Sometime After Midnight

by L. Philips

  Cameron shakes his head. “You don’t cover Buckley. Especially a newcomer. It just isn’t done.”

  “Other people don’t cover Buckley,” I say. “You obviously can.”

  He looks overwhelmed at that.

  “What we really need,” I say, changing tack, “is a song like that for the demo, that’s all ours. Something in that same really bluesy style, but with your particular twist to make it a little more modern. Got any lyrics that would work?”

  The slow grin that spreads over Cameron’s face is answer enough. He pulls out one of his many journals and flips through until he finds what he’s looking for. He hands it to me.

  I read, barely making out the quick scratches and curves of his handwriting in the light, but I make out enough. The Buckley tune might not have been about sex, but this is. I can almost feel the slow, bluesy groove we’d need to get this message across. I can almost hear the breathy edge Cameron would put in certain phrases, like heavy breathing.

  Something coils tightly within me, and I hand the journal back to him with an embarrassed laugh. “Yeah, that’ll do.” I’m curious, and mostly devastated, that one of his ex-boyfriends inspired this song. But of course they did. Both Harry and Xavier are at the top of the A-list for a reason. Talented, gorgeous . . . and I’m betting behind closed doors even more talented and gorgeous. How does someone like me, who’s hardly even been kissed, compare to that?

  I swallow. Hard. “That has to be about Harry, right? Sorry, being nosy again. But seems to fit him way more than Xavier. At least, that’s my outsider perspective.”

  Cameron smirks at me, meets my gaze levelly. “I wrote it last week, Nate.”

  I swear a full moment passes before his words sink in, and I actually comprehend his implication. I can’t say anything. I try to stammer out an “Oh,” but I think I just make a weird, whimpering sound instead.

  Cameron looks as though he’s enjoying himself way too much. As a matter of fact, he looks downright triumphant, the bastard. He stands, still smirking. “I think we’ll need more wine for this one, don’t you?”

  I nod, still incapable of forming words, and he disappears into the house, leaving me alone to grapple with what he’s just told me about himself, about what he thinks of us, of me. And now we’re going to work on this song for the demo. Possibly hours of writing it, recording it, perfecting it, all with him right next to me and those words over and over again. It’s like he planned this to torture me.

  And damned if it won’t be the best kind of torture ever.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Cameron

  It was Nate’s brilliant idea to cut us both off after the second glass of wine and start on Gatorade, and thank the universe for his brains. Instead of being sloppy drunk, I am blissfully sober. Wonderfully sober.

  For the past few hours, all we’ve done is write and create, and it’s put me in some sort of trance-like state. Only instead of being mellow or zoned-out, I feel like I’m hyperaware of everything, incredibly conscious. My vocal cords feel warm and used and stretched, like they’ve just had a two-hour-long hot yoga class. I’ve never sounded so good. And whatever I do—whatever I sing or suggest or improvise on the spot—Nate is right there with me, in step or, frequently, a step ahead.

  We’ve moved out onto the dunes, both of us barefoot, in shorts and our cardigans. Nate looks incredible like this, cross-legged, the guitar in his lap. I can barely remember him without a guitar in his hands. It’s part of him now. He’s a living Picasso painting at the moment, the moon casting a faint silver-blue glow over his face and bare skin, his dark thick hair taking on a slick patch of liquid shine. But instead of a melancholy old guitarist, he’s young, vibrant, living in the moment, as startlingly sober as I am.

  He plays a soft, bright lick on his guitar, bringing my attention back to the music. He has my notebooks. He’s been jotting down chords and symbols and anything that can help us both read my words like they’re music. One day we might set them to real notation, but right now, this feels better. More authentic. Like there’s nothing in the way of getting the music out of our heads.

  I watch him jot down another note to himself—to us, my notebooks are ours now—and realize we’re probably up to our third song tonight. It’s so easy, almost too easy, but I don’t question it. Maybe it’s that with asking me to sing the Buckley, he put us both in the headspace of thinking anything’s possible. Maybe it’s simply the magic of the beach in the wee hours of the morning. I don’t know. But everything feels right.

