Sometime After Midnight

by L. Philips

  I laugh again, and he reaches for me. I slip my hand into his, cautiously, still afraid I’ll burden him with my sadness, my anger, my whole story. He pulls me onto his lap, pulls me up against his broad chest, and I sink into him. It should be patronizing, perhaps, but it’s not. I rest there, feeling his warmth, feeling his heart beating. It’s interesting, new, thrilling even. For the past week we’ve been passing creativity and inspiration back and forth, the force of it ebbing and flowing between our minds and now, I think, our hearts too. But this is different. I’m not just drawing inspiration from him, now I’m drawing strength. Courage. Comfort. I didn’t realize that strength could be given like this, or taken.

  “Please don’t shut me out.”

  I lift my head off Cameron’s chest and look at him.

  After a moment, Cameron continues. “I don’t think this is something we can ignore, or just joke away. I don’t know much about your dad. I don’t even really know much about mine. And I certainly don’t know what happened between them that night. But I really like you, Nate. I want to be a good boyfriend. I don’t think I’ve ever been a good boyfriend, but I’ve honestly never wanted to be, either. With you, though, I want to be there for you. And to do that like I should, I think we’re both going to maybe have to be really honest with each other. Even about stuff that hurts. Stuff we’re angry about. So don’t shut me out. Talk to me. I’m your partner. And not just for songwriting. Or, I’d like to be, if you let me.”

  “Really,” I whisper. “I don’t think I’m angry at you. Not consciously. But you’re right. All of this is bringing memories of my dad back. A lot of them good, though, I think. Like, after I heard you singing on Instagram and I wrote that song? I was in some sort of musical coma. It’s like I emerged hours later with hardly any recollection of time passing but this song in my hands. Dad used to do that. He’d write and lose himself for hours. I remember standing in the doorway of our living room and trying to get his attention. Sometimes it would take yelling his full name, like Grandma used to do when he was in trouble, to get him to snap out of it.”

  Cameron’s laugh is low, rumbling in his chest, muffled as I press my head to his skin.

  “Have you ever written about him?”

  “I never could.”

  “Why?”

  I think for a moment, unsure how to answer. “Nothing seems worthy,” I finally say. “How do you create music for a musician like him? For a person like him?”

  “I think it’s like macaroni art.”

  At that, I sit up and stare at him. “What?”

  “It’s your dad, Nate. Even if what you write is complete crap—which it won’t be because I know what you can do—he’d love it. Because it’s from the heart and it’s from you. Just like the macaroni art preschoolers give their parents.” I continue to stare at him. He rolls his eyes. “I know. Rich coming from a guy who doesn’t think his own father will like his demo. But my dad did keep my better report cards, so maybe that’s saying something.”

  Narrowing my eyes at him, I say, “I’d still want you singing it.”

  “Really?”

  I nod. “You’re my voice, Cameron.”

  His smile is bright enough to light up the beach. “Then let’s write it.”

  “Now? It’s, like, four in the morning.”

  “Absolutely now. We didn’t come here to sleep.”

  “In my defense,” I say with what I hope is a suggestive expression, “we didn’t come here to do a lot of the things we did tonight.”

  “Speak for yourself, Grisheimer,” Cameron says, and with a wink, he disappears into the house to get his notebooks, leaving me behind, blushing and shaking my head.

  Chapter Twenty

  Cameron

  When I get downstairs, Nate’s come inside and is sitting on the couch, tuning up. He smiles up at me, shrugging. “I got too cold.”

  “It’s probably better in here anyway. Then I won’t have to take out so much background noise while editing.”

  He stops plucking at a string over and over. “You mean we’re recording this one?”

  “We should, don’t you think?” I ask, starting to second-guess it. “I mean, just so we can keep it for ourselves and not forget it.”

  “Okay,” Nate says, but he sounds unsure. Perhaps he doesn’t want to commit something so personal to a permanent record.

  “We don’t have to.”

  “No,” he says, shaking his head. “We should.”

  I sit down next to him, turned so that I’m facing him, pen and notebook at the ready. A moment passes.

  “I’m sorry. You’re the lyrics guy. I don’t really know where to start,” Nate says.

  “Oh, um. Hmnnn,” I say, a bit at a loss as well. I don’t have any experience with this subject, writing or in general. I’m lucky that way. “Maybe a memory of him? You could tell a story about him when you were younger. Like how he taught you guitar or something?”

  “Daddy taught me to play this here gee-tar on a fishin’ trip down in the holler?” Nate says, and plays a short riff that sounds a lot like a banjo.

  I chuckle. “Okay, yeah. That’s too country.”

  “Yeah, the story thing is. But we could do it less . . . story-like. And maybe not so literal.” Nate starts strumming some chords, and I know the song. Or at least I think I do. It sounds familiar.

  “That’s good. What is that?”

  “‘Blue and Black.’ Dad wrote it. It’s the song that landed him the deal with Paradise, or so he told me.” Nate continues playing it. “Dad was playing it at a gig when someone noticed him. Might have actually been your dad. Would it have been?”

