Love Out Loud

by Aimee Salter

  I stand there for a long time, caged. Afraid if I move I’ll break into pieces. Up on the deck Tommy’s playing, blending one song into the next, always slow, mournful. Prick knows I can hear him. I shake my head, but keep listening. His talent stuns me and, if I’m honest, pisses me off a little. I have to work to do what he does like breathing. I have to practice, push through blocks, bleed myself onto a page. Even then Tommy can walk into a room where I’m playing and know the answer to my problem in seconds.

  Asshole.

  But an asshole who’s got it together a lot more than I do.

  The thought is as reassuring as it is uncomfortable.

  Both our moms are drug addicts. Neither of us had money growing up. We aren’t stupid (Tommy’s a freaking genius), but we both didn’t like school. Tommy’s dad was more violent than mine but stuck around through middle school. Mine was gone by the time I was eight—but so absent before then I don’t actually remember the day he walked out. I’m not sure I knew he had for a while.

  By the time we were thirteen, music was the only thing that kept us sane. And it brought us closer together because by that time our other friends were skateboarding and chasing girls while we learned how to play guitar and piano, and whatever else we could get our hands on.

  Tommy started bringing Kelly along to hang out and do her homework while we practiced. I loved her immediately. By fourteen I was writing songs and Tommy could play the drums like the sticks were extensions of his hands. We got our first paying gig that year. And I kissed Kelly for the first time, too.

  By sixteen we’d nailed our “sound”, but everyone thought I was nailing Kelly. I wasn’t. I wanted to. But she was carrying a lot. She wasn’t ready.

  By eighteen we were on the radio. Then Kelly gave me her virginity, Amber made me an empty shell, and I broke Kelly’s heart, then left for my first tour. Our first album went gold in the US during the tour last year. Platinum earlier this year.

  Next month we start rehearsals for an honest-to-God international tour. By Christmas, we’re on the road again. And Kelly’ll still be here.

  Tommy’s guitar sings something I haven’t heard before, pulling my thoughts back to here and now.

  And Crash, tell Tommy.

  Inwardly, I recoil. Try to imagine how he’d look at me if he knew. It’s not like he’ll bail on my life. He’s proven that already. I haven’t told him because I’m embarrassed. I’m a fucking child on the inside. And that’s unfair because Tommy’s been there for me my whole life, even before Crash Happy. If anyone will be on my side, it’s him. But I’ve almost pushed him away because I don’t want him to look down on me.

  Because no matter what I say, or how much I front the band, the truth is, Tommy’s our foundation.

  He’s more brother than friend.

  I need to suck it up and ask for his help.

  The backs of my knees complaining because I had them braced for so long, I head towards the sound, ignore the pain and trot up the stairs two at a time.

  Tommy sees me coming and his pierced brows pop up. “So—”

  “I’m ready.”

  “For?”

  “I need your help. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.” I clear my throat, shove my hands as deep in my pockets as they’ll go, suddenly feeling like a kid again, caught looking at Tommy’s Dad’s porn mag. “I’ll let you cash in the chip,” I say.

  I’m sitting on the couch that I never did it on with Amber while Tommy stands in front of me because he refuses to sit down until he knows what happened.

  “Amber . . . forced me.” The word rape echoes in my head, but I can’t make my lips form it. It sounds like something that happens to a girl.

  “Forced you to what?” I glance up at him just as the light turns on. His expression flies wide. “What the fuck do you mean, she forced you?” he growls.

  It’s a jagged moment. I can still back away from this. Make it about saving Tommy, or something else. And I almost do it. The words are on my tongue.

  But Tommy’s hand twitches. “Crash? Seriously.”

  I clear my throat and stare at my hands, steepled between my knees. “Exactly what you think.”

  He jerks back, shoves a hand through his mop of hair. Starts to say something. Stops.

  Our eyes lock.