  “Do you know anything about Tchaikovsky?” I ask him suddenly, and he jerks his head up from the notes.

  “The Nutcracker guy?” he asks, and I nod. “Not really. Other than the Sugar Plum Fairy and all that. I didn’t have much classical training. My dad was mainly all about rock. My other teachers branched out, but only popular stuff. Folk and jazz and blues. Why?”

  “Did you know he was gay?”

  Nate absorbs that, his body rocking back with it. “I guess I’m not too surprised. Odds are, at least one of the famous composers was.”

  “Yeah, so he married a woman, though. Wanted to have the ‘normal’ life, you know?” I use air quotes around “normal.” “But of course that didn’t last. He left after only a few months and ended up at a resort in Geneva, where one of his students came to visit him. For months, Tchaikovsky and his student locked themselves away and worked on a composition, a violin concerto. His student was an accomplished violinist, and so Tchaikovsky would write, and the young man would play it, and they’d both improve the piece until it was done. In the end, the most famous violinist in the world at the time said it was unplayable, but guess who could play it? Tchaikovsky’s student.”

  “And this student wasn’t just a student, was he?” Nate asks expectantly, and I couldn’t be happier that he’s interested.

  “Speculation of course, but how could it have been otherwise? Months locked away with only each other and some of the most beautiful music ever written as a result.”

  He stares at me. “How do you know all this?”

  “Program notes when I went to the New York Philharmonic once,” I say, grinning.

  Nate chuckles. He leans over, picks up some sand, lets it sift through his fingers, then picks up another handful. “Months, huh? Can you imagine?”

  “Yeah, actually.”

  Nate looks up, meeting my eyes in the darkness. He lets the remaining sand in his hands drop with a thud. “Me too. It would be like this. All the time.”

  “Only better. In some ways.”

  Nate inhales and exhales, a jagged, forced breath. “Yeah,” he agrees, barely audible above the roar of the waves. “In some very important ways.”

  “We could make this better.”

  With that sentence, the world stops turning. Nate’s dark eyes try to focus on me, startled but not really surprised, trying to comprehend and maybe—or maybe it’s just wishful thinking—willing me to go on. I’ve addressed the elephant in the room. It’s up to me, then, to propel us forward toward the inevitable. And to do that, I have to ask him a simple question, but it’s a question with an answer that has the power to hurt me or make me the happiest boy alive, and Nate’s the one wielding all that power. I rally my courage and remember that I’m a Pierce, damn it.

  “Want to go inside?”

  “Not yet.”

  That makes me pause. Not the answer I was expecting, but not exactly what I was hoping for, either. “Not yet?” I ask.

  He shakes his head, the moonlight moving along with his hair. “I want to kiss you out here at least once. It’s the best location for a first kiss, don’t you think?”

  Warmth blossoms in my chest. “I like the way you think, Grisheimer.”

  Gingerly, he sets his guitar aside, on the grassier part of the dune. Then he turns back to me, and though his eyes flash hope and excitemen
t and want, I see the same nervousness in his gaze as I feel in the pit of my stomach.

  Then we both lean in.

  And you know what? Kissing Nate is better than a whole symphony. Tchaikovsky and his violinist have nothing on us.

  Nate

  I wake with a scream and a gasping breath, tearing the covers off myself because somehow, in my hyperventilating brain, I think it might help thwart a panic attack not to be so covered.

  A large, soft hand closes over my shoulder. I feel the dip of the mattress as Cameron sits up, hand still on me but cautious of getting closer, like trying to approach a frightened animal.

  “Bad dream?” he asks groggily.

  I try to steady my breathing and manage to at least keep it silent, instead of wheezing like a lunatic.

  “Yeah. Sorry I woke you.”

