Crew stops Brad’s hand. “Hold on. What do we even know about Jeremy?”
All eyes focus on Liam. “I only just met him. Dirk introduced me to him yesterday. He may be my uncle’s buddy, but I did some research. He’s legit.”
“How is it we’re only now hearing about this?” Crew asks. “If he’s legit, why didn’t Dirk tell us about him a long time ago?”
“He didn’t want to get our hopes up. But after our gig with White Poison and all the attention we’ve gotten lately, he finally gets that we’re the real deal.”
“The real deal?” Garrett asks. “As in he didn’t think we were good enough before?”
Everyone looks at me. I cringe.
Liam touches my shoulder. “I told you good things would happen if we brought her in.”
Crew skirts the back of the couch. “Re-record all of our songs? That’s a lot of damn work.”
“Work that will pay off in the long run,” Liam says. “You know it will.” He turns to me. “Are you up for it? This puts a lot on you, too. We’ll help where we can. But Crew’s our lyricist, which means you’ll have to spend a lot of time together, reworking your songs.”
“Great.” Crew looks less than excited as he gets a bottle of water from the mini fridge.
Liam slings his guitar over one shoulder. “Listen, if it was up to me, this would be a done deal. But it has to be unanimous. If you want to go in a different direction, well, that’s the way it will have to be.”
“But … SummerStage,” Garrett says, pouting.
Crew smiles for the first time today. “I have to admit performing there would be pretty sweet.”
Garrett hops off the couch and goes for his drumsticks. “Come on, then. We have a lot of work to do. We have until Friday, so we don’t have to decide today.” He walks around his drums and sits on his stool. He leans forward, close to his mic, then he belts out in an announcer’s voice, “SummerStage presents the hottest up-and-coming rock band in the tri-state area—Reckless Alibi!”
Chapter Twelve
Crew
New material by this summer.
I shake my head for the umpteenth time since meeting Jeremy Halstead a few hours ago. I admit, it’s what we’ve been working so hard for all these years, so why, now that it’s happening, do I feel so apprehensive about it? Of the four of us, I think I’m the only one questioning any of it.
I blow out a breath and let my head sink back onto the couch—the five of us.
I make sure everyone is gone and then pull out my notebook. It’s almost always with me so I can jot down lyrics when they come to me. But nobody gets to see it. They all know it’s private until I complete a song.
Getting comfy on the couch, I open it to some of the first pages, knowing we could use some of it for the new material Jeremy is demanding. I just don’t know if I can, though. I flip through the pages knowing some of them I could never sing—not even if a gun were pointed at my head. But there are a few that could work. Mom still has a few of my notebooks—surely there are bits and pieces I could turn into songs. I’ll have to make a trip into the city and see if I can find them.
I open the “Abby” photo album on my phone and look at the pictures. Would she be okay with that? Would I?
There are two songs I wrote when we were dating that weren’t really about her at all. One was about her dad, specifically about being controlled by someone who wanted to dictate your life. It could be about anyone. I’d have to adapt the song for Bria. The second song is about a turtle. I still remember the day Abby and I helped it get from the sidewalk to a pond. The lyrics I wrote about that damn turtle were stupid, but if I changed them a bit the song could be about finding your way and letting people help you.
Some of the songs I wrote about Abby were shared with Naked Whale. We even put them to music. They were pretty damn good, especially when Abby was singing with me. Liam is the only member of RA who’s ever heard them, and he knows better than to bring them up.