Your Echo (Sherbrooke Station Book 2) Page 5

  She’s hunched over in the entryway now, lacing on a pair of faded pink Keds after dropping the knitted pair of slippers you’re supposed to wear here into the basket by the door. I stand there in just my socks. No way in hell was I going to put a pair of fucking knitted slippers on.

  I lied to her. Partially. I did think tonight’s presentation would at the very least turn out to be amusing, but the real reason I came to this thing was the chance of seeing her. Call it desperate or inappropriate—or inappropriately desperate—but I’ve never been one to avoid jumping down the rabbit hole to chase after inspiration. If there’s any word to describe what the memory of this girl has become to me, it’s that.

  Inspiration.

  Don’t get me wrong; I’d be on her in a heartbeat given half the chance, but that’s not what I’m here for. I’m here because she’s the first page of a story, and I want to read the rest.

  “You just gonna stand there all night?”

  Her question pulls me back to reality.

  I shrug. “Maybe.”

  “Okay, then.” She throws a backpack over her shoulder. “I’ll see you around.”

  There’s a blast of warm air from the July night outside, and then she’s gone.

  I pull my shoes on and head out after her. She’s just about to turn the street corner, blonde hair spilling over her backpack and catching the glow of the streetlight.

  “Hey!” I call. “Hey, Stéphanie!”

  I can’t help adding an extra heavy accent to her name. She pauses with a hand on her hip, glaring at me.

  “I’m going this way too,” I tell her, as I jog up the few metres between us. “You mind if we walk together?”

  Her hand stays on her hip. “I’m a big girl. I don’t need a man in skinny jeans to walk me home at night.”

  “Maybe I was asking because I need you to walk me.” I glance up and down the street and drop my voice to a whisper. “I’m scared of the dark.”

  “You have too many creepy tattoos for me to believe you’re scared of monsters.”

  I step closer. “Maybe I’m scared that I am the monster.”

  A toss of those blonde waves. “Now you’re just getting philosophical.”

  She starts walking again, and I fall into step beside her. Most of the houses on the street have their windows wide open to catch the evening breeze. Every now and then, we’ll pass by a strain of music, muffled notes passing into the road through shifting curtains. I hear bottles clinking and then several voices start singing along to Sherbrooke Station’s big single, ‘Sofia.’

  I grin and glance at Stéphanie. She rolls her eyes.

  “You live nearby?” I ask, as we turn onto Rue Rachel, heading down towards the hub of Boulevard Saint-Laurent.

  “Just a bit before Saint Lau,” she answers, the ghost of an accent in her voice when she says the street name.

  “Convenient,” I comment. She gives me a confused look and I elaborate. “For going out.”

  “I don’t drink, so mostly it’s just loud and annoying.”

  I step ahead of her, turning around to walk backwards so we’re face to face.

  “You don’t have to drink to go out. You should enjoy the vibrant paradise of Montreal while you’re young.”

  She stares at me like I’m crazy. “Have you ever actually hung out around drunk people while sober?”

  I have to stop and think about that. My hesitation seems to be the only answer she needs.

  “Didn’t think so. I wouldn’t be giving sober people advice on how to enjoy Montreal if I were you.”

  I turn around and line myself up between her and the edge of the sidewalk again.

  “Wait, so what do you do?” I ask. “At night and on the weekends and stuff?”

  She outright laughs at that. “Well, at night I usually sleep. You know, like a normal person. On the weekends, I work most of the day. I didn’t know you’d been famous long enough to forget that life isn’t just one big party.”

  I stop dead in my tracks and pretend to be shocked. “Life isn’t just one big party?”

  She stops too, staring me right in the face. She’s taller than I realized, all endless legs and willowy arms.

  “I’m trying to figure out if you really are as shallow as you pretend to be.”