  I glance toward the windows and out to the beach. It’s still incredibly dark out, which means we haven’t been asleep that long. He puts another hand on me, both of them winding over my chest and down to my stomach, so that he can pull me close. I let him and rest against his warm skin.

  “Want to talk about it?” he asks, and I shake my head in response. It is, quite literally, the last thing I want to talk about with him. What I want to do instead is crawl back under the covers with him and let him kiss me until I forget everything I know and spend the rest of our lives in this wonderful little cocoon we’ve made for ourselves. That sounds just about perfect.

  “I think I’ll grab some water,” I tell him. “Want anything?”

  “Nah, I’m okay.”

  I lean over the side of the bed, grabbing my shorts. Cameron’s strong hands pull me back to him, gently. He kisses me on the cheek, wraps me up in a hug. “I’m here.”

  It’s a simple promise for some really complex things, but he means it. I’ve come to realize that Cameron doesn’t operate in the realm of insincerity. It’s just one of the many misconceptions I’d had about him that I’ve corrected over the past week.

  “I know,” I say back, which is equally complex and heartfelt. I get up and tug on my shorts and smile as Cameron moves into the space I’ve just freed up. “I’ll be right back.”

  I move down the spiral staircase carefully. My heart is still thumping in my chest and I have to fight a bit of vertigo, like the dream was so real, it left all the physical blows behind. I open the fridge and grab a bottle of water, and despite my promise to come back to Cameron, I step through glass doors and out onto the deck. The door shuts with a snick behind me, and the thunderous sound of the ocean waves fills my ears. I lean against the railing and watch the water, the awesome power of it and the deep, mysterious black somehow comforting and thrilling all at once.

  I don’t know how long I stand there, watching the waves, trying to make my mind go blank, but it’s long enough that Cameron misses me. The door opens and shuts behind me, and I feel a rush of air-conditioning over my skin. Cameron doesn’t touch me, but holds back, lingering just behind me.

  “Was it about your dad?”

  “How did you know?” I say toward the sea.

  I hear him sit in one of the lounge chairs. “It feels like we’ve known each other forever. But really, I don’t know much about your past. It’s the only thing I can think of that would make you this upset.”

  A minute passes, in which I look out at the dark ocean like it can give me answers or reassurance. And of course it can’t. But I decide to confide in Cameron nonetheless.

  “I was only nine when my dad died, and it wasn’t until later that I learned the way it happened,” I begin, unsure of how much to burden him with. “And it was like I became obsessed with it. I couldn’t stop imagining it. Playing it over and over in my head. What it must have felt like to go over the railing of that high-rise balcony, to fall. It scared the shit out of me, but for some reason it was like this movie in my mind that I would watch all the time. My school made me go to a therapist. I guess I was acting up. Drawing some really disturbing things on my assignments. The therapist told me that was normal to fixate.”

  “I’m sure it is.”

  “How can it be normal to keep visualizing your dad’s death?” I say, more bite than I mean in my tone. I shake my head. “I learned to stop myself from thinking it, but I would still dream it. You know those falling dreams?”

  “When you wake up as you hit the ground?”

  I nod. “I have that one all the time.”

  “It’s a stress dream, or so I’ve read,” Cameron says. “I usually dream that I’m falling when my life seems out of control. It’s understandable that you’d have falling dreams after your dad died. Your life completely changed.”

  “Yes, but this is different,” I say. “Instead of it being me, I’m him. I’m Mick Grisheimer. And it’s not just a falling dream. I dream the whole sequence of what I think took place. I’m Dad, and I know I’m going to jump, I feel like it’s the only way, and I climb the railing. Then I’m falling and it feels like forever until I reach the ground. And I never feel pain, but I feel the thud. I hear it: the impact. Body meeting the cold cement. That’s when I finally wake up.”

  Cameron’s eyes are on me, pitying, which I resent, but also caring and compassionate, and I can’t even describe how grateful I am for that. And relieved. That makes me feel comfortable enough to tell him more of the truth.

