Loud is How I Love You

Loud Is How I Love You

Mercy Brown

InterMix Books, New York

AN IMPRINT OF PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE LLC

375 HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10014

LOUD IS HOW I LOVE YOU

An InterMix Book / published by arrangement with the author

Copyright © 2016 by Mercy Brown.

Untitled Excerpt copyright © 2016 by Mercy Brown.

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eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-40430-4

PUBLISHING HISTORY

InterMix eBook edition / January 2016

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Penguin Random House is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.

For Alex,

who has always loved me loud.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks, first and foremost, to my agent, Brooks Sherman. Thank you for believing in this book and for taking it (and me) on. One of the greatest memories I have is the thrill of that first phone call from you. Thank you for holding my hand through what has felt like a pretty steep learning curve (also don’t let go, please and thanks). I’ve always felt like I was in good hands with you, and that has made all the difference.

Thank you to my editor, Leis Pederson, for having a thing for rock and roll romance (a thing I can definitely get behind). You really understood what this book was about from the start, and I can’t thank you enough for helping to get it out there into the world.

There are many people without whom this book would have never been written, in fact couldn’t have been written. Would have never been read by anyone outside of a handful of friends. But before I set out on the impossible task of naming and thanking as many of those fine folks as I can, I have to say that this book belongs to Lo.

Lo (the Lauren half of Christina Lauren, also forever lolashoes in my heart) and I found each other writing Twilight fic years ago, and immediately became smitten with each other’s words. It was Lo who grabbed my hand in late 2010 and just wouldn’t let go until I got my own story out into this world. Aside from myself, who had to live a lot of this book’s small adventures and then write the actual words, there is no one who has done more to help
Loud
, the story, become
Loud Is How I Love You
, the book. I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was five, and on this voyage to make that dream a reality, Lo has been my North Star. And there in my heart, Lo, you will always be.

You don’t have to look far within that constellation to find Christina, and PQ I can’t thank you enough for all of the cheerleading and straight talk, too. Thank you for being an enormous talent who inspired me and so many others in the fandom long before we ever even knew each other. Thank you for answering all of my flailing texts and being a phone talker like I am. You always manage to calm me. Thank you for your secret blurb that makes me laugh every time I think about it.

To Debbie, my Snarkier Than You, I owe a profound and special debt. It was Deb who first read the first thing I ever wrote and finished—my Twilight fan fiction,
Osa Bella.
I never thought anyone else would ever see it, but she said we had to publish it on her blog. (I didn’t even know what fan fiction was at the time! Also Deb, that exclamation point is for you.) Not only did Debbie read the thing (several times) and encourage me to share it, which in turn introduced me to an amazing community of smart and hilarious women, she also told me how to
fix
the story. And then she told me how to fix everything I’ve written ever since, including this book, and still, as I’m writing this now, Debbie is home with her nose in Google docs reading my words in her own free time, adding tons of hyphens and telling me when I’m not describing this hook up in enough detail, and all kinds of other things that end up making a story like this so much better. Debbie, I’ll never find a way to tell you I love you enough times, in enough different ways, to convey how important your support has been. We’ll just have to spoon it out in a little hotel in the Pacific Northwest. Again.

Tonya, thank you for being my friend and reading my stuff and always telling me like it is. Your moral support has meant the world to me. Thank you for listening and laughing and liking me even though I am an awful, terrible Cards Against Humanity player. Can’t imagine writing another word without your razor sharp eye for what makes a story work.

Caren, you were the very first to read this whole manuscript with fresh eyes when I expanded it to a novel. I have long been an admirer of your voracious reading habit, and I always thought if I could write something that you would love, then I’d really be onto something. Your feedback and encouragement meant and still means the world to me.

Cynnie, Stacy, Mary, John, and Karin, you all were among the first to read this and your early feedback, too, gave me both the confidence to move forward and the direction to move in. Thank you for cheering me on and pointing the way.

To the Twitarded blog sisters, Deb, Jen, Stacy, Katherine, Cynnie and everyone else who hung out there and who read my early attempts at writing and kept coming back for more, well, I never would have gotten this book written and published if I didn’t have that kind of support and encouragement early on. Thank you forever for that.

Nina, thank you for jumping in here and doing all the hard work to get the word out. I would truly be lost trying to navigate all of that without you. I can’t thank you enough.

Jeff Zentner! I never would have figured out that I slept on Sharon Van Etten’s floor back in 2001 without you, so we are friends for life now. Thank you so much for all the encouragement and love and support for
Loud
, and for letting me crash the YA Sweet 16s party as your obnoxious hanger on.

