Before

by KE Payne

  “After the Rain” had some catchy hooks and I knew it was a winner the moment I’d finished writing it. That’s why I was so stoked that Ed thought it good enough to be the new single. I didn’t always agree with him, but I was pleased that, unlike for “Drowning in You,” this time he’d accepted the slight shift away from our normal sound and had seen the potential in it as much as I had, and even though I knew he wanted to change some of the guitar riffs in it, I was happy to comply, just as long as it meant it made the cut. Not all of Ed’s suggestions went as smoothly as this, though. I would say for every twenty songs we wrote, Ed usually wanted to make subtle instrumental or lyrical alterations to at least half of them. Those tended to be the ones that I’d written instrumentals for, and I always knew what he’d want to change about them, because it was the same thing every time, as I liked my music to be more edgy than Brooke and Robyn did. It had always been the same, even when we’d been writing songs together during our breaks at school, but it had always worked out well between us. We compromised back then just the same as we compromised now; an instrumental here and there or a drum intro usually kept me happy. When I wrote music alone, however, the edginess was more apparent. My guitar solos weren’t watered down by the others, my words weren’t changed, and the angst and grittiness I loved in my writing stayed.

  So after various meetings and emails pinging back and forth between us, the version of “After the Rain” that we had recorded a few days before was ready to be released out to the fans. Ed rented out studio space on the twelfth floor of an apartment block in East London so we could rehearse it together, so we’d be ready for all the promo that would soon follow, the first of which was a booking on The Afternoon Show, a popular daytime chat show on one of the commercial channels. This was the part of the whole process that I particularly loved: time spent hanging out with my buddies, jamming and singing the music we’d created together, then appearances together on TV, singing our new material to our fans. I never tired of it, and I knew Robyn and Brooke loved it just as much as I did.

  I just hoped Alex would, quite literally, enjoy singing from the same sheet as us too.

  *

  I’d never been to East London, which was a bit silly considering I’d lived in the capital for over a year now. The rehearsal studio that Ed had rented was in a suburb called Walthamstow, which, to my knowledge, was famous for having a greyhound racing track and not much else. I caught the Tube up from Islington, blending in with the summer tourists as I sat squeezed between them in the insufferably hot carriage, the music playing from my phone drowning out the roar of the train.

  No one looked at one another, no one spoke, no one smiled. As the train rocked and scudded through the dark tunnels, I played “After the Rain” on repeat, knowing I wanted to have it completely earwormed into my head before I got to the rehearsal, so that as soon as I opened my mouth to sing, it would feel like I’d been singing it for years. I stared up at the advertising opposite me, listening to Brooke’s voice as it sounded in my ears, then Alex’s. The harmonies sounded good, and as the train slowed to its next station, I couldn’t help the smile that escaped from my lips. My mind tumbled forward to the single’s release, to the reception I hoped it would get with the fans. It could be our most popular single yet, I could just feel it.

  The train jolted back into life, drawing my eyes away from the advertising. The carriage was quieter now, and now there were fewer people standing in front of me, I could see further down the carriage. That’s when I saw her. Alex. She had her hood up, despite the stifling heat of the carriage, and was looking down at the phone in her hands, texting. I studied her for a bit, hoping she wouldn’t look up, because I didn’t want to have to go and talk to her, even though I figured I ought to.

  I turned my head away and looked in the opposite direction. Alex was wearing the same hoodie she’d been wearing at the studio two days before, and just seeing it, and remembering the way she’d so casually dismissed me and sauntered from the room, made my skin warm. Then I wanted to go and sit next to her, so I could ask her just what the hell she’d been playing at, but I also figured having an argument with her in a public place wouldn’t be my wisest move.

  “After the Rain” finished playing in my ears. I could either play it one more time or switch it off and go speak with Alex. I chose to let it play on again.

  I stared at her from across the carriage.

  The music played on.

  Of course, I could just go and talk to her. It didn’t have to descend into an argument. The train slowed into the next station, and in the flurry of doors opening and closing, and people coming and going, my attention was distracted from her until the train pulled out again.

  I stole another look over to her, half hoping the seat next to her would be occupied now. It was still free. Annoyed with myself, I switched the music off and stood, holding onto a rail next to me for support. I walked down the length of the aisle, swaying in time with the train, and eventually stood in front of her. When Alex didn’t look up, I tapped her foot with my foot, then flopped down in the seat next to her.

  “Didn’t see you here,” I lied. “I was sitting over there.” I lifted my head. “Just saw you now.”

  Alex put down her phone and lifted her Beats from her ears. “Sorry?”

  She looked annoyed at my intrusion, but that could have been my imagination.

  “I was just saying,” I said, pulling my own earbuds out, “I didn’t see you.”

  “Oh.” She placed her headphones round her neck. “Right.”

  I nodded, just for something to do.

  “What are you listening to?” I asked.

