7. Zak
“God, it’s like having fucking herpes. There’s no getting rid of you, is there?”
Only unlike herpes, there was no antiviral to suppress Scott Lee.
Zak vividly remembered telling her father she was done dealing with him. Yet, less than twenty-four hours later, she had come downstairs to check out of the ritzy five-star hotel Tribute put them up in—no doubt a negotiation tactic of its own—and found him waiting in the lobby.
Where was the cab they’d called for? And was there any chance the driver would slow to a roll and let her jump in for a faster getaway?
Was she athletic enough for that?
“Chase,” Scott started, ignoring her even though she was right in front of him. “You can tell Zak I’ll respect her wishes by relaying information through you instead of speaking to her directly. Seems real fucking counterproductive, but whatever. And then you can ask her, for me, if she’d be willing to meet up the next time she’s in the city.”
What a fucking asshole.
“Uh.” Chase looked at Scott. Then at Zak. Neither of them said a word, so he continued, “Scott wants to meet with you?”
“Chase.” She dropped her duffel bag and guitar. “You can tell Scottthat we are meeting up. Right now. And if he has something to say, he can come right out and say it.”
“Just her and I,” Scott said to Chase again, but now she felt his eyes on her. “I was hoping we could talk alone.”
“Sounds like an excuse, doesn’t it, Chase?”
She felt a twinge of guilt for putting him in the middle, but justified to herself that it served him right. He had put himself in the middle. If he wanted to talk to her estranged father behind her back, he could do the talking now.
“I don’t know?” Chase said.
“You have a point. Maybe it’s not an excuse,” she went on. “He did make it my entire life without scheduling a sit-down chat. Might as well push it off a few more weeks.”
She tried not to look back at her father, but it was difficult when the grand entrance was covered in mirror panels on the walls and ceiling.
“One lunch,” Scott pressed. “I don’t care if you hate me the entire time, and I’ll understand if you still hate me after.”
“I don’t eat lunch.” Not necessarily true, but it washer most neglected meal of the day.
“Dinner?”
“I have plans.”
Chase stepped out of the crossfire.
“I didn’t even give you a date. How about coffee?”
“Not a morning person.”
“Well, I know where you got your stubbornness from,” Scott said under his breath.
If glares could serve as death sentences, hers would have strapped him to the execution chair. “Don’t you dare compare me to her.”
“I was talking about myself.”
She maintained straight, frigid eye contact. “Don’t compare me to you, either.”
“Zak, please.” In two words, his voice plummeted from stony to brittle. “Please. We can meet wherever. A park bench. The lobby of your hotel, I don’t care. I just want to talk.”
“Well, I don’t. And I don’t want to think about this right now. I have enough to deal with.”
Mainly, the album they had three weeks to record.
Except now she was thinking about that and all the possible things her sperm donor wanted to say to her. She had Scott squarely boxed away into the “annoying coworker” section of her brain until now. As it turned out, all it took for her resolve to crumble for him were a couple of pleas and the bare minimum effort, but she would turn this around.
She was a pro at icing out family after all those years of ignoring her mother’s voicemails. Right?
Zak didn’t stay long enough to hear his response. She grabbed her things and pushed past him, through the revolving door. Into the dead of winter.
Outside, brown and gray snow piled against the street curb like crystalline heroin. What little sunlight shone through the clouds bounced off of spotless windows, towering metal buildings, and sheets of ice.
She stared across the street at Madison Square Park as she stuffed her hands into the pockets of the puffer coat she had borrowed from Chase, pulling out the other winter gear he lent her.
LA born, raised, and trapped, she had never needed snow attire. Before they left, he had dug out his old clothes for her to try on, and she couldn’t help but think of the way he had smiled at her when he wrapped the wool scarf around her neck and pulled his Kodiaks cap down over her ears—as she did the same.
How poetic. Even when she was as irritated with him as she’d ever been, he was the one keeping her warm in the snow.
Footsteps crunched on the sidewalk behind her. “Maybe it’s a bad time to ask, after everything that happened in there,” Chase said. “But can you and Italk?”
There was a snappy remark on the tip of her tongue, but Chase must have turned her fucking soft or something. Because when she opened her mouth to say, “Are you sure you don’t want to run it by my father first?”, the thought of lashing out at him only made her sad. She wasn’t facing him, but she could envision the dejected look on his face.
No matter how blindsided she had been by his collusion with the enemy, hurting him would only hurt her more.
So she repressed her instinct and turned around. “No.”
