Loud is How I Love You (8 page)

“What do you think the deal is with him?” Millie asks me. “Is he into someone else?”

“Not that I know of,” I say and try not to cringe too obviously as I see Sonia’s jaw drop right behind Millie’s back. I’m not artful at bullshit, I’m really not, but here I am trying to bullshit my way through the awkward with one of my good friends. Fuck, how did I end up in this situation again? Why?

Oh, right. That adorable, blond, mastodon-dick-swinging sex champion in my band.

Luckily (oh my God), our conversation in the ladies’ room is interrupted when Julia comes staggering in, sobbing. Sobbing like somebody just died. No matter how drunk I’ve seen Julia, not once have I seen the girl shed tears. So something really awful must be going down.

Julia lights a cigarette and asks one of us to go out and buy her two shots of anything and bring them to her posthaste. Sonia volunteers while Millie and I receive the awful news that Julia has just found out Matt has been fucking Hanna Octane behind her back for about six months. Tonight, just five minutes ago, in fact, Hanna decides she can’t handle the guilt anymore and comes right out and tells Julia while they’re ordering nachos at the damned snack bar.

Now, Hanna isn’t a terrible person, really. Well, she did fuck Matt while he was with Julia, and that’s terrible. No doubt about it. But I’m telling you, Hanna is a little weird. She’s sort of lost and you wonder sometimes whatever happened to that girl, but you can safely surmise it involved a heavy dose of hallucinogens. So you have a hard time really blaming her when her judgment is off. It often is (see also: plugging your guitar direct to the damned sound board). And we’re not some gang of bitches who are about to go out there and jump Hanna Octane. There’s no hair-pulling, cat-scratching brawl in our immediate future.

We are, however, about to go out there en masse to confront Matt because fuck him for hurting Julia Time and for fucking up the best jangle pop band in our scene.

“This is unbelievable,” Millie says. “What a douchebag Matt is! How could he?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Julia says and blows her nose into some toilet paper. Sonia comes back with two shots of Jameson. We catch her up to speed while Julia throws them back one right after the other.

“Is this the end of Circle Time?” I blurt out because I’m sensitive like that. Sonia makes a horrified-looking face at me, but both Julia and Millie are in bands and they understand that this question is akin to “Who gets the kids?”

Julia nods her head like she’s thinking hard about this one.

“I’m not giving up the fucking band,” she says. “We just put out a single and I emptied my savings in the studio last month for that. He can fucking quit.”

“But he’s the singer,” Millie says. “How will you deal with that?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll find a way,” she says.

She splashes cold water on her face, and then marches back out there like a motherfucking Viking warrior. Millie, Sonia, and I follow right behind her. She goes right up to Hanna, who’s sulking on the plastic bench, and reminds her that friends don’t fuck their friends’ boyfriends.

“That’s why I had to tell you,” she says, sniffling. “I don’t even know what’s wrong with me. I think I need a medication change.”

It’s pretty clear Matt has figured out what’s up from the way he picks his vintage leather racing jacket up off the bench and skulks over to the door. Matt is in such a hurry to get the hell out of there, he’s about to walk out with his bowling shoes still on. One of the counter workers, who we’re pretty sure is employed through some community service work release program, sees him and throws his body across the glass doors like he’s a protester stopping a tank from mowing down a field of daisies. The guy will not let him out, so Matt tries to pry the guy off the door. The guy grabs Matt’s vintage racing jacket and Matt goes to hook him in the face, doesn’t even blink, but the guy blocks him like a street fighter and twists his arm behind his back.

“The shoes, dickface,” he says.

Now you have twenty guys in bowling shirts scrambling to the front door and all of Rock and Roll Bowling jumping into the scene for the face-off, and the assorted characters make for the weirdest-looking rumble I ever hope to see.

“Let’s take this to the parking lot,” a big beer-bellied dude suggests as four other bowling league members crack their knuckles.

“Let’s not,” Billy Broadband says. “I paid for another three games.”

“Seriously,” George says. “Give the damned shoes back, Matt, you dumb fucker.”

The manager comes over and threatens to call the cops if a fight breaks out, so Matt heads back over to the counter to turn in his shoes, muttering about his jacket. But then he’s stopped by Julia, who pushes her way through the crowd and grabs him by the arm.

