He was struggling to put his life back together in the wake of terrible loss, and who could blame him for struggling? Maybe some people thought he’d been grieving too long, suffering too long. But it was only four years. Who could put a limit on how much you loved someone?
Or how much it hurt when you lost them?
Or how much you blamed yourself?
If you asked me, it was natural to feel whatever my brother was feeling.
He’d grown up with Gabe. They’d been best friends since they were nine years old. Inseparable. Two peas in a pod and all that stuff. To me, Gabe was like another older brother. And to my brother… he was probably like another limb.
I could still remember Gabe, so clearly. Like he was standing right in front of me, in one of his holey old T-shirts and jeans with the pocket chain, with this curly brown hair all askew and his brown eyes sparkling. And his giant smile. Gabe had the best laugh, the kind that made everyone else laugh. He made the best hot wings on the planet. He called me cutie-pie. And he’d do anything for his friends.
If I could remember him that vividly, I knew my brother could too.
Let me be broken.
As I walked over to the doors that led into Cary’s studio, I could hear his voice in my head—at Gabe’s memorial service. My brother had gotten up to speak, though very briefly, about Gabe. Mostly he spoke to Gabe, rather than about him. He said he knew Gabe wouldn’t want anybody to be broken about what happened to him, but…
Today, just let me be broken.
I took a breath to calm myself, to fight back the emotions that swelled in my chest… just like they did every time I thought of my brother at Gabe’s memorial service, saying those words.
The last thing I wanted was for my brother to see me in tears.
Then I pulled out my phone and sent him a text, letting him know I was here.
While I waited, Freddy appeared, head-butting my ankle.
“Hey, snuggle puss.” I scooped him up and hugged him to my chest like a security blanket.
It took a few minutes, but then the door opened. My brother stood there, looking at me as I snuggled his cat in my arms.
“Hey, cupcake,” he said. Like no time had passed since the last time he saw me. Like this wasn’t weird at all—that I had to text him to ask permission to see him, and he had to let me into a locked, soundproofed suite in his house to visit him.
“Hey. I brought you coffee.” I’d picked up the usual, like I did pretty much every morning, whether he actually drank it or not.
He bent down to pick up the mug at my feet, and he smiled at me a little. But it wasn’t a real smile. Just one of those halfway, forced smiles that he put on because he probably knew other humans expected him to.
“Thanks.” He stood back to let me in, and I slipped inside with Freddy. He closed the door behind me. “You were at Angie’s?”
“Yeah. Just for a few nights. You know, girl time.”
That, and I stuck my boobs in Xander’s face and humiliated myself, so I needed somewhere to hide.
I bit my tongue on that part, obviously.
“How’s she doing?” he asked, as I followed him up the hall.
“She’s good.”
At the other end of the dark hallway, we emerged into the main room of the studio, which had once been a big family room. The walls were now soundproofed and draped in curtains, the floor layered in rugs, and comfy furniture was scattered around.
Cary settled onto a couch, and I sat down at the other end of it with Freddy, who snuggled into my lap. Freddy adored Cary, but he always seemed to like it when I was around, too.
I’d given him to Cary as a kitten, about a year after Gabe died. For companionship. I’d read that having a pet could help people suffering from things like PTSD and depression. I had no way of knowing if Freddy had helped my brother, but he was a friendly cat who offered cuddles in spades, so I figured he did more good than harm.
Even if he sometimes annoyed Cary by scratching up his furniture.
Plus, he always gave me comfort when I had to talk to my brother about things I was nervous about saying.
“I wanted to tell you…” I said, stroking Freddy’s fur. “I talked to Angie about my job here a bit. Elle has an assistant, Joanie. Angie asked Elle for me about what Joanie does for her and got a list of duties, things Joanie does to help her out. There’s quite a lot. I made a list for you.” I dug out the paper I’d brought in my back pocket, unfolded it and handed it to him.
Of course, Xander also had an assistant, but I was hardly gonna ask him for anything.
Cary took the paper and looked it over. The list was extensive, though I’d removed anything that would involve him actually leaving the house, tailoring it the best I could to working for someone who never left home.
“If there’s anything on there that you’d like me to do for you… I can do it.”
“Thanks, CC,” he said. “That’s cool.” Then he put the paper aside.
And with that, I knew he wasn’t going to ask me to do anything.
But at least I’d tried?
“And, uh, speaking of my job… I was thinking. You really don’t have to pay me so much. I mean, my expenses are low. I’m living here anyway.”
“It’s the same rate I was paying the other assistant. Seems pretty standard.”
“Yeah… Except, he had a ton of experience. I’m new at this, and besides, it doesn’t seem to be very… busy right now. It doesn’t seem worth it for you to be paying me so much.”
He shrugged. “You’re here if I need you. That’s worth it to me.”
“But… I wasn’t here the last few days.”
“It’s fine. If you need some time off, no worries.”
Well, damn. I gave up.
There was really no point arguing this with him. Obviously, he planned to pay me whether I worked or not. Whether I was even here or not. It wasn’t like he was unaware that he hadn’t given me any work to do. He’d insisted on paying me the same as the other assistant I’d helped him hire. And clearly he didn’t care that I wasn’t actually doing anything to earn it.
