15. Chase
Signing autographs had once been Chase’s favorite ancillary part of his job.
Sure, there had been the obsessive sports fans who didn’t care about treating him like a human being as long as they got their money’s worth of added value from his Sharpie on their official gift store jerseys. Hockey had its toxic side, like any other sport and every community in general, but all of that was sprinkled in with moments of incomparable joy.
People making lifelong friends through their love of sports. Going on first dates, getting engaged in the stands. People setting aside all other differences and coming together to celebrate their pride for a city that meant something to them—whether they’d been born and raised there, moved there, or held happy memories there.
Those were the stories he loved to witness, the ones he loved to hear as he scrawled the repetitive loops of his signature.
The first autograph he signed after losing his leg had been for one of the nurses who had seen his bare ass hanging out of a humiliating hospital gown for weeks on end. Who had told him, “What, you couldn’t hold it for five more minutes?” when he finally gave up on waiting for someone to answer the call button, tried to make it to the restroom on one leg, and fell so hard it knocked the piss out of him.
“That game is going to go down in history. You know, you’re the biggest celebrity I’ve been assigned to? Crazy. It’s awful, what happened. Awful for the other guy, too, to have to live with that guilt,” she had said while he mindlessly signed, too stunned to stand up for himself.
Those were the most common autographs he had given since, and they made interacting with the public a living nightmare.
Until today.
Chase had been skeptical after seeing the billboard ad. He didn’t look like himself up there. He looked airbrushed and hardcore, and most glaringly of all, in love with a woman whom he felt nothing more than fond acquaintanceship toward.
But Zak had been right: none of it mattered. Because when people came to their table to buy Saint of Spades’ debut album, they were there for the music. He had to field a few compliments from strangers about what a cute couple he and Izzy made, but for the most part, people asked questions about the band or talked about how much the songs meant to them.
They brought up Amped, either intentionally avoiding mention of the scandal, or lauding Alex for his bravery. They commented on how everyone seemed so different in person, and Chase knew they were really talking about Zak.
For TV, she’d been the scorned, cold-hearted woman concocted by producers. For her fans, she was the bright-eyed, slick-mouthed woman who Chase knew to be the truest version of herself. Answering, “What do the words mean?” with, “Well, what do they mean to you?” or “How did you come up with that guitar solo?” with, “Trial and error and a little bit of tequila.”
And extremely commonly, replying to, “Your dog is so cute!” with, “She’s more like a hyperactive throw blanket with a foot-long tongue.”
Zak still had that starry glow about her as they piled back into her car after the shop closed.
“Suck my ass, Tribute Records,” she said, slapping her thighs. “And fuck you, Kenny Vaughn from The Ledger Review. Who’s ‘uninspired’ and ‘lacking finesse’ now?”
“You’re right.” Alex smirked. “You do sound like the picture of refinement.”
She ignored him as she held up her copy of the album, on vinyl, in the fading light. They’d each kept one for themselves. “We made it.”
She stared at the cover they’d commissioned from the poker set artist. A detailed playing-card style drawing in black, red, and blue ink. Black spades and capital S’s marked the top left and bottom right corners. At the center, an apostle with face and neck tattoos wore intricate robes and held a burning candle in one hand, while its inverse image had a skeletal face and held a bleeding heart.
Zak took out the silver permanent marker she’d used to sign their merch and uncapped it. “My turn,” she said. “Write me something nice, boys.”
She handed it to the backseat first, which thankfully gave Chase time to think of what to write. What words could possibly sum up the past nine months they’d spent together? Surely, words existed. The only question was if everyone else would hang tight while he penned the next Great American romance novel onto the sleeve of Zak’s album.
He was instantly transported back to his senior year of high school, wondering what the hell he was going to write in her yearbook all day only to find out she hadn’t ordered a yearbook anyway. Which, in retrospect, should’ve been painfully obvious.
By the time the album landed in his hands, he still didn’t feel any closer to finding the right thing to say, even as he read the others’ autographs.
From our first chords to our first tour. Te quiero, chica. – Edge
Something nice. – Dallas
To the sixteen-year-old girl who turned me into a drummer. – Alex
Snickerdoodle licked the album cover to leave her own mark while Chase sat there like an idiot with the marker, inches away from writing, You saved me. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, and Saint of Spades is a close second. I love you.
