Collaring Chaz (Dante's Infernal #2) - Joel Abernathy Page 0,6
by you?”
“Sure,” he said without taking his eyes off the page. “What is it?”
“The new song. I was just looking over my part this morning, and I thought maybe we could change that final riff to a chromatic run up to the third, kinda like Tom Hamilton did in ‘Just Give Me a Kiss’?”
Dante looked up, staring blankly at me. “Tom who?”
“Tom Hamilton? Legendary bassist of Aerosmith? Sweet Emotion?” I pressed, hoping something would click.
“Right. Yeah, let’s just table it to get through rehearsals, and we’ll talk about it later?”
“Oh. Uh…”
“Be right back,” he said, going over to the sound engineer who’d just walked in before I could say anything.
“Sure,” I mumbled, pulling my guitar strap over my head and settling into my spot in the background. I watched as the others bustled around doing their own shit. Cash still worked security sometimes, so he was talking with one of the engineers about a setup for our next tour, and Rafael and Dante were having an animated debate about the sheet music Dante had just basically told me was set in stone.
It was probably a dumb idea anyway. They each had some integral role to play while all I really had to do was keep Cherry in tune and throw away plastic cups.
When we finally got started, I was starting to crash. Man, I really needed to find a way to get some sleep. The mania of being on tour made it easier to get by, but I was beginning to hate recording sessions with a vengeance. Dante had always been kind of a diva, but now that he was sober, he was twice as perfectionistic and alert enough to notice every tiny mistake.
Most of them were mine.
By noon, we hadn’t even gotten a single good take on the song, and Dante and Rafael were both insistent about doing it all in one take rather than splicing it together in post. It was “more authentic” that way, and they were probably right, but every time I played the same riffs, I felt like I got worse instead of better.
My mind always zoned out when I was bored, and when I zoned out I fucked up. When I got called out for fucking up, I got anxious, and when I got anxious, I zoned out even more. It was just a continually worsening cycle of sucking.
We were in the middle of a take I had somehow managed not to fuck up three quarters of the way through, so of course Drake showed up in the sound booth and motioned for everyone to stop.
Son of a bitch.
“Let’s break,” Dante muttered, going into the booth to meet his dad. The real one, not the guy he called Daddy.
That had to be confusing.
I decided it would be a good time to get some fresh air, but by the time I made it out back behind the studio, I was already lighting up to worsen the air quality in my lungs. I’d been trying to cut back while we were home, but today was testing my one-week streak--which was as far as I’d ever gotten before, since I started in eighth grade trying to impress Raf and Dante.
At the last minute, I swapped the smokes for a blunt. It would take the edge off my nerves without the guilt, at least. It was the one thing I felt okay taking around Dante anyway, since he was still in recovery. Hell, I didn’t know how the tour was gonna work, since it fucked with my anxiety enough even when I was high and or drunk the whole time. Better to just take shit one day at a time.
The door opened, and when I saw Drake step out, I felt like I was back in high school getting busted by him. I quickly put the blunt out against the brick wall and tucked it away, but I could tell from the look on his face I hadn’t done it soon enough.
“Some things never change,” he said in his usual flat tone. “You know, I really don’t give a fuck what you smoke, as long as you’re doing your job, but if this is how you spend your breaks, I see why it’s taken you all day to record a single good take.”
I grimaced. Guess he’d been talking to the others. I wasn’t sure who’d ratted me out, and I didn’t really want to know. I could’ve defended myself and told him it was the first smoke I’d