Page 31 of On the Beat

“Why me?”

“Haven’t you ever heard of keeping your friends close…” Ryder takes a step toward me. “And your enemies closer?”

I hold up the notebook between us like a shield. “Which one am I?”

A lock of hair swoops over his forehead, and I notice a rip in the collar of his shirt, the print on it faded. Beneath the torn collar, a chain with a guitar pick disappears, and I trail my eyes over his throat, up to meet his eyes. Something like realization flashes in them, but I don’t know what he’s seeing. And that scares me.

“Neither.” He steps back, rubbing a hand over his face like he’s been woken out of a deep sleep by someone throwing cold water on him. “Tentative partners.”

“Verytentative.”

Ryder says nothing, and I’m both grateful for and annoyed by his silence. It gives me a moment to formulate my thoughts, yet another to wonder about his.

“So…” I put my notebook on the console table. “When do you want to start?”

He blinks before awkwardly clapping his hands together like this is a dance rehearsal and he’s about to sayfive, six, seven, eight. “Let’s start right now.”

* * *

“You were an emo kid in high school?”

Ryder wears a look of exasperated frustration that tells me he wishes he had never asked for my help. “I thought you were going to be helpful, not antagonistic.”

“I wasn’t aware that bringing up someone’s past was particularly antagonistic behaviour.” I cross my legs at the ankles, leaning forward on the piano. When I told him I used to play as a child—in fact, I won some national piano competitions, until I quit because of carpal tunnel—he enlisted me to help him in the music studio. “You’re the one who told me about your past.”

“I didn’t tell you anything, you just asked me what the scar on my eyebrow was from.”

“You willingly told me it was from a bad piercing, you could’ve just said it was none of my business.”

“Can we just getbackto business?” He plays an augmented fourth on the piano, the discordant ‘devil’s chord’ ringing in my ears. “I thought you were going to find some songs for me to sing.”

He asked me to find Filipino songs that would be suitable for a charity concert—something cheesy, uplifting, and suitable to be sung by a medley of mediocre artists with varying talents and streamed only to make money. I pass him a folder of song lyrics and guitar chords that I printed out. “Here you go.”

Ryder flips through the sheet music and starts singing the first few lines of each song. The problem is, none of it sounds natural, not just because he doesn’t speak Tagalog—some of the songs are in Taglish—but because something in his tone just doesn’t sound… empathetic. There’s a cold, distant remove in his voice, like he’s holding the music at arms’ length during an awkward middle school dance.

“Stop, stop,” I say as he’s halfway through one of the songs. “I think you should write something yourself. Something original. Everything you’re singing just sounds… stiff, and kinda fake.”

“Fake?” he repeats, eyebrows lifting. It’s not that he seems ruffled or worse, offended, by my critique. Instead, he looks like he genuinely wants to hear what I have to say, which surprises me. I would have thought he was another one of those pop stars with fragile egos, the kind who can’t take no for an answer when it comes to asking for anything, whether it be praise or drugs or access to a club. “What do you mean?”

“I mean… it sounds like you’re playing someone else’s song. Not your own.” The moment the words leave my mouth, I regret them, realizing that’s exactly what he’s doing, and he isn’t helped by the language barrier. “Not like you’re out of practice, but there’s just no heart in it.”

“Iamsinging someone else’s song.” Ryder shifts on the piano bench, away from me. A defensive edge coats his tone. “What do you expect from me?”

For him to be better. For him to be worse. I don’t know what I expect, but it’s not him, singing with a blank expression and hollow eyes. Maybe I was wrong about him after all. “Oh, I don’t know. Could you try it again, with more emotion?”

“I amnotan actor.” Still, he sings it again, injecting what seems to be about one percent more energy into his singing. “How was that?”

I shrug, and type something on my laptop, noting an idea for an article.

Ryder closes my laptop, narrowly missing my thumb.

“Hey!” I glare at him. “What was that for?”

“Pay attention.”

“To you, you mean?”

“Isn’t that your job?” The corner of his mouth quirks up, but it’s not a friendly smile. It’s more like he knows something about me and is holding it over my head.

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