26
They ended up taking requests for quite a while. Shanna really wanted to hear something by Katy Perry, so they did “I Kissed A Girl,” with Derek and Shanna singing together on the chorus. Shanna was giddy.
It was really interesting hearing the song where one half was in a deep male voice. And uncomfortably sexy whenever Derek would look at me while singing.
I have to admit, it also freaked me out a little to hear my roommate – who had seen me half-naked more times than I could count – singing a song about being bi-curious.
Ryan switched instruments to mimic the deeper, driving notes of the backup music.
He’d been good on acoustic, but he was outstanding on bass guitar.
Afterwards, I teased Derek a little. “I didn’t know you liked Katy Perry.”
“Ryan’s little sisters love Katy Perry, so we do it for them,” Derek said, scowling at me for impugning his manliness.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about ten-year-olds (or however old they were) being huge fans of “I Kissed A Girl.” It made it even weirder that the person singing it to them was the hottest guy ever, but… whatever.
They also did a great cover of a song called “D’yer Maker” by Led Zeppelin. I’d heard it before on classic rock stations, not to mention Sheryl Crow’s cover. Though Derek and Ryan’s version wasn’t nearly on a par with theirs, it was pretty damn good for a basement jam.
Derek’s singing was amazing; Ryan’s playing was fantastic. Ryan’s voice was nice, but had nowhere near the power or sexiness of Derek’s. And Derek was basically an amateur compared with Ryan’s ease with the guitar. By now Derek had abandoned his instrument and was just lounging on the floor, relaxed and completely at ease as he sang.
They did “Say It Ain’t So” by Weezer, “Everlong” by the Foo Fighters, “Patience” by Guns ‘n Roses, “Flake” by Jack Johnson, and “I Give Her All My Love” by the Beatles.
They nailed every one of them.
And I was getting more and more turned on the entire time.
Derek was so damn good-looking to begin with… and now to hear this astounding voice coming out of him?
And to think, Yeah, he could actually GO somewhere with this?
I imagined him and Ryan as part of a band, playing at the 40 Watt or the Georgia Theater. I imagined hundreds of people shouting and screaming and singing along – not a far-fetched scenario at all.
It was… I don’t know. I guess I shouldn’t be that shallow, but it was seductive to think of me backstage, watching from the wings, Derek winking at me every so often as he played to the roaring crowd.
Then I would think, But what about Kevin? and the daydream dissipated… only to start up again with the next song.
After awhile they took a break to stand up and stretch.
Shanna raved about them and basically attached herself to Ryan at the hip.
“What’d you think?” Derek asked nervously while Ryan shyly backed away from his new admirer.
I nodded my head. “You guys are really, really good. I’m very pleasantly surprised.”
Actually, I was more than pleasantly surprised, but I didn’t want to feed his ego too much. And Shanna was being a good cautionary example of how not to act as she rubbed up against Ryan like a dog in heat.
Derek grinned. “When I first told you I was in a band, you probably thought we sucked ass.”
“…noooo…” I said, not at all convincingly.
Derek laughed right along with me.
“You’re just so enamored with yourself, I figured you were probably exaggerating about your music, too,” I said.
He stared me in the eyes. “Well, the other parts of me I’m so ‘enamored’ of… was I exaggerating about them?”
I pressed my lips together and blushed a little as I stared into his eyes.
I absolutely refused to look at his arms… or his chest… or his lips… or his ass (not that I could see it right now… but my God, his ass…).
He evidently took my silence for disapproval – maybe because it veered too close to flirtation or sex – and he hurriedly said, “Never mind, I retract the question. Would you like to hear some original stuff we recorded?”
Anything to cut the sexual tension.
“Um, yeah.”
“Hey, Ryan, let ‘em listen to some of the stuff we’ve recorded,” Derek called over his shoulder.
Ryan fired up the computer, opened a computer program, and played a couple of songs. They were good – not great, but good, like a lot of stuff you hear on college radio. The tunes were actually pretty catchy. Derek’s singing was strong and occasionally sexy. The lyrics weren’t bad, though they kind of tended towards the melodramatic and self-important.
