A Song For Us (Fallen Tuesday Book Two) (A Brothers of Rock Novel) (11 page)

“The airport?”

“The airport,” Carina said. “I’m
going to see Gray.”

(11)

Gray slept like hell. The bed in
the finished basement was very comfortable, but his mind wasn’t. It made him
laugh that Mack had taken such a domestic approach to life. A nice townhouse. A
finished basement. Things in order. Mack never lived like that. There was a
period between two and four in the morning that Gray lost track of time. He
couldn’t be sure if he slept during that time or not, but when he saw five
glowing with red eyes from the clock next to the bed, Gray threw the covers off
himself and decided to just wake the hell up. He went from the bedroom to the
couch and called Frank. Being the loyal manager he was, Frank always answered.
No matter the time of day.

“Gray, is everything okay there?”
Frank’s groggy voice asked.

“Sorry to wake you,” Gray said. “I
need a favor. A big favor.”

“Okay. What do you need?”

Gray wasn’t sure how to choose his
words, so he just blurted it out. “I need a private jet ready to fly someone
from Liering. The sooner the better.”

As much of a pain in the ass that
Frank could be, he didn’t question Gray about the private jet.

For Gray it was simple, he needed Carina
with him. For some reason, his body just couldn’t handle the distance. Carina
held secrets Gray wanted to know. She made him feel a way that he only saw
between Luke and Amy.

“I’ll get it all set up,” Frank
said. “It may take me until late morning… maybe noon.”

“Okay,” Gray said. “Get some more
sleep if you need it.”

“My alarm was set for quarter
after,” Frank said. “I’m okay. Hey, are you going back to the studio?”

“Yeah, we are,” Gray said.
“Yesterday was a good start. Got sluggish though. But we’re together and we’re
writing.”

“Not to pressure you, Gray, but any
idea how long you’re staying?”

“I can’t answer that,” Gray said.
“Right now, if I can be honest, I’m hiding and avoiding it all. The music is
keeping me grounded.”

“Your music and your guest?” Frank
asked.

“Goodbye, Frank.”

Gray hung up and smiled. He put his
feet up on the table and looked around. It was so quiet and relaxing. His mind
finally felt open and able to process information. The writing and music bug
bit him hard, bringing Gray to his feet. He needed a guitar. To write. Right
now.

The basement had clean walls,
meaning no guitars hanging around. There wasn’t even a left over drum kit in
the basement.

Gray growled.

What kind of rockstar didn’t
have instruments everywhere?

Gray ran up the steps. He slowly
opened the door, wincing, hoping he wouldn’t wake Mack. Or scare him to death.

Gray moved slowly through the
townhouse, the thick plush carpeting silencing his footsteps. There was a
living room with leather couches and a massive television on the mantle of a
beautiful stone fireplace. The next room looked like a second living room, but
that was where Gray struck gold. It was a music room. Dedicated to the success
of Fallen Tuesday. There were two drum sets, one in each of the far corners.
The room had gentle lights turned on, shining down on the instruments. Guitars.
Acoustic guitars. A 12-string guitar. Basses. Amps. Stacks. It was a musician’s
fantasy.

Spotting an acoustic guitar on the
ground, that’s where Gray went. He bent to pick up the guitar and he heard a
noise. It sounded like glass. He froze and listened, wondering if his ears were
messing with him.

They weren’t.

He heard the sound again.

Giving up the guitar, for the
moment, Gray retreated and followed in the direction of the sound. He spotted
the next archway, leading to the dining room that shared a space with the
kitchen. It was a large open floor plan. When Gray saw a figure sitting at the
table, it made him think of Carina again and how she mentioned someone had
broken into her apartment.

But this wasn’t a criminal.

Mack sat at the dining room table with
his back to Gray. It was mostly dark, except for a few dim lights lit, the same
lights in the room with all the instruments.

Gray took a step, wanting to see
what the hell was up. Then he saw Mack lift a bottle from the table and put his
head back. When the bottle hit the table, Gray realized that was the sound he
had heard.

The sight sent a wicked chill
through Gray’s body.

Gray sidestepped, wondering if Mack
would see him, but he didn’t. It allowed Gray to see that Mack held a picture
in his left hand. Even when Mack lifted the picture and put it close to his
face, Gray didn’t know who was in it.