What was the balance between writing out explicitly how committed he was to her and to a life that included her, and the band, at the forefront—but not scaring her with that commitment?
He threw the L-word out the window. Bad timing, always bad timing. And right now, he was full of bad ideas. One of which, he hastily wrote before the kissy noises and sniggering coming from the backseat escalated any further.
The first of many. – Chase
It felt shallow and generic already, but even more so when he handed Zak’s record back to her and watched as she read their notes with nostalgic eyes, a laugh, a smile… that slipped when her eyes scanned Chase’s signature. He could tell she was disappointed, though she tried to cover it up by telling everyone, “Thank you,” and sliding the album into her seat-back pocket to keep it safe during the drive home.
Suddenly, he wished he had gone for it. He wished he had abandoned every inhibition the way he so admired her for doing. But he wasn’t her.
“Who’s next?” she asked.
And once all the joking and signing was done, Chase looked at the CD he’d brought back with him that read:
And the river rises higher. You and I know the end. Maybe you’ll float, but baby, I’ll sink in. – Zak
Words he knew because he’d sung them countless times. Spent hours perfecting them when they recorded Track 7. It was the bridge of “The River”.
Chase couldn’t stop thinking about the lyrics Zak had scrawled on his CD as the five of them celebrated the album drop at his bandmates’ apartment that night. He had read them again, twice, in the car to first make sure it wasn’t a cruel trick of his imagination. And nearly four hours later, he’d driven himself past the brink of insanity. The options he’d come up with were:
A) Zak was comparing the bond she had felt with their previous singer to the way she felt toward Chase, and it was nothing more than a gesture of camaraderie. She’d probably written lyrics on everyone else”s CDs, too.
B) Those particular lyrics served as some sort of metaphor for their relationship. The river “rising higher” could represent the overwhelming state of their careers. “You and I know the end,” could, ominously, refer to the end she had always envisioned for them. The one where they, and the band, fell apart. Chase “floating” could refer to him rising above the tribulations of fame while she “sank,” or succumbed, to them.
C) She hadn’t written “The River” about Link, and it wasn’t about addiction. It was about him.
Option A had to be the most likely, but his brain would notlet go of B orC.
Every time he thought he had Zak figured out, she did a one-eighty. Cryptic and blunt didn’t seem like they should coexist in someone’s personality, but she managed to meld those two opposing traits like a Michelin-star chef whipping up an unusual culinary dish so delicious he could lick it off the plate.
“You’re thinking pretty loudly over here,” Alex observed as he walked into the kitchen to grab another IPA.
Chase, perched atop a bar stool, shrugged as he took a sip of his own beer. “Just soaking it all in.”
“Really?” Alex’s eyes crinkled as he tuned in to the argument happening in the living room. The other three were in the middle of a heated debate about the best guitar solos of all time. “Which part? The part about how the solo in ‘My Sharona’ doesn’t get enough credit because it doesn’t fall under the rock umbrella?” Alex said in Dallas’s twang. “Or—” He cleared his throat and put on Edge’s accent, “How Blue ?yster Cult is more than just another 60s psychedelic band, and they should be credited for metal as much as Black Sabbath.”
Alex settled into Zak’s expression of vehement disagreement. “Or, how, the guitar work in ‘Astronomy’ is great, but it would have been way better without the grating, repetitive vocalizations covering it up. You can call it good, but you can’t say it’s on the same wavelength as Black Sabbath. You know what? I disagree with the entire notion of picking a best. There are too many bests. ‘Great King Rat’, ‘Welcome to the Jungle’, ‘Poundcake’ if ‘Eruption’ doesn’t count. Maybe ‘Voodoo Child’?”
“Alright, picking Hendrix is off-limits. That’s fucking cheating, Zak,” Chase said in his best Dallas impersonation.
“I see you’re getting the hang of this.” Alex pulled out the chair next to his and sat down. “You know, at first I thought you were quiet because you were a little slow in the head.”
“I appreciate that,” Chase said.
“But then, I realized you were just confused. Some people get quiet when they don’t know what they’re doing, and some people yell until they can’t hear anyone tell them they’re wrong.” Alex popped the cap off his beer and clicked the neck of the bottle against Chase’s. “I’m glad you’re the first kind. So, tell me. What’s got that overly concussed brain of yours all scrambled up tonight?”