But the drum stuff was meh. It sounded like it was all done on a drum machine, and by somebody who wasn’t very creative. And the guitar parts, while competent, sounded average.
But holy shit, the bass was crazy.
I never even notice the bass guitar in most songs. It’s usually there in the background, a complement to the drums, just underpinning the beat. But in these songs, the bass was front and center.
I looked at Ryan after one little bass solo. “Is that you?”
“Yeah,” he admitted sheepishly.
“That’s awesome,” I said.
He rubbed his close-cropped hair with an aw shucks grin and blushed.
“What about me?” Derek asked, almost on the verge of petulance.
“The singing’s really good, too,” I reassured him.
He still looked grumpy. “It’s not great?”
“Well… it’s just… it’s not as cool as when you were singing the songs ten minutes ago.”
“Give me a break – those are some of the greatest songs ever written,” he said. “I mean, our stuff – it’s pretty good for a band starting out, but we’re not f*ckin’ Led Zeppelin or the Beatles.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said, afraid I had offended him.
“The drum stuff sucks,” Ryan said glumly. “And I’m okay at guitar, but we really need a great guitarist, somebody who can make it sing.”
“I think you guys are awesome,” Shanna cooed, and grinded against Ryan’s leg a little more.
“We’re going to get there,” Derek said fiercely – to Ryan, to me, and almost to the whole world in general. It was like hearing a general yelling at his troops. “We’re going to get a badass drummer, and Killian Lee already said he’d be in the band.”
Ryan snorted and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right.”
“Who?” I asked.
Derek clicked the spacebar on his computer and stopped the playback.
“Okay, check this out,” he said.
27
“So this past winter, this English band came through Athens – Gobsmacked. It’s some weird British slang or something. Nobody had ever heard of them, but they played at the Georgia Theater on a Tuesday when it was dead. They were pretty good, but the guitarist was incredible. I mean, f*cking astounding. He was this little guy with long, black hair, kind of puffy and messed up, and he just let it hang loose down his back. He was older than the rest of the band, probably about 30, and he wore black from head to foot – black shirt, black pants, black trench coat down to his ankles. He was just… it was incredible. He’d launch off on these long solos that were just inspired. The band would kind of stand around while he did it – you could tell the lead singer was pissed, because everybody loved the guitarist and not him – and then they’d come back and finish the rest of the song. But the guy was amazing. I asked around afterward and found out his name was Killian Lee.
“They were playing the next night at the 40 Watt, so I told Ryan we HAD to go see him. Ryan was all freaked out – ”
“I was not,” Ryan protested.
“ – cause it was a school night – ”
“Shut up,” Ryan said, and gave me a nervous glance for some reason.
“But I told him if he didn’t go, he would regret it for the rest of his life. Didn’t I?”
“…yes.”
“And was I right?”
“Yeah, yeah, you were right,” Ryan muttered. “Just finish the story.”
“So anyway, Ryan snuck out and we went to the show – and the guitarist was even better the second night. I mean, he blew Ryan away. It was awesome.”
Ryan nodded enthusiastically.
“So after the show, I’m all like, ‘We’ve gotta go meet this guy.’ And Ryan’s like, ‘NUNH-UNH.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, I’M going to go meet him,’ so Ryan finally gave in and we go backstage while all the roadies are loading up the equipment and the rest of the band are getting smashed. Killian’s back there sitting on a folding chair, just doodling on his electric guitar, smoking a joint, just kind of off in his own little hippy-dippy world. And I go up to him and stick my hand out and say, ‘I’m Derek Kane.’
“He smiles real peaceful-like, totally laid back, and sticks out his hand. ‘Nice to meetcha, mate.’”
I cannot stress how adorable Derek’s bad English accent was.
“So Ryan gushes all over him – ”
“I was not gushing,” Ryan said crossly.
“ – and Killian just smiles like he’s stoned, but the whole time he’s playing his guitar – just little whispers of his fingers over the strings. It’s not plugged in, so you can barely hear him, but he’s just playing non-stop, even while he’s talking to us, like his brain and his hands are disconnected.
“So I say, ‘We’re in a band. And one day we’re going to get you to be our guitarist.’”