  The moment it clicks into place is visible on his face and the horror there makes me shudder. But it’s quickly replaced with unfettered rage. “What the fuck!” He storms toward the sliding door. Toward Amber.

  “Tommy, stop.” I leap off the couch.

  “Don’t care if she’s a woman—”

  “Tommy!” I grab him by the shoulder and whip him around, shoving him up against the glass. He shoves back, hands fisting my shirt to push me off.

  “Stop!” I bark at him.

  “No fucking way!”

  I have the upper hand. But he’s stronger. If I don’t get through to him this will go badly for me and Amber, both. “Listen to me!” He cocks back to hit me and I blurt it all out before he swings. “It’s not happening anymore. I got her to admit it on tape. If she does anything to hurt any of us, she’ll go down and she knows it. I only told you so you’d know.”

  Tommy’s hand on my shirt trembles with the effort he’s putting into pushing me off. But the arm he’s got cocked back hasn’t swung.

  “Anymore? She did it more than once?” His voice is too quiet.

  I can’t let him understand the real extent of it. I won’t be able to stop him if I do. “The important thing is, she’s not anymore,” I say, wrestling to keep him pinned against the glass. “Don’t make me the reason you go to jail, T.”

  “She’s the fucking criminal!”

  “But she’s also got the power to kill Crash Happy, and our careers, before anything happens to her, and believe me, she will.”

  “I don’t care!” He struggles so hard I’m afraid I’ll hurt his shoulder, keeping him there. “We need to fire her. Fucking hurt her—”

  “Think it through, Tommy. We fire her so our careers can suffer because she’s a bitch? I’m not letting her steal this from me. I’ve got it handled. She’s under control now. She has to do what I say and she knows it. Listen.”

  Something in my voice must get through. He’s still tense under my hands, but he stops pushing. After a few seconds, I ease up on his arm, stay poised to pin him again.

  “For all we know,” I try to keep my voice calm even though the words make me sick, “someone else could be worse. Amber’s the best at what she does. You know that.”

  “So she keeps making millions from us? Just walks away. After that?”

  It makes my skin crawl to have him thinking about that. Picturing it.

  Suddenly I can’t be close to anyone. I let him go and step back, trying not to recoil. But Tommy must figure it out because his face goes dark.

  “This is fucked up, Crash.”

  “My whole life is fucked up. Yours too. We do what we have to do.”

  He curses. “Kelly?”

  I stretch to loosen the knot that’s appeared between my shoulder blades. “She didn’t know until a couple days ago.”

  Tommy’s glare doesn’t let me off the hook.

  “I was out of my head, Tom. I didn’t know what to do. I fucked up. I told her I’m sorry. She knows why now.”

  Tommy claws a hand through his long hair and paces across the living room. I just stand there. Muscles slack. Skin crawling.

  Then he stops and looks at me. My throat pinches when his face screws up like he’s in pain. “We need to write,” he says.

  “What?”

  “Get it out. In a song. Write something that she’ll know is a great big Fuck You, and make it a hit so she has to hear it over and over again.”

  “I’m already working on that.”

  “What? The new song?”

  “It’s for Kelly, but Amber will know. Two birds with one stone.”

  Tommy chews his lip ring. We stare at each other. Both grin.


  “Sounds like fun,” he says and opens the slider out to the deck.

  I follow him, stunned, chest tight with gratitude for a friend who can see me at my worst and still stand with me.

  I don’t deserve him. Or Kelly.

  I sigh as I walk out onto the deck. Coda’s still out there, on his side under the table. His tail thumps, but he doesn’t get up. Tommy picks up his guitar and pulls my notebook across the table, reading by the light of the living room behind us.

  “Let’s rock this bitch.”

  It’s four in the morning before we pull it together. It still needs work, but I’ve poured myself into this thing and Tommy’s been nodding along. Always a good sign.

  By five, the whole thing’s in place and I feel more peaceful than I have in a long time. Like I’ve exorcized a demon.

