He was silent as children chased one another through the abandoned building on the screen.
“So, it started with a feeling that time,” he muttered. “And the one you’re working on now started with a line.”
“Yup. I take my inspiration wherever I can get it,” I admitted. “Especially these days when it feels like we’re living on lockdown.”
“Is that another line for the song?”
“Naa…but now that you mention it, maybe it should be,” I said and reached for the notebook on the coffee table, immediately writing it down.
“Wait, did we just do the thing you guys are always doing?” Kit asked.
“What thing?”
“The thing where one of you says something, then someone else piggybacks off of it until you’re all grinning and scribbling in notebooks.”
“Oh yeah, that thing, we've been doing that forever,” I admitted. “Johnny and I would sit around the table in the high school cafeteria filling our notebooks with shitty songs.”
“Sounds like way more fun than all the creative writing classes I took,” Kit said. “It’s kind of soul-crushing to have to stand up there in front of the class and then have them rip your words to shreds. I started changing the way I wrote by the last one, just so I wouldn’t catch so much shit from everyone.”
“You need to change back, reclaim the voice you were comfortable with, and when you’re ready, bring something to the table. No one is going to cut you down if it’s rough. Polishing a song together is what makes it the band’s rather than one individual’s.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s shitty that the teacher let that happen,” I said. "It's even shittier if the teacher helped.”
“They helped.”
“Then they can go fuck themselves. Hate when people think they can teach something by being mean.”
“Do you guys ever bring something to one person to kind of go over it with them before you bring it to the whole band?” he asked.
“All the time.”
“Would it be okay if I did that with you?”
“Hell yeah. Ozzy and I worked things out plenty of times before bringing the rest of the band in on it. Sometimes it was because we had a very specific flow in mind and other times because we were building off similar thoughts. The longer you’re with us, the easier it’ll be for you to just know who you need totake something to so you can bring the full vision to life.”
“I want to start with you.”
“Works for me,” I admitted. “I like hanging out with you.”
“I was beginning to wonder, at first, when I joined back up with you guys. It kind of felt like you were avoiding me.”
“Naa, I just had something going on with someone. It’s over now.”
“Is this one of those times when I should say,I'm sorryorgood for you?"
Sighing, I tucked my hands under my head only to feel his fingertips searching until he’d tugged one free so he could hold it. “I’m sorry,” I admitted. “It wasn’t my choice, but it was my fuckup. He was so far out of my comfort zone, yet exactly what I needed in so many different ways. Funny though, when I think about it, there was still this whole part missing, which is probably why it didn’t work.”
“I think you lost me there.”
“Meh, I lost myself a long time ago trying to figure it out,” I replied. “So, I don’t expect anyone else to get it.”
“I might if you’d explain it to me.”
As a van plummeted off the cliff on the screen and erupted into an orange ball of fire, I lay there with that dull throbbing in my head growing worse the longer I tried to piece together fragmented words.
“I guess basically it boils down to me being an attention whore,” I said when no other words came to mind. “That’s not everyone’s cup of tea.”