“I’ll meet you in the van,” he says.

“You’ve been fucking Hanna Octane?” Julia says. Her voice is high-pitched and whiskey-sure.

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Deny it.”

“I’m not fucking Hanna Octane.”

“I know you’re not fucking her, as in, right this moment. Have you been fucking her?”

“Let’s not do this right now,” he says. “Seriously.”

“You’re not denying it.”

“No, I’m not.”

There’s a dramatic gasp in the crowd, and it’s Billy Broadband. I’m surprised he didn’t put his hand to his brow and swoon to the ground. Even I feel like I just got my teeth knocked out. Everyone turns around to stare at Hanna, who’s sitting there on the bench with her face buried in her fingerless-gloved hands.

“Are you guys still playing the Melody with us next Friday?” Herb from Buttcrack asks. “I just made the flyers, dude. The mailers are already sent out.”

“I’m playing it,” Julia says. “I can’t speak for this asshole.”

“We’ll play it,” Matt says. “We can be professionals about this, can’t we?”

There’s no real precedent for this kind of situation in the scene. People fuck around, sure, but usually they’re not in the same band, because, hello? Band rule number one, remember? Don’t fuck anyone in the band! This is the exact reason the
rule exists. Because we’re musicians and we’re for the most part fairly deep-feeling folk and shit happens and shit happening should feed your art, it shouldn’t make you cancel booked shows. If you want to be able to eat and buy gas and otherwise make some kind of living so you can continue to make your art, you’ve got to keep your shit together. That was my whole point.

This is exactly why I’m back to believing fucking Travis was just a terrible idea. This is why Jeff and Sonia keep shooting me these worried looks all night, enough so that Millie finally asks me if everything is okay and I have to lie and say, “Things are great!” And shit, they were great until all of this, and now I’m careening from feeling totally fucking awesome when I’m with Travis to feeling like a guilty creep who’s fucked up the best thing I have going for me when I’m not with him. I don’t know how to feel or think about anything right now. I just feel fucked.

And the only one who can help me figure it out is home writing a paper on Bob Marley.

***

“How was bowling?” Travis asks when I call late to let him know I got home fine. Of course I did, why wouldn’t I get home fine from a place that’s all of ten minutes from my home? This is ridiculous. I don’t need to be calling him every time I take a shit now, do I?

No, I don’t say anything like that. That’s just the mouth in my brain talking.

“Julia and Matt broke up,” I say instead.

“Yeah, George mentioned there was drama. Matt’s an asshole.”

I’m silent.

“How is Julia?”

“She’s miserable.”

“Well, I guess she would be.”

“Exactly.”

He pauses. I say nothing.

“Are you okay?” he asks. “You sound upset.”

“I’m not upset. Why would I be upset? I’m fine. I’m not upset. I don’t sound upset.”

“I’m coming over.”

“You are?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I’ll be there in five.”

“What about your paper?”

“I’m almost done now, just a few more pages and then my references.”

“You don’t need to come over.”

Now he’s quiet.

“What happened, did they break up Circle Time?” he finally asks.

“Not yet,” I say. “But I have no idea how they’ll manage it. And see? This is why I was worried about all of this in the first place! What are we even thinking, Travis? What the fuck are we thinking?”

“You promised you weren’t going to freak out on me, Emmy. You promised!”

“You can’t control when you’re going to freak out! That’s completely missing the point of freaking out! Freaking out is an organic process, it’s wild and unpredictable. You don’t fucking schedule your freak-outs, okay? They just happen! That’s what freaking out is!”

“I’ll be there in five minutes.”

“Travis.”

“What?”

“Bring me french fries.”

“Do you want a shake?”

“Yes.”

I don’t even have to tell him vanilla.

After we hang up, I glance over at my guitar, sitting in its stand in the corner of my room, looking at me, perfectly calm like my life isn’t about to fall apart. I put the phone down and pick it up, and as soon as I hold it in my arms, I settle down.

