2Without You || Oh Wonder
COLE
I lockmy apartment door and make my way down the building’s concrete stairwell, the sound of my footsteps bouncing off the walls. I moved in here less than a year ago, and it’s the nicest place I’ve ever been able to afford. It’s not a penthouse or anything, but it’s got state of the art air conditioning, and the guy behind the desk in the lobby wears a tie.
The fact that there evenisa desk in the lobby is a huge step up from most of the dives I’ve lived in before. My band, Sherbrooke Station, has been bringing in enough cash for us all to support ourselves off our music for a while now, but people outside the music industry don’t understand how rare it is for famous bands to get filthy rich. Most of the money you earn never actually makes its way down to you.
Still, things just keep getting bigger for us, and if I can make a living writing bass lines and playing music all over the world, I don’t give a shit about what the lobby in my apartment building looks like.
I step out the glass doors and into the noise and heat of downtown Montreal, heading off to the rehearsal we’ve got scheduled for this afternoon. I live just far enough that walking is inconvenient, but close enough that taking the metro feels like overkill. I usually walk.
The June heat wave finally broke but I’m still sweating after just a few blocks. It might have something to do with the black jeans, black boots, and black t-shirt, but I’d rather walk barefoot on crushed glass than put on flip-flops—flip-flops such as the ones JP, our keyboardist, is wearing when I spot him a couple metres up the road, that damn man-bun of his bouncing along with his steps.
I quicken my pace to catch up and call out his name. He turns around and gives me one of his famously doped-up looking smiles. He hasn’t actually been smoking—I’m very familiar with whatthatexpression looks like on him—but he’s clearly as high on life as usual.
“Salut!” he shouts, doing what I think is supposed to be some sort of tribal dance to summon me closer. A few girls laugh as they pass by, and he gives them what I’m sure he considers a suave nod.
JP is one of the most gifted musicians I’ve ever met. He’s also fucking nuts.
“Salut,” I reply, once I’ve reached him. We continue up the street together.
“You excited for rehearsal?” he asks, his Québécois accent making him miss the ‘h’ in rehearsal.
Roxanne still does the same thing. A memory of me making fun of her for it until she full-on body checked me onto her bed springs to mind, and I do my best to shove it back where it came from as I shrug in response to JP.
He claps me on the shoulder. “That was really interesting, Cole. Thank you for your very detailed answer.”
I’m not really known as the ‘talker’ of the band, and even though I’ve never given anyone a reason to believe it, people usually get the sense that they shouldn’t fuck with me.
I glare at JP until he drops his hand and starts using it to snap out a beat in time with his steps instead.
The Sherbrooke Station metro stop comes into view ahead of us. That’s how our band got its name; we were so desperate for a rehearsal space that it felt like hitting the jackpot when JP’s uncle said we could use the basement of his law firm outside of office hours. The firm is in an old house next to the metro stop, and we sent each other so many ‘Meet you at Sherbrooke Station’ texts that it seemed like a good fit when we were picking a name.
Must have been a good choice because that name has now carved out a spot for itself on almost every major hit list there is and will spend this summer sitting near the top of the bills for a dozen music festivals across North America. After that, we’re heading off for our first ever Australian tour. Truth be told, we don’thaveto practice in a shitty basement anymore, but the habit has been a hard one to kick.
Ace and Matt are already inside when we make our way down the stairs. The place is still kitted out with the beat up second-hand couches and homemade soundproofing panels we hauled down here years ago. Matt’s tuning up his snare while Ace screws around on his Fender without the amp plugged in.
It still freaks me out how much the two of them look like brothers sometimes. We’re all covered in tats, but Matt and Ace also share the same sand-coloured hair and pretty boy faces.
“You guys get bothered on your way in?” I ask, referencing the ambushes of fans that pop up outside the building from time to time.
Matt shakes his head. “Not this time.”
“I got asked for an autograph on the metro,” Ace adds, “but other than that, no.”
JP sprawls on one of the couches. “Mon oncleis pissed. He wants us to start paying the firm for security.”
I say what everyone’s thinking but doesn’t want to put into words: “We need a new rehearsal space.”
They all nod their heads and stare at the floor.
“Yeah,” Matt answers half-heartedly. “Yeah, we need to get on that.”
Matt’s usually the first to get our asses in gear about anything band-related. Sometimes it feels like having a second manager with him around, so the fact that he’s dragging his feet about this shows just how attached to the basement we all are.
I grab my bass from its spot in the corner and get tuned up before we launch into this summer’s setlist. I lose myself in the chords, the world narrowing to the ridges of the strings where they press into the calluses on my fingers. I breathe in time to the bass line, head nodding like a metronome, the music taking me over until it feels like my whole body is an instrument.
That’s what drew me to playing bass as a teenager: they way you can sink right into it, let it crash over you and pull you down. People make jokes about bass being easy, about playing the same chords over and over again, but the simplest rhythms are the most powerful, the most ancient. Our heartbeats are just a pulsing bass line—two notes, over and over—grounding us and guiding us, even when we forget to notice them.
