Time To Live

Chapter 14: Reunion

Rick sat at the kitchen table in his bandmate's rented house and sighed. "Okay, so we have two songs that have gigantic holes in their infrastructures and I promised Chris that we'd put our brains together and try to work a miracle."

Ryan laughed. "How do you expect me to work a fucking miracle?"

"I just do," his friend grinned. "Because we need you, man!"

"A'ight," Ryan shrugged. "Let's see what I can do, but don't expect much!"

They toyed around with the two tracks – tentatively titled simply "Macabresque" and "Lament" – and resolved some issues while creating others. Rick was a bit unnerved that the chord progressions that led into the bridge of "Lament" were not stacking up as he heard them in his mind, but Ryan assured him that if they walked away for a while an epiphany was a lot more likely.

So, instead of trying to force it, they were currently sitting in Ryan's kitchen sipping two tall cold ones. Glancing around at the set-up, Rick grinned. "Nice place, by the way. How'd you find it?"

Ryan shrugged. "Friend of a friend of a friend told me that it was available and that I should check it out. It was exactly what I was willing to pay in rent and, yeah, it works. It's a good place to call home for now."

His friend nodded and took a swig of his beer. "And it's being kept very clean."

Ryan snorted. "For now."

"Are you expecting any visitors later on?" his bandmate raised an eyebrow suggestively.

His friend rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Wow, that's how you're going to play this?"

Rick shrugged. "I know that there's someone in your life, so why not just spit it out? You're not keeping the place looking like this for your own sake, that's for sure! I've lived with you before, remember?"

Ryan buried his face into his hands and sighed. "What do you want to know?"

"What's her name?"

"Not telling."

Rick groaned. "Come on, man! How old is she?"

"Seriously?" Ryan sat up wide eyed at this. "You want to know how old she is?"

"Alright," his bandmate confessed with a chuckle. "I don't actually fucking care how old she is. Where did you meet her?"

Ryan shook his head and laughed at this. "At a bar, of all the fucking places. Shane and AJ insisted that I go with them, and then they were playing this ridiculous game where AJ gave us all dumb fake names and shit. I was supposed to tell any chicks we met that my name was Charles and I was a real estate attorney."