Sound Bites: A Rock & Roll Love Story

by Sound Bites (epub)

  I grinned back, stood up and followed her to the door. And for the first time since I’d moved back home, I got the feeling that things were starting to look up.

  ***

  After my first day on the job, I arrived home from work a little after six, just in time to catch Dylan bidding farewell to his sleazy girlfriend in the parking lot. Her hair was a tornado of poorly bleached curls, her shirt looked like it was laminated to her breasts, and her jaw line was sporting a fresh trail of orange facial concealer that went along nicely with her giant layer of black eyeliner. A walking Halloween party.

  I hustled through the parking lot, trying to pretend that I didn’t see them, but I could feel Dylan’s gaze on me. I always felt it. Even when I wasn’t looking at him, I sensed his stare burning a hole in the back of my head. I kept my eyes focused on the ground, hoping that he would ignore me.

  “Hey, California.”

  Damn it.

  “Hi, Dylan.”

  “Who’s that?” God, even his girlfriend’s voice was annoying. She sounded like a whiny four year-old.

  “Some girl who just moved into the building.”

  “Oh. How do you know her?” A certain suspiciousness crept into her voice.

  Oh boy. Not only was his girlfriend tacky and whiny, but she was also insecure, which I assumed was probably because he cheated on her. No, he definitely cheated on her. Of course he did. What man didn’t cheat?

  Note to self: all men are cheating, lying scum.

  I spent the remainder of the evening unpacking what was left of my things, which was really just one last box, the box I had been avoiding since I’d moved in. I sat cross-legged on the floor and sliced open the cardboard with a pair of scissors, removing the contents one by one.

  Justine’s passion, ever since we were teens, had always been photography. I’d listen to her rant for hours on end about the evolution of technology and how no one bothered to develop photos in print anymore.

  “They’re going to lose everything,” she’d say. “Everyone just saves their pictures to their computers or to websites instead of developing them. Sooner or later, their computer is going to crash, or another social networking site will take over, and somewhere down the line those pictures will be lost.” She’d hold up a giant photo album for emphasis. “But no one ever loses these.”

  To prove her point, every Christmas, I’d receive the same gift: an album of all the pictures we’d taken in the past year.

  And now, here they were, laid out in front of me. Smacking me in the face with reality.

  I knew better than to sift through the recent albums, the ones that would make my eyes bleed, reflecting back on my beautiful lie of a life in L.A. I stacked the albums on the top shelf in my closet, a safe place where they’d never block my path or catch my eye. But when I got to the bottom album, the archives from 1997, I opened it.

  Maybe I was hoping to discover some clue, some inclination of where it had gone wrong. But all I found was a series of Polaroids of two fourteen year-old girls, laying side by side behind the football field, whiling away another fall in Rockland. Justine had always been a boy-magnet, with her small frame, giant blue eyes and teeny nose that crinkled when she laughed. I had a blonde shoulder-length bob and short bangs that looked like they belonged on a first-grader. We were both fashion disasters back then, Justine constantly wearing dark lipstick that contradicted her pale complexion, while I was caught in the middle of a grunge versus goth identity crisis.

  I stood up and relocated to the couch, my head propped against the armrest as I flipped through the pages. There was the freshman semi-formal, the dance that Justine and I dressed up and pretended to go to, but instead snuck out the back door to get drunk in the woods with the senior boys. There was my first boyfriend, Ethan Blackwood, the typical high school bad boy who was notorious for his crass humor and irresistible charm. There was the time Justine and I MacGuyver’ed a bong out of a Sprite bottle and tin foil and spent the night blowing hits out of her bedroom window and laughing hysterically.

  Ah, high school. How I missed it…

  I hadn’t realized I’d fallen asleep until I was awakened by a familiar melody coming from directly above my living room. It sounded like it was flowing from the vents, but it was hard to tell. I listened to the words as they drifted through the walls, like some sort of distorted lullaby.

  It's never over,

  My kingdom for a kiss upon her shoulder

  It's never over,

  all my riches for her smiles when I slept so soft against her

  It's never over,

  All my blood for the sweetness of her laughter

  It's never over,

  She's a tear that hangs inside my soul forever

  I couldn’t believe it. Someone, somewhere in my building, was playing “Lover You Should’ve Come Over.” The Jeff Buckley ballad that had altered my perception of music entirely.

  As I haphazardly transferred myself from the couch to my bed, I realized that something about the song was off. It sounded almost identical to the album version, only it was softer. An acoustic version, maybe. I couldn’t place it, but whatever it was, there was something brilliant about it.

  ***

  Two nights later, it happened again. I was in the midst of a dream where I was working back at the Pace offices. Karen had assigned me my first profile story on a local band, but as soon as I finished piecing the article together, my computer crashed and the entire document was lost. I kept trying to restart the computer, but all I saw was a giant, black screen in front of me.

  When I awoke, the same familiar sound was seeping through my vents, and I realized that was what woke me. Only this time, it was a version of Buckley’s cover of “Halleluiah.” I listened until the song ended, and then heard the first notes of “Lover You Should’ve Come Over” strike up once again.

