Say it Louder (20 page)

My throat goes dry. “Sit in?”

“For a few takes. See how it goes. Give you a break.”

“I don’t want a break.” The dry throat spreads rapidly to my tongue, which is feeling too big for my mouth. “I just want to get this done.”

“I get it, and I applaud your dedication. But the band hired me to call the shots for this album. I’m supposed to manage it to completion, and I think this is the best way.”

A tiny alarm goes off by Ravi and he stands immediately. “Break’s over. You can take an hour, get outside, take a walk, whatever.”

“No.”

“Or you can join me in the sound booth. But you can’t interrupt.”

“But—”

He holds up a hand, his feet already moving toward the door. “Take it or leave it.”

***

I hear it before I see it. The band sounds tight, strong, thoroughly owning the song. It’s a sucker punch, this
knowing
that magic is happening in the studio.

Happening without me.

The first door on my left is cracked, and I push it open to reveal the dim sound booth, dozens of little green and red lights reflecting off Ravi’s glasses. He’s watching the band intently, his fingers moving gracefully over slider switches like a pianist’s hands dancing over a keyboard.

I follow his gaze. In the back of the recording room, practically blending into the gray egg-crate foam lining the walls, is the mousy babysitter.

And she’s totally rocking out.

This can’t be happening.

Somehow Ravi’s sixth sense prompts him to put up a hand to shush me even before words come tumbling out of my mouth. And so I shut it like a stupid guppy, and just stare.

In the time it took me to go outside and grab a couple of tacos—and run through every curse ever invented—Ravi’s replaced me.

And she’s better. Way better. That much is fucking objectively clear.

The song winds up and she wraps it with a snap-pop flourish that I’ve practiced for hours but never perfected. I really want to hate her, but when she looks up at the guys, a fierce kind of pride mixed with a fragile question on her face, I also kind of respect her.

She’s got the goods.

She brought it, and she’s not backing down.

Ravi hits a few buttons and taps the mic to the studio. “Great take. Let’s switch to the ballad. Give Ryan the rundown, Jayce, and we’ll go in five.”

So the babysitter’s name is Ryan.
Ravi swivels on his seat slowly, deliberately. “What did you think?”

I swallow hard. “Fair.”

“Bitter’s not a good look for you, Dave.”

“What do you want me to say? That it was fucking awesome?”

Ravi gives me a wry smile. “You’re getting warmer. What else?”

Damn him. Damn this babysitter with a boy’s name, and damn my band for getting so fucking famous that they realize they can do better without me.

So I go all in. “She’s on. Really on. She’s driving the beat more than Tyler is. She’s forcing Jayce to play tighter and she modulated the tempo a little on the last chorus to really land it.”

Ravi nods. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

But that nod feels condescending, and it pushes my thin grasp on control past its breaking point. “Are you fucking kidding me? You bring in a … what? … a babysitter for a studio musician? I built this band from the ground up. I was there in Tyler’s garage every fucking practice. I called the venues. I set up the gigs. We wouldn’t even be here without what I built!”

Ravi is silent, his face impassive, like he’s waiting for my storm to blow over.

And because his silence gives no more fodder for my fight, I shut up.

Finally, Ravi answers in a voice barely over a whisper. “You want me to play that back to you?”

“What?”

“What you just said. Or maybe you want me to point out what you didn’t say. You didn’t tell me the band’s famous because you’re the drummer. You told me Tattoo Thief made it because of how you
managed
it. That’s your strength, Dave.”

I snort. “Management.”

“Yes.”

“We’ve already got a manager. You. I trusted you to help us finish
Wilderness
—we all did—and the minute you took over, you found a way to kick me out.”

Ravi holds up his hands. “Guilty. Look, if it’s any consolation, the other guys didn’t know. I know Ryan from her work with other bands, and after you hired me, I signed her on to sit in without asking you first. Judging by how well she’s doing, she’s been practicing round the clock on these songs.”