My guitar is a ’59 Gretsch Double Anniversary in two-tone green. This guitar and my rig, a ’74 Fender Twin with a
matching custom cabinet, are all I have left of my father, Len Kelley. My father’s gear was sent home by the surviving members of Consequence after he died, even though we hadn’t heard anything from him in five years. I still have the note from the singer that says Len always wanted me to have it. My mother wanted to sell it, but I begged her in the biggest argument we’ve ever had to let me hang on to it. I barely won. It’s not that I’m not practical, and I know Mom could have used the money. She wanted to put the money towards my college savings. But this gear is the most beautiful and long-lasting thing my father has ever given me, and as mad as I am at him for leaving and for dying, I just can’t let it go.

I’m sitting on the bed, strumming quietly when I hear Travis pull up in the van. I hear him come in the front door, ask if I’m upstairs. I hear his boots on the stairs as he trudges up here. My door is open and he stands in it holding a shake and a bag of fries and it smells like normal. I tell him to come in and he does. He puts the food on my desk and sits down next to me, but I stand up, put my Gretsch in the stand and sit on my desk chair, facing him.

“Emmy, we’ve got this under control, okay?” he says. “Please don’t get so stressed out, it’s going to be fine.”

“Yeah, well what if it’s not?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Because I’m probably going to fuck it up,” I say. “In case you haven’t been paying attention, I don’t have a good relationship record. Remember the Michael Bolton Fan Club president?”

“That’s because you’re more band-obsessed than boy-crazy,” he says. “I happen to be in your band, so I think I have a chance here.”

“But this is exactly why it’s a bad idea,” I say, and I feel my chest is all tight, my face getting hot, and now my mouth is starting to move before my brain feels clear. “It’s not just you and me that will be hurt if things fuck up between us.”

“You’re getting way out ahead of things here,” he says. “You already have us signed to Geffen and getting a divorce when we’re just starting out.”

“It doesn’t feel like we’re just starting out,” I say.

“We’re just starting from a different place,” he says. “It’s not like I just met you at a party.”

I let out a long, deep sigh. I can’t look him in the eye. I’m such a fucking mess with all of the infinite shitty possibilities laid out in front of me for how this all might come to a sucky dramatic conclusion, à la Circle Time’s implosion at Carolier Lanes tonight. I can’t reconcile how I want him with all that we’ve got to lose.

He reaches for my hand but I pull it away.

“What if I just can’t do this?” I say, my heart in my mouth.

He stares at me. I can’t read him at all. I hate myself so much right now, I can hardly take it.

“Can’t?” he asks. “Or don’t want to?”

“I just don’t want to fuck everything up right when things are starting to take off. We just got this WJHU gig—do you know how much that will help us when we’re trying to land a CMJ showcase? We’ve already got Ag Field Day booked with Ween. Just because we’re lusting after each other isn’t a good reason to put all that in jeopardy.”

“Lusting after each other?” he says. That disappointed face of his, it really kills me.

“You know what I mean.”

He thinks for a minute, looks down at his feet. Then he reaches for my hand again. This time I let him take it, and it makes me feel so much better and so much worse all at the same time.

“What do you want to do?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. I know I should have a better answer than that, but I don’t. “I just think I need to slow down.”

“Okay, then,” he says, nodding in agreement, but then he looks sort of confused. “Wait, what does that actually mean? No more sex? Because I’m fine with not having sex, if that’s what this is about. Well, don’t take that the wrong way, I don’t mean ‘fine,’ like I won’t miss it. ‘Fine’ isn’t really the right word. I mean, of course it’s
fine
, but I’m just saying that sex isn’t really the issue for me.”

“It isn’t?”

“No,” he says. “It isn’t.”

“Well, what’s the issue for you?”

“I don’t really have an issue, I guess,” he says. “I just don’t want you to freak out.”

“I do like having sex with you,” I say. “It’s not that.”

He laughs, and now that I hear myself say it, it sounds ridiculous, because I like having sex with Travis like I like not being attacked by killer bees.

“I mean, I love having sex with you,” I say. “It’s probably the best thing I’ve ever done.”

He glances up and looks at me like I’m crazy or something, but then he gives me a small smile and nods, and I can’t
read that mouth of his at all.

“I understand,” he finally says. “We’ll slow it down, okay? We’ll just dial it back here until we’re back to where you feel okay.”

“Can we even do that?” I say.