DRASTIC (Book 4 of the Soundcrush Series)

Chapter 30: Drummer Boys Make Deals

This song is mentioned late in the chapter. A cover of Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover. A cover by Matt Palmer. Sophie Hawkins did the original back in the nineties....


Bodie

Of fucking course the kid is a natural drummer, but his skill on the keys blows me away. It's a classical piece he's playing, ironically one that I've heard a lot because when Ashlynn lived with Trace, she had a classical playlist, and this piece was the first song.

Not that we listened to her playlist intentionally. Sometimes we would all hang out by Trace's pool. He would invariably say something to piss her off. Her response? She would change the playlist to classical music on her phone, go inside, and lock the back door so we were forced to listen.

Trace, never being foresightful enough to bring his own damn phone off the kitchen counter in anticipation of pissing her off, and being far too proud to apologize to her, would just ignore the situation and use the opportunity of her absence to break out the liquor from the pool bar. After a couple of rounds of tequila shots, Leed would be the one to either call Ashlynn  or charm his way through the locked door and get her to change the playlist back to something more fun. He never got her to come back out to the pool, though.

I grin at the memory as Darius finishes the piece. I guess Leed finally got his Tequila Girl. It will be pretty interesting to see how that goes, between them. If Leed can settle down with Trace's ex-wife, and with Ollie and Tam in the mix, surely there is hope for me and Marley and Darius.

And TJ. No way around it, TJ is very important to Darius.

So that makes TJ important in this house. Shit. I shouldn't have thrown him in Marley's face like that. It's just fucking hard to take—to see her cryin' on his shoulder. Seeing Darius look to him like he's a compass. Like he would be lost without him.

TJ stands in the place I should have had the shot to fill.

But the past is the past. And here and now, Darius and I share something that TJ can't take from us.

This. A passion. A skill. A craft.

I check my watch. Leed should be here soon, but there's enough time to point out to Darius that there was something squirrelly with a couple measures of his bass cleft. When I ask him to play the beginning again, I stand behind him and follow along with the sheet music. He makes the very subtle mistake again—the right notes, just not expressed properly. I've heard this piece a lot I know exactly what it should sound like.

"Something's not right there with those sixteenth notes." I circle the measures a finger, then dot the staccato marks and the ties above other notes, denoting an expression of flow.

He gives me a look, like he doesn't like being corrected, but plays it again, slowly. "Yeah, that's it."

When he speeds it back up, he makes the same mistake.

"Shit," he mutters. He plays the several measures four times more at three-quarter tempo and then brings it up to speed four more times.

I'm impressed by his dedication. I half-expected him to blow my observation off, because no casual listener could hear the slightly misexpressed rhythm.

"Thanks," he said. "I didn't realized you played piano, too."

I laugh. "No where near as well as you. But I play a little of everything. Music was all I did in juvi. There was a music therapy program, and I figured out that I could play just about anything. After I settled in, I kept my nose clean and didn't cause any trouble in there, so a couple of the guards helped me out and let me practically live in the music room on their shifts. It was basically a three year intensive, self-taught music education program for me."