Stray for You (Rainbow Rescue Cat Café #3)

Chapter 17

Chapter Seventeen

Cameron

LIFE RETURNS TO NORMAL. My normal routine. My normal co-workers. My normal Julian-free life.

It should come as a relief, but for some reason I float through work and band practice and dinner with Mom and Aunt Mary like a sleep walker. I’m only ever half-present, half-awake. My mind is like a puzzle dumped directly out of the box; all the pieces are there, but they’re upside down and backwards and heaped in a messy pile I can’t seem to organize into anything coherent. Do I miss Julian? Is that what this feeling is? Or am I wallowing in guilt for spending so much time with a guy who should be my enemy? I wrote him off years ago because of the way he interfered with Mom’s happiness. What was I thinking letting him back in?

If this is guilt, it wasn’t potent enough to stop me from going to that hotel room.

Twice.

The experiences replay involuntarily in my head, and a confusing mix of hot and cold batters at my chest. Even when I’ve dated a guy for months and months, none of them treated me the way Julian did that one night. It was like every single individual hair on my body, every flake of skin, every breath was so precious to him that he meant to imprint them on his lips.

I shiver and only then realize all of my bandmates are staring at me.

“You alright, man?” Tim says.

“Huh? Yeah,” I say.

“You’re kinda spacing out on us,” Kelsey says.

I look to Erin, the unofficial leader of the group, but she offers me no help whatsoever.

“If you’re tired from work or something…” she says.

“I’m fine,” I insist with a bit too much bite. “Let’s do the next song.”

My bandmates share a glance, but none of them protest. I make sure I’m on my game when we launch into the next song. It’s the chorus of something Erin is still hammering out, but the skeleton is solid. I already have the music in my fingers, and I make sure I hit every note so that by the time Erin waves us off, no one can complain about my playing.

Erin grabs a notebook off a table. We’re in her parents’ basement in a suburb of Seattle. Studio space is way too expensive for us to waste the cash on practice, and fortunately her parents have a recurring date on Tuesday nights. It gives us an opportunity to practice for free without disturbing a whole apartment complex.

Still, a basement is a basement. Tim quiets his drums with pads. Kelsey and I aren’t using amps. Erin sings without a microphone. The sound isn’t quite right. It’s not close to what it would be if this was “real,” but it’s the best a struggling band like us can do. We all know we can step up if we get a chance, that nice equipment and a nice space won’t change the fundamentals that we’re hammering out here today.

Erin nods and smiles as she jots something down in her notebook. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, I think that’s coming along.”

She speaks half to herself, but the rest of us are used to her creative process by now. This is how Erin molds the shapeless putty of an idea into an actual song. She’s written most of what we’ve played, with the rest of us contributing our knowledge of our instruments. I’ve thrown in bits and pieces now and then, but Erin usually does the writing when it comes to lyrics. She’s our leader for a reason — she’s good at the ideas, at the logistics, at seeing the big-picture vision. When she talks about The Ten Hours, we sound like a real band and not some dopes in a basement.

“Let’s do it one more time,” she says. “I need to see how the bridge connects to that last verse. That okay with you guys?”

We all nod, more than happy to follow her vision. I’m especially grateful, I suspect. Working on something new requires more concentration than replaying the stuff we’ve performed dozens of times. Those songs are imprinted into my fingers; the new stuff hasn’t transformed into muscle memory quite yet.

We go through the section a few times before Erin calls us off. She grabs her notebook and flops onto the beat up on couch in her parents’ basement to start scribbling. There’s not much down here with us besides that couch and the coffee table. We cleared out the storage area of the basement to make space for Tim’s drum kit. The floor is cold concrete. Cobwebs cling to the exposed wood of the unfinished ceiling. A single bald lightbulb hangs down, accompanied by a chain for turning it on and off.

Despite that, this has become a cozy space for all of us, a place where we’re free to do our music however we want. Honestly, I kind of prefer it to a bar or stage. Here, it’s just about the music. It’s raw; it’s real. We’re not performing for anyone but ourselves, even if we do plan to take our art out into the world eventually.

Erin is still furiously scrawling notes. Idle and awkward, I pluck at my guitar. Without intending to, I pick at the chords of my own song, humming the few lines I’ve managed to write.

For the second time this evening, I look up to find my entire band staring at me.

“That’s not a bad idea,” Erin says.

“What is?” I ask, already suspicious.

“That was your song, right?” she says. “We should work on that a little.”

I flush with cold dread. “It’s … it’s not even done. We… I can’t. I haven’t even…”

“There’s something there, though,” Erin says. “I heard you just now.”

“It’s a couple chords and a few lines,” I say. “It’s nothing. You guys would hate it.”