“Okay. I get it, but—”
“No to the talking,” she said. “But can you just… hold me? For a minute?”
He didn’t hesitate to wrap her, tightly, in his arms.
All the truth she needed was in his touch. All the comfort she wished she would’ve sought out yesterday instead of hiding away, alone, in her room last night.
“I’m sorry, Zak.” He pushed her hair back from her face. “I can’t imagine what it’s like for him to suddenly show up in your life again. I should have told you earlier, but I wanted to take care of everything for you. You were so excited about the tour and the album, all the amazing things you’ve worked so hard for. I didn’t want you to discredit all that hard work over this one thing.”
Before the clarity of last night’s solitude, she might have accused him of being full of shit. Her knee-jerk reaction was that people were always full of shit. But she had shown Chase time and time again that she handled accepting help about as well as she handled small talk with strangers or listening to Ace of Base. Which was to say, she could tolerate it. But only if it was imminently, critically necessary.
“Thank you,” she said into the lapel of his coat. “For the apology, and for what you did for the band. And I’m sorry for letting my ego and all this shit with my dad get in the way. I missed you last night.”
“I missed you, too.”
She pulled back and gazed into the muted gray of the sky reflected in his eyes, framed by a light dusting of snow on his eyelashes. “Do you ever miss the snow?” she wondered aloud.
“All the time.” He tugged her hat down more. “This is my favorite time of year.”
“It’s good songwriting weather.”
“If that’s the case, I can’t imagine what your bookshelf would look like if you had lived somewhere else.”
As it stood, she’d filled four of the five tiers with notebooks, some overflowing and stuffed with ancillary papers. Others, she’d barely cracked open before deciding she didn’t like the size, binding, or paper weight.
“Well, we’re about to see the world,” she said. “So I guess we’ll find out.”
Zak didn’t know why she bothered leasing an apartment in the first place, because now she lived at the recording studio.
Eight o’clock sharp the morning after Flight 90408’s landing gear hit the tarmac at LAX, she and the band reported to Belleview Studios. With the exception of sleep, meal, and dog-walking breaks, they’d been there ever since.
At first, the band had never sounded worse.
Playing at live shows was euphoric. Playing in an acoustic box under the scrutiny of a team of audio engineers was the antithesis of that.
Recording separate tracks had a brutal learning curve for people who had only ever played together live before. The music was generally the same, but now it had to follow a more consistent structure.
The producer Tribute had hooked them up with took a hybrid approach to assembling each track. Edge, Alex, and Dallas recorded their parts together to create the base rhythm layer, Zak recorded the lead guitar separately, and Chase’s vocals were added last.
Though it took a few runs to acclimate to the rigidity of recording, there were benefits to the studio environment as well. They finally had a way to add overdubs and tweak backup vocals. Zak had the luxury of trying dozens of different solos, and then agonizing over which one to keep. All on the label’s dime.
After the first few disjointed takes, they ended up steamrolling through the album. At the end of day four, Chase was in the recording room working on the last layer of their final track, “F*** You, Farewell.” Censorship courtesy of the same team that would slap their well-earned EXPLICIT CONTENT label on the cover.
Zak got the impression during their two, brief phone calls that Trevor Simon was still not thrilled about the terms of their agreement, but he was thrilled about the unprecedented turnaround time. Less studio time equaled less upfront cost. And, at the very least, he had been relieved to hear they selected their biggest Amped hits to appear on the album alongside some older audience favorites.
The album concept brainstorming process had been a rapid one.
Missing Linkwas a memorial to the man who had sent them on this insane journey. It was the story of their band from the beginning until now. From the singer who started it all, to the one standing in the live room.
Zak sat beside the sound mixer as she watched Chase work. Wondering what it would have been like if he and Link had met.
When he was singing songs she still remembered in Link’s voice, it was hard to shake the comparison. Two personalities so unlike each other, yet so universally loved. While Link had been all too aware of his own charisma, Chase still seemed surprised every time the producer praised him for a good take. Every time she smiled at him from behind the glass.
Zak’s new cell phone buzzed on the table.
They each had one now, and it seemed like the damn things never stopped ringing. People needed to get in touch with the band at every hour of the day. Bookers, coordinators, promoters, and assistants of people who were supposedly important, though Zak couldn’t remember any of their names. She guessed that made them even, because these people didn’t remember that nine a.m. Eastern time translated to six a.m. Pacific time. Or maybe they didn’t care.
Maybe they would learn faster if she kept returning those calls at nine p.m. her time, midnight theirs.