I frowned in disbelief. That was a pretty ballsy thing to say.
“Ryan looks at me like I’m crazy, but Killian just laughed, took a hit on his joint, and nodded his head. ‘Well… let me hear you first,’ he says.
“Ryan doesn’t have an instrument, obviously, so Killian tells one of the roadies to bring the bass guitar stuff over. The bassist is pissed, but Killian tells him to f*ck off, he’s going to quit Gobsmacked and join our band if he doesn’t let Ryan borrow the bass. So the bassist threatens to cut Ryan’s balls off if he f*cks up his bass, and then he goes off to get drunk. Ryan’s freaking out at this point, but I couldn’t be happier.
“Killian asks what we want to play, and I say, ‘Whole Lotta Love,’ which is a Zeppelin tune. Killian nods like he’s happy to hear it. Ryan’s killer at this – we’ve practiced it, like, fifty times here in the basement – so we launch into it, and it’s awesome. I’m pretty good, Ryan’s losing his nervousness, and Killian just owns the song. It was like we’re playing with f*ckin’ Jimmy Page. We actually start attracting a little crowd.
“Then Killian is like, ‘What’s next?’ and I say ‘Higher Ground,’ and he says, ‘Stevie or Peppers?’ because the Chili Peppers covered the original Stevie Wonder song, and I say, ‘Chili Peppers.’ Killian tells some guy to go get the drummer from Gobsmacked, and he comes back and he’s pissed, but Killian tells him ‘Get on the drums, mate, we’re doin’ the Chili Peppers’ ‘Higher Ground.’ So the guy does, and it ROCKS. We’re getting a bigger crowd. We play a couple more songs, and people are totally into it, but the lead singer comes back in and he is PISSED that he’s not the center of attention, and he and the bassist basically get the roadies to load all the equipment up and tell us to f*ck off.
“Killian flips them off and looks back at us and says, ‘You guys are good. Really good. You – ’ and he points to Ryan – ‘are technically excellent. You just need to get more of a feel for it. You need to get spiritual with it. Let the music own you. And you – ’ and he points to me – ‘you’ve got that ‘something’ you need to be a great lead singer. You just need to stop mimicking those other people. Stop imitating them. Find your own voice. It’ll take awhile, but if you do it, you’ll be unstoppable.’”
It was actually really good advice. It put a finger on the one thing I’d noticed subconsciously about the songs: Derek sounded like himself… but he also sounded like a couple of other, better-known singers. He didn’t quite sound… unique, if that made any sense.
Derek continued, “Then he smiles and shakes our hands and says, ‘That was a pleasure, mate. We should do it again sometime.’
“And I say, ‘When he gets better at feeling the music, and I find my voice, I want you to be in our band.’
“And he laughs and he says, ‘You do that, both of you, and I will definitely leave this shitty outfit, or whatever outfit I’m in, and I’ll back you.’
“And then he waves goodbye and walks out into the night strumming his guitar, no amp, just the metallic strings dying away in the night air.”
I could see it in my mind’s eye – the mystery man walking out into the night, his trench coat swirling the fog behind him.
“From that moment, I was hooked,” Derek said, his eyes on fire. “I was a man possessed. I’m going to find my voice if it kills me, and Ryan’s going to go deeper and do whatever the f*ck he needs to do, and we’re going to get Killian Lee to join the band, and we’re going to be f*cking famous.”
The certainty and the passion with which he said it sent a shiver down my spine.
“Wow,” Shanna said, entranced.
“He didn’t mean it,” Ryan said glumly.
“Yes he did,” Derek said vehemently.
“He was just being nice.”
“No he wasn’t. Dude, that guy was too stoned to be telling anything but the truth. Anybody that cool, he’s not going to blow smoke up your ass. I just know it. He’s gonna be in the band.”
Ryan looked over at me, smiled, and rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”
It was funny – like Ryan was trying to impress me with his worldliness by dissing Derek’s naiveté.
“Yeah, ‘whatever’ yourself – you just watch, he’s gonna be in the band,” Derek shot back. Then he looked around distractedly. “I’m hungry – you guys hungry? Let’s go upstairs and see what’s in the fridge.”