Chase considered his wording. Alex was a notorious secret spiller, which wasn’t a problem in a group of friends who didn’t care to keep secrets from one another. But even though he was now part of that group, they all had this extensive, matchless history with Zak.
“Can I ask you something personal?” he ventured. “About Link?”
“Of course.” Alex took a long drink from the beer bottle. “It’s been almost a year. You don’t have to ask me before bringing him up.”
“What was it like for you? Dating. Working together. Keeping it all a secret.”
Alex looked off to the side with a shallow sigh. “I don’t know if dating was the right word for it. I don’t think we ever went on a real date. I don’t think Link ever even referred to himself as gay, or bi, or whatever. But the beginning was easy, like it was for anyone who met him. He had this way of making everything sound like flirting. He did everything in his power to make everybody laugh.
“You’re in the band now, you know how it is. You spend every waking moment of your day with these people and you get to know them without trying, but he was the oddball. It was like everyone knew him, but nobody did.”
And on a very different level, Chase did know what that was like. He could see himself in a person he never had and never would meet. The odd one out. The person who could talk to everyone, but never be authentic around anyone. Not until Zak.
“The day it all started, we had just finished a gig. We’d always hang around afterward and talk with the people who came, some real boots-on-the-ground marketing. I was hitting it off with this guy, and I went to get my shit from Zak’s car, and then Link was in my face. At first, I thought he was pissed off at me about something, so I asked him what his problem was. And he kissed me.
“It wasn’t like any relationship I’d ever been in before. It wasn’t just passion. He understood me, but I don’t think he understood himself. And that’s where the problems started to come in,” Alex said. “We were in deep before we realized what a problem this whole band thing would be. Behind everything we did, separately and as a group, there had to be this extra thought of, ‘How are we going to make sure no one finds out?’ It’s not that I needed to broadcast my romantic life. It’s just hard for someone to be the center of your world… part-time.”
“But at first, I was happy to deal with it for him. I would’ve been happy to tell the others, but I also understood why he wanted to keep his sexuality private. When you’re like me, opening yourself up to a normal relationship also opens you up to a lot of assholes. Some of them just run their mouths, but some of them corner you outside a nightclub and hold a knife to your throat. Choosing to be myself cost me my family, my friends, and my future. People who used to go to my birthday parties were telling me to kill myself. My parents kicked me out and donated my college fund to the LDS church to ‘save purer souls from demons like the one inside of me.’ I had no one in my corner until I met these guys.”
Apart from the odd sarcastic quip, Alex rarely talked about his life before the band. All Chase knew from Zak was that it was shitty—a common pattern in their home lives. And still, he was sure the details got darker if Alex’s cursory overview involved people assaulting him, disowning him, and telling him to commit suicide. It was the kind of story that made Chase feel ignorant yet again. Because no matter how many depressing personal anecdotes he listened to, he still didn’t understand how anyone couldn’t accept the people who had been so accepting of him from the beginning.
“I’m sorry you had to go through all that.”
“I’m sorry you had to lose your leg. But life sucks sometimes, and we have to make the best of it. ‘Cause sometimes, it doesn’t last that long.” A lifetime of extreme joy and misery formed one twisted-up expression on Alex’s face. “You asked me because of Zak and this whole tour situation?”
“Sort of.”
“I know I don’t have the best reputation when it comes to keeping my mouth shut, but when it comes to people’s relationships, I’m an iron vault.” Alex made a cross over his heart with his pinky.
Chase tipped the glass bottle back and forth on the counter as he deliberated with Alex through eye contact. He didn’t have to get up and peek out the entryway to know Zak wasn’t listening because he could hear her still in the throes of that heated debate with Dallas and Edge, but he did anyway.
Just to feel a little closer to her as he said to Alex, “Even if I told you I’m in love with her?”
“Is that supposed to be news to me?” Alex stood, joining him. “What? You haven’t told her.”
“I tried.”
The other man’s brows furrowed. “How do you try to tell someone you love them?”
Chase had to hold back a laugh at the absurdity of it. “You get halfway there before they cut you off with sex.”