“Have him do it again,” Zak told the producer as she checked the call window and saw Izzy’s name. “He can go higher than that on the last chorus.”
She went to the break room across the hall to take Izzy’s call.
“Hel—”
“Four days? Are you kidding me?”
“Considering I’m not even the one who told you, no. I’m not kidding.” Zak assumed one of their many mutual contacts must have mentioned their recording marathon to Izzy.
“Tribute’s kicking themselves right now for not overruling Scott and handing you the first contract.”
“Hey, this wouldn’t have happened so fast if we’d been locked into that first contract.” Zak laid across the sleek couch, propped her ankles up on the armrest, and closed her eyes. How nice it would be if they could just stay closed. “Besides, you use screaming and vocal fry in every single song. You could literally end up mute if you pushed it too hard. You’re a machine.”
“It’s all in the diaphragm. Plus, my airtight warm-up routine. Practice like it’s church choir, sing like it’s the coming of Satan—that’s my motto. Just don’t tell my grandmother that’s my motto because she would send me for a literal exorcism. Nonna hates sarcasm.”
Zak coughed out a laugh.
“How did you do it? And why? Do you sleep? I have so many questions,” Izzy rattled on.
“Well, we”ve gotten about eight years’ worth of practice in. So that helps,” Zak said. At least there was one benefit to playing for dirt cheap at any dive that would loan Saint of Spades a stage. “Also, no to the sleeping.”
Izzy made a noise in the back of her throat. “Robots freak me out. I’m going to be seriously upset if I find out you are one. Anyway, just called to say congrats! Tell the guys I said ‘hi.’ And the puppy.”
“You can tell her yourself in Vegas.”
Izzy let out a sharp squeal and hung up.
Tribute hadn’t bothered to outline any rules about pets in their separate tour contract, so Zak hadn’t bothered to mention she would be bringing along a destructive fluff ball on the five-hundred-thousand-dollar bus they were renting.
The doors closed so quietly in here that Zak didn’t notice Edge had come in until she opened her eyes and saw him standing over her.
“Coffee?”
“If I drink any more coffee, I’m going to have a heart attack or throw up. Not sure which.” She brought her legs in to make room for him.
Edge sat and placed the paper cup he was holding on the side table. “How did the call go?”
“Upset you didn’t get to answer for me this time?” she teased.
“I didn’t realize it was Izzy.” He grabbed the latest edition of Rolling Stone from the rack and flipped to the Michael Stipe feature. “Just wanted to make sure we didn’t get dropped five seconds after knocking out an entire album.”
“Hmm, no.” Zak yawned. “She said hi, by the way.”
Edge stopped pretending to read. “To me?”
Knew it.
“To everyone.”
“Mala,” he muttered.
“Like you never give me shit about the Chase thing.”
“Except I have no thing. With anyone.”
“You never do. What’s that about?”
“Same reason you didn’t. It’s easier if it only lasts one night. Easier for them, especially. It’s a bummer to be stuck with someone who’s not healthy.”
Zak caught his eye and held it. “Being your friend has never been a bummer.”
“Yeah, but you knew me before. I never had to tell you. Never had to wonder how you would react or if it would scare you off. That is, if they don’t get scared off by how fucking boring my life is.”
“You’re in a band. We’ve been on TV, on the radio. We’re about to release our first album and go on an international tour. There’s nothing boring about your life. You don’t have to drink or party to be interesting,” she argued. “If anything, your family is what’s scaring them off. Marisol looks like she knows how to dispose of a body without getting caught.”
Edge snorted. “They don’t even make it that far. But you might be onto something there. I haven’t seen Uncle Ram?n around lately.”
Zak spaced out on the interlocking purple circles printed all over the wallpaper until they made her dizzy. “Do you think Chase and I are right for each other?”
Do you think I’m right for anyone?
“That doesn’t sound like a question for me. It sounds like a question for you.”
“Answer it anyway. Answer it like someone who knows me.”
“Well,” Edge thought aloud. “I’ve never seen you like this with anyone else. Never seen you let anyone in. I know that’s hard for you, after all the shit with your mom. I know you like to pretend she never bothered you because you didn’t want her to bother you, but that isn’t how family works. Believe me, I would know.”
They laughed in unison.
“And I’m sure it’s been hard on Chase, too. It’s not easy to love someone who doesn’t believe they can be loved. So to see him put in the work for you, I feel like he gets it. He gets you, and he believes you’re worth the work, just like we all did. And that’s what I want for you, as your friend. You deserve someone who makes you their number one. Someone who wants what you want out of life. None of it is worth anything if you’re going through it alone.”
