Say it Louder

by Heidi Joy Tretheway

  “How much time do you need?”

  “Two weeks. One more recording session to run cleanup on some tracks, and one more song.”

  Gavin holds out a fist to fist-bump Ravi, then me. “You sound like our manager.”

  “Interim,” Ravi clarifies, and his grin is contagious. “If Dave will set up the Pittsburgh show, I’m willing to step in. Think you guys can keep from killing each other or jumping in front of the bad-PR bus long enough to finish your album?”

  Gavin pulls out his phone, ready to schedule another recording session. “We’re in.”

  ***

  We go to Tyler’s loft for practice with the news—Ravi will serve as our interim manager, focusing on production, and I’ll book us a show back in Pittsburgh as a lead-in to the album drop and a larger tour. Handling contracts is TBD.

  “That’s cool,” Jayce says, and it’s the first time he’s made eye contact with me and not looked like he wanted to kill me since Kristina sold out Violet. “That’s really good, man.”

  “A few days in Pitt before the album drops works for me.”

  It all feels so easy. I made a few calls before practice and all but confirmed the hometown show, and nobody’s giving me shit for being pushy. They seem … grateful.

  It’s a good place to be and I zone out, fully in sync with Tyler’s bass line during practice on a high that things might actually fix themselves. The band will stop hating on me. Our album will hit the charts. And Kristina and Chief will scuttle off into my past.

  And Willa. I’ve been riding that high since I left her place stocked with paint and canvas. I want to go to her, but I’m afraid being there will just distract her from her mission: to create.

  “Ravi wants one more song. Something different,” Gavin tells the guys when we take a break. “What do you got up your sleeve, Jayce?”

  Jayce demos a cool lick on his guitar, full of subtle half-steps that show his musical prowess. As he’s playing, Gavin drops a few chords on the keyboard and they seem to go. I try to catch the beat but only end up messing up the magic and they finally stop in frustration.

  “I’m sorry. Do your thing.” I hang my head and go take a piss, angry at myself for trying—and failing—again to be part of the creative process. I know I’m background, by no means the main attraction in terms of our music, but it sucks that they drive it home.

  “It’s not you,” Tyler says when I hang back by the kitchen bar instead of resuming my place behind the drum set. “They’re just doing their thing.” He drains a tall glass of water and watches Gavin and Jayce play off each other.

  “That’s supposed to be my thing, too.” Resentment creeps into my tone. “I don’t want them to just see me as backup.”

  Tyler squares his shoulders to face me. “Remember when I asked you to sit in for practice?”

  I nod, thinking back seven years ago to my junior year in college. Tyler was a skinny, awkward sophomore with a setup in his mom’s garage. Jayce was his bro, and they’d plucked Gavin off a street corner where he’d been busking. I was the last one to join them, and I guess I’ve always felt like the odd man out. Like I have a bit more to prove than the rest of them.

  “It wasn’t for your drum skills,” Tyler says.

  That stings. “Fuck off.”

  “Listen, you dumbass. I’m not riding you for your music. We do good stuff together. I just don’t want you to think that’s the only thing.” Tyler’s voice is low so the other guys can’t hear, but it feels too loud in my ears. “We never would have gotten big if you hadn’t been the biggest part of our hustle. If you hadn’t been getting us gigs and thinking beyond the music.”

  “I’ve always been about our careers.”

  Tyler gives me a gentle push that sets me off balance. “Exactly. So stop bitching about what you can’t do, or what you aren’t, and do what you do best. Nail down this show. Help us get Wilderness done. And stay the hell away from Kristina.”

  Even her name sours my mood. “Easier said than done.”

  Tyler jerks his head toward the couches, a safe distance from where Gavin and Jayce are jamming. He picks up a bass guitar from its cradle and sits opposite me.

  “So what do you got?” Tyler plucks a few chords.

  “My drum kit’s over there.” I jerk my thumb over my shoulder toward the other guys.

