Sometime After Midnight

by L. Philips

  I stare at her. I can’t remember being more proud of anything or anyone in my entire life. “Tess, that’s amazing. Of course I’ll help.”

  Tess nods again, serious and sincere. “I know you will. But first, I’ll help you. When you’re a famous singer, you’ll be much more useful.”

  Then she turns on her heel, getting the exit she’d wanted, and I sit there shaking my head. There’s no doubt in my mind who got the brains in this family.

  Chapter Twelve

  Nate

  I turn over the engine of the Tank a few times, thanking the universe that Victor (and more importantly, Mrs. Amati) said I could use her all day if I needed to.

  Clearly, he saw that I needed to get some fresh air and get my head on straight.

  It’s been a week since Tess posted that video of Cameron singing by himself in the warehouse, and it’s been a week since I’ve been able to concentrate on anything else. I’ve been dropping ice cream cones, spilling Mr. Freezys, and pouring hot fudge on just about everything. Tonya’s about to kill me. Also, I’ve been eating my feelings. About three times in as many days, Victor had to stop me from eating an entire basket of fries. But what he doesn’t know is the worst of it:

  I wrote Cameron’s song. Not the lyrics, obviously. He wrote those. And I used the melody he’d been experimenting with in that video. But I took my guitar and I filled in the rest: the harmonies, the major and minor chords, the little fills that would make it a real song. And it’s perfect. It’s exactly what Cameron described to me that night at the Crown. It’s got a pinch of all the styles he wanted, and it sounds like something Adele or Amy Winehouse might sing, if they had a Southern rock band backing them.

  And what truly frightens me is that this might be exactly the sound I’ve been looking for myself.

  What Victor also doesn’t know is that I’m on my way to see Travis Blake. He thinks I’m going to go hike or commune with nature or some nonsense. Or at least that’s what I told him. Of course, he probably knows that I’m not actually doing that. First, I never hike, and second, I’m not exactly dressed for it. I’m in a plum-colored shirt with a deep V-neck and black skinnies, and combat boots that lace up to my calves. I’ve got a bulky mustard yellow cardigan over the whole thing. Not exactly hiking material, but worthy of meeting with a gorgeous guitarist, anyway.

  My palms get instantly sweaty when I pull up to the San Bernardino address Travis gave me. The building is modern-looking in that 1950s way where everything was designed with space travel in mind, and huge brushed-metal letters above the entrance proclaim SOMEWHAT DAMAGED STUDIOS.

  I pay a meter for two hours and push through the heavy chrome doors in the front. A tiny woman wearing cat-eye glasses and a Grateful Dead shirt looks up from a curved metal desk and pulls the microphone part of her headset away from her face. “Welcome to Somewhat Damaged. Are you Nate?”

  I nod.

  She presses a button and lifts the microphone back to her mouth. “Yes. Travis’s friend is here. Absolutely. Can I get you water? Club soda? We also have green tea if you wish.”

  It takes me a moment to realize she’s speaking to me now, not into the mic. “Oh. Uh. No, thanks. Hey. Do you know that you look like—”

  “Please don’t say Mayim Bialik.”

  My smile droops. “I guess you get that a lot?”

  The Deadhead receptionist gives me a can’t-really-be-bothered smile, then promptly goes back to ignoring me. Seconds later, Travis walks into the lobby. He’s in loose jeans and a white undershirt, and has his blond hair tied back into a bun. He shakes my hand and pulls me into a crushing hug.

  “Doing all right?” he whispers.

  “Okay,” I say into his shoulder. Travis pulls away. “Confused, I guess.”

  “I gathered.” Travis turns back toward the way he came, and I can only assume I’m supposed to follow. “Want a green tea? Bree would get you one. She’d get you anything if you ask the right way. Right, Bree?”

  The receptionist acknowledges Travis with only a lifted middle finger. He grins at me and continues. “Hungry? We can charge the studio for takeout. It’s fun.”