  Tommy asks me to sing it through so he can just listen and see what it needs. “I might be too close to it right now, but let’s see.”

  I don’t bother pretending I don’t want to. I’m obsessed.

  You never knew the truth

  The ends, the means, they broke me

  You never heard my heart

  I’ll never forgive myself for you

  Deep inside for life

  For you, I’m in hell.

  In you, I’m in hell

  Deep deep down.

  Without you

  There’s no more hell.

  You buried me deeper.

  Now I’ll never

  Forever you

  You never saw reality

  The dark, the beast that owned me.

  You never heard my heart

  I’ll never forgive myself for you.

  Deep inside for life

  For you, I’m in hell.

  In you, I’m in hell

  Deep deep down.

  Without you

  There’s no more hell.

  You buried me deeper.

  Now I’ll never

  Forever you

  When the last chord of the guitar fades out, Tommy stares at the table. I wait. Am I fooling myself? Does it not work?

  Then, yawning, he knocks on the table. “You did it. Let’s record it. Send it to Sony ourselves.”

  I rub my grainy eyes. “We’re supposed to put everything through Amber first.”

  “Screw Amber. I want to show her what we can do without her. Send a message. Not for money. Let’s video it. We can put the parts together like that dude we saw on Facebook. I’ll do drums and base. You do acoustic and vocals. We can grid it on the screen. Tell Mark we want to put it out there for fun. The fans will love it. And if it gets big, then we can record it for the album. Call it a preview, or something.”

  I’m unconvinced, but Tommy’s not. “C’mon, man. Remember when we did this stuff just because we loved it? And if we liked it, we used it? Let’s do that again. Amber and her analytics can bite me.”

  I grin. I’d been thinking lately that, much as I love making a living with music, the business side of music is soul-sucking. Amber has a whole formula, a process. She evaluates everything we write, then lets the producer choose from the best stuff. It was comforting at first. Made me feel like we were less likely to look like amateurs. But Tommy’s right. It would be fun to do something just because we love it.

  “Well, okay, then.”

  The exhaustion falls off my shoulders like a cloak. I’m not tired anymore. Tommy must feel the same because he bounces out of his chair and heads inside.

  The dawn light is creeping up on the horizon. I call Coda in after us, who follows, but heads straight for his bed in the living room. I make a mental note to check his food and water when we’re done, to make sure he’s eating and drinking. Then follow Tommy downstairs.

  I may never get Kelly back, but I’ll tell her—and the world—that what happened wasn’t her fault.

  And it’ll rock.

  The videoing part goes pretty quick. After a couple hours we’ve got a rough cut. Tommy set us up in front of the weirdly blue wall in my basement and we used his phone. We’ve got this world-renowned machine behind us, but we’re recording ourselves on a phone and downloading it to my laptop.

  The editing takes a lot longer. Tommy’s pretty good with this stuff—he used to do all the little videos we’d put out on our social media. But cutting things together so the timing’s right on different videos takes some fiddling.

  When he eventually plays me the song the screen is a four-square grid. In three of the squares, it’s just us playing. Me on acoustic, Tommy drums, and plays bass in another. But for the vocals I slip in and out, leaving the frame when there are no lyrics.

  When the last note fades out and the screen goes black, there’s a lightness in my chest I haven’t felt for a long time. “Before we post it,” I say like we’ve been talking about it already. “Can we put a dedication on it?”

  “Kel?”

  “Yeah, but use Broken Girl, her YouTube name. She doesn’t have a lot of followers. Our fans won’t know what it’s about. But she will—without paps showing up at her house.”

  Tommy messes with the laptop for a few minutes. When he’s done, the music fades out on a black screen with the words For The Broken Girl.

  My gut tightens. I hope she sees it. I hope she understands. And one day I’ll show her the rest. The part even Tommy doesn’t know yet.

  “That’s it,” I say, suddenly exhausted.

  Tommy nods. “I’ll load it.”

  “Thanks. You want coffee?”