  “No, gimme something I can work with.” He plucks a few more chords and they fit with the song I was humming at Willa’s.

  I try a few bars, and Tyler’s guitar makes them bigger, more important than the simple little melody in my head. So I fish my phone out of my pocket and scroll to a note where a few lyrics have been taking shape.

  I hum a bit more, then try to sing it.

  If you want me/ Say it louder

  If you need me/ Show me more

  If you’re ready/ Then I’m willing

  Open up/ unlock the door

  If you tell me/ I’m listening

  If you show me / I’ll follow you

  In my dreams/ you’re in my arms

  I’ll sacrifice to make that true

  If you love me/ Say it louder

  Let me hear you/ let me feel

  If you crave me/ Give in to the need

  Say it louder/This love’s for real

  My voice trails off and Tyler does some riff tricks, layers on the melody. I can tap out the rhythm, but hardly put notes to it. The song feels alive in his hands, in his instrument, and I just sit back and let him roll.

  “What was that?”

  I whip my head around and Jayce is leaning over the couch, practically drooling as he watches Tyler.

  Tyler smirks. “Our new song, I think.”

  “I want it in,” Gavin says. “Where were you hiding that one?”

  Tyler tips his guitar neck toward me. “I wasn’t. That was all Dave. I just gave it a voice.”

  Jayce and Gavin both zero in on me and suddenly I’m bashful. “I was just messing around with something I said to Willa.”

  Gavin puts a solid hand on my shoulder. “That’s not a mess. That’s good stuff. Can we try it out?”

  He comes around the couch and sits with his guitar, watching intently as Tyler picks out the chords.

  “Give us the beat,” Jayce says, and for once I don’t feel like a musical fuckup. I fish my sticks out of my bag and tap it out on my knees and the couch cushion beside me, syncopation for a rock anthem.

  Tyler falls into step with my beat, then Gavin and Jayce each pick it up on their guitars. Once we get through the chord set a couple of times, Jayce nods to me.

  “What are you waiting for? Sing it again.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I go back to my place with a familiar knot in my stomach. I worry that Kristina might be there for another confrontation, or maybe it’s just the lingering black memories of Chief’s naked ass as he drilled my girlfriend.

  Ex. Exxxxxxx girlfriend.

  But I’m not prepared to find a moving truck outside, with a crew trundling boxes out the door.

  Kristina’s reading a magazine at the kitchen bar, tapping her long, coffin-shaped beige nails on a wide slab of granite. “Don’t forget the stuff in the—” She looks up and the sentence dies on her lips as she realizes I’m not one of her movers. “Oh. It’s you.”

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Taking what’s mine.” Her lips flatten in a thin line, daring me to call her out on this blatant theft.

  “What, taking half of everything I earned isn’t enough for you?”

  “It’s never enough,” she says, and I bark a disgusted laugh.

  “Then enjoy it. Because you’ll never get another thing, or another thought, from me.” I brush past her and root around in the refrigerator for a beer.

  How have we gotten here? To this sour and filthy place? I know I must have cared for her once, but it seems so far away, like the remnants of a dream when I’m living a nightmare.

  “Where have you been?” Her t
hin-plucked brow arches.

  “None of your business.” I scowl, remembering the little location tracking program on my phone. But instead of calling her out on that stunt and poking a potential hornet’s nest, I just gulp my beer.

  “It’s my business when you’re hanging around with a little punk slut.” She taps a dagger nail on the gossip magazine and I lean over for a better look. “You have the nerve to throw me out, pretend you’ve got nobody on the side, but you’re looking pretty cozy with her.”

  The photo was taken through the window of Righteous Ink, a candid shot of me and Willa hanging around the counter, her ever-present pen in hand as she sketches, and me leaning close, my mouth inches from her neck, a smile on my parted lips.

  “Tattoo Thief’s drummer Dave Campbell gets cozy with street artist Willa, whose debut show, ‘Parking Lot Picasso,’ opens in two weeks,” the caption reads.