  “Nothing much.” Alex smiled and plopped her phone into her hoodie pocket. “Bit of Motown.” She lifted her chin to my earbuds, now dangling round my neck. “You?”

  “Mixture, really.” I screwed up my nose. Like I was going to tell her what I’d really been listening to?

  A yawning silence between us followed, and I wished I was the sort of person that found small talk easy. That’s why I always dreaded anything that involved having someone do my hair and make-up, or visits to the dentist. After all, there’s only so many things you can talk about, and I wasn’t particularly good at any of those things.

  I looked around the carriage, wishing my brain would come up with something.

  “So, how do you like London?” It was weak, but the best I could come up with.

  “London?” Alex asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “How do you like living here?”

  “Well I’ve been here nearly a year,” Alex said, “so I guess I’m kind of used to it now.”

  I detected amusement in her voice, which pissed me off, and I was equally annoyed that my attempt at conversation with her had bombed, thanks to her sarcasm.

  “What about you?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, childishly and deliberately not elaborating. “I like it.”

  It was all so stilted, it was painful. Fortunately, intervention arrived when at last our train arrived at Walthamstow. I don’t think I’d ever been so grateful to see a station sign.

  As I got off the train and headed for the exit, I lost Alex in the melee. I figured I ought to wait for her though, in spite of our awkwardness in each other’s company, because despite everything, I thought making her walk alone to the apartment block was a bit mean. I waited for her at the top of the station steps, grabbing her arm as she weaved her way past me in the thickness of the crowds, and I’m certain I didn’t imagine the look of relief on her face when she saw me.

  Even then, as we made our way from the station, the aching silence between us resumed, and I returned to racking my brains for a conversation starter.

  Maybe there would never be one. As we walked stiffly side by side, I seriously wondered if Alex Brody and I would ever have anything to say to each other ever again.

  Chapter Five

  The rehearsal studio was amazing. I wandered over to the window and star
ed out at the acres of apartment blocks and roads yawning out below me, watching people scuttling on the streets below me like ants, whilst listening to the sounds of Nate setting up the systems behind me. I couldn’t wait to get started. This would be the first time we’d actually be singing together as a foursome, rather than each of us singing our vocals independently and knitting them together as we had done at the studio. Now we had a week of promotion ahead of us, and I was itching to get back onstage and in front of the fans again, so that they too could hear the new line-up for themselves. I couldn’t wait. It had been too long, I thought, since I’d stood in front of an audience, my guitar in my hands, and just sang.

  I still wished Alex and I could have tried to say something to one another on the short walk from the Tube to the tower block. Instead, we’d both plugged ourselves back into our respective phones, so the silence between us wouldn’t become even more embarrassing than it already was, and had just walked side by side, occasionally sidestepping someone walking towards us, before falling into step with one another again.

  I would have loved to have been able to pinpoint exactly why it was I found her so hard to talk to, but the conversation just never seemed to flow between us. I’d have thought our shared love of music would at least give us a starting point, but the agonizing silences on the Tube ride over had told me that even talking about what music we had with us wasn’t enough to sustain us. But then, I hadn’t exactly ever seen either Robyn or Brooke busting a gut to talk to her either. I also didn’t sense either of them beating themselves up as much as I was over it.

  Now, in the apartment, Alex had done her usual trick of taking herself off to talk to anyone that wasn’t me and was busy helping Nate set up the amps. Funny how she could talk to him and Grant quite easily, when she found it so difficult to talk to me. I slid a look to her, chatting so freely with Nate, and I wondered what his secret was. I also knew Robyn, when she got here, would be furious at seeing them together again, and I wondered why Alex continued to hang around Nate when she knew Robyn hated it.

  The apartment was awesome and I already knew, just from the voices around me, the acoustics were perfect. I watched Alex moving an amp with Nate and wondered if I ought to go and offer to help; perhaps if I involved myself with my surroundings a bit more—made myself more visible to Alex—then the space that she had created for herself away from me might close a little. I watched them a little longer, thinking that the amps looked way too heavy for me to even try to shift, before intervention arrived in the form of Robyn and Brooke, shoving the apartment door open and bringing with them a blast of chatter and laughter, and some much-needed distraction.

  Shifting the amps could wait.

  “You’re here!” I strode over to them both, grabbed a hand each, and pulled them over to the window. “Tell me if you’ve ever seen a view as awesome as this.”

  “So why couldn’t Ed rent a place like this when we did the first album?” Robyn peered out of the window. “Rather than that draughty warehouse down by the docks?”

  “Because we’re making him money now.” I laughed. “He’s got to keep us onside, right?”

  “Damn right.” Robyn threw a look over her shoulder, paused, then released my hand and walked over to Nate.

  “Is Alex doing it deliberately?” Brooke’s gaze followed Robyn.

  “If she is,” I said, “she’s stupid.”

  “I thought you handled stuff well the other day, by the way.” Brooke lowered her voice.

