by Katia Rose
We walked around for hours, ate the craziest food we could find, and somehow managed to sneak into a show that night. I still remember the way her face looked under all the flashing lights.
“Then she told me she wasn’t going back. I knew I couldn’t just leave her in Toronto. I made all these promises about being there for her, about how she just needed to make it through high school and then we’d figure it out. I know I was just a kid, but I meant it. I kissed her on the train ride home, and after that...I mean we never put a label on it, but we were together.”
I wait for another ‘awww cute’ comment, but Nabil stays quiet.
“Of course, her mom flipped when she got home and basically put her on house arrest, but we were teenagers, so that just made us even more determined to see each other as much as we could. The whole rest of my senior year...It was fucking amazing. She meant everything to me.”
She was my first in so many ways. I may not have gone all the way with a girl until college, but when I think of firsts, it’s always of her. I felt and shared things with her that I’d never experienced with anyone else. It wasn’t just our bodies; it was our hearts and minds too. I opened my whole soul up to her and let her carry it away to keep beside her at night.
“We had all these plans for after I graduated, all the stuff we’d do when she came to visit me in Montreal, how we’d live together once she finished high school. They were stupid dreams, but we believed in them. Or at least I did.”
I hesitate, but I have to keep going. I need to get this out.
“A couple weeks before I was supposed to move into my dorm, I wrote her this letter. The only way I could ever visit her at her house was by going through her bedroom window, so I did that one day when she wasn’t home and left it in her room.”
“Not creepy at all,” Nabil quips. He has a point.
“Well, I was eighteen,” I defend myself. “I thought it was romantic or something. That letter was the most honest thing I’ve written in my life. I told her...everything. I promised it all again.”
I told her everything I felt about her, everything I wanted with her, everything I’d give her if she’d let me. I shared all my fears about our future and all the hopes that reminded me I had nothing to be afraid of.
I told her I loved her.
Sufjan hisses when I tighten my grip on his fur too much. I give him an apologetic stroke, but the tension doesn’t leave my body. All my muscles are tensed at the memory of the pain.
“And then?” Nabil asks.
I let out a dark laugh, the sound of it strained and eerie.
“Then nothing. I didn’t hear anything for a week.”
“What if she didn’t get the letter? What if—”
“That’s what I thought,” I interrupt. “I thought through every what if I could. I figured maybe she just needed some time, but after that week went by, I showed up at her window again. At first she tried to ignore me, but then she finally opened it. She asked what I wanted. I asked if she got my letter. She said yes, and...”
What comes next is the part of the memory I’ve had the most success blocking out, probably because I almost blacked out at the time. I can’t even remember getting home, but if I try hard enough, the words she said come echoing back, and even six years haven’t softened them.
“She said we were just stupid kids. She said it was insane to believe we could wait for each other and that we should just move on and live our lives. She said she hoped I met a nice girl at university, someone easier to be with than her.”
“Shit,” Nabil mutters. “I mean, did you...did you try to talk to her? Maybe she was just scared or something.”
“Of course I tried, but she wouldn’t listen. It was like something died in her. She was looking at me, but there was just nothing. She said it would be better if we didn’t see each other again, and then she went and told her mom that I was bothering her. Her mom came out and threatened to call the cops on me, so I left.”
I sound hollow. That’s exactly how I felt for a long time after that: hollow. Empty. Numb. It took almost the whole first semester of university before I really let myself feel anything again.
“That was the last time you saw her?” Nabil asks with awe.
“Yep. Until you and I walked into Taverne Toulouse.”
He lets out a string of swear words that includes English, Arabic, and French. Then he spends the next few minutes asking me to repeat certain parts of the story and swearing more as he puts together some kind of mental puzzle.
“Okay. Okay. Here’s what I think,” he announces after a particularly long pause.
“Please, bestow the honor of your thoughts upon me.”
“Hemar. Listen up, okay? I think she was right.”
I sit up on the couch, and Sufjan meows in protest before jumping off my lap.
“What?”
“She was right when she said you were both just kids. You were stupidly in love. I’m sure you both made stupid choices. You shouldn’t let what happened then make you be stupid adults now.”
“How are we being stupid adults?”
“By pussyfooting around how you feel!”
I drag a hand down my face. “I don’t know how I feel.”
“Bullshit, my brother. You know how you feel about her.”
I don’t say it out loud, but there’s a big part of me that recognizes he’s right.
I only remember to check in with Mohammad by the time I’m back at Paige’s place. She finally agreed to give me her spare keys this afternoon. I let myself into the building and head up to the apartment, going straight to her bedroom to check on her before I message Mohammad.
She’s right where I left her: propped up on her pillows, head lolled to the side.
I consider straightening her up so she doesn’t have a neck ache tomorrow, but I don’t want to wake her or repeat the screaming incident from this morning.