  I could have been telling Willa a joke. Laughing about some stupid tat drawing she was working up for a Brooklyn hipster. But the photo erases all of that pretense and cuts to the core of what was really happening.

  I’m crazy about her.

  In the blue-balls, holy-shit-this-is-bad-timing, can’t-get-her-outta-my-head kind of way.

  I’m looking at Willa in that picture the way I haven’t looked at Kristina in a thousand years. And Kristina knows it.

  Her eyes do that tight crinkling thing, drawn up and squinty, and I realize how angry she is. While I’ve always been the control guy who can orchestrate everything externally, Kristina’s got a talent for a practiced face. A mask to layer over anything.

  So even though she was fucking Chief and maybe other guys on the side, I’m caught with the blunt force of her fury as I realize she wasn’t ready to let me go. She’s fucking jealous.

  I drink my beer to cover the churning in my gut, a horn that blares get the hell out of here in one ear and get revenge in the other. But on the second score, I think Kristina’s way ahead of me.

  “I didn’t think you’d be slumming it with a street rat,” Kristina says, her mouth twisting.

  “She’s not a street—”

  “Save it.” Kristina flips the magazine closed and shoves it in her designer handbag. She moves toward the door, where the movers are hauling out the last of the boxes and sighs like a martyr. “Now I’m going to have to get tested. I’ll bet Miss Gillespie’s cunt is as dirty as the rest of her.”

  She scoops up her keys and purse and barks an order at a mover hauling a large wardrobe box out the front door.

  I open my mouth for a comeback, but close it again. It’s futile. No way is Kristina leaving here without the parting shot, and I really just want her to leave.

  Her little fit just made me realize I’m going to have to get tested. Who knows how many people she’s slept with before riding me bare and exposing me to … everything?

  There’s no end to how royally she fucks up my life.

  But wait. How the hell does she know Willa’s last name? I add up what she knows—the magazine photo, the location tracker on my phone, a slanting reference to Willa’s history on the streets.

  Before I can ask, the door slams. A hollow, unfamiliar echo fills what’s left of my living room.

  And then there’s silence. And I’m left to consider the worst-case scenario, that instead of taking my money and disappearing, she’s going to use some of it to buy information any way she can get it, stockpiling more ammo in her information war.

  I mentally kick myself and Eric. There’s nothing in the contract that says she can’t keep collecting.

  Fuck.

  I stand frozen for a minute. Instead of the bleak self-torture of gin and violent video games, I decide I have to face the music. I take my beer on a tour, surveying the rooms. Couches and tables—gone. Music collection, kitchen stuff, her entire closet—also gone.

  The master bedroom’s a disaster, with the fancy carved-wood bed frame gone and the mattress that she and Chief defiled left leaning against the wall. The same wall where I cracked the plaster with the doorknob when I kicked the door open.

  I’m in the same spot I stood when I watched them together. Watched them moan and rut and slap. Watched my world come apart at the seams.

  I slide down the wall to a crouch, utterly exhausted, my beer bottle dangling from my hand. Light slides through the slats of wooden blinds, painting a striped pattern on a wall with empty picture hooks.

  I close my eyes and let out the aaaargh building in my chest. Not a scream or a moan or a sob, but just—defeat.

  Grief.

  I bow my head to shut out the world, but Willa’s words filter into my twisted-up brain.

  Today’s a new day. Don’t waste it.

  You got sober, you got some perspective, and now you’ve got to sort out your shit. No time like the present.

  More of these little nuggets come to me, things Willa’s said to push me out past self-pity. They crack open this shroud of grief, splashing light into my dark places, and I start to feel something other than garden-variety shitty.

  I feel relief.

  Hope.

  Today is a new day. Cutting Kristina out of my life isn’t worth grieving. It’s worth celebrating.

  And I’m not going to waste one more minute.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  As the locks I installed click open, the tilting I feel before a show—like a quick drop from air turbulence—hits me and I grasp the door jamb to steady myself.

