Always You

by Roxie Noir

  Chapter Eighteen

  Darcy

  “Gavin, Joan, and Nigel landed in Seattle,” Trent says, looking at his phone. It’s the first thing either of us has said in ten minutes.

  “Okay,” I say. I don’t know what other response, exactly, that statement warrants.

  We’re standing next to a huge corrugated metal building, in the middle of a field in the middle of a forest, and it’s raining. There’s an overhang, so we’re not getting wet, but everything is damp, my shoes are kind of soggy, and I’m cold.

  Secretly, I was kind of hoping that the rest of Dirtshine would get delayed or something, because I am not in the fucking mood to deal with Gavin’s post-heroin drive and organization, nor do I really feel like meeting one of my idols while I’m still half-gimpy from my back and I’m in a grumpy fucking mood.

  “What time is that girl supposed to be here?” Trent asks. He’s standing a couple of feet away, arms crossed over his chest, feet apart, staring out at the rain like he’s going to ask to see its ID before letting it into an exclusive club.

  “Ten minutes ago.”

  “Did you call her?”

  “I don’t have service.”

  “Are you sure it was three-thirty we were supposed to be here?”

  I turn my head away from Trent and roll my eyes. For two nights now — ever since we almost kissed — I’ve been sleeping shittily, trying not to think about what almost happened, failing miserably at said attempt, and then trying to convince myself I don’t regret it.

  Combine that with us finding a practice space for the band at the last possible second, and we’ve been dicks to each other for most of today.

  “Maybe she meant three-thirty a.m., not p.m.,” I smart-ass.

  “I’m just asking,” he rumbles.

  I almost say you weren’t just asking, you were asking like an asshole and you know it, but just then a white SUV pulls into the parking lot, its windshield wipers going full-force, its headlights off. Trent and I stare sullenly, and wait.

  And wait.

  Just as I think it’s just someone who’s lost, the door swings open and a hot pink umbrella pops out, unfurls, and is quickly followed by a pair of legs in flip flops. When the car door shuts, it reveals a young redhead in cutoff shorts and a tank top who waves at us.

  She’s cute. She’s kinda hot, she’s showing plenty of skin, and she almost certainly doesn’t have burn blisters all down her back, so I’m already annoyed with her.

  And it really doesn’t help that, as she walks toward us, she’s blatantly checking out Trent.

  “Hi!” she says. “Sorry I’m late, my roommate got locked out of our apartment and so I had to call her boyfriend and go give him a spare key, but then he wasn’t answering his phone so I had to call my roommate back and get his roommate’s phone number and then I woke the roommate up at like two-thirty in the afternoon and I had to explain the whole situation to him, so that all took forever.”

  She laughs, the sound bubbling out of her. I can’t help but notice that even in one thousand percent humidity, her hair looks great.

  “So you’re Darcy?” she says to Trent, holding her hand out.

  “I’m Darcy,” I say.

  “Oh! Hi, I’m Allison, the summer coordinator,” she says as we shake hands.

  “Trent,” Trent says, then lapses back into silence.

  Allison blinks and looks from him to me and back, then shrugs, holding up a keychain that has far more doodads than keys on it.

  “All right, well, let me show you the practice spaces we’ve got,” she says, opening the door. Trent holds it for me and I walk through, following Allison’s bouncy hair and bubble butt into a high-ceilinged concrete hallway with what look like small metal houses on either side. I recognize them as sound-proofed rooms.

  “Since it’s summer you’ve basically got your pick of whatever you want,” she says, her voice echoing. “There’ll be a couple students from the community college around, but like, it shouldn’t be too bad or anything. You want to just see the nice one first?”

  She looks at Trent.

  “Sure,” Trent says.

  “It’s over here,” Allison goes on, her plastic flip-flops echoing through the hallway between two tiny rooms, each barely big enough for a piano. Trent glances back to make sure I’m behind them, then follows Allison. “You know, someone was telling me one time that this place used to be an airplane hangar during World War Two or something? And then sold it to the community college for like a dollar because they didn’t have anything else to do with it and the college needed the space...”

