by Laura Miller
I finally found her name but wasn’t any closer to figuring out what I was going to say. I stared at the phone’s screen for five, solid minutes, then I closed my eyes and pressed the button that sent the phone dialing her number. A deep breath in and a slow, uneasy exhale followed.
I heard the first ring, and it sent my heart into overdrive. I anxiously waited for the second ring, and then it came just as the first had—unexpected but deliberate. My heart continued to race. But, oddly, the sound of the rings, one after the other, was comforting somehow—that was until the fourth ring. On the fourth ring, I started to panic. And by the fifth ring, the sound of the solid tone was shrilling and unsettling. By that time, I knew that I wasn’t going to have the chance to talk to her. I took another deep breath and waited for her voicemail to pick up. Then suddenly, the ringing stopped, and a familiar, robotic voice poured through my phone’s speakers.
“The caller you are trying to reach does not have a voicemail box set up yet. Please try again. Goodbye.”
And with that, the other end of the line went silent.
I sat there on the edge of the cot, phone again cradled in my hand and my eyes locked on the phone’s screen. I waited there for minutes, willing the screen to glow and for her name to appear in bold letters across it. But when the minutes passed in silence, I couldn’t bear to hear the deafening sound of the quiet anymore. I lowered my head and cradled my face in my hands. I wasn’t sad. It felt more like anger, but it wasn’t anger either. It was like nothing. I felt numb. At least with sadness, I could mope away my sorrows. But with this strange pain, it was as if there was nothing I could do to make it go away.
I took another deep breath in and tried to collect myself. Then, I refocused my attention onto my phone, and it suddenly came to me: I could text her.
I started typing, but I only got to “Jules, I need to” when a sound at the doorway made me look up.
“Why are you still here?” asked a tall, shadowy man.
The man was the station’s chief. He wore a New Milford Fire Department tee shirt—just like the one I was wearing—but he also had short, wavy, graying hair and a mustache. In fact, he kind of reminded me of Clark Gable from that long movie Jules always loved to watch.
“I, uh, was just working on some homework,” I said.
He eyed the phone in my hand.
“In the dark?” he asked.
I glanced over at the small table next to the cot with the lamp and an opened book on it.
“I can’t concentrate with too much light,” I said.
He shot me a suspicious look, held it on me for a few seconds, then started to leave but stopped.
“Something on your mind, son?” he asked, turning back toward me.
I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t really in the mood to talk.
“Aah,” he said. “It’s a girl, isn’t it?”
My eyes turned up.
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“Because that’s the only reason a young man, such as yourself, ever sits in this station in the dark with a frown that wide on his face,” he said.
I tried to laugh.
“I’m right, though,” he said, dragging a fold-up chair to the cot.
I smiled, but it felt unnatural.
“What did you do?” he asked.
I flashed him a puzzled look.
“Come on,” he said. “I also know you did something stupid. I forgot to mention that every young man, such as yourself, that comes into my station with a frown that big on his face has also done something stupid to a girl.”
I dropped my head and slowly shook it back and forth.
“I let her go,” I mumbled.
My eyes locked onto the phone in my hand again.
“You let her go?” he asked.
“Yeah, I should have said something when she said it wasn’t working, and I should have followed her that night on New Year’s,” I said.
After a couple of moments, my eyes turned up from the phone, and I realized he didn’t have a clue as to what I was talking about.
“I let her go,” I repeated.
“I see,” he said, nodding his head.
“We’re talking about Julia, aren’t we?” he asked.
I nodded my head.
I watched his eyes travel to the lunch bag he had been holding in his hands. He turned it over a couple of times and then looked up.
“Sometimes, you just have to let go,” he said. “She’ll come back, when she’s ready.”
I sat there for a second in silence. Then, he reached over, patted me on the shoulder and chuckled.
“Happiness is like a butterfly,” he said. “The more you chase it, the more it will elude you. But if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.”
By the time he had finished, my eyebrows were in a heap at the center of my forehead.
“It’s Thoreau,” he said, chuckling some more. “Didn’t you ever learn that in school?”
I laughed.
“Can’t say I did, sir,” I admitted.
A moment passed, and my smile started to fade.
“Does that really work—the whole letting go and coming back thing?” I asked.
His eyes fell to the tiles on the floor before they found my stare again.
“Some of us spend our entire lives hoping it does,” he said. “And for some of us lucky ones, it does. But, boy, I have a good feeling that for you, it’ll work. Just be patient.”
I smiled and lowered my head again as he got up and scooted the chair back to its place against the wall.
“And don’t do anything stupid in the meantime,” he said over his shoulder as he made his way to the door again.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ll try not to, sir.”
“Oh, and by the way,” he said, stopping at the doorway, “didn’t you just get some big, fancy job on the department in St. Louis?”
I smiled.
“Yes, sir,” I replied.
“That’s no small feat,” he said, shaking his head. “But if you’d ask me, I’d say they got the better deal. You’re a damn good firefighter, Stephens.”