28
The kitchen was lovely – more Real Simple ideas at work, with a couple of pretty flower arrangements and a tiny herb garden in one of those round, space-age terrariums you buy at Bed, Bath & Beyond. There wasn’t too much in the cupboards, so we ate potato chips and carrot sticks with dip as we sat around the island in the middle of the kitchen.
After a few minutes, I heard whispering behind us. Two little brown-haired girls, about 9 and 12, were poking their heads around the corner, watching us. As soon as they saw me look at them, they burst into giggles and darted out of sight.
“Hey – who’s that back there?” Derek said loudly.
More giggling, and then the little girls came tearing around the corner and slid into the kitchen on their socks.
“Hi Derrrrrrek!” they both shouted at once, and dissolved into giggles again.
“Hello, ladies!”
“Out!” Ryan shouted.
“AWWWWW!” they complained.
“Come on, man, they can stay,” Derek said good-naturedly.
Ryan grumbled and ordered them to behave. They both stuck their tongues out at him and proceeded to moon over Derek, hanging on every word he said.
“Uh-oh, you have competition,” Shanna whispered in my ear.
I just rolled my eyes at her.
“This is Kaitlyn and Shanna,” Derek said. “Kaitlyn and Shanna, this is Bob and this is Marley.”
“THAT’S NOT OUR NAMES!” they shrieked at the same time.
“Whaaaaa? It’s not?” Derek said, astounded.
“I’m Mara!” the older one said.
“And I’m Casey!” the smaller one shouted.
“Wait – are you sure?” Derek frowned.
They loved it. Eventually, though, they glanced over at me and Shanna.
“Are they your girrrrrlfriends?” the nine-year-old asked. I expected her to start singing Derek and Kaitlyn, sittin’ in a tree… K-I-S-S-I-N-G…
“Not yet,” Derek said, and winked at me – which made my stomach flutter. “But we’re workin’ on it.”
Shanna looked over at me with a OoooOOOOH look.
I rolled my eyes again.
Somebody else had a reaction, too: Mara, the tween. She shot me icy daggers I would have expected from somebody twice her age.
Maybe I did have competition.
It was pretty funny, though.
Derek saw her, and immediately leaned over and gave her a noogie. “But YOU will always be my real girlfriends,” he said as he lightly rubbed his knuckle into Mara’s head.
She shrieked and forgot all about me.
Derek apparently had all women wrapped around his little finger, even the prepubescent ones.
“We heard you singing Katy Perry!” they shouted.
“I was practicing for you,” Derek said seriously.
“We wanna hear Katy Perry!” they whined.
“Next time,” Derek promised, laughing.
“We wanna hear Katy Perrrrryyyy!”
“You see?” Ryan asked in exasperation. “It’s like a stray dog – you feed it once, you let it hang around, and it never freakin’ leaves.”
“I’m gonna tell Mom you said a bad word!” the little one shrieked.
“Freakin’s not a bad word,” Ryan snapped.
“It’s gettin’ a little too close for comfort,” a Southern-accented voice said behind us.
A woman walked into the kitchen. She was probably mid-40’s, pretty, blonde, and conservatively dressed in a business suit. She was a lot shorter than Ryan, but she was still pretty tall in her heels – maybe even taller than me.
“Hello, Derek,” she said, and ruffled his hair as she passed by.
“Hi, Mrs. Miller,” Derek said affably.
“Mom!” the little girls shrieked in a chorus.
She kissed their heads and turned to kiss Ryan’s cheek – but he recoiled visibly.
“Moooom,” he said, embarrassed, and motioned with his head towards us.
Ryan’s mother turned and looked at us – first at me, then at Shanna, then at Shanna’s prominently displayed cleavage.
Mrs. Miller’s demeanor cooled down noticeably after that.
“Friends of yours?” she asked with a chill in her voice.
“They’re Derek and Ryan’s girlllfrieeends!” the littlest one cackled, like she’d just gotten them in trouble.
Maybe she had. Mrs. Miller raised her eyebrows slightly.
