Page 26 of Broken Chorus

“If the music is good, and I have no doubt that we can be better than good, the fans will prove that there was never a reason to question their loyalty.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

“I don’t think I am.”

“But if you are?”

“Then I’ll admit I fucked up and we can take it from there,” Kelly grumbled through clenched teeth. “At least I can say I tried, which is more than you seem willing to do.”

“I’m here, aren’t I? And part of why I came up here was to tell you that I’m willing to give it a shot, even if I don’t feel the best about our chances.”

Kelly shot him a look he was painfully familiar with. Part hurt, part exasperation and still fully pissed off. “Glad to see Hawk can still change your mind when I can’t.”

Aaron sighed and shoved his fingers through his already messy hair. “It’s not that he changed my mind, he just convinced me not to declare it was an epic fail until I had proof. I just wish you’d give Kazzy another listen. We already know what to expect from him. He knows the places we’ve been and the stories that have been told about us. He’s been on some of the same tours, played in front of the same crowds. It might not have been with us, but there’s a kind of shared history that just makes him…”

“Safe. Familiar. Someone you don’t have to learn anything more about ‘cause you already know enough to relax and just shred with him,” Kelly said. “Problem is, there is no challenge in that.”

“Who says I want a challenge?”

“You may not want it, but we need it if we’re going to stay relevant. Fans hate when bands change members, you know that. They watch for the train wrecks and speculate about whathappened to cause the switch up. They’ll be standing by ready to make comparisons, too, so we can’t just measure up. We have to blow the past out of the water if there is ever gonna be a future for us.”

“And if it’s too late for all that and we’ve already peaked and started down sliding?”

“Then we’ve already failed ‘cause we didn’t stick to our vow to make every new album better than the last. I hate failing, so I refuse to accept that we can’t tap into some layer of ourselves that we’ve never exposed before. You have to start looking at this restructure as the best thing that could ever have happened to us, rather than the exclamation point on an aborted career.”

“What if it needs to be the exclamation point?”

“Are you trying to say you’re done?”

Aaron shook his head, nodded, then shrugged a little before running his fingers through his hair again. “I don’t know, okay. Sometimes I think I’m ready to be done with it all, and something I think, one last time, one more song, one chance to go out the way I always wanted to.”

“That’s what I’m looking for too.”

“No, it’s not,” Aaron said. “You’re looking for epic long term world tour shit, and that’s not something I think I can give you.”

“But you don’t know that you can’t.”

“I don’t know that Icaneither.”

“So, we figure it out together, just like everything else we’ve ever done,” Kelly insisted. “All I’m asking is that you give it a fair shot. If you do that and still decide that you don’t want to do this any longer or just don’t want to do it with me, then we part on good terms and I hear from you on the regular, fucker, the same way we do Hawk. No more radio silence bullshit! You had me worried.”

“Sorry, that wasn’t my intent. In case you need to hear it, I didn’t backslide. I didn’t even smoke up all that much, since I spent three days up at Hawk’s place.”

Aaron could see the relief on Kelly’s face and felt shitty for sending his thoughts spiraling.

“Good,” Kelly said. “And for the record, I did need to hear it. I kept picturing you passed out lifeless somewhere, and it wasn’t a good look, my friend, it just wasn’t.”

“I’m not planning on letting that happen.”

“Good to know.”

“I just need you to know that I’d have still been up there if Hawk would let me stay,” Aaron said. “I feel like I’m in limbo. He thinks my heart is still on touring and being on a stage a hundred and twenty nights a year when sometimes I wish I’d never picked up an instrument.”

Now that left Kelly staring at him with a shocked look on his face.

“Maybe if I hadn’t, my grandparents would have been less shitty,” Aaron admitted. “Maybe I’d know what a family was supposed to look like and maybe Hawk…”

“You wouldn’t have Hawk if it wasn’t for the music!” Kelly snapped. “And you do know what a family looks like, fucker, we’ve been your family for over a dozen years.”

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