Page 60 of Reverb

“Very funny.” I hadn’t touched him all evening, so I did it now, moving close and putting my hands on his shoulders, feeling their warm strength under his shirt as I brushed against him. “You could be added to the extensive list of lovers I’ve had in here if you wanted, you know.”

That list was nonexistent, and Stone knew it. I didn’t even have to explain. I squeezed his shoulders and pressed my body against his, and he gave me a narrow-eyed look.

“If you think I’m gonna be the first guy to debauch you in this bedroom, Sienna, then think again,” he said. Stone had words like debauch in his vocabulary, but he didn’t choose to use them often. When he did, it was a sign that he was relaxed.

“I exist in a world of disappointment.” I leaned in and pressed my cheek on his shoulder. Stone put his hands on my back, rubbing me gently through my sweater, making me shiver. “I guess it’s only fair that you experience the embarrassment of my parents, since I’ll be experiencing the embarrassment of yours.”

I’d written and turned in the first three articles of my Road Kings series, the pieces about Denver, Neal, and Axel. I’d written a draft of my article about Stone, then revised it, then rewritten it again. I couldn’t get it right, even though he’d given me my long-awaited interviews. Nothing I wrote about Stone accurately described the man I saw, the man I now knew so well yet was still discovering.

For my final rewrite, I set up an interview with Stone’s mother, Diana. Stone had been reluctant, but even after he’d agreed to it, Diana had refused. He must have talked to her, because eventually she’d messaged me back and given in.

Stone sighed, and because I was leaning against him, I felt how deep that sigh went, the product of years of some kind of exhaustion. “Try not to judge her,” he said, the words tight with tension because he found this hard to talk about.

“I don’t judge people,” I argued against his shoulder. “Except you.”

He ignored that. “I’m not gonna tell you her story. But when you meet her, remember that I played guitar in the garage for years and she never once told me to stop. Remember that some people had really bad childhoods. Stuff you can’t get over, ever. You know what I mean?”

“Yes,” I said softly.

“Some people aren’t messed up because they choose to be,” Stone said. “Some people would be different if they’d been given a chance.”

I lifted my head and looked into his brown eyes, which were scowling and serious and honest. I ran my fingers over his beard, then leaned up and kissed him softly. “I understand.”

He looked worried. “Do you?”

“Yes, I do.” I kissed him again, and he relaxed against me. How did the world not know how sweet this man was? Everyone was blind.

I kissed his cheek. “We should go downstairs,” I said, smiling. “Otherwise my parents will think you’ve debauched me.”

TWENTY-THREE

Stone

The song that Denver had come up with, which we were still calling “Raven,” was going to be the best song on the album.

It was a weird fever dream of a song, with a bass line that was the best thing Neal had ever come up with. I went through my pedals, trying to get just the right sound to match it.

Then I took a trip to my storage unit and dug out an old amp I’d used in the Gardens on Mars days that somehow made a kind of sound I’d never duplicated with any other piece of equipment. I experimented with that for a while until the guitar sound on “Raven” was exactly right, different from anything we’d done before. Really fucking good.

In endless hours in our abandoned car dealership, the four of us started to make magic. We played, and we played. We had to spend part of our days dealing with business, mostly to do with the new studio we were building and the record we were going to release ourselves, but most afternoons we’d find our way to the car dealership. Going home at three in the morning was pretty common. It was one of the reasons we were building sleeping apartments into our new studio. Making records didn’t follow a nine to five.

Tonight, though, we knocked off at midnight. My bandmates had women to go home to. I texted Sienna: You still up?

She replied that she was. This was her third day in her new apartment. We’d moved her in two days ago.

I’m coming over, I wrote, because I hadn’t seen her in two days and I wasn’t giving her an option. This was my usual mood now. The longer I went without seeing Sienna, the grumpier I got.

She replied with the heart-eyes, because she knew that drove me nuts. That was fine. Once I got to her place, I’d show her who was boss.

I looked up at my bandmates, who were packing up to leave, and suddenly it seemed strange that they still knew nothing about Sienna and me. Why the fuck hadn’t I said anything? Because she was writing about us? I’d known these three guys for half my life. We were making the best music we’d ever made right now. No one knew me quite like they did. Even Watts wasn’t getting on my nerves anymore.

I looked at Neal, who was shrugging on his jacket. We’d had our problems, Neal and me, over the years. We’d fought a lot. He was good-looking, charming, funny, easy to talk to. Decent. And he was talented in a way that I wasn’t. He could play more instruments than me, he picked up new music faster than me, he could read music, he could switch styles like a pro. He had a good wardrobe. He got along with people. He was a father. He was the guy who could truck through and play a great show on no sleep without complaining. He never got moody or lost in his own head or silent. He always had the right words.

So, yeah. Neal had always been the guy I wasn’t. Which was why he’d always made me mad.

He ran a hand through his hair and smiled at something Axel said, and suddenly all of that fell away. Years of getting pissed off at Neal, at resenting him for existing. I didn’t see the point of it anymore.

I stood up. “Shut up, all of you,” I said to my bandmates. “I have something to say.”

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