  I think. “Probably not. I think by that time, Father was too busy to do any scouting himself. My grandfather was gone, and the company would have been all his to run. Sounds bluesy. What was it about?”

  “Getting beaten up by love.” Nate sings a little, unsure and whisper-soft, and snippets of phrases trigger an avalanche of lyrics in my head.

  I start to sing with him.

  You hurt me, baby

  And I can’t get enough

  I need your touch

  And your violent love

  Hit me with your best shot

  Make me black and blue

  No matter how bad it hurts, girl

  I’ll keep crawling back to you

  Nate stops playing, fixes his gaze on me. “You know it.”

  “Yeah,” I say, kind of amazed myself. “I used to hear it all the time. I didn’t realize that was your dad.”

  “Hear it where?”

  I take a moment before I answer, remembering the sound of his father’s voice, his sorrowful guitar, bouncing off the high ceilings and walls of my home in Beverly Hills.

  “My house, Nate. My father must have played it in the house,” I say, piecing things together in my head. “He liked silence when he got home. Said he had enough of music during the day, he didn’t want to hear it all night long too. I learned to listen to stuff I liked with my headphones in, despite the awesome speakers all over the house. Nate, he must have loved that song. To play it in the house. To play it for us.”

  “That’s comforting,” Nate says, but he’s frowning. “But it makes it all the more confusing, doesn’t it? I mean, if he loved my dad’s work so much, what would they have fought about that made my dad feel like there was no other way out than jumping off a balcony? What went so wrong?”

  He looks to me for answers, pain etched all over his handsome face. I wish I could give him answers; failing that, comfort. “I wish I knew,” I say. “I’ve actually wanted to talk to my father about it. I won’t lie to you, Nate. The name Mick Grisheimer just isn’t spoken around my house. No one utters it around my family. It’s not going to be an easy conversation, and I want your permission to have it.”

  Nate hesita
tes, then nods. “If your father could give me any answers, Cameron, I think it might help a lot.”

  “Even if they aren’t easy?”

  Nate considers that and then, slowly, nods again. “Anything. Anything that could help me understand. Even if it’s bad. Because I still don’t understand. Eight years later and I still don’t understand. And I don’t love Tonya, I may not even really like her, but there are times that I see the same haunted look in her eyes that I see in mine, and I think she could use some answers too. Because why would he want to leave us? Why would he want to leave at all?”

  Nate wipes at his eyes, and it damn near breaks me to see. Carefully, around his guitar, I hug him as tight as I can. He buries his face in my neck, wet and warm and sniffling.

  “I’m sorry. Seriously, this is the last thing I wanted to get into with you this weekend. I was really hoping to avoid all of this.”

  “No,” I say, turning my face into his hair, talking into the thick strands. “No avoiding. Honesty. We’re partners now. In everything. Us against the world.”

  “I know,” he says, and it’s so matter-of-fact that it warms my heart. “I just hate you seeing this so soon.”

  “Seeing what?”

  He stills in my arms, then burrows in closer before murmuring, “The collapse. That’s what I call it. When all my walls come crashing down. It doesn’t happen often anymore, but when it does I’m in this kind of funk for a while.”

  “I think, just like the dreams, that’s probably normal too. I think maybe it’s natural to build some walls after losing a loved one, especially that way. And when you have a moment to think about it or something triggers a memory . . .” I shrug. “I’m sure it’s overwhelming.”

  “But shouldn’t I be over it? Or at the very least, maybe it shouldn’t hurt as much anymore.” Nate looks to me again for an answer I can’t give. “I just miss him so much. And you’re right. I’m desperate for his approval, and I’ll never get it. I’ll never know if he likes my music, if he likes you, if I make him proud. He won’t be there to see me do all the things he taught me to do. To see me find my sound and my voice and my way.”

  I pull back, and although I instantly miss his warmth, this is too important to say without eye contact.

  “That’s it, Nate. That’s your song.”

  Nate studies me, trying to understand. “My song is missing him?”

  “No, your song is how he’s missing all of you. Missing what you’ve become.”

  Nate slumps over his guitar, letting it support his weight while he considers what I’m saying. “I don’t know if I can write that.” He takes a deep breath, closing his eyes, holding it before breathing out slowly. “It’s too . . .”

  “Close?”

  “Yeah,” he says. His voice is rough from crying. “But that’s exactly it. I’m so angry and sad that he’ll never see this. See me like I am now.” He shuts his eyes tight, and a fresh tear falls onto his cheek. “And that’s why I have to write it, right? That’s what you’re going to say to me?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m going to say,” I tell him.

  “I don’t know how to begin.”

  I reach out, spread my fingers over his on the guitar. “What’s the most important thought? Or the most immediate? What do you feel like you have to say or it’s going to eat a hole in you?”

  “I don’t know,” he says, shaking his head. “I just wish he was here, Cameron. I wish he was here with me.”

  “Then that’s where you start.”

  In the end, it’s our shortest song, and the hardest for me to sing. It relies almost solely on my falsetto, on me singing nearly whisper-soft, but that’s not what makes it so difficult. It’s that I can’t seem to get more than a few lines into it without tearing up, my throat constricting, making it nearly impossible to get the notes out.