“No we’re not, we just came over to hear them play,” I said nervously, and extended my hand. “I’m Kaitlyn.”
She took my hand and warmed up a little. “Hello, Kaitlyn.”
“I’m Shanna,” Shanna said. She waved half-heartedly, put her elbows on the countertop, and crossed her arms in front of her chest. She was no fool.
“Hello,” Mrs. Miller said a little less warmly, then turned to Ryan. “And will Derek and your friends be staying for dinner?”
“Uhhhhh… we hadn’t really discussed that,” Ryan said, looking at me.
“No. We don’t want to impose,” I said.
“Ah, come on. She feeds me all the time,” Derek said jovially.
“That’s true,” Mrs. Miller admitted, and gave him a playful scolding look. “And you’re eatin’ me out of house and home.”
“Noooooo, never,” Derek grinned back.
She smiled, then turned back to Ryan. “But I was going to fix spaghetti, and I don’t have enough hamburger meat and sauce for everybody.”
“We’ll get it,” Derek volunteered. “We can go to the store.”
“No, really,” I said, “that’s too much trouble – ”
“If y’all go get it, it’s no trouble at all,” Mrs. Miller said.
“Yaaaaayyyy!” the little girls cheered. “Derek’s gonna stay for dinner!”
“I guess we’re staying,” Shanna whispered.
I didn’t roll my eyes this time.
29
I drove us to the grocery store. Mrs. Miller had given Ryan some money and a shopping list – the spaghetti ingredients plus a few other things – and he and Shanna got a cart and started down an aisle.
“Aren’t you coming?” Ryan asked forlornly as Derek and I lagged behind.
If I didn’t know any better, I would have said he was crushing on me.
Which was super-awkward.
“We’ll follow along,” Derek said. “I want to have some time with my future giiirrrlfriennd.”
“Oh God,” I said as I closed my eyes, as though I was wearily annoyed.
In reality, his words sent pleasurable shivers down my spine.
Not good.
Shanna just laughed, hooked her arm through Ryan’s, and led him down the pasta aisle.
“You don’t mind staying for dinner?” Derek asked. “I mean, you didn’t have to study?”
“Well, I do have to study, but… no, dinner’s fine. I just didn’t want to put Ryan’s mom out.”
“She’s not put out by anything but Shanna’s boobs.”
I burst out laughing. “You noticed?”
“What, her boobs, or Mrs. Miller’s reaction?”
“Which were you looking at?”
“Well, you couldn’t miss either.”
I laughed again, though I was stung a little by what might have been jealousy. “Yeah, I think maybe Ryan ought to get a t-shirt for her.”
“That’s a good idea. If you thought Ryan’s mom was pissed earlier, wait till his dad starts sneaking glances at dinner.”
“Ewwwww,” I said, disgusted. Images of a pervy, leering old man flashed through my brain.
“Aaah, he’s not a bad guy. It’s just… they’re hard not to notice when they’re on display like that.”
“Yeah, I guess,” I admitted, then elbowed him in the ribs. “Does that mean you’re checking them out?”
“Like I said, when they’re in your face like that… besides, they’re the only ones I’m seeing lately. I’ve noticed you don’t dress too… shall we say, provocatively.”
“You want me to start?”
“HELL yeah.”
“Then I’m definitely not,” I teased.
“Dammit… I knew I shouldn’t have said anything…” he said in mock frustration.
We walked along in silence for a few seconds.
I was the one who broke it. “By the way, I think it’s really cool how you’re so nice to Ryan’s little sisters.”
“They’re great, aren’t they?” he asked with real affection.
“Yeah – and they’re totally in puppy love with you.”
He laughed. “Yeah, that was one of the reasons the Millers kicked me out.”
Wait – hang on a minute –
“What?” I asked.
“Ryan’s parents were a little… you know, protective. I totally agreed with them. They’re like little sisters to me, of course – I never had any brothers or sisters, so I think they’re awesome – but, yeah, Mara’s 13 in a couple of months, and I’m not exactly the kind of dude that parents of a teenage girl want around.”
“No, no, back up – you lived with them?”
