2. Tom Cobalt #3
Jeremy slips into the control room, sipping a Fizz Life through a straw. He’s addicted to my family’s soda. I swear he drinks about five cans a day.
“And?” Jeremy asks me while Phoenix continues to play. Phoenix can’t hear in the tracking room since I haven’t switched on the mic.
I watch the drummer of my dreams. He never misses a beat. “What’s wrong with him?”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t play coy, Jere.” I spin toward my manager. He has a shit-eating grin as he sips from the straw. “You’ve sent me a drummer that should be headlining a world tour.”
“Hopefully he will be. With you. As part of The Carraways.”
I shake my head slowly, like I’m trying to find the error in the code, but before I can prod Jeremy, the song ends, and Phoenix is rising from behind the drum kit. “Your turn, Tom.” He points at me with his stick. “Prove you don’t suck.”
I clench my jaw. “Jere, play ‘Fire You Feel.’”
“Roger that.” I hear the smile in his voice.
He shouldn’t be excited. Something about this feels like a catalytic trainwreck.
Probably because when I exit into the tracking room, Phoenix and I exchange fuck you glares, and fire sears both my lungs as I fit on headphones, slip the guitar strap over my shoulder, and lower the fixed microphone toward my mouth.
Jeremy’s leveled voice comes through my headset, but he’s not speaking to me. “Phoenix, sit back down. I’m about to start the demo to Tom’s single. Come in on drums if you feel up to it.”
I’m not prepared for Phoenix to play my song. With me.
I’m barely prepared to sing to him.
This is happening too fast, but can we go slow? The label wants to rush everything since I misspent all last year struggling to make an album.
I tune the guitar, then when I’m ready, I motion to Jeremy in the control room.
Right as the track begins, I rotate and face Phoenix. His brows tick up a little in surprise, but I’m not going to avoid him. He wants to hear me, then I’m confronting him head-on.
Lips near the mic, I belt out the feverish, caustic intro that feels like magma slipping into my bloodstream. My fingers move naturally on the guitar. My body shifts with the raging beat. When I sing, all my bottled emotion explodes out of me, and I detonate into the chorus.
I wrote “Fire You Feel.” The lyrics are personal. I’m more exposed as each word carries out of my body, but each one is also a weapon, a blade, aimed ahead of me.
You could never take the reason I woke.
You could never take my anger you provoke.
This voice, these feet, this heart of a thousand beats will go on.
Don’t worry, I don’t need you to see.
Any fucking part of me.
I don’t need you.
You’ll wish you knew.
Any fucking part of me.
The fire you feel is blue.
Don’t you wish you knew?
Any fucking part of me.
Phoenix shifts on his stool, almost forgetting to play. His gaze is latched to mine, and I don’t release him.
My throat burns like my eyes, and I tap my temple and point at him before giving him a middle finger and strumming into a guitar riff.
He animates on the second chorus, spins the sticks and plays with me. My pulse pounds and accelerates into a mind-whirling speed. He adds new drum beats I never thought of when I recorded the demo—ones that sound crisper, harder.
All I really know is when the song ends, my esophagus is torched like my lungs, and each breath hurts. That was too much.
Too raw.
Too real.
Too incensed.
Too good.
I don’t want to sound this great with this guy. I can’t put my finger on it—but there is something terrifying about this partnership. Like I’m making a deal with the devil to achieve ultimate success. What’s the actual cost?
Phoenix is scrutinizing me in the silence too. His breath heavy. He rubs sweat off his temple with the side of his fist. And the first thing he says is, “Who fucked you up?”
My ribs contract painfully.
He repeats the lyric, “‘You could never take the reason I woke.’”
I feel bare. My tongue is tied for once. Thankfully, I don’t have to respond. Our manager enters the tracking room with a bright grin and an approving nod.
Neither of us return the smile.
“Jere.” Phoenix stands from the drum kit. “What’s wrong with him?”
My eyes widen since I asked the same thing about him earlier. “Nothing’s wrong with me, dude,” I defend myself.
He snaps a hard look at me. “Okay, arrogant god. You have the presence and the voice of someone who should be selling out stadiums. But you haven’t even released an album.”
At least he knows I’m amazing.
Jeremy comes closer, and our heads swing toward our manager as he finally says, “I’m putting my two problem children together. Your previous bands said you’re not easy to work with, so let’s see if you can work with each other.”
This is a terrible idea.
But it’s the only one I have left. As Phoenix grinds his teeth, his annoyance verging on actual hate, I feel the same sentiment claw down my body.
I’m very, very fucked.
Maybe I was fucked the moment my dream was born. Dreams are infernos we try to start with our bare hands. I’ve been desperately cradling a flickering ember that might sputter out at any moment, hoping that it’ll spark into a real fire one day.
All I want is to burn alive.