  Nate is right. I am his voice. I’ve become his instrument. I sing it for him, as him. For his dad. I sing it with the hope that if I can get it right, it will ease his pain, if only for a moment. And we record it in the silence of the living room, Nate joining in on some simple harmonies, supporting my voice in any way he can, lifting the melody up with me. His guitar is plaintive, simple, moving, just like the words, which he and I write together, hands knotted, squeezing each other tight:

  I wish you were here with me

  I know you’re in the air I breathe

  I wish you were here to see

  Everything I made of me

  All I dreamed has come to be

  Why can’t you be next to me?

  A feather fallen from your wing

  Leading me, taking me

  Remember when you said to me

  Think of me and there I’ll be?

  But I want more than memories

  To hear your voice, guiding me

  You’re the anchor when I’m offshore

  The star in my darkest night

  You showed me what to fight for

  Don’t tell me that you’re gone

  I wish you were here with me

  I know you’re in the air I breathe

  I’ll never be the same again

  * * *

  ***

  After yet another late night of music and deep talks, I’m completely surprised when Nate stumbles, sleepy-eyed, into the kitchen as I’m making breakfast. He yawns as he enters the room, hair adorably flat on one side, and plops down hard on a stool at the counter.

  I pour the rest of the carafe of coffee into a mug and slide it and some cream his way. He pours in so much cream that I’d guess the coffee-milk ratio is around sixty-forty, if not completely half and half. I note his preference for later, then go back to making omelets.

  “Morning. I didn’t think you’d stir before noon.”

  He yawns again. “What time is it?”

  “This, my friend, is what they call the ass crack of dawn.”

  Nate chuckles into his coffee. “And let me guess, you’ve been up for hours. You could have woken me.”

  “Not a chance. I barely touched you when I got out of bed and you growled at me like a wild dog. I didn’t want to lose a finger or get a fist to the face.” I sip my own coffee. “You’re not huge, but you’re sturdy. I bet you could pack a lot of power behind a punch.”

  Nate drinks deep from his coffee, which seems to perk him up a little. He grins lazily. “So what have you been doing, besides cooking?”

  “Well, I listened to our recordings and started editing them a bit. There’s really not much we have left to do. I think I should probably layer in some harmonies and I’ll have to work on erasing the sound of the waves in a few of them, but really, it sounds pretty solid. Then I got hungry.” Carefully, I fold an omelet in half and press it back down into the sizzling pan. “I put ham and cheese in this one. Want it, or should I make you something different?”

  Nate makes a gimme motion with his hands.

  “Excellent.” I flip it onto his plate and start cracking eggs for mine.

  “So . . . if you think not much needs to be done, that means we don’t even have to go into the studio at all, right?” he asks, and even though I’m turned around, beating whites and yolks together, I sense his hopefulness.

  “Yeah. I don’t think we need a studio at all for this. Despite the background noise, the recording is tight. I think when we perform we should think about adding keys and plugging you in for an edgier sound during some moments. I think the music lends itself to that. And definitely some scaled-down percussion. Some of it is crying out for some brushed drums. But for now, this is good enough for a demo. Even with no vocal harmonies and the sound of waves, it’s better than most I hear.” I turn and lean on the counter, polishing off my coffee while the eggs cook behind me. “I mean, they’re looking for songwriting skills, which we have, especially together, and playing. And you can f
or sure play.”

  “And you can sing.”

  I smile. He’s getting pretty good at reminding me that I have actual talent. I might start to believe him soon. I point at his mug. “Are you going to want more? Because I am.”

  “All the coffee,” he answers solemnly, so I load up the machine with more grounds and water. It starts hissing and bubbling, which, in my opinion, is one of the most beautiful sounds in the world. The eggs are done, so I toss in the rest of my ingredients and fold, then I turn back to him.

  “Come on. It’s beautiful out. Let’s go outside and eat while we talk.”

  Nate happily agrees, and a minute later, we’re at a table on the deck, soaking up the early morning sunshine. I take a deep breath, feeling the flutter of nervousness in my stomach as I do so. “So there’s something I want to talk to you about. . . .”

  Nate pauses, his fork halfway to his mouth, and looks at me, now nervous too. “Okay . . .”

  “We recorded about seven songs, total. We only really need three, and five is the most you should ever include on a demo,” I say. “I personally like the idea of four. A little extra effort, but not so much that it seems arrogant, if that makes sense. I don’t want to take up too much of their time.”

  “So which four?”

  I scoot around bits of omelet on my plate. Truthfully, I already know the four I want, and while I hope he agrees, I can’t wait to see which songs he likes most. Listening to them is such a different experience from writing or performing them. You get to relive the stuff that made you write it, and it’s like you can literally hear yourself pouring out of the music.

  “Let’s spend the afternoon listening, and we can narrow it down, okay?”

  “Sure,” he says, but his brows come together in concern. “Is that all you really wanted to talk about? You made it seem like there was something bad.”

  “No, it’s not all.” I add a tiny amount of cream to my coffee, no sugar, and Nate watches me closely. I know he’s noting it, the way I noted the same about him minutes ago. Perfect for each other, I swear it.