His hair was shaved on the sides and he had a small mohawk, spiked like a cool dinosaur. Myles wanted to tell him but he thought it might sound a bit stupid.
Instead, he looked at his hair and said, ‘Cool hair.’
‘Cheers, mate,’ said Nick. He was taller than Gabe and they looked similar but not totally identical. They had such different styles. Gabe was all preppy and clean-cut, but he had a tattoo behind his ear, which he said his mum had lost her shit about when she saw it. It was a little barcode, which when scanned showed his birthday on an app.
Myles immediately wanted one but could imagine Edward saying no. His mum would let him but that wasn’t a good thing. She didn’t care what he did.
Gabe returned with a guitar and a lead and handed it to Myles.
‘This hasn’t been played for a while. Not since Evie was last up here. It’ll need a tune.’
Myles took his phone out of his pocket and opened an app and played a note. It was really out of tune but he eventually got it to sound less like it was being played underwater.
‘What do you want to play?’ he asked, suddenly nervous.
What if they thought he was a shit player?
‘You start to play something and we’ll join in,’ said Nick sitting at the drum kit.
Gabe moved behind the keyboard and played a chord.
Myles thought about all the albums he had listened to, all the videos he had watched when learning the chords for his favourite songs, the obsession with his favourite guitar players, Jimi Hendrix, Jack White, Jimmy Page, B.B. King but nothing came to mind. Instead he played a chord, and then another one, and then he found the groove and played in the garage with brothers he didn’t know.
He heard Nick find the rhythm and they played together, repeating the riff, then Myles found some more notes and then Gabe joined in on the keyboard.
There was something inside Myles that clicked for the first time in his nearly fifteen years of life. He felt like he belonged, as though he wasn’t on the outside anymore. There was something that connected the three of them and Myles had started it.
He hadn’t learned how to make friends easily or keep them, not with his home life. When some people at school had found out his mum used to be a model, then they wanted to come to the house, but there was no way he could risk them seeing his mother when she was drunk. Then he started to keep to himself more and more until he stopped attending school altogether, and since Edward wasn’t his legal guardian and Amber was in America, there wasn’t anything the school could do about it until Amber returned.
But this moment in Eve’s parents’ garage, with the coolest boys he’d ever met, made him want to never leave.
They played a little longer and then Gabe waved at them to stop. ‘Do you know any Arctic Monkeys?’ he asked.
Myles breathed a sigh of relief and nodded. ‘“Do I Wanna Know?”’ he asked and Nick started to play the beat and then Myles joined in and played the iconic guitar riff.
Gabe’s voice soared over them, even without a microphone and Myles nearly stopped playing as he took in the sound. It was warm and rich and with just the right amount of rasp.
The song finished and Myles grinned at the brothers.
‘Hold up, you didn’t tell me that you could sing like that. It’s insane,’ he said to Gabe.
‘You should hear Eve sing,’ Gabe answered. ‘She’s like Stevie Nicks and Adele mixed into one voice.’
‘Really?’ Myles couldn’t imagine Eve singing.
‘Yeah, she was super cool until she became a dork,’ Nick joked.
‘Let’s do another,’ said Myles, and he started to play another Arctic Monkeys song and the twins joined in. This time Nick sang harmonies.
Eve wandered out to the garage with the puppy in her arms and watched them finish the song.
‘You wanna join in, Evie?’ Gabe asked.
Eve laughed. ‘No, the pipes are a bit rusty now.’ She looked at Myles. ‘We need to head off soon,’ she said.
Myles stood up and took off the guitar. He leaned it carefully against the chair then went to Eve and took the puppy from her hands.
‘Hey I was thinking…’ he said.