  “The other day?” Like I didn’t know what she meant. I’d thought of little else since.

  “At the recording.”

  “Right. That.”

  “I mean, what was she thinking?” Brooke said, turning to face the window again. “Robyn wanted to have a go at her about it, but I told her to leave it.”

  “You know the crazy thing?” I asked. “I don’t even think Alex realized how much she’d pissed me off.”

  “So maybe you should tell her.” Brooke looked at me. “After all, you’ve got to work with her.”

  I stole another look to Alex. “You know,” I said to Brooke, “I’ve just sat with her on a train for the last twenty minutes, and I could hardly dredge up two words to say to her.” I masked a sigh with a smile. “So telling her she should quit trying to be queen bee and annoying the hell out of everyone around here was always going to be hard.”

  “But if you don’t tell her…”

  “It’s all right for you.” I laughed. “She doesn’t think you can’t sing. Or Robyn for that matter.” I frowned. “Seems it’s just me she has a problem with.”

  “In fairness,” Brooke said, wrinkling her nose, “she didn’t really say that about you, did she? That you couldn’t sing.”

  “What? Sneaking to Ed and telling him she thought I was pitchy?” I said, tossing a look to Alex, who’d left Nate now that Robyn had turned up and was now fiddling with the wires on her headphones. “And the way Ed just took it from her.” I continued to glower over at her.

  “Ed’s just trying to keep Alex onside right now,” Brooke said. “He’ll agree to anything she says because he thinks she’s the best thing ever.”

  “You think?”

  “I know.”

  “She’s got no idea, has she?” I murmured, more to myself than to Brooke.

  As I continued to seethe, Alex looked like she didn’t have a care in the world. While Robyn spoke with Nate, I saw Alex, now sitting with her headphones on, oblivious to my eyes boring into the back of her and to my simmering resentment. Our argument at the studio and her words of contempt about me returned, like an annoying mantra that my brain refused to ignore, and I wondered—and not for the first time since she’d said it—just why I couldn’t seem to let it go. Maybe because she hadn’t brought it up on the train either. Perhaps I was expecting her to say something—apologize, even—but because she hadn’t, that made me even more resentful.

  My eyes were drawn to her again. Should I tell her everything I’d wanted to say to her on the train? That I thought she’d had no right to rock up at the recording studio—as the new girl—then find fault with my singing? Words like respect and lack of professionalism swirled about my head, and I sensed adrenaline rising inside me as I imagined striding over to her, yanking off her headphones, and telling her exactly what I thought of both her and her criticism. In front of everyone. Let everyone in the room know in no uncertain terms what I thought of her.

  My adrenaline crashed, though, as I saw her get up and walk out through the apartment door, the door banging closed behind her like it had done in the recording studio.

  Maybe next time. My breathing slowed again. I shouldn’t be nervous about confronting—no, not confronting, speaking with her. She was the newbie, not me. She should be nervous about speaking to me; she should understand that she shouldn’t make comments about things she didn’t understand well enough to possibly have an opinion on.

  “What you have to remember,” Brooke said, dragging my attention back to her, “is that you are the best bloody singer ever. You just remember that next time Alex gets into your head.”

  I cast another look to the door. Brooke was right, of course. I was a good singer. If only the niggling doubt that Alex had planted in me would go away again.

  *

  By the time Ed eventually turned up at the studio, my anger had abated slightly. Now, after hanging around for nearly an hour, all I wanted to do was start singing, get the song rehearsed to our satisfaction before going on The Afternoon Show, then go home. My parents were heading off for a three-week holiday to Italy later that day, and I wanted to get home so I could speak to them before they left. We spoke a lot, my parents and I. We FaceTimed at least once a day, mostly to reassure my mum that I was okay, that I was eating okay, and that London life was everything I’d told them I’d known it would be when I’d left Brighton to follow my dream. But as much as my parents got reassurance from those daily calls, I got comfort from them too, because I knew my s
ituation was way different to other girls’ my age. Most other seventeen-year-olds—certainly my other old school friends—had their parents with them 24/7, looking out for them, being there just when they needed them. Okay, I knew mine would be there in a flash if I ever needed them, but still…it wasn’t quite the same.

  The rate things were going at the studio now, though, I wasn’t sure I’d catch them before they headed off. Alex had disappeared and I was simmering that she was denying me the chance to speak to my mum. Alex had kindly left the room over half an hour before, and the only person who apparently didn’t seem to give a damn was Ed. Instead, me, Brooke, and Robyn had been left kicking our heels while he spoke first to Grant, then to Nate, then—infuriatingly—left the room too, without telling any of us what was going on, or when we might even begin to start rehearsing.

  Brooke and Robyn didn’t seem as bothered as me. While I paced the room, feeling myself getting more and more wound up at the lack of any apparent organization, I heard Brooke talking on her phone to first one person, then another, then another, while Robyn read out as many of the latest #Be4 tweets to me that she could find on her Twitter feed.