Page 33 of Broken Chorus

He took a picture of the verse before he erased it, allowing him to document the process from blank board to finished song. Over the years, they’d chosen a series of images to print on the inside of their CD inserts, along with photos of the band doing some of the most random shit imaginable. His favorite was of him and Aaron wrapped up in a Velcro burrito, high atop a sky swing moments before the god dammed crane dropped them. Aaron had been grinning and waving like a madman, while Hawk had reached towards the camera looking for someone torescue him. Roller coasters were one thing. Their asses were parked in seats and buckled to a bunch of metal. That sky swing…

Hawk had loved the last two-thirds of it, but that drop, holy shit, if Aaron hadn’t been right there beside him, laughing and yelling for it to go faster, Hawk might have lost his shit. Instead, he wound up laughing at Aaron’s commentary as they’d swung, then grabbed his hand and raced around to the entrance so they could do it again.

They weren’t the words to this song, but words did come to Hawk’s mind then, bright, powerful, energetic words that captured that day perfectly. Moments like this were why he believed in double sided dry erase boards and quickly flipped it to start scrawling words.

Past the point of no return

Mere inches from the end

Countdown clock ticking down

You’ll pay for this

My crazy friend

His first thoughts were always rambling stream of consciousness bursts of writing that left his fingers stained and his mind empty by the time he was done, so he gave himself over to it, writing past when the buzzer on the phone went off and filling a good chunk of the space. Only when the well of memories and moments stopped feeding him the words he needed did he stop and put the cap on the pen.

He knew better than to start rereading. He’d be in here all night if he did that and there was plenty of work he needed to get done before he went to bed. Best to just snap a picture and shut the lights out, go check on the kids and get busy.

When he peeked into Ella’s room, all he could see was the top of her head peeking out from beneath her comforter and an army of bears gathered around her like they were guardingtheir queen. She looked like her mother and had her personality too, sweet and thoughtful, always worried about Dani and Liam, letting them choose while she took what was left over. When Lynn had come into Arden’s life, his brother had been struggling to stick with anything for longer than a four month stretch. Somehow their friendship had made it longer than that, then bloomed into something more. Half the band had given Arden dating advise, some of which backfired spectacularly, but in the end, they’d played the wedding with Hawk doing double duty as Arden’ s best man.

He stepped away from Ella’s room to check on Liam, who like Dani, looked a great deal like Arden, right down to the unique strawberry-blond hair he and Hawk had shared. They were both asleep too, but as he headed back up the hall, intent on getting laundry done and the dishwasher emptied, he was hit by a memory he hadn’t thought about in years.

Dude…do you know what time it is?

You won’t care where you hear what I have to tell you.

Uggg, we just went to bed.

Oh shit, is that Aaron draped across you? Hi Aaron!

Arden your timing sucks!

Says the guy with the suckiest timing this side of …!

Oh, shutup will ya, I’m sure Aaron will get back to sucking as soon as I’m through!

.

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Oh my god I did not mean that the way you assholes just took it! For fuck’s sake, I’m trying to tell you you’re gonna be an uncle.

.

.

Wait, what?

Dude, he just told you that you were gonna be an uncle.

Fuck that, you’re both gonna be uncles! Everyone in the band is gonna be an honorary uncle. My kid will have more uncles than they’ll know what to do with.

Do you know what you’re having?

Dude, we just found out we’re having, give us a few months to figure out the sex.

You gotta let us do the gender reveal!

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