  I can hear the noise of Saint-Laurent from where we are: the car horns blaring at wayward pedestrians, the cacophony of clinking cutlery in the dozens of restaurants. Underneath it all there’s the thumping bass getting pumped out of nightclubs that won’t fill up for another few hours, a steady lub-dub beat that pulses in time with all the dark hearts in this city. There’s not a sticky staircase on that street I haven’t stumbled up at some unholy hour of the night, alcohol burning at the back of my throat and in my veins.

  “Sometimes I feel like I’m trying to figure that out too.”

  I didn’t really mean to sound serious, but even in the darkness, I see the pity in her eyes, and I wish she’d laughed instead.

  “Would you believe me if I told you it gets better?” she asks.

  I see it then, what everyone else must see when they look at her: a beautiful girl with a sweet face and a sunny disposition, a girl who wears pink Keds and volunteers in her spare time, a girl who can’t see someone else’s pain without wanting to help them fix it. She’s the kind of girl you forget to put up walls around, like stumbling upon a safe house in the middle of fighting a war.

  She’s as disarming as a white flag in the breeze, and that’s how she arms herself.

  “I’d believe you if you told me it might,” I answer. “I’m kind of cautious when it comes to optimism.”

  She stares for a moment longer and then throws her head back to laugh.

  “Mon dieu, it’s like everything you say is trying to be a depressing rock song.”

  I didn’t notice the coiled tension in the air until it snapped with the sound of her laughter.

  “Hey,” I tell her, “there’s a reason I’ve been called a ‘lyrical genius’ more times than I can remember.”

  “Lyrical genius?” she scoffs. “You have a song called ‘Adam the Dickhead.’”

  Now that’s a surprise.

  “You know about ‘Adam the Dickhead?’” I question. “I forgot we actually recorded that. It didn’t even make it onto our first demo.”

  If she’s secretly some kind of super fan, it’ll be the biggest curveball I’ve ever been hit with.

  Stéphanie shrugs. “My roommate is a little bit obsessed with your band. I just remember that song because of how much it sucked.”

  I can’t argue with that.

  “In my defense, Adam really was a dickhead. He was some guy my girlfriend cheated on me with.”

  “So why not call it ‘Adam and My Ex-Girlfriend Are Dickheads?’”

  I reach up to tug on one of my gauges. We still haven’t moved any farther down the street.

  “To be honest,” I explain, “I probably deserved getting cheated on. I wasn’t the world’s greatest boyfriend. Adam, though—that bastard really was a fucking dickhead.”

  Stéphanie smirks. “For some reason, I don’t have trouble believing you about the world’s greatest boyfriend thing.”

  I place a hand on my chest. “Hey now. Weren’t you just trying to pull me out of my pit of self-loathing?”

  “Sacrement,” she swears. “Again with the tortured artist thing. Can’t you shut it off?”

  “Nope. I have to keep it running twenty-four seven. I know you thought this was the money-maker”—I wave my hand in front of my face—“but really it’s up here.” I tap the top of my head.

  “Up there must be a scary, scary place.”

  I leer at her. “You have no idea, Stéphanie.”

  She shifts her backpack higher up on her shoulder. “You sure about that, Ace?”

  “No.” The tension is back, a knot tightening between us. “No, I’m not sure about that at all.”

  She jerks her chin towards the end of the block. �
��My street’s right up ahead, so I guess this is goodnight.”

  I wait for her to leave, but she doesn’t move.

  “Goodnight, then. Enjoy sleeping like a normal person. I’ll be up there”—I point towards St. Laurent—“being loud and annoying.”

  I’m not sure if I’ll go out tonight, but it’s not like there’s anything stopping me. Sometimes I wish there was—some concrete barrier, some gate I could put up to keep myself away.

  “Ace.” Stéphanie steps closer, so close I can see the individual strands of her pale eyelashes and the shadows they cast on her cheeks. “Take some advice and don’t go there tonight. Just tonight. Give it a try.”

  A sound forms in the back of my throat but doesn’t turn into any words. All I can do is watch as she lifts a hand up between us. She holds it hovering there, her fingers trembling, before she clenches it into a fist and lets it drop. Then she’s walking away, pale legs and pink Keds carrying her around the street corner and out of sight.