He’d probably let me do anything I wanted or nothing at all, and it would be fine with him.
He probably didn’t even want an assistant anyway. Like my schooling and the fancy car, this was just another way for him to throw money at me to lessen the burden of guilt he might feel about rarely spending time with me.
It sucked, but I knew it was true.
“So… do I get to hear the new album yet?” I asked, looking to change the subject. “I mean, does your assistant get early access? I’d love to hear it.”
“It’s not ready yet. But when it is, my assistant will be one of the first to know.”
Unfortunately, I kinda doubted that.
“How’s the band?” I asked. “Are they happy with it? Is everything going well?”
“Yeah, they’re good. They’ve finished recording, mostly. We’re just tinkering around, making it great.”
And that was a non-response, if I’d ever heard one.
Good and great weren’t really in my brother’s musical vocabulary. Nothing short of utterly exceptional would be acceptable to him. Good or great wouldn’t even get you in the studio door with Cary Clarke.
He didn’t even produce Steel Trap.
Xander and Dean were two of his closest friends, but their band didn’t make the cut with my brother.
I could understand why. I was no musical genius like Cary, but even I knew Steel Trap was good. They had a couple of radio hits, but they weren’t exceptional. Not like Alive was.
“Well…” I told him, “if you ever want to bounce anything off me… you know, see if it’ll be a hit with the cool kids, I’m your girl.”
He smiled a little. “Yeah. I’ll let you know.”
He wouldn’t.
I looked around, starting to feel uncomfortable. It was always like this with Cary—at least, the last four years had been like this wi
th Cary. Awkward conversation. And me, generally feeling like an imposition. An interruption.
Gone were the days of my big brother playing tea party with me, or taking me to rock shows, or making popcorn and hot chocolate so we could hang out and watch scary movies together.
We never did stuff like that together anymore.
Not like I hadn’t tried to make it happen… but Cary was never game. Always too busy. Buried in his work.
I tried anyway.
“Want to watch Netflix or something?” I suggested. “Hang out? I’ll let you pick the show and have the remote.”
“I would, but… I can’t. I have a ton of a work to do tonight.”
“Oh. Okay.”
I looked around again. I would’ve been happy to hang out and just watch him work, listen to whatever he was working on, but there was no way he’d go for that, and I knew it.
He used to let me do that. When I was twelve, I got to sit in while Alive recorded some of their songs for the album in-studio. They even recorded my laughter on one of the tracks.
But that was a long time ago.
“I guess I should let you get back to it.”
I set Freddy carefully aside on the couch, arranging him in a sleepy ball and tucking his tail in for him.
“Sure,” Cary said. “Before you go, though…” He reached for something on the end table behind him. It was a small, wrapped gift box. “It’s a graduation gift. Sorry it’s so late.”
He held it out to me and I took it.
“You didn’t have to do this, Cary.”
“I would’ve come to the graduation,” he said, though I kinda wished he wouldn’t. Wouldn’t lie to me like that. “But I was working on the album. You know how it is.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”
“You can open it.”
I peeled off the silver bow and the blue paper. It was a small, flat box, the kind jewelry came in. “You didn’t have to get me anything,” I repeated. He really, really didn’t.
He’d already gotten me a BMW for my birthday. He could’ve really skipped the graduation gift and I wouldn’t have cared.
But he was waiting, so I opened the box. Inside was a necklace.
I lifted it out. It was a long, delicate gold chain with a cupcake charm on it. It had blue stones set in the gold icing; aquamarine. Not my birthstone, but my favorite color.
He remembered. He always remembered stuff like that.
I looked at him. “You picked this out for me?”
“Yeah.”
I studied it. He must’ve ordered it off the internet, because it wasn’t like he’d go to some jewelry store. The thought of my brother searching “cupcake necklaces” online, for me, made me kinda smile.
“Do you like it?”
“It’s sweet,” I said, putting it on. I saw the look on his face, and I amended, “I mean, it’s beautiful.”
“Shit. You’re right. It’s childish,” he muttered, like he just realized I wasn’t fourteen anymore.
Sometimes it was like he’d lost the last four years completely.
“It’s not,” I said.
“I can get you something else.”
“No. I love it,” I told him. It was kinda little-girl, but I did love it. It was from him. “Thank you.”
He got to his feet when I did, and I gave him a hug.
And I held on tight, because who knew when I’d get to do this again?
He felt very real in my arms, and very alive. And in that moment, I could’ve forgiven him for anything.
I didn’t need jewelry or cars. I just needed my big brother.
Chapter Eight
Xander
I managed to avoid Courteney for most of the week.
Maybe we were avoiding each other.
When I walked out of the poolhouse on Thursday morning, I hadn’t seen her around the house for days. And there she was. Lounging by the pool, working on her laptop with little glasses on, suited up in full-on combat gear.
Another fucking skimpy, sexy-ass bikini.
How many of those things did she have?
It wasn’t the blue one I’d seen her in when she was hanging with her girls, or the white one with the ruffles.
