rockband chapter 5 babey 😈🤘🏻
Neil tilts a record out of the stacks, and the sun catches the sleek surface and shows him his reflection.
“You’re not even in the right section,” Kevin calls. He’s two rows away flipping through rock-punk CDs, looking exhilarated when they fall towards him like dominoes.
The whole store is no bigger than a spacious bedroom, and the shop front is all boxy windows, letting in honeycombs of late-afternoon light. Kevin’s never looked so relaxed, dragging his fingers along the spines of albums, inspecting the equipment behind the till, smiling and chatting with the owner.
“There is no right section,” he mutters, sliding the album back into its slot. “It’s all music.”
“Right,” Kevin says. Neil glances up and finds him unexpectedly close, mouth pursed reluctantly with amusement. “Except we’re not here for all music.”
“What are we actually here for again?” Neil asks, distracted. He can see Andrew waiting outside with his back to them and his arms crossed, serious and stock-still as a bodyguard.
“Inspiration.”
Neil watches Kevin’s face. The crease that’s usually between his brows is only suggestion now, a slouchy, un-tensed line. He’s tolerable like this, Neil thinks, almost impressive, choosing music to feed his creativity.
“You love it here,” Neil accuses. “This is a vacation for you.”
Kevin scoffs. “Like you’re not the same.”
Neil shrugs. There’s an upright piano on the wall and he wants to squeeze the keys in his hands like fingers in a crowd. The sound of voices and tires on asphalt from outside spreads like frosting over the crumbling drumbeat from the stereo. The rusting brown of the wallpaper behind the counter looks almost orange with the full force of the sun on it.
He could live and die in a place like this, head down, hands full of bright new music and dark classics, never in silence, never alone.
“Come look at this,” Kevin says. Neil follows him to the far corner of the shop where there are picked-over alternative CDs and peeling tape labels. He plucks an album from the stack and wiggles it at Neil. “Old school Ausreißer.”
Neil squints at the cover art. “You look like a bad metal band.” The original four are caught in the middle of a set, dressed in all black under a red spotlight, mid-howl. The word Ausreißer is so stylized that it’s almost illegible.
Kevin rolls his eyes and puts the CD back in its slot. “Things change. When we found you you looked like you were on day ten of a bender.”
“I can go back to that, if it’s the look you’re going for. Wouldn’t want to stand out in a band full of junkies and burnouts.”
“Funny,” Kevin says flatly. “Just bring that smart mouth to song writing.” He gathers his little stack of music and a clear box of sturdy picks, and drops them on the front counter to be checked out.
Neil hesitates, swaddled in the darkest, warmest corner of the store, reluctant to splash back out into the cold. He can already see how it will play out: Andrew’s silence and Kevin’s focus, the way they take up so much of the sidewalk that Neil has to fall in behind them or walk in the gutter, the drive home like a never-ending commute to nowhere at all.
He’s listless without a stage, and Kevin won’t let him forget that he’s not a natural born songwriter. He’s waiting for inspiration like that second raindrop after you swear you felt the first one.
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