  There’s a bench on the other side of the road. I cross over the asphalt to sit down on the perforated metal seat, pulling my phone out to glance at the time.

  9:45PM. Just over two hours until all the clubs will be full. I could hit up one of the cheap student bars and be properly buzzed by then. JP would probably come out if I asked him to. There’s no better wingman than JP. He gets all the girls’ attention by jumping around like a ridiculous fuckwit on the dance floor, and then he brings half a dozen of them over when he comes to talk to me at the bar. We could have ourselves a grand old Thursday night.

  I glance up at the lights of St-Laurent, at the never-ceasing trails of people traipsing up and down the road. Wherever you end up on that street, you never end up alone.

  I flip my phone from hand to hand, staring at the spot where Stéphanie and I stopped. When I do finally dial a number, it isn’t JP’s.

  “If this is a last-minute request for me to be your wingman tonight, the answer is no.”

  “Calm your tits, Cole. That’s not why I called.”

  He grumbles something unintelligible. The fucker is always grumbling.

  “I, um...” I swallow. I should have planned something to say before I called. “I just wanted to say that...I...um...”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “No!” I realize shouting probably isn’t going to convince him that’s true. “No, I’m not. I’m not drunk at all, and the reason I’m calling is to say that I was...uh...”

  I hear the muffled sound of a woman’s voice. Cole puts his hand over the microphone before he says something back to her.

  Roxanne.

  Remembering the look in her eyes when she found me on her balcony that morning helps me pull my shit together.

  “Look, Cole, I was an ass. I was two asses. I was like...one of those animal costumes where one end is the head and one end is the ass, except both ends were the ass and...I...um...”

  “Christ, you are drunk, aren’t you?”

  “No, I swear I’m not! I just don’t say I’m sorry very often.”

  There’s a moment of silence.

  “Ah. So that’s what this is about.”

  “Yeah.” I rub the back of my neck. “I’m sorry. I was out of line. I was more than out of line. I was fucking disrespectful. Just because I don’t remember it, doesn’t make it any less fucked up.”

  “That’s true.” Cole’s tone is wary.

  “You’re my brother. You and the guys—you’re my family. I know it hasn’t always been easy for you, especially since the band has caught on like it has, being...”

  “The black one?” Cole prompts. “In a genre of music dominated by white guys?”

  “Yeah,” I continue. “I do respect you, Cole, and everything you bring to this band, and I want to...to be here for you if you need me, and shit like that.”

  I swear his cough is covering up a laugh, but I force myself to keep going. Each word is like pulling teeth.

  “I respect Roxanne too, and I respect what you have together, and I don’t want you guys to be anything other than happy. I fucked up and I’m sorry.”

  Another few moments pass in silence.

  “Say that to Roxanne, and I might think about forgiving you.”

  “Of course!” I almost shout in relief, desperate to end this Sharing Our Feelings session.

  There’s a rustling sound followed by more muffled conversation, and then Roxanne comes on the line.

  “Ace?” she says hesitantly. “Cole said you have something to say to me? Please tell me you’re not drunk.”

  God, why does everyone always assume that?

  I stop myself from pondering that question too deeply and get on with apologizing to Roxanne. She calls me a few names after I’ve said my piece, and then tells me she was more upset about the way I insulted her espresso mugs than anything else I said that day.

  We hang up after that, and I wish the neon lights on St-Laurent didn’t look quite so tempting anymore. I wish that after forcing out an apology for just a fraction of all the wrong I’ve done, I could face the source of so much of that wrong and feel like the thumping bass beats were pushing me away instead of drawing me closer, but they’re not. I still feel the urge to slip past the first bouncer I see and spend the night being clapped on the back by people asking for autographs and buying me rounds.

  Would you believe me if I told you it gets better?

  “How would you know if it gets better, Stéphanie? How the hell would you even know?”