  Allison keeps talking. Trent keeps grunting in response, not that she seems to notice his lack of enthusiasm, because she just keeps going and going, and my mood gets blacker and blacker.

  I don’t know why. I’ve seen girls flirt with Trent before. I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen him pick girls up before, though actually, the last time I remember that happening was over a year ago, back before Gavin, Liam, and Allen overdosed.

  You don’t have a claim on him, I remind myself. You turned that down, remember? And now everything that happens that you don’t like is your own fault.

  “Okay,” she says, unlocking the door to a much bigger room than all the rest, then putting her back to it and smiling coyly at Trent. “You ready?”

  “Sure,” he says, both hands still stuffed in his pockets.

  She pushes it open, flicks on the lights, and shouts, “Ta-da!”

  It’s a rehearsal room. It’s nothing special: about twenty feet by twenty feet, some chairs, some music stands, a piano in one corner, soundproofing panels lining the walls. It’s fluorescent-lit, tile-floored, and pretty much unremarkable in every way.

  Trent and I look around while Allison holds both her arms out, smiling radiantly.

  “What do you think?” she asks Trent.

  “It’s nice,” he says, his voice still placid and neutral, his hands still in his pockets.

  “Yeah,” I say, mostly to remind her that I’m also there.

  “This is the newest one,” she says. “The soundproofing is only a couple of years old, it’s really well-insulated, everything. I have some friends in a ska band and sometimes when no one’s using this one I give them the keys, and this is their very favorite place to practice!”

  That’s because it’s obviously better than someone’s garage, I think.

  “It’s a good space,” Trent says, his hands still in his pockets. I can tell he’s just talking to fill space between Allison’s words, and he wanders over to an upright piano in the corner of the room and opens it, playing a chord.

  It’s a little out of tune, and I make a face. Trent looks at me, tries another chord, his brow wrinkling slightly because that one’s also off.

  “Sounds good otherwise,” I tell him, walking toward the back of the room.

  He plays something else, still out of tune, and I turn to the back wall and listen.

  “Like I said, the ska band really likes it, the lead singer was telling me that the sound in here is really crisp and...”

  I ignore Allison, walking further around the room while Trent goes through some chord progressions. He’s not a pianist, and he’s not good at it, but if you’re a professional musician you’re eventually going to learn to play the piano a little, like it or not.

  It sounds mushy up against the walls and the corners have an odd, unpleasant ringing effect that I’m not crazy about, but it’s a practice space, not Carnegie Hall. It’s good enough.

  “...Was complaining a little bit about the trumpets, I guess, because cellos can be hard to hear or something? But then the bassist told me that actually the guy was just complaining because he left the door to his practice room open so he could get the breeze in or something, and so really it was his own fault if he could hear the horns!”

  “We’ll take it,” I tell her.

  “Oh! That was fast.”

  I almost roll my eyes and tell her it’s fast
because it’s pretty much the only suitable space in all of Tallwood and we can’t afford to be fucking picky, but I swallow those words and smile instead, because I don’t need to be known as that bitchy girl from Dirtshine.

  “It’s nice,” I say, and I don’t sound convincing to myself but Allison beams.

  “Awesome!” she bubbles. “You guys like it?”

  Trent flips the cover over the piano keys and straightens up, crossing his arms over his chest again. Even that simple gesture makes all the lines and muscles stand out, makes his shirt hug his biceps. I can tell Allison notices, too, and I just about glare a hole in the side of her head.

  “It’s exactly what we’re looking for,” he says, his voice slow, placid, and calm. The usual Trent.

  “Cool!” she says, swirling her tchotchke-filled keychain around one finger. If it hit someone I think it might take them out. “Let me go to the front office to grab the paperwork? I know you said your manager was gonna be the one filling it out because he’s got all the info, but I figure it can’t hurt you two to see it beforehand? You can hang out here, I’ll be right back.”

