“Don’t worry about it. I get it.”
That’s something I noticed about him soon after meeting him: he’d tease me and prod me and keep at me long after other people would have given up, but he always knew exactly when to let things go. He gave me just the right amount of space, even before he really knew me.
“The controller should be on my desk,” I call out.
I hear him shuffling around in my room before he comes back with everything he’ll need. He starts getting set up on the coffee table, and without any warning, the sight of my gear starts making my throat get thick. The corners of my eyes burn.
I do my best to hide it, but he must notice something because he asks what’s wrong as soon as he looks up.
“I...I miss it already,” I find myself telling him. “When I woke up in the hospital and saw my hand, it was the first thing I thought about. I just...I know it’s only for a few weeks, but it’sme, you know? And now I can’t do it.”
“I’m sorry.”He leans forward to reach across the coffee table and place a hand on my knee. The skin under my sweatpants heats from his touch. “I’m really sorry all of this happened. I know it fucking sucks. You’re going to recover, though. You’re going to get it all back.”
“Thank you.” I nod and try to speak clearly enough that he can’t hear the lump in my throat. “Thanks for saying that. It helps.”
He squeezes my knee and gives me a small smile before going back to getting the gear set up. The small touch sends my heart racing.
“Okay, that’s good to go,” he says after another minute. “What tracks am I working with here?”
I think for a moment and then direct him to pull up a group of files. “Those should work.”
“Excellent. Now let me just import some stuff of my own.” He pulls out a flash drive and puts it into my laptop.
“Wow. You came prepared.”
He grins while looking at the screen. “I’m always prepared to impress.”
“We’ll see about that.”
I don’t want to stroke his ego by showing it too much, but it only takes a minute of him messing around on the controller for me to beveryimpressed. There’s a lot of ways we’re different from the teenagers we were in his basement, but the music we make is probably the starkest contrast between now and then.
Youssef has become a master. It’s not even a matter of opinion; it’s a fact. Very few people can play this way. It’s like he’s taken his mind and implanted it in the controller. His movements and the sounds they create are seamless, an infinite flow of information and artistry. There’s a finesse to the way he plays that I’ve never seen in anyone else, a grace and poise amidst a purposeful chaos that’s absolutely stunning to witness.
It doesn’t matter that he’s sitting on the floor in my living room or that there’s a plate of cucumber slices beside him. The music coming out of the speaker connected to my laptop transports us both to that dimension only a truly glorious sound can take you to.
I can’t look away. He’s snaking his head from side to side, torso swaying to the rhythm. His eyes glint with excitement and something like hunger as they dart between the laptop screen and the controls.
Then he starts playing one of my songs, and his gaze locks with mine. It’s only for a second, but the intensity of the moment sets the air on fire. He’s going to work my sounds into something new, and there’s an inevitable intimacy to that.
My breath stops altogether as he continues to play, forging complex tangles of both our sounds into patterns like delicate metalwork. This stuff is nothing like that EP of his. It’s the kind of music he attempted back when we were idealistic kids riding the high of how enlightened we thought we were, only now all the pretense is gone. What he creates is real and true and so powerful it makes my heart ache.
He keeps going for another few minutes, and then he starts leading into a track I recognize from the first beat. My heart stops.
He wasn’t supposed to have that. It must have got imported by mistake with all the other stuff I told him to use.
I want to tell him shut it off, but I’m too caught up in the moment to interrupt. No one else has ever heard this before, and it’s like watching someone stumble across your secrets to see him pause and sit back while the track keeps playing on, exactly how I created it.
It’s got more of a deep house feel to it than my usual stuff, and it’s a lot more lyrics-focused than I tend to lean, but that’s not what has me bracing for the first verse.
When my songs have vocals, I either use sample packs or find a singer online who will record the part for me after I write it myself. That’s what I do when I’m ready to release the song, at least.
Before that, I sing and record it myself. I even practice playing with live vocals at home whenever Zach isn’t around. It’s tough to do, and it took a lot of work to sound even semi-competent at it, but I never feel more alive than I do when I’m using my voice and my gear at the same time. My music never feels more alive than it does then.
It’s an even deeper secret than the box of makeup under my bed. My voice lives in a box kept somewhere far more dark and hard to reach than that. Nobody has heard me sing since I was sixteen, when I finally snapped and said no more auditions. Youssef has never even heard me sing.
Until now.
The intro finishes, and my muscles clench as my voice fills the room.