She wrapped her jacket tighter around her torso to shield herself from the chill of the air conditioning vent blowing directly above her. “Who said anything about love?”
And just as importantly, who said anything about Chase wanting the same things out of life? On both counts, she was too terrified to ask. At first, she thought compromising the band would be the scariest part of falling for him. But what about finding out that the risk meant nothing? That after everything, the most perfect part of her life could end not only because of its casualness but also because of its seriousness.
“Both of you,” Edge answered as if it were obvious. As if she had drunkenly confessed her feelings to the world at the New Year’s Eve party when she was fairly certain she hadn’t said a word. “You two say it all the time. If you haven’t noticed it, you’re not watching close enough.”
That seemed an impossibility when most times she had to consciously force herself not to watch Chase. Then again, she probably wouldn’t see it without a flashing marquee and an emergency siren. There was no way for her to know what love looked like, outside the uncomplicated, brotherly kind she knew with Edge, Alex, Dallas, and Link.
“Did you think we’d make it this far?” she asked, nudging his leg with the toe of her shoe.
She half-expected him to call her out, but, for once, she wasn’t changing the subject to be avoidant. She was changing the subject because there were so many old memories attached to the songs they had recorded this week, and she was constantly slipping in and out of nostalgia. Half were about their lives before each other, and half were about the drastic ways their lives changed after meeting.
Track 4, “1:18”, she had written about the day she and Edge met. A title not drawn from the time they had met—that, she hadn’t been keeping track of—but the verse in Corinthians they were being lectured on when she noticed the shy kid in the back corner who was carrying a guitar case.
Crazy to the outsiders, foolish to the wise
We made our own beliefs
Believed our own lies
So full of ideas and without a fucking clue
They took more than they gave
We gave up more than we knew
But this life is more than clean edges, round numbers
Family becomes your enemy
Strangers breathe your name under the covers
One day we were kids, the next eighteen
Innocence long gone before we saw we had nothing
Nothing but us
Nothing but a dream
The hands on the clock winding down the next eighteen
“When we met? No. I still thought I was going to become a doctor. But I was glad to meet someone who was just as crazy about the guitar as me. Only, I now know you are much crazier.” He smiled. “When we joined with the others? I don’t know. I hoped for the best, but I think I didn’t want to ruin something I enjoyed by putting too many expectations on it. My brother makes good money, but he doesn”t seem any happier than me.”
“Probably ‘cause Antonio is an asshole.”
Edge held his hands up. “You said it, not me.”
“Well, I’m glad you stuck it through,” she said, realizing they’d never talked about it. Edge had been an assumed constant in her life from the moment he entered it. “I know you had other family to worry about, and to fall back on, but you’ve always been it for me.”
“The family you’re stuck with is different from the family you choose.” He stopped there, momentarily, before adding, “And if anything happens, if I’m holding you back, if the band needs to go in a different direction—I’ll still be there for you. I would understand.”
“What?” That woke her up. “Where is this coming from?”
By the way he danced around the subject, she knew he was talking about his epilepsy again. He was more accepting of it now than he had been in the past, but acceptance was never a short or linear path.
“Life in the normal world is already a lot to manage sometimes,” he said vaguely. “Life on tour… I don’t know. I don’t know what it’ll be like for me. It might be fine, but if it’s not, I wanted you to know that I’ve come to terms with it.”
“There’s nothing to come to terms with. You got us all to the top, too, and you’re staying there with us. If we need to adjust anything for you, we adjust. Okay?”
Edge wasn’t only her best friend, but the best bassist she knew. Even though it was the most thankless role in a rock band, it was a vital one. She wouldn’t settle for less than the best when it came to any piece of their ensemble, and she would never abandon a friend.
“Yeah, yeah, I hear you.” But he didn’t look as convinced as he was trying to portray. “I just wanted you to know where I stand.”
“And I’m telling you where you stand.” She sat up and rested her arms on top of her knees. “You stand right by me on stage. Fuck epilepsy.”
“Fuck epilepsy,” he agreed.
They talked for a while longer before Chase showed up, his once buttoned overshirt now undone to reveal the white tank beneath. The sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, and his forearms flexed as he guzzled down a water bottle.
“So do we have an album now?” Edge asked him.
Right. The recording studio. That’s where they were.
“We do,” Chase said, his vocal chords raw. “A damn good one, if I say so myself.”
Zak’s smile melted into another yawn. A moment like this called for a celebration, but that part would have to wait on a very, very long nap. “Let’s hope you’re right.”