I stare at her like a creep for a few minutes, letting my gaze trace the angles of her face in the lamplight. I watch the rise and fall of her chest, the way it lifts her arm in its sling on top of the blankets. I wish I could travel into her dreams and talk to her there. It would be so much easier to ask the questions stuck in my throat and get the answers I crave.
I shut the door behind me and pull my phone out, forcing myself to clear my head as best I can while I scroll through the string of texts and missed call notifications from Mohammad.
Apparently he has big news that couldn’t wait until Monday.
I send him a quick apology and start typing out an explanation, but my phone rings with a call from his number before I can finish. It doesn’t surprise me that he’s still in the mood to make business calls this late on a Saturday night; as he likes to say, ‘the industry never sleeps, and neither do I.’
“Where the hell have you been?” he asks before I can say anything.
“Well hello to you t—”
“Yes, hello, hi. Forget that I asked where you’ve been. It’s not important. What’s important is that I have news for you, Youssef. Big news. Devastating news, but like, devastating in a sexy way.”
If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was on coke or something, but he barely even drinks. Success is his drug of choice.
“All right. Hit me.” I take a deep breath and realize that I’m all but cringing at the thought of what he’s about to say.
I’m cringing at the thought of good news about the career of my dreams.
“I heard back from Nautilus Records.”
“Huh?”
I recognize the name. Nautilus Records is an up-and-coming label in the dance and pop genres. They’re based in Los Angeles and have only been around for a few years, but they’re already shaping up to corner the market.
I just don’t know what we’d be hearing back about.
“It’s early days, and I don’t want to jinx it,” Mohammad cautions, “but they do want to fly you and I down to LA to have a chat.”
“Abo
ut...what?”
“About you collaborating on a single with one of the pop stars on their roster! We’re also maybe looking into getting you signed for some kind of short-term deal, but that’s still a big if.”
My voice comes out the exact opposite of enthusiastic. “I didn’t know you were looking into that.”
“Yes, you did. I’ve told you like five times. I swear half the things I say to you go in one ear and out the other. One of us has to care about your career, so yeah, I’ve been pushing for an in with Nautilus. We’ve got to dream big, shining star.”
He laughs, but I don’t join in. My stomach is rolling.
“Oh come on, Youssef,” he continues after a moment of silence. “Don’t give me more of that imposter syndrome stuff. You deserve this opportunity. You deserve everything that’s happening to your career. This is where you’re supposed to be. This is what you’ve always dreamed of. It’s what you hired me for.”
I sit down on the couch again and listen to his words repeat in my head.
Where you’re supposed to be.
What you’ve always dreamed of.
Imposter syndrome.
That’s what him, Nabil, and even my parents keep telling me I have, and in a lot of ways, it sounds right. I don’t believe I deserve any of this. I don’t think I belong. Sometimes I can’t even make myself believe it’s all real.
I mean, Nautilus Records wants me to do a single with a pop star? They’re going to fly me to Las Angeles to talk about a deal?
This is stuff that happens to someone else, not me.
“Hello! Earth to Youssef.”
“Uh, right. Hi. Yes.”
Mohammad laughs again. “You didn’t hear any of what I just said, did you?”
“Uh...”
“I said that I believe in you. I wouldn’t be working for you if I didn’t. This music you make, it’s making a difference. People need it. Do you know how many people have told me your single is the song of the summer? You’re making memories for them, Youssef. You have talent. You have a gift. I know it seems like I’m always chasing after big contracts and gigs that pay well, but it’s all just a means to an end. I do this job because I believe in music. I believe in your music. You should too.”
I’m shocked enough that I pull the phone away from my ear for a second to stare at it. I’ve never heard Mohammad talk like this.
“Wow. Um, wow. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I don’t say shit like that to everyone, so consider yourself lucky.”
I can’t help noticing how similar his little speech is to some of the things Jacob said when he offered to make me co-owner at Schenkman Studios: that I have talent, a gift the world needs and deserves. In the end, that’s what everything has always been about; my life has always been shaped by my music.
Even my life with the girl sleeping in the next room of this apartment is so wrapped up in music I can’t separate the two.
“Now,” Mohammad continues, “can I tell Nautilus we’ll be on that plane?”
I hesitate. I could tell him I’m not sure. I could tell him about the offer from Jacob, but that would make it real, and I don’t know if I’m ready for it to be real yet.
“I...Yes. I mean, wait. When does it leave?”
He gives me a date a few weeks from now, two days after my sister’s wedding.
“Yeah, that will work.” I take a deep breath. “Okay. Yes. I’ll do it.”
He starts to say goodbye, but I interrupt.
“Wait! For the deal, they don’t want me to, like, move there do they?”
“Hmm.” I can picture him sliding his rings around as he contemplates. “They’d probably want you there for a while. We should think about getting you down there ourselves anyway, or at least to New York. You’re going to be bigger than this country can take soon!”
I don’t join in with his exhilarated laugh. We hang up soon after that, and for what feels like the thousandth time in the past week, I’m left asking myself what the hell just happened.