  Without even thinking, I got up, threw on a bra and a pair of slippers, and proceeded up the stairs to find out where it was coming from.

  When I reached the top of the stairwell, I heard the music coming from the first door on my right, the apartment directly above me. I paused and gnawed on my lower lip, contemplating how ridiculous I’d be to actually knock on some stranger’s door and confess that I was eavesdropping on their music collection.

  I turned to head back down the stairs, but froze when something on the door caught my eye. The apartment number stared back at me, mocking me, laughing at my expense.

  Apartment eighteen.

  The image of Dylan’s registration appeared in my head:

  Dylan Cavallari

  10 Park Place Apt. 18.

  Boston, MA 02111

  There was no way in hell I was knocking on that asshole’s door.

  I lingered in the hallway for a few minutes, imagining about what would happen if I did knock. I pictured his trashy, loudmouth girlfriend answering the door in her underwear and demanding to know if I was sleeping with her boyfriend. I really wasn’t in the mood for any catfights, especially since I was wearing slippers.

  I pressed my ear to the door and listened, but didn’t hear any voices so I assumed he was alone. My second fantasy consisted of Dylan answering the door, telling me I was a huge bitch and to go fuck myself, then slamming the door in my face. That was what I was most afraid of.

  My third fantasy consisted of Dylan answering the door and inviting me in. While Jeff Buckley played in the background, he threw me down on his bed and ripped off each article of my clothing one by one, while condescendingly telling me I was a spoiled bitch. I liked that one that most. It was kind of a turn-on.

  Fuck it, I told myself. It’s now or never.

  I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and knocked on the door.

  Chapter 6

  The incredulous look on Dylan’s face when he answered the door was priceless. He stared at me for so long that I burst out laughing.

  “California?” he asked. “What the hell are you doing here? Everything okay?”
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  I nodded. “I know this is really strange, but I have to ask you a question. Am I interrupting anything?”

  He shook his head. “No, I’m alone. Come on in.”

  I followed Dylan into his living room, which was an absolute pigsty. It had that specific bachelor pad aesthetic to it – piles of books and newspapers strewn everywhere, dirty dishes covering the coffee table, the lingering scent of stale beer and dirty laundry. I could barely tell what color his armchair was because of the massive pile of clothing draped over it. I made a poor attempt to hide the disgusted look on my face, but it must have been pretty obvious because Dylan shot me a judgmental look.

  “Listen,” he said. “I know it’s a mess, but I don’t want to hear one complaint out of your mouth or I’m kicking your ass out. Understood?”

  I nodded in agreement.

  “Good. So what’s up?”

  I glanced down looking for a place to sit, but I didn’t have many options. Realizing this, Dylan picked up the pile of clothes on the chair, threw them onto the floor, and motioned for me to sit down.

  “Well,” I began. “I woke up the other night because I heard music coming through my vents and...”

  “Hey,” he interrupted. “If you’re coming here to bitch about the noise, I don’t want to hear it. It’s one of the prerequisites of living in a complex.”

  I felt my face harden. I hadn’t even been in the door for two minutes and the guy was already getting under my skin. “Will you let me finish? That’s not why I’m here.”

  Dylan threw his hands up, his expression softening. “Sorry. Continue.”

  “Okay, so I woke up and heard one of my favorite Jeff Buckley songs, but I…”

  My voice trailed off as I noticed a pleased expression slowly cross Dylan’s face, replacing his usual perma-scowl. “Wait a second, you listen to Buckley?”

  “Of course. The guy’s amazing.”

  Dylan leaned forward in his chair, looking at me with raised eyebrows. The shocking part was, in place of his normal brooding self, he was actually smiling. This was a first.

  “Wow,” he said. “California, I may have completely misjudged you. You kind of struck me as some high maintenance club rat that rocked out to horribly overproduced pop music. But I’ll have you know that I’m a huge Buckley fan myself, which you’ve already probably guessed.”

  “That’s what I was getting at. I came here because I’ve never heard that acoustic version of ‘Lover You Should’ve Come Over’ before. I have a few live albums of his but the one you were playing was just…” I searched for the word. “Brilliant.”

  Dylan raised his eyebrows. “Well, I’m flattered.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m flattered,” he repeated.

  “What do you mean you’re flattered?”

  Dylan smirked at me like he knew something I didn’t. “It’s Renee, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, Renee, you can search long and hard, but you’re never going to find that version of the song.”

  I was getting annoyed with his off-topic insinuations. “Okay. Why not?”

  “Because that wasn’t Jeff Buckley’s version. It was mine.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I’m serious.” He pointed to his acoustic guitar in the corner of the living room. “That’s my favorite song to play.”

  No way, I thought to myself. There was no way. Buckley was The Almighty. I had yet to meet someone walking this Earth who could be mistaken for him.

  “So, you mean to tell me that you were the one singing that song tonight?” My eyes narrowed.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Okay.” I walked over to the other side of the room and handed Dylan his guitar. “Prove it.”

  He sat in silence for a minute, his smooth wave of confidence crashing down. He suddenly became very interested in studying the ceiling patterns.

  I placed his guitar back on the floor. “I knew you were full of it.”