To my parents (all four of them), thank you for always, always encouraging me to do what was in my heart and for believing in me, even when I know it was hard.

Mom, thank you for telling me I could be anything I wanted when I grew up. For telling me I could be a viper pilot or president. And thank you even more for believing it. I promise the next thing I write, you can tell your church friends about (okay not the next thing but maybe the thing after that, we’ll see). And thank you for being excited and proud of me, even though this book isn’t something you can bring to church. (You won’t, right? Right?) Thank you for always being my number one cheerleader, the president of my fan club. For always picking me back up when I feel knocked down. For being Mom. You truly inspire me, every day.

Dad, thank you for the years you let me and Alex rehearse in your shop’s loft after hours, making that horrible racket. For sneaking upstairs to watch us play, even though I know you hated the music and thought we were nuts. Thank you for letting us take the van into New York City to play shows on the Lower East Side when I was 19 and telling me that adventures and dreams were important. Maybe you didn’t always understand mine, but that never seemed to matter. You were always right there to help me go after it in any way you could. I can only hope to do so right by your grandsons.

To my boys, Doot and Bing . . . first of all, put this book down! And don’t look at the laptop when Mom’s writing because there are curse words on it! Thank you both for being the light of my world, the best thing I have ever done and will ever do with my life, and for being cool with wearing mismatched socks, having extra Minecraft time and ordering pizza when Mommy is on a deadline. I cannot wait to see what kinds of stories your own lives inspire and hopefully they are all PG-rated.

To the New Brunswick music scene, a very real and vibrant thing where I spent the majority of my youth: You were the first community where I was accepted and respected for trying to put my original ideas in the world. I have always loved you, but you can’t really appreciate how rare and profound a thing is until you live some years and have the broader perspective of your life to fit it into. We all put so much of our life force into making the music of that scene, but also into being an audience, being there to participate, live and in person, in an experience that is impossible to encapsulate in mere words. You need the sound, and you need to hear it live. And you need us—all of us—to show up and be part of it. Sweaty bodies on a club floor, all feeling it, whoever was on the stage that night almost didn’t matter as long as it was loud and honest. That was the scene, and it was us. And although the club scene may not be what it used to be, I know that in basements and warehouses and backyards throughout New Brunswick, the scene lives and will continue to thrive.

It’s 100 percent impossible to name everyone who has been a direct part of that experience for me, but there are a few names that must be put here. Always and forever to my left on any stage, Mike, the Dark Crane, and our sweet Tish; the very first bandmates, Jesse and Drew; all our drummers, Little Alex, Tommy, Trip, Dave; ExVegas, Thierry, Jim, Rich, George; my sweet Urchins, Karen, Albie, Dave H., Andy; a few of the people who made the scene happen and didn’t play instruments, Jim Testa, Bryan Bruden, Kirk Miller, Stuart Wexler, Gus; the bands whose likenesses I may have riffed on a little here (yes, I did do that), Aviso Hara, Landspeed Record, the Scott Farkus Affair, Plug Spark Sanjay, Boss Jim Gettys, Bionic Rhoda, Buzzkill, 3 to 6 inches, Stuntcocks, Mildred Pierce, Sicker than Others, Instant Death; the Powerbunny 4X4 Pit Crew, Jeff S., Jeff N., Dave, and Frank and honestly, there are just so many incredible bands and people to name and thank that I’ll never be able to get everybody in here. I’m sorry for that. Please know that every single one of you who got out there and rocked the Melody, the Court, the Roxy, the Dead End, the basements, Cook College, Ag Field Day, Demarest
dorm, Brownies, Khyber Pass, Maxwell’s, the Continental, CBGB, and all the places in between, know you all made my life better and still do, even years later.

By the way, thanks to Ween! Obviously, the depiction of Ween and Mickey Melchiondo here are straight from my imagination. But thank you to Ween for being all around good guys and inspiring all of us. You might be from New Hope but know that New Brunswick has always claimed you anyway, because that’s just how we are.

When I wrote this, I tried as best as I could to capture what it felt like to come into my adult years and fall in love while playing in a band in New Brunswick, because that’s something I know about. But this book was never meant to be an accurate portrayal of reality, just a reflection of what has stayed with me about that time in my life. I’ll always hang onto the music, the friendships, and the laughs.

And the husband, too.

Yeah, that guy.

Alex.

It almost seems too obvious to say that without you, there’s no story here. There’s no band, and there’s certainly no love story involving Big Muffs and last minute gigs in Baltimore.

There are husbands who support your dreams, and then there are husbands who share the stage with you, who stand there on your right and say things like, “Turn up. You’re not loud enough.”

And that’s a special brand of true love.