I'll Be

Chapter Eighteen: The Truth

On the Friday before our meeting, I stood at my locker in nervous excitement. I wasn’t sure how any of it would go, considering we didn’t even have a demo.

            Shit. We didn’t even have a demo.

            While I stood and mentally kicked myself, I could sense someone behind me. Instinctively, I smiled.

            “You think you’re so crafty.” I flirted, shaking my head “But I am so not…”

            I turned, and jumped back. Reeve hovered, smirked and raised an eyebrow. He shook his head, “Sorry, babe. Not quite.”

            “Hey.” I sighed, running my hands through my hair, “What’s up? Here to give me some pointers for the meeting?”

            He shook his head, “Not exactly. Here more for…personal matters.”

            I turned and slammed my locker, “Sorry, Reeve. We, as a band, don’t set each other up on blind dates. Not that you’re horrible; you’re a total catch.”

            “Har har.” He pointed down the hall to the orchestra room, and we started to walk.

            Reeve, as a friend, was hesitant at best. We’d been cordial at dinner, and I thought we were getting along fine. But slowly, the closer Sawyer and I became, the more distant Reeve became to me. I always figured it would’ve been different; I thought he’d be the Shawn to my Topanga, the Joey to my Monica. But it didn’t really play out that way, and now I felt further from Reeve than I had ever been before, which said a lot, considering.

            Reeve shut the door to the orchestra room, pulled out a chair and offered it to me. I sat, and he straddled the other, resting his arm on the back while he searched for something on his phone.

            “What are we doing, Reeve?” I asked, and he raised his finger, telling me to wait. If this were any other situation, I probably would’ve bent it back and broken it, but I didn’t do that for two reasons: 1) I knew he needed that finger to play, and I wasn’t about to let e.p. have a bassist out of commission, and 2) I wasn’t quick enough to grab it. Carefully, he handed me his phone, which displayed a video from last year of the boys playing The Slope, just like we did.

            Reeve cleared his throat, “This video is the highest quality video of us playing that’s been posted on the Internet.”

            I nodded, “I know. Last I checked, you guys had something like a hundred and fifty thousand hits.” Reeve reached for his phone, and scrolled down carefully while he spoke.

            “Adrian put the video up on KDM’s webpage two weeks ago,” He explained, flicking at the screen with his finger, “And now we have…”

            He handed the phone back to me, and I almost screamed. I swallowed the excitement, whispering “Six hundred and forty three thousand?”

            “And counting.” He nodded, refreshing the page; the number jumped up by one hundred.

            I looked up, “What does this have to do with me?”

            Reeve slid his phone back in his pocket, stood up and began to walk around the room. I don’t know what I expected him to tell me, but when he started to explain, I was slightly caught off guard.

            “All Sawyer ever wanted to do was play.” He said, and I could see the smile slowly creep across his face, “From the time we were in middle school, I could barely get him to put his guitar down long enough to play catch. He’d already been playing for years, and his dad had trained him expertly. But then he handed me one of his acoustics, and I couldn’t put it down; I understood how he felt, what he loved about it. So we started to play; we’d sit in his room, playing any song we could. It didn’t take me long to realize that he was better than me, that he always would be better than me. He just had that talent, you know? That gift.”