  He finally lowered his head and met my gaze. “I’m not lying, I just… can’t,” he mumbled. “I can’t play in front of people. I’ve never been able to. I hate it because a lot of my friends are in bands and I envy them every time I see them up on that stage, but I just can’t do it. I get too nervous.”

  It was funny because the intensity that usually seared from his eyes had now dimmed, changing his entire demeanor. In a matter of seconds, Dylan had transformed from a cocky, arrogant prick to some sort of self-doubting loner. It was like he oozed both confidence and insecurity at the same time. A walking contradiction.

  “It’s just me,” I reminded him. “It’s not like you’re playing in front of an audience.”

  He turned and stared at his guitar for a long time, as if debating whether or not to pick it up. I knew he wanted to, but he probably felt strange emptying his soul in front of someone he barely knew.

  “Fine, I’ll try,” he surrendered, reluctantly picking up the guitar. I was surprised at how easily he gave in. I thought I’d have to lay down some heavy duty coercion. “But I’m telling you, it’s not going to be as good as the version you heard a few nights ago. I play the best when I’m alone because I’m not nervous.” He let out a quick laugh. “Actually, on second thought, I always play alone so I guess it’s hard to compare.”

  “Have you ever played in front of anyone?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, when I was younger and had no fear. But for some reason, when I was in my late teens, I couldn’t do it anymore. I think it’s because when you’re young, you don’t care what anyone thinks of you. But once you get older, you start to become more aware of your surroundings and how people view you. And whether you like it or not, you start to care what they think.”

  He was right, to a point. I thought back to when I first met Justine, when I was fourteen and fearless. But I could still see glimpses of myself that stuck with me through the years, besides the bowl haircut and excess flannel. Dylan, on the other hand, didn’t exactly strike me as the type that gave a damn what people thought of him.

  I motioned my head towards the guitar, signaling for him to play. He fiddled with the tuning for a minute, then began to strum the first few chords of “Lover You Should’ve Come Over.” He stopped after a few seconds, took a deep breath and then started the song over again. I sat in shock as he belted out the first verse of the song.

  I was wrong. His voice didn’t just sound like Jeff Buckley; it sounded almost identical. The guy could go around impersonating him to the blind and they’d think he’d been resurrected. It was surreal. To me, Buckley had always been someone that no musician could ever compare to, so the fact that I had found someone worthy of his comparison was mind-blowing. Not to mention that certain someone happened to live within a ten-foot radius from me.

  Dylan’s voice was a little shaky throughout the first half of the song, but by the end it had smoothed out completely. But what was even more intriguing than his vocals was his entire aura. When he sang, he sang like he meant it. He sang with a sense of desperation, like his entire soul had come to life through the music. I figured out why he always sang alone; it was too emotional for him. It made him vulnerable. And that was a side of him that I assumed he didn’t let many people see.

  When he finally finished, I sat in silence with my lips halfway parted, debating on how the hell to put the last six minutes and forty-three seconds into words.

  “Wow.” That was all I could manage. That was enough for Dylan though, because he smiled for the third time that night.

  “Dylan, you have a gift,” I said.

  “Thank you,” he said modestly. “I like to think so.”

  “But,” I continued. “If you’re the only one who gets to see it, then what’s the point of having it at all?”

  Dylan rolled his eyes as though I was telling him something he was already well aware of. “Don’t you think I know that?” he asked. “It’s not something I can control. I wish more than anything that I had that confidence
to walk on stage and perform the same way I do when I’m alone, but I don’t. I’m just not comfortable with it, and there’s nothing I can do to change it.”

  If there was one thing that Dylan and I had in common, besides our love of music, it was the fact that we were both stubborn as hell.

  I glanced at my watch and realized it was almost one in the morning. I stood up and started to head towards the door.

  “I should go,” I told him. “But before I do, I have a question.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Will you play for me again sometime?”

  He walked over to where I was standing and rested his arm against the door, looking me up and down warily like he was trying to figure me out. I noticed that his confidence had reappeared. I didn’t like his confident side. It made me nervous.

  “You can come by anytime, as long as you leave that bitchy attitude of yours at the door,” he said. I sensed that he was joking, but he didn’t smile. “Just make sure there isn’t a red Blazer in the parking lot because Christina is pretty jealous as it is, so unexpected female visitors might set her off.”

  “Understood. I’ll see you later.”

  I turned around and began to descend the stairs. I was about halfway down when I heard Dylan’s door creak open.

  “Hey, California.”

  I looked up and saw him staring down at me from the top of the stairs.

  “Yeah?”

  He grinned. He had a sexy, crooked grin where only the left side of his mouth shifted upwards. I grinned back stupidly, even though I had no idea what he was about to say.

  “You know, you’re not half bad.”

  Before I had a chance to reply, he had already disappeared back into his apartment.

  Chapter 7

  It had been over a week and I still couldn’t get Dylan’s voice out of my head. The damn red Blazer had been in the parking lot nearly every night, and even on the nights when it wasn’t there, I didn’t have the balls to show up on his doorstep again. I didn’t want him thinking I’d been permanently perched at the window, eagerly awaiting the departure of the Blazer, even though I was about one window-perch away from becoming a certified stalker.