“You should have asked.” I’m still fuming.

“I’m more about show than tell. If she didn’t work out, we’d just send her on her way and you’d get the break you needed to get your head back in the game.”

“It’s in the game,” I insist.

“It wasn’t an hour ago.” Ravi taps the mic to the studio and gives the band a one-minute warning.
My band.
“You were dragging down two perfectly good songs. I’m a producer, and it’s my job to fix what’s not working, even when you can’t see it. I don’t even
want
to be your manager long-term. What I want is to manage you into another album release, another great tour, and the next evolution of your band.”

“Which is what?”

“Bring Ryan in. Bow out as Tattoo Thief’s drummer on part of this album, maybe even part of the tour, or take a smaller instrumental part. Bring her in as your main drummer.”

“Why in the hell would I want to do that?”

“Because you’ve got bigger fish to fry. Tattoo Thief needs a drummer
and
a manager, but you can only be one of them. Be the one you do best.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The canvases are becoming a blur. My paint-sticky fingers shake as I lay one stencil over another, secure it with blue tape, and then pick up the wadded T-shirt again.

Dip, blot, daub, repeat.

I reach for a can of turpentine and the twinge between my shoulder blades spiders out into a full-blown knot of doom that no amount of stretching can work out.

I feel like I’m bleeding out on these canvases, every ounce of creativity pouring forth until I am so entirely drained that I can give no more. I’m sluggish when I clean my brushes, starving and sleep-deprived, but there are six more canvases in various stages of completion and I’ve got a deadline that feels more like a gun to my head with each passing hour.

I. Can. Not. Fail.

I hang my head, trying again to reach some magical stretching pose that will give me the strength to keep going, or at least temporarily relieve this knot, when a brisk knock saves me, at least temporarily.

Dave’s smile is absent.

I hold up my hand. “Nuh-uh. I have no room for negative vibes in this space.”

Dave shuffles his feet in the doorway and attempts to plaster a smile on. “Better?”

He steps toward me and I sink into his strong arms, feeling his fingers knead the muscles bracketing my spine. When he hits just the right spot I moan.

Embarrassed, I try to pull away, but Dave keeps me firmly anchored against his chest. He stoops to kiss me gently, but I guess I’m more than starved for food—I’m starved for human contact—so I return the kiss with gusto.

Dave bites my lower lip and I moan again, feeling him harden as I soften, as I melt into his body. Sore muscles forgotten for the moment, I wrap my arms around his neck and thread my fingers through his hair.

Out of breath, I manage, “Much better.”

I lead Dave inside, letting the sounds of the city and other tenants in the apartment building fill our silence. He walks around the room looking at canvases. Once. Twice.

Finally, he looks at me. “I don’t know how you do it.” This time, his smile is genuine. “These are
much
better than the first set.”

I can’t help beaming a little and I feel my neck flush with pride at the compliment. “I still have six more to finish.”

“You’ll make it.”

I gesture to my uniform: too-ragged-to-be-cool jeans and a button-down streaked with paint. “I feel like I’m falling apart. Like I don’t have what it takes to go the distance.”

Dave’s brow creases and he turns away from me, stalking toward the kitchen. “Trust me. That’s not your problem.” He grabs a plastic fast-food cup and fills it from the tap aggressively, like the sink pissed him off.

“Seriously?” I’m thoroughly off-balance from his sudden mood swing.

“What? You’re doing fine. You’ll be fine.” His expression is some mix of anger and sadness, but the way he throws
fine
at me, it feels like a blow. Like he’s actually pissed that I’m doing OK.

As he gulps down the water, I put my hands on my hips and stare.

“I don’t know what crawled up your ass, but I’m serious about no negative vibes in here,” I’m so frayed from today that this about-face is about to put a final crack in my disintegrating mood. “I can hardly keep it together as it is. If something’s eating you, go work out or bitch to your bandmates. Don’t show up and dump your rich-boy problems here.”

