No. Well, yes, but not because I loved my girl.
Finally acknowledging my feelings for Zoe had made me even more eager to spend time in the studio. I didn’t know if all artists went into this mad fugue state of creating while living with heightened emotions, but it was having that effect on me.
Even dealing with the changeable moods of my brother while we worked on the songs wasn’t deterring me. I needed to make my music.
Also, staying occupied with it helped drown out the rest. The shit with Jerry. The checks I sent that would never be enough in their eyes, even if I mailed them off until my dying day.
Those X’d out photographs Zoe had mentioned so casually that had invaded my brain.
It had to be just my fans. But that word didn’t compute. If they liked me as an artist, they presumably cared about me, right? Why would they harass someone who was important to me? I got it intellectually. Women thought they had a shot with me, so fuck anyone who got in their way. Just…whoa.
I had fans. Fans who wanted me on a visceral level that drove them to do things they normally wouldn’t. So insane after a lifetime of obscurity.
Still, that was a far better explanation than the alternative. Anything else refused to register.
My work was a welcome respite. Confusing, often frustrating work, but it took up my entire consciousness just the same.
I fell asleep in the studio. Woke there too. Day after day, night after night. I would’ve ditched my motel room and moved in there if I’d thought I could get away with it.
As it was, I spent as much time there as possible. Writing in my composition notebook until my fingers cramped and the pencil became a stub. Playing my guitar and then the piano until my hands ached and fragments of songs played even when I closed my eyes. Singing until my voice was shredded and all I could do was whisper and drink bloody hot tea.
When I wasn’t there, I was with Zoe.
Inside Zoe.
She’d had questions after the Lila interruption in the studio. I’d expected them, and I offered bits and pieces of my past. All truths, just not all of my truth. I’d told her about being expelled. About petty thefts. Minor assaults. That I’d grown up with a parade of men in and out of my home and a mother who’d burned me now and then when she wanted to deliver a message.
Neither of us mentioned who was burning me now. Because she knew quite well it wasn’t my mum.
Beyond that, Zoe didn’t press. She seemed to understand it wasn’t easy for me to discuss my past. God, if only she knew the half.
Sometimes she was busy when I wanted to see her or when I texted. Strangely enough, we both seemed to be in a creative period, perhaps thanks to regular multiple orgasms along with the requisite emotional component.
I was addicted to the woman and made no bones about it.
Even on the nights I stayed in the studio, I needed a hit of her. Couldn’t make it even twelve hours without one. So in the darkest hours just before dawn, when the next time I’d see her seemed just too far away, I’d dig out my mobile and hope she was still awake.
She always was.
Because she’d been waiting for me too.
It was foolish to hope. Hope got someone like me killed. If not in reality, in the soul. It was amazing I still had one left.
If I did, it was because of her. She was rebuilding me, piece by piece. I was that car Johnny Cash and his friend had built from parts stolen from the shops where they worked. Adding on to the vehicle day by day until it was done. The difference was, theirs hadn’t run.
But I was humming so hard and fast that I could barely sleep. Couldn’t settle. All I could do was write and play and sing and fuck the woman I adored.
I was even learning to play with others. Sort of. Deacon and Gray were easy to work with. If I came up with a germ of an idea and hung on to it like a pit bull, even if they disagreed, they found a way to make it work with my overall vision. Not that I was super clear on that yet. Rory rode the middle line between me and Deacon and Gray, sometimes agreeing with their ideas how to change a lyric, or more specifically, the production end of things. Sometimes he agreed with me.
Emphasis on sometimes.
Simon had been the wild card from the get-go.
At first, he’d seemed barely checked in to the proceedings. He’d pulled a microphone on a stand next to the couch he’d made his home and sang from there, rarely joining me in the booth that I’d found had better acoustics for my voice. Mine was lower than Simon’s, and raspier to boot, probably in no small amount due to the cigarettes I was sneaking far too often.
Stress, what? Not me.
But despite the certain damage I was doing to my voice, I liked the sounds I was producing. The growls I could dig down for before soaring to notes that weren’t as easy as they’d once been pre-smokes.