wink.
“Then I guess I have a couple weeks to figure it out myself or get one of you three to spill.”
“Maybe they will, but me? Not a chance.” He spins around in his chair, clearly pleased with himself.
I roll my eyes and then catch myself starting to yawn—it is getting kind of late. “Maybe we should start heading home?” I suggest and start standing up from my stool.
“Not so fast, Valentine.” Cade jumps out of his chair to stop me and gently pushes me back onto the stool. He turns around and starts messing with things on the table behind him. After a few moments, he faces me again with a pair of big studio headphones in his hands. He stretches them open and places them over my head for me. He turns back to mess with some of the board controls, then slips another pair of headphones on himself and starts playing the track he must’ve just recorded during my shift.
I immediately recognize from the first line that this is the song he was trying to work on when we were in Denver. Every time I’ve asked about it, he told me that he scrapped it since he couldn’t get past the first verse—except for a few ideas he didn’t like enough for the chorus.
Luckily, I heard him repeating that first verse enough times to pick up on it now. Something must have inspired him enough to come back to this song. Another realization hits when I notice the piano backing the track. He had to have been working on the song for a while if he already had Zack record a piano track for him. It sounds super polished, like it’s completely finished. What’s going on? I did not go into tonight expecting so many surprises.
I can’t help but giggle as I watch Cade sitting across from me, mouthing along to the lyrics with his eyes shut. I’m glad his eyes are closed because I don’t think I’d be able to focus on the lyrics if he was watching me right now.
From what I can tell, this is another song about me. Cade’s told me too many times now that the songs he sings are for me, so I don’t think I need to question if this sweet, love-y song is about me or not. It seems to be all about wanting to be more than friends with someone. When the song fades out, we slowly pull our headphones off. I wait for him to say something first, still trying to process the song myself.
“I wanted to do this for you with Distract Me, but never got the chance to,” he says softly with a smile.
I could melt right here, right now. “What’s this one called? I love it.”
He lets out a breathy laugh before he answers with, “Just Friends.”
Of course , I think to myself, w hy would it be called anything else?
“It sounded perfect. Is it done?”
“It’s exactly how I want it to sound, but the label would probably want to change it if it were to go on the album, make it more rock sounding like the rest.” He sounds a bit disappointed at that.
With the financial support of the label, Tryhard’s able to take some time off of shows for a while, putting all their practice time into perfecting their album. I know he wants to trust the input and decisions of their new label, especially knowing how easy Eager Eyes says they are to work with, but it must be hard feeling like he’s losing some of the creative freedom that came with being independent.
“Do you want it on the album?”
“I don’t know.” He hesitates for a moment, running his fingers through his curls before continuing his train of thought. “I love it, but it also doesn’t fit the sound we’re going for. It’s a really special song, I wouldn’t want it to change, and maybe keeping it off the album would keep it just ours.”
Ours. For all I know, he could have meant that it would stay in the hands of the band, but part of me thinks he means just the two of us.
“Here, let me do something on your phone for a sec.” He reaches out, and I don’t hesitate to hand it over to him. He turns away from me and starts fiddling with the control board again. He plugs my phone into a cord for a few seconds, and then is done with whatever he was doing and gives it back to me. “Now you can listen to this version whenever you want, it should be in your files.”
Whenever you want sounds an awful lot like all the time to my brain right now. This song is going to be the only thing I listen to for a while, at least whenever I can fangirl about it by myself. I grab onto Cade’s arm and pull him up to stand with me as I get up from my seat.
“Thanks, Cade.” I pull him into a hug, enveloping myself in his signature Tobacco Vanille cologne, and squeeze him tight.
“I’m glad you liked it. Now let’s get you home.” He pulls away just enough to have one arm wrapped around my shoulders and starts leading us out of the studio.