“That amazing, devious slut.” Alex cackled. “Classic Zak. Incapable of believing in anything she hasn’t personally experienced. So that checks stability and commitment right off the list. But thankfully for you, not love. Because I don’t know where I’d be without her, and neither do those two in there. And if she didn’t love us, she would’ve skipped town a long time ago to bully her way into the music industry.”
“I know she loves all of you,” Chase said, watching her laugh in the other room. “But slow-in-the-head or not, I can tell something is holding her back with me.”
When Zak wasn’t telling the whole truth, it looked like a breath incomplete. Inhaling, but not fully exhaling.
Alex nodded. “Have you figured out her autograph yet?”
Chase raised a brow.
“Yeah, I read it over your shoulder. Well, most of it. She has the handwriting of a developmentally delayed kindergartener.” Alex shrugged. “Couldn’t help it. I was curious.”
Chase turned the question on him. “Does that mean you know what she meant by it?”
Alex made a zipping motion over his borderline evil smirk. “Iron vault. Remember?”
“Whose side are you on here?”
“The side of chaos,” Alex said. “But because I like you, and you’re good to my friend, I’ll tell you this. I have never seen her look at anyone the way she looks at you. If you don’t believe me, pull out the photos from our shoot in New York. And Chase?”
“Yeah?”
“Take it from me.” He prodded Chase’s shoulder with his beer bottle. “No matter what you think she’ll say, tell her anyway. Just tell her.”
Alex’s spoken words swirled around in his brain, tangled with Zak’s written ones, long after Chase had returned to his apartment for the evening.
“If you don’t believe me, pull out the photos from our shoot in New York.”
So, he did.
Chase’s plain desk and fabric office chair were both hand-me-downs from Lydia. The last time he sat down and flicked on the lamp, he’d been writing his resume. A short, one-paragraph document with a single role and a high school diploma that now rested on top of the poster proofs. Beneath the two loose championship rings that rolled to the back of the bottom drawer when he opened it.
They’d gotten a stack of thirty official photos—the same ones Tribute would print on T-shirts, release on ads, and put on their website. Chase had paid little attention to what the images looked like beyond appreciating their overall quality.
He was no photography buff, but the biggest thing that kept him from admiring the band pictures was the memory of what it had been like to pose for them. The long day of primping and standing in front of the camera had only been made tolerable by the fun they had between snaps, but no one was smiling in the finished shots.
However, there was one photo where they’d gotten close.
It jumped out at him now that he was looking for it. A picture where Zak had one foot propped up on an amp, an aux cord tangled under the stiletto heel of her shoe, and a guitar in her hands, but she was looking up at him. Her body was angled toward his like she was telling him a secret.
He was holding a microphone high in one hand, adjusting the cord with his other, and looking down at the ground, a ghost of a smile on his mouth. He remembered her making some sort of joke in his ear, flirty and mean and probably wholly inappropriate in front of a camera crew—but he couldn’t remember what it was. Those sorts of comments were a daily occurrence with her.
Though the line of her lips was sly and challenging, her gaze was soft. It was the expression she had worn when he saw her penning lyrics in the coffee shop. Playing guitar on the balcony. Taking her first steps onto the stage during a concert. The look she gave him whenever she did something despicably hot in bed. And it was him she was focused on. Not the guitar, not the tuning knobs she toyed with in the picture.
He flipped to the next one and saw those piercing eyes on him again. The next one, where he faced the camera, but her arm was over his shoulder, her fingertips habitually brushing the ends of his hair. The next one, where she leaned back onto his leg as she sat on the amp in front of the group.
It was easy to tell himself it had all been for the camera, but Zak had been getting directed and frustratedly re-directed by the photographer for five hours that day. She couldn’t fake a pose if her life depended on it.
But whether it was love or affection, or simply lust, how was he supposed to know the difference?
All he knew was that when he flipped through those mock-ups—when he saw the glow captured in her eyes—he saw his future with halting clarity.
He saw a decades-long backlist of albums, a lifetime of traveling the world and making music. Getting tangled in hotel sheets and ignoring wake-up calls and never, ever feeling homesick again. He saw the two of them in band photos years from now, looking back at each other exactly the way they did in these, only with wisps of silver in their hair and crow’s feet at the corners of their eyes.
He didn’t know if it was love he saw, but he did know it was bliss. Comfort. Passion. And he knew he wanted it forever.