“Play it by ear?” he suggested. “Maybe at the end of the tour…?”
“Yeah.” She leaned back against the seat of the couch. “This might suck.”
Jeff snorted involuntarily. “Probably not any more than the past few months. Years. Tours.”
Trix lifted her head and looked at him. “You’re that tired?”
Instead of answering right away, Jeff let himself think about it. “I’m burned out,” he said slowly. “Part of it is this thing with Max. Part of it’s just… I think you and Max aren’t the only ones who’ve had stuff you didn’t deal with, you know? It’s catching up to us, or at least it’s catching up to me. I feel like if I don’t take the time to get myself right, it’s just a long slow slide downward.”
They sat in silence for a moment before Trix said, “I’m sorry I didn’t know.”
“Trix, are you kidding me right now? Don’t apologize. Christ.”
For a second, her face froze halfway between apologetic and surprised. Then, absurdly, she started to giggle. She put her hand over her mouth and looked shocked at herself, but the laughter started to slip past her fingers until Jeff caught it too.
“Fuck,” she said, gasping against the side of the couch, “Jeff, we areso fucked-up, oh my God. We have so many issues we could start an archive.”
Jeff was lying flat on his back, laughing silently and clutching at his stomach because he couldn’t get a deep enough breath to make noise. Tears rolled down his face. He honestly couldn’t tell if they came from mirth or catharsis.
Finally he gathered himself enough to flop over on his side so he could look at her around the end of the table. “What are we gonna do in the meantime?”
Trix lay on the floor too, her hands tucked beneath her cheek. “I don’t know. I mean, write an album, usually. That’d keep us all busy. Keep Max’s nose clean, so to speak. Except I don’t deserve to collaborate with you right now, so there’s that. And also, I get the feeling Tim’s been playing you?”
“Not particularlywell,” Jeff said, “but yeah. He’s a dick. I would rather gnaw my own foot off than let him make another dime from our work. But getting out of our contract is going to be expensive.”
“Didn’t you just hire a fancy lawyer?” she asked. “I mean… that’s something lawyers look into, right? She could theoretically help us find a way out of it. Find another label even.”
Well… maybe? “That could solve some of our problems.”
“Like the fact that all the songs in your comp book are love songs?” Trix suggested, smiling gently.
“Not all of them,” Jeff protested. “None of them are particularly… rock-y.” Which, yes, their label would likely have issue with. They’d want at least a couple bangers.
The gentle smile turned up sharply and she laughed. “Oh my God. Jeff. You’re writing acottagecore album.You pulled a Taylor Swift!”
Oh God. He had even written those songs in a cabin in the woods. He raised his hands to his face as he laughed. “In my defense, people love those albums.”
Trix turned over onto her back and sighed at the ceiling. “I can just imagine you singing about Carter’s cardigan.”
“Don’t jinx it,” Jeff warned.
She tilted her neck and met his eyes. “You’re really for-real gone on him, aren’t you? Like, not just a high school crush.”
“Literally every love song I have ever written is for him. That one I said was about that guy Brian I dated for a couple months? I lied.” He smiled wanly. “I am really for-real gone.”
“I’m happy for you,” she said after a moment. “You deserve it.”
It was coming up on dinnertime when they pulled themselves off the floor. “Do you want me to check if Carter’s still sleeping?” Jeff offered. “I could ask him to relocate to the bedroom if you don’t want to meet him right now.” He wouldn’t blame her.
But Trix shook her head. “No, it’s okay. I made my bed, I can lie in it.” Then she smiled. “Besides, I’d like to meet him.”
Jeff knew that look. “And by ‘meet’ you mean ‘ogle’?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She stood up and reached a hand down to Jeff. “Come on, you can introduce us, and then I’ll get out of your hair and you can take advantage of his after-nap energy.”
Sure enough, Carter was awake, fussing with something that smelled amazing in the kitchen. “Jeff?”
“Hey.” Jeff poked his head through the open pocket doors and into the galley-style kitchen. “You up for meeting another quarter of Howl, or is that too much rock-star exposure for you for one day?”