  I laugh as we push through the doors and into a long hallway. “No, thanks. Stopped for a burger on the way here.”

  “Oh man. You’ve gotta try this diner down the street.”

  He turns and suddenly we’re in a large room with foam squares all over the walls. I recognize Murray’s drum set, which is on a platform in the back of the room. There are mismatched rugs under all the instruments, including the awesome keyboard setup that Vanessa fine-tuned herself, and on the other side of her keyboards is an actual grand piano. For the acoustic stuff, I assume. And of course, Travis’s guitar collection is here. All of his beautiful guitars sit neatly on stands, shiny in the low studio lighting, looking alive.

  “Miss them?”

  I smile at Travis. “Yeah. Although my own aren’t anything to scoff at.”

  Travis knows I’m talking about my dad’s guitars, and he nods. He sits down on an amp and folds his arms over his chest, waiting for me to speak. A chunk of his hair falls out of his bun and into his face and my stomach does a little flip. I can’t even comprehend what it must be like to look that good all the time.

  I clear my throat. “You look happy. Recording must be going well.”

  “It really is.” Travis leans back. He looks truly content with life, as if this exact room in this exact studio at this exact moment is precisely where he is meant to be. “Brendon’s been laying down the vocals separately, for the most part, which gives him a lot of freedom to experiment with exactly how to style every line. And our producers here are freaking amazing. Sometimes they just let me or Vanessa jam and record it all, and if something works, it ends up on the record. It’s a cool process, man. You ready for it yet?”

  “Well, that’s kind of why I’m here.”

  “I wondered.” He leans in. “What’s up? You sounded . . . distressed on the phone. I’m used to you being kinda nervous, yanno? But not like that. You sounded messed up.”

  “I feel messed up. Let me ask . . . what did you think of Cameron’s video?”

  Travis looks off into the distance, his eyes forming eyeliner-rimmed slits, like the memory of it is seven years ago instead of seven days. “Liked the lyrics a lot. They were honest, even if they were a little overly sentimental, but I kinda get the feeling Cameron Pierce might be a sentimental guy, so it works. But his voice . . .”

  Travis makes a blissed-out face, like he’s been smoking weed.

  I nod slowly in agreement. “I know. That’s what really got to me. I never in a million years expected that voice.”

  “It’s not unheard of that a suit’s kid would actually be talented. I mean, they grow up around music.” Travis gestures toward the lobby area. “Hell, one of Bruce’s kids—that’s the studio owner—plays once a week with Billie Joe Armstrong just for fun. They just get together and jam because Billie hangs out here and the kid happened to show interest in guitar. I’m sure Cameron’s picked up a lot about music just by virtue of being around it so much.”

  Briefly, I picture a young Cameron, his dark copper hair combed neatly over to one side, a miniature Ralph Lauren outfit, a high-pitched giggle, running around the Paradise Entertainment studios, playing hide-and-seek with A-listers, sneaking peppermint candies from old rock gods, and getting kissed on the cheek by pop princesses. I wonder if his childhood was really like that.

  And, if my father had lived, would I have run around the studio with Cameron? Would we have been playmates?

  It’s such a different path from the one my life is currently on, I can’t even fathom it.

  “So. Richie McRicherson made you swoon with his song and now you want to play guitar for him?” Travis guesses, and he’s not entirely off base.

  “Well, that’s the thing. He’s offered me the
job.”

  Travis sits back and lets that information settle. After a few moments, he says, “You’d better fill in all the gaps here, because you said nothing about auditioning for him.”

  “I didn’t even know I’d auditioned for him until a week ago. About two hours before that video got posted online, actually.”

  I can see the thoughts flying around in Travis’s mind. They’re all there in his eyes. Every question and every assumption. Before he can get very far into his imagination, I tell him the whole story. It tumbles out of me like an overflowing Mr. Freezy. I tell him all I remember about the first audition, how the lyrics had been wonderful and I’d had to write a tune for them, how excited I was that the gig would include songwriting too. Then I filled him in on the creepy “second audition,” in which Cameron showed his hand and I made a complete ass out of myself.

