Joe raised his hands. “Not me. I came to work.” He produced his phone and set it on the table. “I brought track recordings and everything.”
“Oh, a professional,” Trix teased. She pulled her drum sticks out of her boot and set them on the table, then pulled a few throw cushions off the couch and sat on the floor. “Some of us have to improvise. But I’ve got some ideas.”
Jeff opened his notebook to a fresh page. “All right, then. Conceptually, what do we have?”
Starting with Joe, each of them listed the song ideas they had been working on. An album needed a mix, but it also needed cohesion, something that would tie it together musically, thematically, or at least tonally. They couldn’t just split an album fifty-fifty with Jeff’s love ballads opposite Trix’s bangers. They could do one that was a mix of ballads and Joe’s anecdotes, maybe, but that really would be almost cottagecore, for them.
And then there was Max, who’d apparently been sitting on seven nearly complete songs written in actual musical notation. He took the pages, dogeared at the edges, out of the bottom of his guitar case and put them on the table.
Jeff felt like an asshole. “Okay, I’m getting the idea that I was late to the party on this one.”
But Max shrugged. “We’re here now,” he said, as though it were really that easy.
Maybe it was. Maybe it could be.
Trix blew out a huge breath. “So—thoughts for themes? Do we want to make lists?”
The business of whittling the album down from forty or so potential tracks to the ten to fifteen that would make the final cut took the remainder of the morning. By twelve thirty they were so into it they didn’t want to stop, so Jeff texted Carter that they were getting room service, and he should come up and join.
Carter texted back a picture of a plate with a half-eaten sandwich.I got hungry. Sorry! I don’t want to break your stride anyway.
He was probably right, since Jeff didn’t actually see the text until almost two, when he texted back a heart emoji.
Finally, around three, they wrapped up. There was still sound check and warm-ups and whatnot to go over. Trix shoved her drumsticks back into her boot and grabbed her hoodie from where she’d flung it over the back of the couch. “Meet you in the lobby at five?”
“Sounds good,” Jeff agreed absently. He stared at the chaos that had become the coffee table—a haphazard mess of yeses, nos, maybes, and revisions. His eyes felt gritty.
The door closed, and Jeff realized Joe was still there. “Hey, so I was hoping…?”
“Shit!” Jeff tore his attention away from the paperwork. “Yes. Sorry. We were going to talk, and I’ve been flaking.” Partly because of Carter, but partly because he thought he might know what Joe would say, and he didn’t know if he’d like it—wasn’treadyto know if he’d like it.
But it wasn’t fair to make him wait.
“You’ve been a little preoccupied,” Joe agreed. Of course he got it; he gotJeffbetter than anyone except maybe Carter. “This won’t actually take long. I just… I wanted to talk to you first.”
“Yeah, of course.” Apart from Carter, Joe was Jeff’s oldest friend. “I get it. Things are, um, not always good right now.” Hence his apprehension.
Joe looked pointedly at Carter’s empty desk space and smiled slightly. “I don’t know… some things are pretty good, right?”
In more than a decade performing with them, Jeff had never been roasted by his bandmates so consistently. “I thought you didn’t want details? You don’t want me to contest ‘pretty good,’ do you? With something like… incredible, mind-blowing, energetic—”
“Please stop,” Joe laughed and brought his hands up to cover his ears.
“—voluminous—”
“Gross.”
Okay, that was probably TMI. “Anyway.” Jeff leaned back on the couch, feigning nonchalance. “What’s—”
“Sarah’s pregnant,” Joe blurted.
Jeff’s mouth fell open. Words tumbled out without forethought. “Oh shit, no kidding?”
Apparently this was a happy occurrence, because Joe was smiling proudly, his cheeks a little flushed. “Yeah. We found out a few weeks ago. That’s why she’s been having a hard time sleeping lately. Being pregnant is uncomfortable even in the first trimester.”
So it was early still. “Wow. Hey, that’s great. Congratulations.” Jeff snapped out of it and stood to pull him into a hug. “You’re gonna be great parents.”
“Thanks. My mom’s really excited. I keep telling her it’s early….”
