Page 83 of Your Rhythm
20Le Long de la Route || Zaz
MATT
“Dude,you’re freaking me out. Quit it.”
I cut off the drumming routine I’ve been pounding out on our living room table for the past five minutes. I can only stay still for a few seconds before I start tapping my feet instead. JP glares at me and I shrug.
“We all have our nervous habits. You eat things. I drum.”
Point in case: he’s shovelling his third chocolate pudding of the day into his mouth.
“So you’re nervous, huh?”
No point in denying it.
“Yeah, I’m fucking nervous. We’re headliningMetropolistonight. Only a year ago we would have killed just to open that place.”
“A year ago we were children. Today we are men.”
He dips his spoon back into his child-sized pudding container.
The jitters that are holding my limbs hostage aren’t new to me; I usually wake up on the day of a show with more energy than I know what to do with. What I don’t normally wake up with is a dread that sits on my chest and squeezes my heart until it starts thumping for mercy.
We aren’t ready for this show. We’ve been practicing like crazy, but we’re off. There’s no rhythm when we play, none of that ghostly energy that flows between us sometimes and turns us all into a single unit of sound. This is going to be the biggest venue we’ve ever played, and I can’t shake the feeling that we’re going to fall flat on our faces, or that it’s all going to be my fault. Nothing I say or do has been enough to repair the rift between us, and we can plaster ourselves with smiles and pretend we’re moving on, but the truth comes out when we play.
My phone starts buzzing in my pocket and I pull it out to find I’m getting a call from an unknown number.
“Hello?” a man’s voice asks. “Is this Matt Pearson?”
“Yeah, this is he.”
“I’m calling on behalf of Metropolis. We just wanted to make sure your management got you all up to date on the lunch arrangements.”
“Lunch?” I repeat, as JP gives me a curious look.
“Yes, you and the rest of the band are invited to have lunch on behalf of the venue today.”
If the life of a starving artist has taught me anything, it’s that you never say no to free food.
“We didn’t know about that, but it sounds great. Where is this happening?”
He gives the address for a brunch place on St. Catherine and tells me to ask for a reservation under Dylan Thompson. We hang up and I inform JP that Metropolis is buying us lunch.
“Weird,” he admits, “but good weird.”
“Good weird,” I agree.
I consider asking him to let Cole and Ace know, but I figure it might make a dent in the ever-present hostility between us if I call with news of free food. I fill them both in, and then read over a text from my mom. Her, Dad, and Kyle are all driving down from Hamilton right now.
JP and I walk the few blocks to the restaurant. We pass by the Tim Horton’s where I used to work and I can’t stop myself from craning my neck to catch a glimpse of the top of the building. If I’d known then what I do now, would I still have taken Kay up there that night?
Yes.
The answer comes to me before I have time to consider the question. Maybe that’s the reason I haven’t been able to patch things up with the rest of the band; they can sense that no matter how many times I say I’m sorry, or how much shit my actions get us in, I don’t regret what I did. I took a chance that needed taking.
She may have left me bruised and broken and abandoned on the side of the road, but Kay Fischer was one hell of a ride. Even with betrayal stinging like salt in my wounds, I can’t shake the belief that there was something real there, that somehow this will all turn itself around.
Cole’s already waiting outside the restaurant, and Ace arrives a minute after we do. I mention the reservation to the hostess, and she leads us to a table up on the second floor. A guy in his mid-twenties with gelled-back dark hair is already sitting there.