“Yeah, for a couple of weeks after Trevor – my step-dad – kicked me out,” he said. Immediately his tone changed, and I could hear this loathing in his voice.
“What happened?”
“Well… I dropped out of high school, for one.”
My stomach twisted.
So he was a high school dropout.
Greeeeaaaat.
He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “Probably not what you wanted to hear.”
“No, I… whatever,” I shrugged, trying not to be judgmental.
“We used to live in Los Angeles. That’s where I grew up. My mom and dad split up when I was ten, and Mom remarried when I was thirteen. To Trevor.” His voice went icy again. “Then, the summer before my senior year, Trevor got transferred here, to Athens. He makes a lot more than my mom, so… they didn’t give me a choice.”
“That sucks… your senior year…”
“Yeah,” he said grimly. “What sucks even more is when you’re planning to start a band in LA. Someday you’re going to play the Whiskey a Go Go, where the Doors started… and then you find out you’re moving to Buttf*ck Egypt.”
I laughed – I couldn’t help it. “Athens is hardly Buttf*ck Egypt.”
“It is when you’re living in LA.”
“Athens is where REM and the B-52’s began,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, my mom kept pointing that out. Over and over and over. I fought to stay with my dad in California, but by then he had a pretty bad drug habit. He was kind of going downhill fast,” Derek said, his voice getting softer and more serious. “So my mom convinced my dad to tell me it was for my own good.”
He shook his head, smiling sardonically.
“He even told me it was better to start a band here because in LA, the competition was too cutthroat. He said here I could actually get noticed. My mom probably just gave him a couple of hundred dollars for his next fix, is all.”
I felt so bad for him… I could hear the pain and betrayal in his voice…
I reached out and squeezed his fingers softly.
He looked over in surprise – and then smiled sweetly and squeezed my fingers back.
My heart pounded in my chest… but I pulled my fingers away, afraid of what I was feeling.
He let me go, and started talking again. “My mom said if I came here, I could start a band and she’d be behind it a hundred percent. So I gave in. But when I got here, I was a total little shit about it. I admit it. I mean, I was going out every night and getting drunk, getting into all sorts of trouble… Trevor was pissing me off, screaming at me all the time, and I was just like, ‘F*ck you, man. You think you can control me? Watch this.’
“Anyway, the only good part about moving here was meeting Ryan. We clicked the first day in gym class because he had on a Stones t-shirt. He was this big, funny nerd – what do you think of him, by the way? I didn’t ask you.” Derek looked wary as he said it.
“He’s sweet. He’s a really nice guy.”
Apparently I passed the test, because the shadow on Derek’s face passed and he beamed. “He is – he’s great. Anyway, he took me home and we jammed in his basement the first week of school, and his family just kind of adopted me. When I dropped out of school and Trevor finally kicked my ass out, I crashed at Ryan’s for a couple of weeks, but it made his mom uncomfortable that I was just hanging out all day, not going to school, not doing anything. And Mara started acting… weird. It was a little inappropriate.”
I liked Derek even more when he said that. He genuinely agreed that a 12-year-old girl should not be living in a house with a non-relative like him, no matter how upstanding he was in his conduct with her.
“So anyway, Ryan broke the news to me. He was all apologetic and embarrassed – it was pretty funny. He said my parents would let me stay until I found a job and a place, and I would always be welcome back to practice and have dinner, but I had to move, and soon. Like I said, I didn’t blame them at all. I went out the next day and found a job at the 40 Watt cleaning up and shit, and I moved out a week later.”
“Where’d you go?”
“The grossest, grimiest, most f*cked-up house you can imagine. You are never, ever seeing it. Seriously, I’m basically living on a futon I found at an attic sale for fifteen bucks. My roommates are a drag queen, a repo man, and this guy named Dale who delivers pizza when he’s not stoned out of his mind. And sometimes when he is.”
“Sounds charming,” I laughed.
“Now you know why I – ”
He caught himself and clammed up.
“…why you sleep around so much?” I finished for him, eyebrows raised mockingly.
He winced. “Let’s not talk about that.”
Yeah, not really a topic of conversation I wanted to dwell on.
“Good,” I said.