shocking that they’d begun talking. Honestly, they were a perfect match. For a while, Kelly suffered from an eating disorder, trying to keep up with Hollywood’s beauty standards. Alex was the main one who helped her through her hardships. He would sit with her and eat meals every single day without fail, making sure she knew she wasn’t alone in her struggles. What started as friendship slowly began to transform into something with more meaning.
We took a few more photographs with the fans while ignoring the vultures on the other side asking us insane questions, then climbed into the back of the black Audi that was waiting for us.
“Hey, Ralph, you all right with me smoking in here?” Alex asked as he leaned forward toward the driver.
“Whatever you want to do is fine by me, Mr. Smith,” Ralph replied, being the laid-back driver he’d always been. Alex always found the need to ask him about the smoking thing, even though Ralph always said it was fine.
Alex sat back as he lit up a joint. He wasn’t a big smoker or anything, but he always had a joint after some kind of event. Maybe that was his way of unwinding from social gatherings. I would’ve taken up the habit if I thought it would’ve helped with my social anxiety. Instead, pot made me more paranoid of what people were thinking of me.
Hard pass for me.
“You hear this song?” Alex asked, pulling out his phone and hitting play. “‘Godspeed,’ by James Blake. Shit. His voice is so fucking dope, man. Smooth as whiskey. Reminds me of our old stuff, before the record deal.” He plopped back in his seat and closed his eyes. “Whenever I hear music like this, I feel like a sellout. This is the music we wanted to make, you know? Music that fucked with your soul in a good way. That made you feel alive.”
The song was powerful in such a chill way, which wasn’t shocking for James Blake. He made me feel to the depths of my being. Alex wasn’t wrong—our music used to feel like that too. Like it mattered. When we signed with our record label, they changed our direction a lot, which brought us fame and millions of fans along with millions of dollars. Sometimes we wondered at what expense, though. How much money and fame was enough to sell one’s soul?
Many days I wished I could go back to the days of small venues and tiny crowds.
Felt more authentic back then.
I reached for my phone and opened my current playlist routine to share my current favorite track from James Blake. There wasn’t a day that Alex and I didn’t send each other music. We used music to express how we were feeling day in and day out. Sometimes we were too exhausted for true conversations, so songs were our way to communicate.
Had a great day? “It Was a Good Day,” by Ice Cube. Felt down? “This City,” by Sam Fischer. The world getting on your last nerve? “Fuck You,” by CeeLo Green. No matter what the feeling was, there was a song that could express it.
“You heard this one?” I asked, turning on “Retrograde,” by James Blake. First time I heard it, I knew it was important.
Alex opened his eyes and leaned forward. His brows knitted as his head began to slowly nod to the beat of the song. “Shit,” he said, smirking as the lyrics laid their seed in his head. His eyes glassed over as the joint sat between his lips, the end of it lit with reddish-orange heat. “We need to get back to this kind of stuff.” He rubbed a thumb against his watery eyes, and I smirked.
My sensitive brother always got more in his feelings when he was getting high.
“For real, Oliver. We need to get back to—”
His words were cut short as the car came to a sudden halt, jerking Alex and me forward in the back seat. “What the hell was that?” I asked.
“Sorry, you guys. Some assholes came rushing down the road like idiots,” Ralph said before pushing his foot against the gas to start again.
Just as we were sitting back in our seat and beginning to relax again, the world began to shatter around us, along with the windows that busted from the impact of a car slamming against the left side of the car. There wasn’t any time to react or comprehend exactly what was going on. All I knew was everything ached.