Page 73 of Seven Lost Summers
Theo chuckles, grin wide. “Remember when you told her her ass should come with a warning label? She shot back, ‘This ass has higher standards than a guy who can’t even find a clit with Google Maps.’”
I can’t help but grin. “God, she never let me get away with that shit.”
Theo practically wheezes. “Bro. She said it loud enough the lunch tables went silent. You just stood there holding your Gatorade like your dick shriveled on command. Even Coach nearly choked on his sandwich.”
I groan, dragging a hand over my face. “She didn’t even blink. Just nailed me with that stare, dropped the line, and kept walking like she hadn’t straight-up murdered me in front of half the school. I swear my balls actually retracted.”
“She was a menace. And you loved every second of it.”
I grin. “Yeah. I really fucking did.”
We stay quiet for a second, letting the memory sit.
Theo claps his hands and springs to his feet.
“Let’s go. If we’re late, Ace’ll act like someone pissed in his coffee, and Xander’ll pull out the whiteboard.”
I blink. “He has a whiteboard now?”
“Had it couriered to the studio. Swear on my life. Came with color-coded markers and an actual fucking pointer.”
It won’t be Ace with his grumpy-ass glare, or Xander barking orders like we’re in some Boyband bootcamp and he’s one meltdown away from shaving his head. No, it’ll be Kit. And that’s worse.
She won’t scream or slam doors. She’ll just stare at us with that unimpressed look that could vaporize egos, all five feet of fury dressed in black and platform boots.
We’ll crumble faster than Theo pretending he didn’t eat the last slice of pizza.
One sarcastic clap. One perfectly timed eyebrow raise. And suddenly I’m volunteering to sweep the tour bus and write a formal apology for existing.
We’re at Ace’s place, guitars out and ready, working on the new songs. Surprisingly, Kit’s not here yet, which is rare.
We love her. Fuck, we respect the hell out of her. She’s the one who keeps us grounded, who stops the chaos from swallowing us whole. That’s the reason she’s still with us, the reason we asked her to come when we started our own label.
Without her, we’d be five missed flights deep, buried under unread emails, and fighting over who left their socks on the amp. She’s our compass in all this madness. Smallest one in the room, but somehow she holds the whole damn thing together.
The music pounds through the walls, and it feels so fucking good.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Theo grinning, that wide, reckless one he only wears when he’s finally breathing again or plotting new ways to piss off Ace.
Xander’s running through a few lyrics while Ace leans over, showing Theo the bass line he wrote. It’s tight, clean, solid as fuck, and for a second I let it take me under.
“After a few chords from Theo, Nate, you come in with the beat,” Ace says, sharp focus in his voice.
I lean back, watching Ace and Xander work, and fuck, they get it. The way they build songs from the ground up, like it’s instinct, like it’s in their blood.
Before Ace showed up at our door, I had options.
A few bands were interested, mostly in me and Theo knew it. He told me I’d be an idiot to pass it up, said it might be my only shot. But there was no fucking way I was doing this without him.
So I waited.
Held out for the right thing. And damn, I’m glad I did. Because if I hadn’t—if I’d jumped into some half-assed setup with people who didn’t get us. Who the fuck knows where Theo and I would be now?
That first night, when Theo and Xander sat on the couch jamming, it clicked. Not only the sound, but the way Xander treated Theo. He didn’t talk over him or try to one-up him.
He listened. Nodded when Theo landed something sick on the strings. Smiled in a way that said he saw him, not just the music, but the person behind it. And for someone who’d spent most of his life being told he wasn’t enough, that kind of respect meant everything.
That’s when I knew we’d found the right fit. Not only for the music, but for us.
