He pushed back in his rolling chair, facing me a bit. “You probably heard that I have stage fright,” he said simply, saving me from answering at all. “That’s the reason I work in the studio, as a music producer, instead of being in a band anymore.”
“Right.”
Made sense.
And it sounded a hell of a lot like some prepared line he’d delivered many times in the past as part of an official press release or something.
Maybe people believed it.
And maybe I wanted to believe it was just that simple. But if the only issue he had was stage fright, he could still go down to Little Black Hole and work there, right?
Not to mention that he could still hang out in his backyard, by his beautiful pool, for some length of time on a gorgeous Saturday, with his best friend and his sister. I’d seen him come out into the yard twice now, so clearly he could leave the house. But he’d barely stayed for five minutes when he came out to say hi to Xander and Courteney.
Which made me super fucking curious what his limits were.
Definitely didn’t feel like I had the right to ask just yet, though.
Maybe he could sense the barrage of questions I was holding back, because he went on. “I prefer a controlled environment,” he said carefully. “I’m pretty obsessive about my work, and I like things a certain way. And I’m an introvert. I function at my best when I’m alone for long periods of time, or one-on-one with people. I’ve, uh, been known to go a little overboard on the perfection thing when it comes to music and producing. It’s probably related to the creative-genius spectrum or something, if I’m allowed to say that. I’m not calling myself a genius. But I’ve been told it’s something like that. Plus… my anxiety.”
“You have anxiety?” I asked gently.
“I have a predisposition for it, which probably comes from my mom.”
“Okay.” I took that in, listening and trying to absorb everything he said rather than pry. Whatever he was offering to tell me, for now, was fair enough.
But I felt the need to ask this one thing, because without knowing, it kinda made my job here awkward. And I really didn’t want to make dangerous assumptions.
“Do you ever leave your property, Cary? I’m sorry to ask you that, and you can tell me if I’m overstepping and I’ll back off. But I’ve heard that you don’t, and I’d like to know. So I can make sure I do the best job I can here. And I would never tell anyone anything about you that you don’t want me to,” I added. “Even without an NDA. Professional stuff, personal stuff, it’s protected here.”
He looked away. He ran a hand through his hair and cleared his throat quietly. He stretched out his fingers like his hand was stiff.
“I don’t leave my house much,” he admitted. Obviously, he was uncomfortable talking about it. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I haven’t left the property much in the last five years. And I can go for long stretches, weeks at a time, when I’m deep in an album, not even leaving the studio. I’m just used to it, I guess. I don’t really think about it anymore.”
“And what about before that? Before five years ago?”
The fingers of his left hand started tapping out a rhythm on the arm of his chair.
“If you don’t want to talk about this—”
“I’ve always had issues with being famous,” he said. “I’ve always had some level of fear about being onstage. When I toured with Alive, I literally had to be pushed or pulled onstage almost every show.”
“That must’ve been hard.”
His eyes met mine. “I didn’t know I had anxiety, or performance anxiety in particular, for many years. Not until a therapist told me what it was.” He said this kind of lightly, matter-of-factly. Like he knew what his issue was and he had a handle on it.
He made it all sound very normal. Very okay.
But it didn’t feel okay.
“I have the anxiety under control now.”
“Okay.”
I got the feeling there was a lot more to it than that. That he was only telling me what he wanted me to know.
But the mention of a therapist gave me hope. It meant that he was getting help. That he had support, when I’d feared that he didn’t.
He went back to his laptop. “It’s five. You can take off. I’ll see you back here tomorrow