  Willa opens the door a crack and peers out with wary eyes.

  “Hey.” It’s all I can manage and I stuff my hands deep in the pockets of my jeans.

  “Hey yourself.” Her voice is low and husky, and she opens the door a little wider. My gaze sweeps from Willa’s wild pink hair down her paint-streaked men’s shirt and comes to a skidding halt at the button between her tits.

  Her curves leave me breathless. “Can I … am I interrupting?”

  “Yes, and yes.” She lets me in, locks the door behind me, and I follow her to her workspace where a dozen canvases are propped against the walls or lying on the floor. Each is in various stages of progress: some washed in color, some covered in stencils and blue tape, some bleeding rivulets of paint or laid out to dry.

  The air is heavy with the tang of paint and turpentine and New York’s sticky end-of-summer heat. Willa wipes at her fingers with a rag, but blue paint clings to every cuticle and the wrinkles in her knuckles.

  “I’ve been going pretty much nonstop,” she confesses, and runs a hand through her hair, leaving a few thin blue streaks in the pink. She rolls her shoulders. “God, I’m tired.”

  I place my hands on her shoulders and turn her away from me, toward her paintings. I knead at the knots along her neck and spine.

  Her soft moan when I hit a particularly sore place makes my dick stir with interest. Now’s not the time.

  “You got anything left in you tonight?”

  She turns her head to look back at me. “What do you have in mind?” Her question is uncertain, almost timid.

  “Take a break. Have a drink. Or at least let me feed you.” I aim for a smile that’s charming and gentle, but it probably just looks goofy. I want to tell her everything that’s happened, but her pale blue eyes dissolve coherent thought and her lips are a strobe-light level distraction.

  She turns back toward me, still circled in my arms, her chin tilted up. “I’ve been living on coffee and ramen and yogurt. As long as those aren’t on the menu, then yes. Please.”

  How is it getting yes from Willa feels like such a triumph? It’s slots with three cherries in row, scratching off the winning square on a lottery ticket, swinging for the fences and making it, all in one.

  My wide smile makes her hesitate, though, and then she looks down at her frayed jeans and paint-streaked button-down. “But not in this.”

  I let my hands skim from her shoulders down toward the curve of her breasts, soft and full beneath the woven cotton, and her nipples harden as my thumbs
graze the outer edges of her curves.

  “Out of this sounds even better.” I draw her to me for a kiss, soft and certain, erasing the where-do-we-stand awkward that’s dogged me since our first time.

  Her stomach rumbles loudly and she breaks away with a grimace. “Hello. Awkward.”

  She crosses the room to her bedroom space, a tangled mess of sheets and clothes strewn across the floor. She snatches a pair of jeans, a T-shirt and a bra. “Give me a few minutes?”

  I can’t even form a reply before she shuts herself in the bathroom, the door clicking closed behind her. Even though I’ve seen her naked head to toe, the closed door tells me we’re nowhere near a place where she’ll dress in front of me.

  I pull out my phone and text the band a few final details for meeting up.

  ***

  First round.

  We’re last to arrive and the band is already installed in the back of the bar. I order a bunch of food and everyone picks at it except Willa, who eats furtively, like she’s doing something wrong.

  I pick up a wing and chew on it just to keep her company.

  “So what’s the story with Kristina?” Beryl asks. Gavin’s girlfriend hasn’t been around much because of her new job managing fancy condos, but by the way she wrinkles her nose, I suspect Gavin’s caught her up to some degree.

  I try to play it cool, wishing that now were the moment that Willa chose to head to the john, but she keeps her eyes trained on her tiny plate.

  “I made a deal with her.” I swallow and rub my hand over my face. “I’m going to give her half, and she’s never going to bother any of us again.”

  “Half of what?” Stella pries.

  “Everything. She figures she was part of our band’s success, that I owe it to her.”

  “That’s bullshit.” Tyler interrupts me with surprising ferocity. “We all worked for this, but you took us to the next level. Not her. Not Chief. You.”