Mack nodded and whispered, “Gone.
So gone.” He tossed the picture to the table and grabbed the bottle of whiskey.
He stood, letting the chair screech against the floor. Gray jumped back and
backtracked into the darkness. Mack walked from the kitchen to the stairs. He
slowly climbed them, the bottle in his hand.

Gray had no idea what to say or do.
He always knew that Mack was a deep guy with a rough past, but just how bad was
it?

Gray heard the sound of a door slam
shut and figured that was Mack finally going to bed. After a minute of standing
in the darkness, Gray went back to the instrument room and grabbed the acoustic
guitar off the floor. He reached into his pocket and found a guitar pick.

He was in business.

Back down the basement, Gray sat
and plucked the strings of the guitar. It took him a few minutes to tune it,
but once he did, he played and played and played. His mind couldn’t stop
thinking of riffs and ideas. When his back started to feel stiff, he stood but
didn’t stop playing. He put his foot on the table and continued to play. When
his mind took a break, Gray simply played Fallen Tuesday songs. He tossed the
guitar pick to the table and began to use his fingers, gently easing in and out
of songs. He rewrote Fallen Tuesday songs just for fun to give them a different
sound.

He only stopped when Mack came down
the basement steps.

Gray looked at Mack, eyeing him but
trying not to look suspicious.

Mack was in different clothes than
when he sat at the table, drinking alone. To Gray’s surprise, Mack looked
pretty cleaned up. Whatever the hell was going on, Mack hid it well.

“Jamming out?” Mack asked.

“I’ve been up since five,” Gray
said. “Just couldn’t sleep. Too much shit on my mind.”

“Join the club,” Mack said. “Come
on, let’s get some breakfast and get to the studio.”

“Did you talk to Luke yet?”

“He’s probably still rolling around
in bed with Amy.”

Gray smiled even though jealousy
attacked him. Not that he wanted Amy, but he wanted to be rolling around in bed
with someone…
with Carina
.

“I called for breakfast,” Mack
said. “I don’t cook. There’s a little place down the street. They really don’t
deliver, but the owner’s kid is a big fan of the band. He makes the trip for
me. Best damn sandwiches you’ll ever eat. Good coffee too.”

Gray put the guitar on the couch
and pointed. “Hope you don’t mind. I stumbled around in the dark and found your
stash of instruments.”

“What’s mine is yours, brother,”
Mack said.

Mack had the eyes of rattlesnake
and a face of stone. He didn’t give one sign that he knew Gray had seen him,
drinking, looking at a picture. It was as though it never happened.

Gray followed Mack upstairs and a
few minutes later, there was a knock at the door. Gray answered it and was
greeted by a Fallen Tuesday fan holding a brown paper bag covered in grease
stains at the bottom. Gray figured Mack liked the grease to coat his stomach
from all the whiskey.

“Holy shit, you’re Gray,” the man
said.

“Holy shit, I am,” Gray said.

“I can’t believe this. This is
awesome.”

“Ease up, Tim,” Mack said as he
came to the door.

Tim handed Mack the food and Mack
paid. When Tim lingered for a second, Mack elbowed Gray and nodded.

“You want an autograph?” Gray
asked.

“Oh man, yes,” Tim said. “I didn’t
want to ask. I didn’t want to be rude.”

“It’s fine,” Gray said.

Gray signed an order slip and then
took a quick picture with Tim. Mack took the food into the kitchen while Gray
watched Tim walk away. He stared at his phone, shaking his head. It made Gray
smile. He could not believe that a picture of him would mean so much to
someone. But it did.

Gray and Mack ate in silence. Gray
sat in the chair he’d seen Mack sitting in earlier that morning. The topic
never came up, so Gray let it go. He wasn’t sure if that was right or wrong.

Luke called around nine to say he
was on his way to the studio. Gray cleaned himself up in the bathroom, changed
his shirt, and followed Mack back to the studio. They arrived just as Jake and
Trent pulled up in separate cars.

Once inside the studio, they sat
and listened to their masterpiece from the day before. If it was possible, Gray
thought the song sounded better. That rarely happened. Normally, a song would
sound less appealing after settling for the night. But not this one. This was
going to be a smash hit.

When the song ended, Mack, Jake,
and Trent stood. They were eager to play. So was Gray. His fingers were
tingling. He had gotten all the practice he could handle that morning in Mack’s
basement.

“I’ve been thinking,” Luke said.
“Give me a second.”

“Shit,” Mack said. “Is it your
voice?”