  “Fuck, yes.”

  Chuckling, I head back upstairs. The room feels hazy. I haven’t slept in thirty-six hours and I’m having trouble focusing. I’ll make decaf. Tommy won’t notice. And then we can sleep until tomorrow if we want.

  I’m standing by the coffee maker as it sputters, trying to decide whether I’ll shower before I sleep.

  Half an hour later I let myself fall into bed, fully clothed, my brain ticking over the ways I can give this song to Kelly whether the label approves it or not.

  And I wonder if it will bring her back to me.

  Chapter Thirty

  Two Months Ago

  Kelly

  Dan’s home from the hospital. No surgery, but weeks of rest and physical therapy. I’ve been running up and down the stairs all afternoon getting him things while trying to get my homework done. I forced myself to stay away from the boys today, even though I’m aching to see them. It’s just too hard. And I can’t let myself get used to seeing them every day because pretty soon they’ll be gone again.

  Around five I head back downstairs to make dinner, get Dan a drink, make my lunch for tomorrow, everything I’m supposed to do, pretending I don’t notice Dan watching me.

  “How are the boys?”

  “Fine.”

  “They working hard?”

  “Not so much today.” The lies come easily now. “They were tired. Up all night working on a song. That’s why I stayed home.”

  Dan glances at the clock and rubs his stubbled chin with his free hand. “You heard anything interesting since you’ve been there? Like, behind the scenes stuff?” his voice is gruff, but it lacks the edge I’m used to.

  My stomach twirls thinking about Amber and Crash and the threats against Tommy. “Nothing dramatic.”

  “Stupid boys playing at being adults. Making stupid videos.”

  Head in the fridge, I grip the door hard. He’s baiting me, and I know it. But if I don’t ask, he’ll get irritated.

  “What videos?” I pretend I’m not really interested.

  “You don’t know?” He grabs his laptop—new, less than year old, which makes me burn with jealousy whenever I think about it. “Come check this out. I thought you knew.”

  I stare at him for a second but decide there’s no way to avoid the direct order, so I cross the living room and move to stand beside his chair as he pulls up YouTube.

  Sure enough, there’s a new video on their channel, and it’s already got twenty-thousand v
iews. As Dan presses play, I realize they’ve pulled Crash’s new song together—the one that’s different. It’s haunting, and I love it and it makes me feel uncomfortable in my skin at the same time. But with Dan here I have to pretend it’s no big deal. That I’m not hurt they didn’t tell me they were posting it.

  As the chorus repeats the second time, Dan replays the video before it even fades out.

  “I like it,” I say, heading back to the kitchen. Should I text them to tell them I like it? Or take the hint that they didn’t tell me they were doing it?

  The speakers on the laptop aren’t great, but even with the thinner sound, my heart bleeds. The song is haunting and eerie. The timing strange. Definitely nothing like anything Crash has ever written before. I can’t catch all the words, but that’s probably a good thing, since I don’t want to react to anything with Dan right there.

  But the music crawls under my skin. I’m fighting the feeling I’ve heard it before. I can’t put my finger on it.

  Dan grunts at the end. “Dunno about that one. Seems like people might not like it. It’s not like their other stuff.”

  I pull chicken thighs out of a pack and slap them down on a cutting board, kind of grateful he’s disappointed by it. I don’t want to think about it with him so close. So I tell him to watch his baseball through dinner, and I take my time cleaning up, then take my bag upstairs murmuring about finishing my homework.

  When I get upstairs, I close the door carefully behind me, then lean my forehead on it. I’m so tired. I didn’t sleep well last night. With everything that’s been happening, when I do sleep, I have terrible dreams.

  I argue with myself the whole time I’m getting into my pajamas, brushing my teeth, my hair, setting out clothes for school tomorrow.

  Do I tell them I’ve seen it? Like it? Or not?

  By the time I get in bed, it seems like there are no right answers at all. No good options. So I decide that my old friends should know I like their song.