  She looks at me, smiles at Trent, and then flip-flops her way out of the room, her butt twitching back and forth in her small shorts.

  “It’s a good space,” I say to him, just to say something.

  “It’s good enough for a ska band, I guess it’s good enough for us,” he deadpans.

  “I hope Joan works out.”

  “Well, she pretty much has to.”

  I just snort.

  “You know that’s not true,” I say. “She could have ten side projects who she likes working with better than us.”

  “Joan’s not Eddie, Darce.”

  I sit down in a metal folding chair and then look over at the wall, suddenly feeling like I might cry. I didn’t think I was all that attached to Eddie — yeah, I liked the kid, but we weren’t particularly friends or anything — but his departure left a bigger hole in me than I’d have expected.

  “I just don’t want to get attached and then she leaves,” I say quietly.

  Trent just looks at me. He doesn’t say anything, but I can feel his eyes searching my face, practically dismantling it, for a long time before I turn and make eye contact.

  “She’s going to,” he says. “That’s the whole idea.”

  “I know,” I sigh.

  “Things change, Darce,” he goes on, his voice suddenly soft and low. “People change. The world moves on. Life’s not static.”

  My heart catches in my throat. I hold my breath. All my nerves seize up but I look at Trent anyway, into his deep brown eyes as he stands there like a monument under the ugly fluorescent lights, and I know we’re not talking about Eddie and Liam and Joan any more.

  “It doesn’t have to be a disaster,” he finishes.

  I slam my mouth shut and look away again, because I’m not good with words and I’m not good with emotions and holy fuck am I not good when I’m supposed to be doing both at once, especially when my stomach is some turbulent mix of regret and nerves combined with the insane impulse to jump out of this chair and just kiss the hell out of him, see what that does.

  But I don’t. I’m a fucking statue made of inertia, stubbornness, and the disinclination to launch myself from a cliff, so I turn my head and study the pinpricks on a soundproofing tile.

  He turns away, hands in pockets, strides to the other wall and pretends to examine that soundproofing, and somehow, my stomach drops even lower than I thought it could.

  I’ve fucked this up, I think. I don’t even understand how but I did.

  And I wish that I’d at least kissed him before I fucked it up.

  A moment later, there’s a smacking noise at the door and Allison walks back in, flip flops loud at fuck, waving some papers around, her massive keychain jingling obnoxiously as she beams at us but particularly at Trent.

  “Okay! I got the papers,” she says, much too enthusiastically about paperwork. “So, some of this stuff I think your manager’s gonna have to fill out, but if you two have the dates and stuff already then we can start... is everything okay? Is something broken in here?”

  Trent and I both just shake our heads, and Allison goes back to telling us about the facility schedule.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Trent

  Gavin’s guitar cuts out in a jumble of sound, and for a moment he tilts his head back, eyes closed like he’s counting to five. He probably is.

  “It’s D-flat, E-flat, F,” he says. “Just a regular fucking F chord, mate.”

  I look down at my fingers on the neck of my guitar. I’m not sure what the hell they’re doing, but it’s not a F chord, so I rearrange them into one and strum.

  “Got it,” I say, my voice tight even to my own ears.

  “You sure? Do you want it written down or something?”

  “I said I’ve got it.”

  “Because you haven’t got it the last several attempts we’ve made.”

  I take a deep breath and clench my jaw, counting to five myself. It’s nearly six in the evening and we got here at eight-thirty this morning, and aside from fifteen minutes to scarf down lunch we’ve been playing nonstop, just the four of us in this room. We’ve played Alleyway Saint about twenty times in a row. I can practically see everyone’s nerves fraying.

  Ten feet away, Darcy is sitting in a metal folding chair, left hand silently forming chords on the neck of her bass, not looking up at Gavin and I bickering. We’ve said about five words to each other all day. She’s barely made eye contact with me, and even worse than Gavin being kind of a prick right now, that’s like sandpaper under my skin.