“No,” Luke said. “Leave that go.
I’m fine.”

“You’ve been thinking…,” Gray said.

“We had a couple slow songs on the
last album,” Luke said. “But they were… I don’t know. They were like the
standard ballad type of songs, you know? The goodbye to family and friends. The
hardship of surviving and wishing for more. Not that those are bad songs, but
I’ve wondering if we could come up with something really powerful for this
album. Something that reaches out and touches everyone.”

Gray rubbed his hands together. He
stared at the floor as he listened.

“We can’t do an album full of slow
shit,” Mack said.

“We wouldn’t,” Jake said.

“No,” Luke said. “I’m not saying
that. I’m just saying… what if we had a song that was both purposeful with
sound and with acoustics. Something really slow and really important.”

“I have it,” Gray said. He looked
at the band. “I have it. I was messing around this morning with a guitar in
Mack’s basement. Songs were just coming to me left and right. Then I started
playing this one…”

Gray stood and walked away. The
band followed as he went to the instruments. He picked up his acoustic guitar
and sat on an amp. He started to play the slow song that came to him that
morning. It was deep. It was powerful.

“Let’s mic it up and record it,”
Luke said. “Just to have it there.”

Gray played the song again - or the
pieces of the song he had - into a microphone. Once it was recorded, the band
went back to listen to it. They listened to it at least ten times.

“It’s missing something,” Gray
said.

“The rest of us,” Mack said.

Luke laughed.

“I could add some background to
it,” Jake said. “Bend some notes. Offset the acoustic with electric sound.”

Luke shook his head. “This is a
good start. But it’s not… it’s not
it
.”

“I agree,” Gray said.

“Well, maybe it’s best we leave it
then,” Mack said. “Get back to what we have right now.”

“That’s a good idea,” Luke said. “Let’s
write some rock n’ roll.”

Fallen Tuesday took their
instruments and began to write music. They recorded when they felt like it,
choosing bits and pieces to record so they could play back and decide if they
were worth keeping or not. Within an hour, they had another song just about
done. There was something little missing from it, and they couldn’t put a
finger on it quite yet.

When Gray felt his pocket
vibrating, he raised a hand to halt practice for a second. It was the call he’d
been waiting for. A private jet would leave at twelve-thirty, hopefully with Carina
on board. Gray hurried and relayed the message to Carina. He stared down at his
phone as the rest of Fallen Tuesday started to play again. Gray heard the music
and he heard the guys talking, but he Gray couldn’t look away from his phone.
Not until Carina sent him a message back. The seconds felt like hours, but
finally, his phone vibrated with a reply from Carina.

I can’t believe this is
happening. I’ll see you soon.

When he looked up, the rest of the
band stared at him.

“Are you good?” Luke asked.

“I think so,” Gray said. “Why?”

“You look a little… flustered?”

“Nothing,” Gray said. “I’ll explain
later. So, where are we with the outro?”

“Mack’s going to carry it out,”
Jake said.

Gray nodded. “I like that.”

Mack stood from the drum set and
leaned across the two toms in front of him. “Can you tell what I’m thinking?”

“You’re the drummer,” Luke said.

“We play the same riff to end the
song, right? Keep going with it since it’s catchy as hell. But then the music
should fade out and the drums stay the same. After about, oh, ten seconds,
there’s no music except the drums. Then we throw in deep reverb and carry it
out.”

Luke looked at Gray. Gray looked to
the glass window in front of them all. The sound engineer - a guy named Dan -
sat with his hands folded, looking back at Gray.

“Did you get that?” Gray yelled.

Dan pressed a button and his voice
came through the recording room.

“Got it. You guys want me to record
this one?”

Luke gave thumbs up.

This would be the first real
recording run of the entire song. Gray felt a shiver of excitement run through
his body. He wiggled his fingers for a few seconds, shaking away the nerves. No
matter how big the band got or how good they got, there would always be nerves.
And that was a good thing. The nerves kept the five guys looking at each other
for support. It made the music great. Gray didn’t want to live in a world of
pressure, but he also didn’t want to deliver basic songs to the fans. Fallen
Tuesday fans deserved more. They deserved the best. They deserved the outcome
of hours upon hours of recording, debating over riffs, finding the missing note
to complete a song. That’s what the fans deserved because they were the ones
who bought the albums, bought the t-shirts, bought the tickets, and made Fallen
Tuesday who they were today.