“We won’t,” Erin says. “And besides, we’re a band. We’re here to help each other with stuff like this.”

“But it’s…”

Erin tosses her notebook aside and stands, planting her hands on her hips. “We never make lyrics alone. These are our songs, Cameron. You’ve written for us before. It’s a good thing. It brings some fresh ideas and a new voice to our songs. I can’t write everything. It’ll sound like me all the time.”

“But…”

I look to Tim and Kelsey, seeking any safe harbor, but Tim shrugs and Kelsey smiles wickedly. I back up a step, but there’s nothing behind me except cold concrete. I’m not escaping this basement so easily.

“Fuck,” I finally mutter at myself. “Fine,” I say louder. “But it’s really not done. It’s not even kind of done. It sucks. You’re going to hate it and it’s going to be a huge waste of time.”

“It won’t,” Erin says. “Let’s go, Cameron. We don’t have all night.”

I grumble as I dig into my bag and pull out a battered notebook. I prefer to write by hand when I’m actually focusing on something. My hands tremble as I flip through pages of scrawled lines and crossed out choruses in search of the smattering of lyrics I’ve jotted down so far.

“Here,” I say, shoving the open notebook at Erin. “If you want to try to make something out of that, be my guest.”

Erin is immune to my moodiness. She takes the notebook and reads over the lyrics, nodding her head and humming to herself as she goes. She picks up strength on a re-read, singing a few lines.

“Like that?” she says.

“Yeah,” I admit while studying my shoes. “I guess.”

“Okay, let’s try it that way. You two got that?”

She checks in with Kelsey and Tim, who nod.

“I think I can put something behind that,” Tim says, already testing out some tentative beats.

“I’ll follow along,” Kelsey says. “Don’t worry about me.”

Just like that, I’m playing my half-written song, and it’s damn near the most mortifying ordeal of my life, especially that line I wrote at the café one day.

If fate is kind, she’ll bring us back together.

We work around that line, the clearest one in my scrawled notes, building music and lyrics like a scaffolding supporting it. After a few repetitions, Erin is belting it out at full volume, and her voice is as powerful and captivating as ever but … but something about it isn’t quite right.

I try to shake off the sensation, but it sticks with me even when we go back through the song another time, propping up the lines around that one like we’re building a house around a central pillar that’s supporting most of the weight. That line is impactful enough to carry the chorus, but Erin’s voice, while as stunning as ever, somehow sounds wrong . I’d never dare utter that out loud. She’s not doing anything wrong. In fact, her singing is stunning. It fills that tiny basement, warming the cold, barren concrete.

No, this has nothing to do with Erin’s ability. It’s … it’s just that…

When I wrote that line, I think I was imagining it in my voice.

I don’t sing for our band. I can. I’ve taken lessons and all of that. I’m passable enough, but I’m clearly not a frontman. I don’t have the kind of pipes that can rival Erin’s. There’s no compelling reason for me to be the one belting out the lyrics when I’m far more useful and comfortable on lead guitar. Even when I sketched out some lyrics in the past, I always heard them in her voice. I’ve never wanted to sing, never requested to sing, not even as backup. Tim and Kelsey do that stuff on the rare occasions when we need it, but for the most part it’s all Erin.

So why can’t I shake the sensation that this song sounds wrong in any voice but my own?

It’s gotta be because I messed around with it by myself back at my apartment. Some nights, I like to get out my guitar and play and sing softly, chipping away at these lyrics that won’t seem to leave me alone. Of course, I didn’t have much time for that last week, what with Julian being here and me being … with him. But the point stands. It’s probably habit, nothing more. Erin is our singer, and that’s how it should be.

“I like this,” Erin says after we play it once more. “I like it a lot. This is good stuff, Cameron. Are you going to keep working on it?”

I shrug, suddenly shy, like they’re seeing my baby photos or something. “I guess. I don’t know. I’ve just been messing around in my free time. It’s nothing serious.”

“Don’t downplay it,” Erin says. “We need fresh material. We need a fresh perspective. If we make it to that festival, we’ll want to bring something new with us. This could be the perfect song to debut at a place like that.”

I scrub a hand through my hair. The thought of revealing this song in front of a big festival crowd feels like walking on stage naked, my chest ripped open for all to see. We haven’t officially secured a spot, yet the thought of playing this song makes me want to crawl under the couch and hide.

“I don’t know,” I say. “If you think so, then I guess it’s fine.”

“It’s better than fine,” Erin says. “This is going to be it, our big show stopper. Keep working on it, alright? I’ll help if you want.”

I nod, but I’m biting back a grimace. That song that sounds so wrong in her voice instead of mine, especially that line about fate bringing two people back together…

I’m scared to face what those lyrics really mean to me, but it seems I may not get a choice.