  I’m talking to the blank screen of a cell phone that doesn’t even have the number of the girl I want to call on it. All I’ve got is her one piece of advice:

  Don’t go there tonight. Just tonight.

  She made it sound so easy, so soothing, like taking a deep breath.

  So I do that. I breathe in, I breathe out, and I go home.

  6 I’ve Got Your Fire || Jenn Grant

  STÉPHANIE

  “I met her in Sofia but her name was Alexandra...”

  Ace Turner’s raspy voice is blasting in the kitchen of my apartment. It’s a strange feeling, like seeing someone you know on TV. I feel a weird, pathetic urge to start shouting, “I know him! I know him!”

  I head out of my bedroom and into the tiny living area/kitchen I share with my roommate, Molly. After a few disastrous months of rooming with my best friend Jacinthe, I realized my bank account wasn’t going to be able to survive living in the kind of apartment a girl raised by successful lawyers considers ‘modest,’ and started looking for other arrangements. Molly and I found each other online.

  “Morning,” I say, reaching for the kettle.

  Molly spins around, her cloud of curly hair bouncing and a splatter of oatmeal flying off the spoon she’s holding up.

  “Oh my god!” she shouts. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I thought you left the house already. I’ll turn this off. I’m so, so sorry. Did I wake you up?”

  If Molly was an animal, she’d be something like a rabbit or a skittish deer. We’ve been living together for two months already, and she still worries that literally everything she does is going to offend me.

  “Molly, it’s okay,” I assure her, as she grabs her phone and shuts the music off. “I’ve been up for awhile. You can leave your music on.”

  “It’s fine. I don’t want to bother you.”

  I shift the boxes around in our huge tea collection, hunting for the vanilla one I like.

  “Molly, it’s fine. Seriously,” I try to assure her as I get out a mug. “I met them the other day, you know. That band.”

  This time her spoon actually falls to the floor.

  “You MET SHERBROOKE STATION?”

  This is the most emotion I’ve ever seen her show. The only time she talks above a mumble is when she’s apologizing.

  “Yeah, I did. They came to my meditation class last Sunday.”

  “WHAT? What did they do? What did they say? Oh my god, what were they wearing? Why were they meditating? Did you talk to
Ace?”

  She doesn’t even take a breath. I let out a laugh, and she instantly turns bright red.

  “Sorry,” she squeaks. “I’m being weird. I’m being so weird right now.”

  I pat her on the shoulder, scared she’s going to try burrowing down under the floorboards if she gets any more flustered.

  “Hey, I get it. I mean, I have seen them in person. I get it,” I say suggestively.

  Molly sighs. “You’re so lucky. Can I, um, can I ask what they’re like? In person?”

  “Ils sont vraiment beaux.” I wag my eyebrows. “Do you know what that means?”

  Molly moved to Montreal for school two years ago, and she’s still working on picking up French. I offered to help her practice after seeing her completely clueless look when we signed our lease documents.

  “They are very pretty?” Molly questions.

  “I meant something closer to ‘hot,’ but sure, pretty works too.”

  If this girl turns any redder, I’m going to get her some ice cubes.

  “They were...interesting,” I tell her. “I did talk to Ace a bit. He’s kind of...brooding.”

  Molly looks like she’s in actual danger of swooning. I’ve seen the Sherbrooke Station posters on her bedroom walls, and I know she’s been to a few of their concerts.

  “You should come to one of my classes,” I suggest, “in case they come back.”

  She starts shaking her head, eyes wide. “I couldn’t. I’d do something stupid.”

  “You could hide behind a tree and just watch them from there if you want.”

  Her face lights up before she realizes I’m kidding and drops down to pick up her spoon, turning away from me towards the sink. She washes her breakfast dishes with lightning speed and then zooms toward her bedroom, mumbling a rushed, “Have a good day,” as she goes.

  A rabbit if I ever saw one. My little lapin of a roommate.

  My first class at the studio doesn’t start until four, so I’m spending the day at my maman’s place. I sip my tea as I make myself some cereal with soy milk and grab an apple from the fridge.