Twelve
Paige
REVBERB: An echo effect, often applied with artistic purpose to part of a track
“Your password is jingle bells four five six?”
“Shut up,” I grumble. “I made it when I was like, thirteen. It was Christmas.”
Youssef and I are sitting side by side on my couch. He’s got my laptop propped on his thighs as he helps me type emails to everyone who’s going to need to know I’m temporarily incapacitated.
I spent most of this morning doing the best I could to finish up a very important—and very well-paid—graphic design project I couldn’t afford to lose. It turns out the painstaking process of doing everything with my left hand turned my fingers into useless, exhausted lumps pretty quickly.
I wouldn’t have accepted Youssef’s offer to help me type if it weren’t imperative I get these emails out as fast as possible. Losing weeks and weeks’ worth of clients and DJ gigs is going to fuck me over bad enough without the stress of waiting around to bite the bullet and give cancellation notice.
“Okay, here we go...” I pull up the gig scheduling app on my phone and wince as I look at everything for the next few weeks. “The doctor seriously said a six week recovery?”
Youssef gives me a sympathetic look.
I hate sympathy. I hate being so pathetic right now, clumsily navigating my phone with my left hand while somebody else types emails for me.
I couldn’t even put cream cheese on my own bagel this morning. Youssef had to help with that too, and I hated how underneath it all, it felt good to have him in my kitchen. It felt like my whole chest filled up with something warm when I walked out of my bedroom this morning and found him softly snoring on the couch, wrapped up in a huge crocheted blanket Zach’s mom made.
I was so out of it yesterday I don’t remember him saying he was going to stay here. I would have told him to take Zach’s room—after putting up a very long fight about why he didn’t need to sleep over.
“Unfortunately, yes,” he answers, “and then you’ll have a lot of physio after that.”
I wish I wasn’t so aware of how close his thigh is to mine. I wish I could stop imagining the way it felt to have him stand behind me and cut me out of my shirt and bra.
That was all I could do: feel. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. I just stood there and tried not to tremble every time I felt the cool blade come close to my skin and bare another inch of me to him.
I can’t even blame it on the general horniness of a six month dry spell and try to get some relief; as I learned when I woke up sweaty and desperate before the sun even came up this morning, the second day of extreme bruising and stiffness makes it next to impossible to get yourself off.
Which just filled my head with some very hard to ignore fantasies about Youssef getting me off.
“But the sling comes off after two weeks,” I say, pulling myself back into the moment before the thoughts can go too far again. “So really I only need to cancel two weeks of shows and then see how I’m doing.”
“Paige.” Youssef shifts so he’s facing me better on the couch. “You’ve only been in recovery for one day, and you’re already pushing yourself too hard just moving around the house. Take my opinion how you will, but if you keep pushing like that, you’re just going to end up prolonging the whole process.”
I can’t argue with that. I want to—not with him, but with my body. I’ve made it as far as I have by always pushing for what I want from the world, and it makes my skin crawl to know the only thing holding me back right now is my body.
I’ve done everything I can to make sure my body doesn’t control my career—not my face or my ass or my curves, and not who I let touch me. I know it’s stupid, but it’s almost as terrifying to know my body is holding me back as it is to know it’s getting me ahead.
I promised myself a long time ago that I’d never let the way I look control my career. I’d never let anything or anyone but me be
in control. I’d never be stuck, unable to move or defend myself.
“And,” Youssef continues when I don’t say anything, “I’ve spent enough time around Nabil to know venues are going to appreciate you giving as much notice as possible.”
“Okay, you’re right. I’ll cancel four weeks to be safe.”
I roll my eyes and play it casual so he won’t know notice the dread is gripping my chest and making my heart race as I start directing him on what emails to send. Thankfully, my most prestigious gig of the year—playing the pavilion outside Montreal’s new mega-club, Luxe, on their opening weekend—is happening after my recovery period.
“Shit, you’ve got a lot of bookings,” Youssef says after the first few emails.
“No rest for the wicked. We can’t all be famous like you.”
“Ha.” He scoffs without taking his eyes off the screen, and I notice a crease form across his forehead.
“I know it might not seem like a big deal to cancel on somewhere like Taverne Toulouse when you’re, you know, a superstar, but—”
“Paige.” This time he does look at me. “I’m not some celebrity jackass, okay? Don’t imply that. My EP happened totally by accident. It was a fluke I wasn’t even looking to get anything from, and it doesn’t mean I look down on you, or your gigs, or anybody else. In fact”—he makes a dramatic sweep of his hand in front of the laptop screen—“why don’t I play your gigs for you?”
Well that escalated.
“What are you talking about?”
“We’ll email your biggest gigs, the ones you really don’t want to lose, and tell them you’re injured but that you have someone willing to replace you. I may not be a jackass, but I do know they’ll want my name. Then I’ll plug you during the show. You can even give me some of your tracks to play. The exposure won’t be as great as playing yourself, but this way you’ll still get something.”
He already looks excited about it, but I just stare.
