“The only thing I’m worried about is that we won’t have full creative control. The company are making some decisions I don’t like.”
She punched me on the arm. “That’s got to be tough for you,” she said. “I guess them’s the breaks. If you want to work for the man, you have to do it the man’s way. It won’t hurt you to compromise.”
If I twisted things really hard in my brain, I could almost take that as permission to use the song.
“I guess I should go,” I said.
As I turned to leave, she reached out to stop me.
“Alex,” she said.
“Yes?”
She looked at the ground. I knew exactly what she wanted to ask and I prayed she wouldn’t. Pete had stirred things up, that’s for sure.
“Oh, nothing.”
Dee
I wanted to celebrate the fact that Alex had walked me home without me jumping him. I’d not reached for him or taken his hand or given him any indication we were more than just friends.
The lust monster inside me was slain.
That’s a lie.
The lust monster had been barricaded into a cave, hidden in the darkness and not allowed to show its face. But the lust monster wasn’t dead. Every night, it came out of hiding and took over my body. Every single night.
I shook my head, trying to shake out all the thoughts of Alex.
The things Pete had said weighed on my mind. I’d idolised Jake. He’d been the perfect older brother, always ready to help me out and stand by me. Everyone loved him and he never did a thing wrong. Maybe that was a bit too perfect. I mean, everyone has faults. He was messy, I knew that. He could be a total stink pig at home, even if he never showed that in public. Maybe there was other stuff he kept hidden too.
I’d wanted to ask Alex but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to discuss Jake with him and he’d made it clear to Pete that he didn’t want to discuss it either.
I had the next day off work, so we rehearsed in the afternoon. Pete was working at the bar that night. He seemed totally oblivious to any tension, like he’d planted the bomb in my mind and then walked away.
Maybe I’d been overreacting to the whole situation anyway. Maybe it’d been one of these weird guy things.
I walked home from the studio, just wanting to put on my PJs and curl up on the sofa. In between work and rehearsal, my schedule was way too hectic. I never got to be just a couch potato anymore.
When I got in the building entrance, I checked the letterbox. There was a parcel from Mum. Jake’s phone? That had slipped my mind completely.
The rest was just junk mail. I threw it in the bin.
The thought of checking Jake’s phone creeped me out a bit. It’d been recovered from the crash site, unharmed. A cop had turned up one night with the phone and a few other things in a plastic bag. The battery was dead, of course. Mum put the phone in one of the kitchen drawers and no one had thought about it since.
It probably would’ve stayed there forever, the way Mum hoarded stuff.
Thankfully, she’d put the charger in with it. It was one of those older model phones with a weird connector. It’d been the latest thing when Jake got it. He’d flashed it around, showing off the amazing camera. Now it looked like something from the olden days, a floppy disk drive or a gramophone player.
While it charged, I made a cup of tea. I started reading a book but ended up waking up in the dark, the book having fallen on the ground and my neck sore from being at a weird angle.
I put on a warm cardigan and some music. I knew I needed to check Jake’s phone but I didn’t want to. I really didn’t want to. It creeped me out.
I got Jake’s photo out of my bag and propped it up on the coffee table. If he was watching me, that might seem better. Then I heated up my cold tea in the microwave. It tasted a bit weird but no point wasting things.
When all that was done, I sat down, took a deep breath and pressed the “on” button. The picture swirled around while it started up.
Then the messages came up. There were so many. Jake hadn’t deleted many, that’s for sure.