My eyes traveled to the floor.
“Thanks, sir,” I said.
“And Will,” he said.
I looked up again.
“Turn some lights on. You’re going to end up lookin’ like me by the time you’re thirty,” he said, smiling and tugging on his glasses.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
My stare remained on the dark doorway for a few seconds, even after the chief had disappeared through it. Then, eventually, I lowered my eyes to my phone’s screen again, and I retraced the letters I had formed just minutes ago. Slowly then, I watched each one disappear as I backspaced the message out of the phone and repeated the chief’s words in my head: Just be patient.
Chapter Nineteen
The Band
“Hey, so Will, I heard you can sing?” I heard a voice call out.
I looked up and saw Matt charging toward me.
“Where’d you hear that?” I asked.
“Through the grapevine, I guess,” he said, panting and stopping in front of me.
“Geez, Matt, you ran five steps,” I said, starting to laugh.
“I know,” he casually said. “I didn’t warm up first.”
I smiled at him and went back to working on the hose.
“So, this band canceled at this bar my friend manages in The Loop,” he continued. “And he can’t get anybody last minute, so I said maybe we could do it.”
I stopped and looked up at him again from where I was kneeling.
“We?” I asked.
“Yeah, Daniel plays the drums; Chris plays the bass; and I play the keys,” he said. “We get together every once in a while, but our singer’s always been a floater. None of us can sing.”
He laughed and handed me a screwdriver. I cautiously took it, as I judged his face.
�
�Listen, I know you’re new to the station and St. Louis and all, so if you don’t want to, that’s okay too,” he added. “We’re getting together to run through some songs tomorrow night at eight at my house. If you’re there, great. If not, I’ve gotta a guy who I know will do it.”
I watched him cup his hand around his mouth.
“He’s just, you know, a filler—not the best songbird in the cage,” he said.
He dropped his hand then and picked up a wrench.
“Just think about it, and let me know,” he said, ambling back toward the door again.
“I’ve heard you’ve got some talent, Will,” he called out over his shoulder. “You’ll be doing us a big favor, and who knows, maybe you’ll have some fun.”
He smiled a wide grin and then disappeared into the breakroom.
I kept my eyes on the breakroom door, just in case he reappeared again to tell me that he was pulling my leg or something. Seconds drew on, though, and he never returned.
“Where’d he hear that?” I whispered to myself, as I went back to screwing on the nozzle.
...
It was Friday night, and I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I had already found her number ten times in my contacts only to set the phone down onto the TV dinner table and stare at it for another twenty minutes.
I finally snapped out of my latest trance and spotted the remote balancing on the edge of the couch. I quickly snatched it up and powered the television to life.
The next thing I knew, I was flipping through each channel, only stopping briefly on each one and then flipping to the next. And within seconds, I was already back to the beginning of the order. I let out a sigh and then hit the power button on the remote, causing the screen to go black again.
What was she doing now?
I stared at the black screen for a couple of minutes, lost in my thought, until my eyes eventually landed on my phone again. Something told me not to reach for it, but my hand went for it anyway. And just before I could touch it, its display lit up.
My heart instantly started a fast, rhythmic pounding against the walls of my chest, as I quickly snatched up the phone and peered into its glowing screen. Next, I forced my eyes into a frantic search for the sender of the message, until they eventually stumbled upon a name and stopped cold.
It wasn’t her.
I let out an exhausted and heavy sigh. Then, I took a second before picking my heart up off of the floor and following over the words in the message: You comin’, buddy?
I took a deep breath in and then forced my eyes shut and let out a frustrated groan. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear I was going crazy in this little apartment.
When I opened my eyes again, my guitar was staring at me from the corner of the room. I cocked my head then and narrowed my eyes, focusing all of my attention on the six-string.
Moments passed. Then, I glanced up at the clock on the wall.
“What the hell,” I said out loud, before standing up and shoving my phone into my jeans pocket.
I made my way over to the corner and snatched up the guitar. Then, I grabbed my coat from a chair and my keys from the kitchen counter. And within seconds, I was out the door and heading for Matt’s.
...
“Will, you made it,” Matt cheerfully shouted, as he swung open his door. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
“Waiting?” I asked.
I watched his eyes fall to the guitar in my hands.
“You can play too? Great,” he said.
He pulled me inside by my coat’s sleeve.
“Guys, look who’s here,” Matt shouted into the garage.
I shyly entered the doorway and stood stiffly inside its frame.
“Will,” Chris yelled out first.
“Hey, does this mean we don’t have to call Jim?” Daniel asked no one in particular.
Chris burst into laughter.
“Okay, okay, let’s get going,” Matt said, raising his voice over Chris’s laughter.
Then, Matt shuffled over to a keyboard and took his place behind it.
“Will, we play a lot of covers—all sorts of stuff,” Matt said. “Do you know ‘Brown Eyed Girl’?”
“Yeah, the girls love it,” Chris shouted.
