16. Hawk
“Two songs?” Alex asked, his eyes wide. “How much time do we have? Because that’s a hell of an ask these days.” I frowned, and he shrugged unapologetically. “Sorry, man. But it’s true. Black Kite hasn’t written together in years. What the hell does Cornelius expect from us?”
“From me,” I said flatly, tapping my fingers on the dark wood of my dining room table. Harry had set the three of us up in here for dinner, saying that it had been too long since she’d cooked a decent meal for us all, and she wanted to do it right.
Judging by how much of it Gavin and Alex had consumed, I guessed it was appreciated.
“He’s expecting it from me. This is his way of getting revenge for the shit that went down with Tori.”
“That’s a fucking joke,” Gavin burst out, his usual quiet demeanor always falling away whenever Tori was brought up. “Not a single thing about that situation was your fault.”
As much as I wanted to agree with him, the fact of the matter was, I had started shit with Tori long before the band blew up over it. Our divorce was just the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. And as much as I was glad to be rid of her and her twisted ways, I had so many fuckin’ regrets about it.
About everything, really.
About falling for her lies. Sacrificing a friendship for the sake of my anger. Hurting Alex and Gavin in the process.
So many wrong choices, and no way to undo any of them.
Once again, a pair of haunting brown eyes flashed in my mind, and I swallowed hard against the memory of my biggest regret of all.
“It doesn’t matter if he thinks it’s my fault or not because, when all is said and done, he’s the one holding our final album hostage, and until we deliver two additional tracks, it will never get released and we’ll never be free of our goddamn contractual obligations.”
“So what do you want to do?” Alex asked, his eyes wary.
I knew what I didn’t want to do; I didn’t want to reach out to Lewis. Didn’t want to ask him to participate in the process in any way. I could write the lyrics, the guys could do their part, but we needed a bass line, and unfortunately, that role belonged to Lewis.
If I wanted these songs done and the album released, I needed to have him be a part of it.
“What I want to do is go down to Castor Records, reach across that ridiculously large desk, and drag Cornelius Castor across it by his stupid skinny tie. Tell him exactly what I think of him blackmailing us for our own intellectual property.”
Gavin nodded, his eyes narrowed, but Alex just stared at me, waiting.
“What I’m actually going to do is sit down with my two best friends and write two killer songs. Once we have what we need, we will probably have to ask Lewis to add the bass. He should be able to do that, no problem, and we likely won’t even have to be in the same room when he does it. It’ll be easy.”
Even I didn’t believe my own words, but that didn’t stop the guys from nodding along. They’d stand by me, I knew, but I hated the thought of making them suffer any more than they already had for my bullshit.
After dinner was cleared, we shifted our little party to the living room, Alex and I casually strumming at our favorite acoustics while Gavin sat, long arms stretched across the back of the couch, bobbing his head to our pitiful plucking.
“You got any lyrics you’ve been keeping from us?” Alex asked, his fingers mindlessly moving through chord progressions.
I pursed my lips thoughtfully, not quite sure I wanted to answer him.
Because I had nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing.
It had been five years since our band had gone on hiatus, and I had spent the vast majority of that time wallowing in my own self pity. I hadn’t written a single line. Not one phrase or even a fucking rhyming couplet.
It was like I had thrown my creativity away and hadn’t even bothered to look for it.
To be honest, I wasn’t sure that I could find it again even if I did.
Creation was work. It took parts of you, pieces of your soul that you willingly gave up when you wrote the words down on paper. Taking your experiences, your emotions, joys and hurts, and putting them out into the open for the world to consume was an act of bravery.
And these days, I was living like a coward.
Thinking about writing had my thoughts drifting to Wren’s latest letter. The way she’d talked about taking all the shit in her life and writing songs about it. Purging her soul onto paper to free herself.
She’d been absolutely correct when she had assumed that was how I worked.
So, maybe it was time to follow her lead and pick up a pen one more time.
Noticing my lack of reply, Gavin sat forward on the couch, elbows on his knees.
“No worries, man. You’ll come through in a pinch. You always do.”
I nodded, but I wasn’t so sure this time. My insides were all fucked up. Not that they weren’t fucked up when I’d written other songs, but there was something different in me now, something hardened and cautious that hadn’t been there before.
The other albums, I’d been young and idealistic, angsty in the way that only a teenaged rock star could be. I was mad at the world, and I wasn’t afraid to let people know it.
Now, though, I was really only mad at myself. And while that could make for a good song in the right hands, I wasn’t sure I was ready to explore my own self-hatred out loud just yet.
We fucked around for a while longer, just playing and talking like we used to do, back before all the bullshit, and for the first time in a long time, the coiled tension in my chest began to relax.
Maybe I could do it. Maybe I could write two songs that would round out the final album, get it released, and finally cut ties with Castor Records for good.
But not tonight. Tonight, I just wanted to jam with my boys.
Sometime around midnight, Alex busted out the good scotch, and we headed out to the yard, letting the soft lights of the patio lull us into quiet retrospection.
“Remember that time in Omaha?” Alex asked, leaning back on his lounge chair and staring at the darkened sky. You couldn’t see the stars, even this far from downtown, but he stared up at them anyway. “When the opening act didn’t show, and we had to find a replacement last minute? They ended up kicking some serious ass.” Looking to me, Alex asked, “Where the hell did you end up finding them again?”
“In the bathroom of a dive bar.”
“Oh, shit!” Gavin laughed. “Was that in Omaha? I thought it was Oakland?”
“Nah. It was Omaha. I remember because after the show, we had that set of hot twins in the dressing room? You don’t find twangy country accents like that in Oakland.”
I laughed along with them, remembering the show they were talking about, but not because of the hot twins—I’d been married to Tori at that point, and regardless of how we’d ended up that way, I had stayed true to my vows, even if she hadn’t—but because of the replacement opening act we’d found.
Mick had been in a panic, his suit looking rumpled and his shirt collar dingy with sweat. He’d been on the phone with the label, trying to get a replacement act in time for opening, but nothing was coming through, and he was starting to lose his mind.
Tori had been on a tear of her own, ranting about how I wasn’t spending enough time with her, as though we weren’t in the middle of a coast-to-coast tour with all my focus on performing every fucking night. No, her selfish ass wanted more, always more, and I had to keep reminding her that it was the music that came first. Always.
In the end, I had been sick and tired of all the noise, and Charlie and I had snuck off, finding some shitty little dive bar the way we liked to do. It was getting late, cutting it pretty fucking close to when I’d need to be back at the venue when I’d gone to take a leak. The wall over the urinal was pasted with fliers, a rainbow of advertisements for events that the bar had hosted, and one in particular had caught my eye.
It was a local rock band, and based solely on their look in the poster, they appeared to match our vibe. The bottom of the poster listed their socials, and as I zipped up my jeans, I’d pulled out my phone, going right to their Instagram and scrolling through. The first video I came across surprised the shit out of me. They were young, like we used to be, but really fucking good for all that.
Four videos later, and I was in the back seat of the car, firing off messages to the band’s profile, crossing my fingers and grinning like a loon.