  “But the worst part of it is that, at least in my dream, Dad . . . or me, I guess . . . regrets it. He knows it’s a mistake. He wants to take it back, but he can’t. It’s too late. He’s already falling.” I look at Cameron. “I know. It’s wishful thinking. Perhaps it’s my lame attempt at coping.”

  “Maybe. Did your therapist think that’s what it was?”

  I shake my head. “I never told her about the dreams. I stopped therapy after only a few months. She seemed to think I was well-adjusted enough, considering. And the dreams came less frequently until they stopped altogether.”

  “Until tonight?”

  “Yes. No. Not really. I’ve had it a few times.” I pause, remembering. “The first time was the night before we met, actually. I got up, went to work, and then Vic got us into the Jacket Zippers show that night.”

  “Right before we met? And then the first night we spend together? Seems like the universe might be trying to tell you something.”

  I feel color rise in my cheeks. “It doesn’t mean anything. And I’m sorry. This is the last thing I wanted to deal with tonight. Everything’s been so perfect.”

  “Don’t apologize. And yes, Nate. I do think it means something.”

  “I’m not angry at you. About my dad,” I say, rushing to get the words out. “I mean, I’m still angry, but not at you anymore. You were just as young as me. How could it be your fault?”

  “But you do blame my father, and Paradise, which are big parts of who I am, and what my life is.”

  “It could also just be that you brought up memories I don’t usually have to deal with,” I say, defensive. “I don’t think it has anything to do with anger. Or resentment.”

  “That could be,” Cameron says in this kind of sage, Obi-Wan way, like he doesn’t believe me but he’s keeping the wiser, truer answer to himself. “It could just be that you’re facing being a musician all on your own, and that brings up your dad. It could be that you’ve reached a point in your life where his approval with how you’re living and your decisions would be supernice to have right now, but you can’t have it. It could be that you feel guilty about even being here with me. There are perhaps a thousand reasons why you could be dreaming this dream again, on two significant nights for us. Or . . .”

  “Or it could just be that I’m pissed at you?”

  He smiles sadly. “Or it could just be that you’re pissed at me.” He leans forward in his chair, getting closer to me. “And that’s okay.”

  “That’s okay?”

 
“Well, don’t get me wrong. It’s not ideal. But it’s not abnormal. Who knows? This whole situation is abnormal,” Cameron says, chuckling to himself, like it’s all strangely hilarious. “I mean, what kind of plot twist is this, that the person who makes the music in my head come alive is the person who probably shouldn’t even deign to talk to me? It’s just cruel. I mean, here I am, falling in love with a musician who hates not just my family, but everything we stand for?”

  “Falling in love?” I ask, my voice suddenly unbearably dry.

  Cameron takes a decided interest in his cuticles. “Contrary to what the tabloids publish about me, what we just did, you and I? I don’t do that with just anyone.”

  That makes my breath catch and my entire body feel overly warm. I look at him, thankful he can’t see how badly I’m blushing. “Well, samesies,” I say, trying to be casual while feeling awkward as hell. “Only I’d never done what we just did with anyone before, so I guess it’s a little different for me, but same idea.”

  The look on Cameron’s face, all the happiness and pride and exhilaration, mirrors how I feel inside. I can tell he’s trying to hold back from full-tilt beaming. “Well, I guess we’re on the same page. Not that we should even be thinking about that. I’m pretty sure everyone would say it’s too soon. So let’s just pretend this conversation hasn’t happened yet?” He wiggles his fingers in front of my face, laughing at himself. “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”

  Somehow, his charm and ridiculousness make it work. I laugh with him, and the tension of the dream disperses, and the thrill of knowing what he feels about me softens to a simmer. “Do you know I just had the thought that you seemed like Obi-Wan Kenobi and then you go and actually quote him? What the hell. You’re right. Maybe I should hate you. Instead I feel like I have never been this in sync with someone in my entire life. It’s more than just thinking alike.”

  “You complete me?” he asks, and I have to admit, his mopey Tom Cruise is on point.