  “I’m fine, just start at the chorus,” I snap.

  Gavin glances back at Joan, who nods, then counts off, and we start playing again.

  Normally I know this song by heart. We’ve been playing it for years, and every note should be practically ingrained in my fingers. Usually they are, but today’s a fucking unusual day.

  We finish the chorus, loop back into the second verse. I’m staring at the wall, making myself concentrate on the task at hand. Not on Darcy, who’s wearing a dress with Doc Martens and no bra.

  Not on the night by the river, with rocks and pie. Not on how I half hate myself for thinking it might work and half still think that it might, because the desire hasn’t gone away. If anything, it’s gotten worse.

  The band heads into the bridge. D-flat, E-flat, F, and then I look over at her just as she glances at me.

  And her finger slips, the note going bad, then the next one’s off the beat.

  Gavin stops playing and throws his hands in the air, then rests them on his head, turning in a circle, the cable on his guitar dragging behind him.

  “Jesus Holy Christ,” he says, shouting at the soundproofed wall. “I could have sworn we were a band who’d played this song a million fucking times, not some buskers come in from off the street who—”

  “Gavin,” Joan says, and we all turn to look at her. She’s sitting perfectly upright on her stool, drumsticks in one hand, her hair pulled back, reading glasses on.

  The three of us are silent for a moment, like we’re suddenly aware that we’re having a family fight in front of a stranger. Which we kind of are.

  “We’ve been practicing all day,” she says, her voice calm and reasonable. “You and I just got in late last night, why don’t we call it for now and come at this fresh tomorrow?”

  Gavin shoves hand through his hair, heaves a sigh, then crosses his arms. He’s obviously stressed about this, and I think the slavedriver part of his personality — the one that was a surprise when he finally kicked the heroin — would rather we stay here until we either all get it right or kill each other.

  “I think Joan’s right,” Darcy volunteers. “We’ll all be less grumpy if we sleep on this.”

  “I’m not grumpy, I just want to fucking—”

  Darcy rolls her eyes.

  “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”


  “Trying to get something right isn’t being grumpy, it’s—”

  “—Yeah, I’m just inspired as shit right now to get this right and you getting in my face about it is really helping, Gavin—”

  “—Apparently rather than consider practicing, the two of you have spent the past weeks fucking around!”

  “I couldn’t fucking lean back in a chair for a week! I still can’t play standing because the strap rubs against my back!”

  Gavin paces back and forth for a moment, clenching and unclenching his hands, shaking them out because he’s been playing for eight hours straight. There’s silence in the room. Darcy closes her eyes, takes a deep breath.

  “I just don’t want us to embarrass ourselves when we go out there again,” Gavin finally says, forcing his voice calm.

  “Gavin, you used to—”

  “I think Joan is right and we should all head back to the lodge, get some rest,” I cut in. Darcy glares at me, but I’m pretty sure she was about to bring up the fact that back in his heroin days, Gavin nodded out on stage more than once, and that’s not a fight we need to have right now.

  “Works wonders, I swear,” Joan says, pushing her glasses up her nose with one drumstick.

  Gavin covers his face with his hands, then runs them both through his hair.

  “Fine, you’re fucking right,” Gavin mutters, pulling his guitar over his head. “Everyone go take a fucking nap, we’ll get back at it tomorrow morning. Bright and early, yeah?”

  He practically throws the guitar into a case, grabs his own jacket, and in about thirty seconds he’s fuming out of the practice studio, leaving the door open behind him.

  Darcy and I look at each other again, then we both look at Joan.

  “Sometimes I miss the heroin,” Darcy says. “It did calm him down.”

  “He’s a real dickhead sometimes,” I add.

  Joan just chuckles, standing and cracking her back.

  “Girlbomb goes to therapy twice a month,” she says. “All three of us together. Don’t worry, I’ve seen some band fights.”