I lowered my head and smiled.
“Yeah,” I said, nodding my head. “I do.”
“Okay, we’ll start with that, and if you got any, you let us know,” he said to me.
I nodded my head again, then looked around.
“Is that where I go?” I asked seconds later, eyeing the microphone in its stand.
Matt and Chris laughed.
“That would be where you go,” Matt said.
I awkwardly grinned and took my place behind the stand. My guitar was now swung across my body, sheltering me, as I played with its strings and tuning pegs.
“All right, here we go,” Matt said.
The melody filled the room a short count later. I was a little nervous, but if I knew a song, I knew this one—thanks to Jules.
The part where I was supposed to come in came quickly, and my first words came out timid, but it didn’t take long for it to feel as if she were the only one in the room again.
After several minutes, I sang the last words of the song and took a step back from the mic, still strumming my guitar. Then, eventually, the music stopped and the garage was silent again. I turned around and faced the guys behind me. I noticed first the goofy grin on Daniel’s face.
“We’ve finally got a band,” Daniel yelled.
A wide, toothy smile soon lit up Chris’s and Matt’s faces as well. And only then did I feel a grin start to edge up my face too. I quickly lowered my eyes and tried to calm my excited breaths. It was as if there were some kind of weird adrenaline rushing through my veins all of a sudden; it was strange. But at the same time, I tried to tell myself that it wasn’t strange in a fun way because that would mean that she had been right all along.
“Oh, but Will,” Chris said, interrupting my thoughts.
I looked up at him.
“You do know that it’s brown-eyed girl, not green-eyed girl, right?” he asked.
I froze, as if I had been caught naked or something, then chuckled to myself.
“Yeah, sorry,” I said, lowering my eyes again and shaking my head.
“Okay,” Matt said. “It doesn’t matter what he sings. They’ll love it anyway. Let’s just keep it going.”
When I looked back up, Chris was staring at me, and he had a mischievous look glued to his face. I furrowed my eyebrows at him, then brushed off his look and returned my attention to Matt, as he rattled off a list of songs.
We played through the rest of the songs. They were mostly classics and country—oddly enough, the songs I used to sing to Julia—so I knew them well. Every so often, though, my heart would stab at my chest when a particular lyric sent me back to a summer afternoon with her in my arms. But then, not too long after, a slight smile would find my face when I realized that I couldn’t escape her no matter what I did. It was like her to always find a way to win. At least now, however, I would be a little distracted. Here, the music forced me on to the next moment without too much thought. And really, these guys weren’t bad.
“So, what do we call ourselves?” Chris asked, when the music stopped for the last time.
“I thought we had a name,” Daniel said.
The men froze—Daniel where he sat and Chris and Matt where they stood. I watched each one’s face twist and turn into a puzzled mess.
“What was it?” Matt asked, finally.
A moment of silence passed again.
“Whatever it was, it mustn’t have been that good,” Chris said. “Let’s come up with a new one. I feel like we’re a real band now.”
“What about WDCM?” Daniel asked.
“What?” Matt asked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s our initials all squished together,” Daniel explained.
“Vetoed,” Chris yell
ed out. “What about Matt’s Garage?”
“Matt’s Garage?” Daniel sarcastically asked and then snickered. “Yeah, I can see us famous someday, ‘Uh, hi, we’re Matt’s Living Room, uh, I mean, Matt’s Bathroom. No, I mean, Matt’s Garage. Can you guess where we started?’”
I laughed and so did Matt.
“This guy,” Chris said, pointing at Daniel, “has already got us famous now. Daniel, you’ll be lucky if Will remembers to introduce you tomorrow night.”
Daniel hit the snare and then the cymbal and a ba-DUM ching echoed through the garage.
All three of them laughed.
“What about District 9?” I asked, shyly.
Their eyes slowly moseyed toward my corner and then rested on me for a second.
“You know, I like that,” Matt said first.
“Yeah,” Chris said, nodding his head. “We’re firefighters first.”
Daniel started a drumroll. It got louder as it continued until it finally stopped.
“District 9 it is,” Daniel shouted.
“Okay, we’ve got a name,” Chris said. “Shouldn’t we have at least one song that’s ours?”
We all looked at each other.
“We don’t necessarily have to,” Matt said. “Plus, are we really gonna learn a song in a night.”
“Well, I think we could,” Daniel said. “But it doesn’t have to be for tomorrow. We can just have it ready for the next time.”
“What next time?” Matt asked. “Do you know something I don’t know?”
“Dude, we’re a real band now,” Daniel said. “We’ve got a singer.”
He stopped, gestured toward me and smiled.
“And we’ve got a kickass name, and you know all those club people who thought we were okay without a real singer,” Daniel continued.
His eyes were planted on Matt.
“Okay, okay,” Matt said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Okay, so what about the song?” Chris chimed in.
“You gonna write one for us, Chris?” Matt asked. “None of us could write a song to save our lives.”