  “So you can’t take the job.” Travis shrugs. “Tell him you don’t want it and go on with your life. What’s the problem?”

  “The problem is that I finished his song.” Travis stares at me. “The song Cameron started on the video. I finished it. I used his lyrics and filled in the rest and wrote the guitar part for it and the harmonies. I couldn’t help it. It’s like his voice wouldn’t let me go.”

  Travis continues to stare at me, his face unreadable.

  “What?”

  In answer, he reaches behind him and grabs an acoustic guitar. He holds it out to me. “Show me.”

  I wince. “I should have known you were going to make me play it.”

  “Shouldn’t have mentioned it if you didn’t want me to hear it.”

  I take the guitar from him and position it under my arm. I strum softly. Naturally, it’s perfectly in tune. I look at Travis. “Just remember, it’s rough. I’m only playing around with what he had done and I haven’t had much practice with it.”

  “Always with the excuses.”

  “Well, pardon me,” I say sarcastically, and lift a hand to indicate the room we’re in. “I get nervous playing in front of rock stars.”

  “Shuddup and play, Grisheimer.”

  Resigned, I begin to softly pluck the strings. I don’t even use a pick for this, keeping it as quiet as possible. The acoustics in the room are so good that soft is all it takes, and I can fill the giant space. I keep my voice the same volume and hum a little intro, a soulful, nearly sultry riff before the opening lines. I’d used Cameron’s words as my chorus, so the first verse is all mine.

  Just like flint and stone

  We collide and sparks fly

  The fire burns, keeps us warm

  We light up this city sky

  I continue with all that I have, ending that verse, launching into Cameron’s chorus with a heavier rhythm, then back again into the rest of what I have. I sing it simply, knowing that Cameron’s voice would be able to do much more with it, and that Travis will understand that, and probably hear it in his head. When I get to the end, I let the strumming fade out into nothing, filling in where the words should be with humming. There’s a few beats of silence, the foam on the walls absorbing each hanging note, before Travis speaks.

  “Nate, are you falling in love with him?”

  The question totally surprises me. Not just the question, but the way Travis almost sounds angry. Angry and disappointed. In my shock, I go on the defensive.

  “What? No.”

  “Those words . . .”

  “I was just finishing up what he started. That’s all,” I say, voice firm. “Really. I wasn’t thinking about Cameron when I wrote them,” I lie.

  Travis crosses his arms and looks at me, waiting, and I feel like I’m suddenly in second grade again and I’ve been caught looking at someone else’s spelling test.

  I blow out a breath. “Okay, maybe I thought about him a little. It’s just that . . . I mean, you’ve seen him. And we’ve only talked twice, so it seems insane, but that first time, before I knew who he was, we totally clicked. And then the second time, we fought. But both times I felt this horrible pull. Even when I knew exactly who he was, even when I was yelling at him, all I wanted to do was get closer to him.”

  “And that’s exactly why you have to stay away,” Travis says. He doesn’t say it loudly, but he might as well have. It screams through my brain.

  “Even working for him?”

  “Maybe especially working for him,” Travis says. He heaves out a heavy sigh and leans forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together like he’s pleading. “I get it. I totally get it. I know what it’s like to be completely inspired by someone’s voice. I write for Brendon, after all.”

  I smile at that.

  “I’d played guitar for years but never felt the pull to write my own tunes until I heard Brendon sing one night in high school. I couldn’t get his voice out of my head, and honestly, I’m a shitty singer, so it was like I could finally write the music I wanted to write, because I had someone who could make it sound fantastic.”

  “That’s exactly how I felt listening to Cameron. Like I finally found a voice,” I say.

  “Exactly,” Travis says, but his voice is serious and distant. “But . . . I’ve also been in love with someone I worked with and, well, let’s just say that didn’t end well.”

  “Also Brendon?” I guess.