He gives a mirthless chuckle. “Rich-boy problems. Nice. Where’d you get that line?”

“It’s not a line. Either you tell me what’s wrong, or you check that shit at the door.”

Dave slams the cup down on the counter. “They fired me! OK? As in, bye-bye drummer boy, hello studio sub. They don’t want me fucking up the rest of their album.” His chin trembles and his head bows. “They don’t want me,” he whispers.

I reel back from his shout, but the whisper is what cuts into my heart.
Fired from his own band.
Is that even possible? I wish I could Superman back time five minutes to erase my taunt about
rich-boy problems.

This is so much worse. This band is everything to him.

I cross the room and tentatively wrap my fingers over his hand as he grips the edge of my scarred countertop. His head is still dropped into his chest and his shoulders heave with choked, silent sobs.

“I’m sorry.” I try squeezing his hand, but he doesn’t respond at all. I trace the tattoos on the knuckles on his left hand that spell out
love,
remembering that the knuckles on the other hand spell
fear.
Polar opposites, just like we are. “Dave, I’m so, so sorry. For what the band did to you, and for saying that about … problems. I had no right.”

“They didn’t do it to me.”

“What?” I can barely hear his muffled words, spoken more to his T-shirt than to me.

“They didn’t. I did it to myself. I did it by not being good enough. Not tight enough. I was dragging them down.” Each short sentence is punctuated by a hitch of breath, another little sob.

I squeeze his hand, the one with
love,
and pull him away from the kitchen to my bed in the corner. “Sit.” I’m covered in paint so I start working the buttons on the men’s shirt and his eyes widen.

“Willa, that isn’t going to fix any—”

“I didn’t say it was. And anyway, I’m not stripping for you. I’m trying to keep the paint on my sheets to a minimum.” I pull off the shirt and try to ignore the desire it ignites in his eyes as I pull on a clean T-shirt.

Because
ho-lee-shit
, the way that man looks at me, it’s like women didn’t exist for him before we met.

I strip off my ratty jeans and crawl on the bed beside him in my usual nightclothes, just a T-shirt and panties, but sex is not what this is about.

His lashes are still wet, his eyes red from the breakdown. I wriggle my way closer to him, laying us back on the bed and slipping a leg between his. I’m trying (but failing) to ignore his dick practically begging to escape his jeans, but in this position I find the closeness I need to be able to say what I must.

“Rewind a bit. What changed that made your band not want you anymore?”

“I couldn’t keep up in the studio. I was falling behind the beat. And when you’re the drummer, you
are
the beat. Fucking that up is like a singer losing his voice. You’re pretty much useless if you can’t perform.”

“Useless, huh?” I let my fingers drift up the soft dark hair on his forearms, over a muscled shoulder, to the secret soft place behind his ear. “The way I see it, you’ve been incredibly useful. Weren’t you the one who got the gigs in the first place?”

“For four years,” he admits grudgingly.

“And weren’t you working on the contract to do the homecoming show in Pittsburgh?”

“Yeah. It’s almost sold out.” That tugs a tiny smile to the corner of his mouth.

“And are you or are you not the one who held the band together when Gavin went AWOL?”

This question spreads his smile a little wider. “Somebody had to put on their grown-up pants and handle it.”

“Sounds pretty useless to me.”

His mouth parts in surprise, then he catches my sarcasm. “You don’t under—”

I pull away. “Oh, no, don’t you dare go there. Don’t throw ‘you don’t understand’ at me like you’re up there and I’m down here and I can’t possibly understand the demands of your rock-star life.”

That shuts him down. “I meant … fuck. I don’t know what I meant. It’s just not that simple. It’s like finding out that you’re an impostor, and everyone knows you’re an impostor, but none of your
best friends
bothered to fucking tell you until it was too late. Now I’m on an international stage and I feel like a fool.”