This one was hot-pink and strapless. And left even less to the imagination than the other ones. A chick with tits that size and a body like that should not go strapless. Unless she wanted to incite a riot.
I hadn’t seen her since the tits-in-the-face incident, and I didn’t say a word to her now but “Hey” when I passed her on my way out to the driveway.
She looked up and said, quietly, “Good morning.” She didn’t smile. She might’ve been about to say something else, but I jetted out of there too fast.
No one needed a repeat of the last time I’d hung out with her while she was wearing a bikini.
I headed over to Trey’s place to work out, and then I went over to my studio space to play my drums. And when I sat down at my kit to play, that’s when it really sank in.
That I had no band to play with anymore.
Two days ago, I’d met up with my Steel Trap bandmates and told them I was officially leaving the band. Not just leaving, actually.
I was already out.
Not a good day.
They didn’t take it so well, though they couldn’t have been all that surprised. Mike, Ross and Dustin all got pretty mad. Mike yelled at me, because that’s what Mike did. Ross threw shit and stormed out, because he was a fucking drama queen. Dusty said some whiny shit that wasn’t even worth listening to. It never was.
Dean just got really quiet and looked fucking depressed. I knew he didn’t want me to pull the plug, but too fucking late.
The plug was pulled.
If Steel Trap wanted to continue on, they could find themselves another drummer.
Which meant I was now a drummer without a band. In other words, the saddest thing in music. About as useful as a dick and balls at a nunnery.
Without other musicians to accompany, a drummer really wasn’t much of anything on his own.
Though, hopefully, this solo situation was a temporary thing.
I put on a couple of songs to play along to and got to work.
Once my blood was flowing and I’d loosened up, I put on “Good Times Bad Times” and got serious. I often warmed up with Led Zeppelin. This song was fun and it was fucking difficult, and it got me right in the zone. John Bonham was one of my idols. Obviously. You couldn’t really call yourself a rock ’n’ roll drummer and not worship Bonzo.
I followed that up with a few of my favorite Alive songs; I still played them all the time. Dean did his best vocal work in that band, mostly because of the strength of Cary and Gabe’s songwriting. I’d recorded my best work—so far—in that band, too.
Then I played one of Dirty’s biggest hits, “Get Made.” Loved that song, and Dylan Cope was an animal on drums. I fucking loved playing Dirty’s songs. Maybe because I knew Dylan, he came from where I came from, and that made the level of success he’d achieved seem possible. Attainable.
I was so fucking jealous of that dude and his band.
While I played, I just cleared my mind and thought about nothing but the drums. This was usually the way I figured shit out.
I played. I cleared my mind.
And when I was done, some kind of solution to whatever problem I was facing usually became clear.
This time, not so much.
Maybe because my problems—plural—had all become such a giant clusterfuck.
I needed a band.
I needed Cary to get better.
I needed his sister out of my head, and I needed my dick to get the message that she wasn’t on the menu.
Not all problems I could wave a magic drum stick at and solve in one afternoon.
After I’d worked up a good sweat and drummed my way through a decent catalogue of songs, felt like I’d put in a decent day’s practice… I was thinking about stopping for the day—quitting while I w
as ahead. But then I changed my mind.
I made the really fucking bad decision to play “Lateralus.”
For me, this was the toughest Tool song to play and one of the most enjoyable, for various reasons. It was also the most frustrating. It was a really fucking difficult song, which I’d managed to master after goddamn years of trying to get it just right.
You could play a song and give it your own flare, but that wasn’t really playing the song. To play a song right, as in the way it was written and recorded, you had to do it note for note. And “Lateralus” was my go-to song when I wanted to challenge myself.
Besides that, it just felt motherfucking good to play it.
In theory.
It was heavy, it had some of the trickiest drum work I’d ever tried to play well, and as always, it left me drenched in sweat.
Danny Carey was a fucking god.
Drumming fast was a challenge. Drumming hard and loud was tiring. But layering that kind of gorgeous, orgasmic sound into a song, with drums, without overpowering everything else that was going on, the other instruments… that took sheer mastery. And sure, I could play “Lateralus”—but I could never have created it, and that was the part that really choked me.
It was what set the Danny Careys of the world apart from a drummer like me. I knew I was fantastic on drums. But I wasn’t an innovator at that level. At least, not yet.
I wasn’t a rock god.
Luckily, not many people on Earth could really hear or understand the difference. And I was only thirty. I had time to immortalize myself.
I might not be Danny Carey or John Bonham or even Dylan Cope, but one day, I’d be a legend, too.
Cocky, sure.
But that’s what you got when a former geek had a chance to become a god.
* * *
I left the studio and headed over to my place downtown so I could shower. While I was driving, Ash called.
He asked me to come out for drinks, hang with him tonight, and I told him I might.
I wouldn’t, though. I already had plans with Jordan, but I didn’t tell him that. Maybe I still wanted to make him sweat a little?
I hung up from that call wondering if I was going about this wrong. If I was gonna stonewall him too hard and he was gonna give up. Find another drummer.
Filthy Beautiful: A Players Rockstar Romance (Players #2) Page 12