  Travis laughs mirthlessly. “No. No. He and I . . . well, we’ve never even been close to falling in love. I was talking about Lindsay.”

  Something stirs my memory. “The tattoo.”

  Travis scratches at his chest, pulling his collar down just enough to reveal the top of her name in thick black cursive. With a growl, he gets up, plucks one of his electric guitars off a stand, and absently studies it. “She was in Liquid, when we first started. She’s the reason for our name. Her eyes were so dark, kind of bottomless and calm. When I looked in them, I felt like I feel when I look at the ocean at night, you know? Awestruck. They were like liquid.”

  I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I’m sorry. Slow down. There was someone else in Liquid? I’m going to need a minute. This is like learning there was a fifth Beatle all over again.”

  Travis smiles at my joke, but it doesn’t reach his amber eyes. He sets the guitar back down, folds his arms across his chest. “She played rhythm guitar. And I loved her. I asked her to marry me.”

  “Now I really am shocked.”

  “Shuddup.” Travis does laugh then, and it’s real. “I was young and stupid. Nineteen. I met her when I met everyone else in the band. Ever played with someone you loved before?”

  “My dad, but I don’t think that’s what you mean,” I say. “I’ve never even been in love.”

  Travis doesn’t seem surprised by this information. “It’s intense, and playing music with someone you’re in love with just multiplies that feeling by about a thousand. It was like great sex, or a really awesome high.”

  I don’t know much about those things either, but I nod like I totally get it, and Travis goes on.

  “Brendon had the voice, but it was Linds that I wrote about. And it moved the whole group forward. Linds inspired me into writing stuff that was better than I could sing, so Brendon sang it. Murray and Vanessa became a thing, and suddenly it was like it all just clicked into place. Liquid was what it should be. And we were planning on moving here, playing, getting a deal, being famous as hell.” Travis shrugs. “We had it all planned.”

  “So what happened?” I ask, on the edge of my seat.

  “After I proposed, she disappeared.”

  “But . . . why? Where did she go?”

  “I don’t know the answer to either of those questions,” Travis admits. “I never saw her again. And Brendon learned enough guitar to cover rhythm parts if needed. And that was that.”

  That was that. I let Travis’s story sink in and find myself incredibly troubled by it. Then I suck in a breath. “‘Hide’?
Your song, ‘Hide’? It’s about her?”

  Travis gives me a short nod, and the confirmation is almost more devastating than the story itself. The song’s lyrics hit me like a freight train every time I hear them. I couldn’t imagine, listening to it, what someone could have gone through to write pain like that.

  I start humming it, hardly realizing it, and Travis picks up the melody, whisper-singing along.

  At the end of my rope

  Gonna tie myself a knot

  The rest keep on living

  But without you, I’m not

  Not living, not breathing

  Not going to keep trying

  There’s nothing to live for

  When you keep on hiding

  Travis looks at me and his eyes reveal it all. The pain is just as raw as it was when he was nineteen. Lindsay is a ghost for him, haunting everything he does. Perhaps that’s why there’s always anger and bitterness in him, just below the surface. Perhaps that’s why I never see him with anyone for more than a day or two. Perhaps that’s why a lot of things about Travis are the way they are.

  I don’t quite know how to respond, so I’m honest. “That song always reminded me of my dad. I kind of thought maybe he was feeling like that too. Before he . . .” Travis says nothing, but I see the acknowledgment in his eyes. “Travis, do you think it would be like that with Cameron? That intense?”

  When he speaks, he can’t quite look at me. “I don’t know if that would happen with Richie Pierce, but it might be worse. Considering who he is, it might be way worse. Because it wouldn’t just be about your heart. It would be about the music too. Your passion. Your soul, man? Know what I’m saying? He could take it, chew it up, spit it out, and sell it to the highest bidder without even a thought to your well-being. But you know that. You know what the Pierces are capable of. I mean, the way I see it, the best possible outcome is that he only breaks your heart. The worst is that it’s like your dad all over again.”