Lavish Didi Stories - The Drummer - Chapter 1

Author’s note: All my characters are consenting adults (18+). All acts depicted are consensual between the adult characters.

Chapter 1

My older brother, Nick, called me from the car, which meant he was already late.

"He's coming tonight." he said. "Don't make it weird. I’m counting on you.”

"I don't make things weird."

"You make dinner for people and then you hover. Don't hover. He's embarrassed with everything that’s happening."

I was at the kitchen counter with my laptop still open and a half-finished caption for a candle brand that wanted the word cozy twelve times. The apartment was quiet in the way it got when Nick had a flight. Tenth floor. The city already starting to light up past the glass. His suitcase was by the door. Mine wasn't, because I didn't go anywhere.

"What's his name again?"

"Tyler. TJ. You met him once when you were younger and you probably won't remember. He lived in LA. Drummer and guitarist. Band didn't happen. Girlfriend put him out."

"Out of the apartment?"

"Out of the life, sounds like. Cheated on him with a famous rock star. He's got a duffel and a guitar and a bad attitude he's pretending is a joke. I told him he can have the junk room if he clears it and paints it. Don't let him sleep on the couch for a month. He will if you let him."

"You're leaving in a few hours, hurry or you lose the flight."

"I know what time my flight is." Nick exhaled. I could hear his car. "Be nice to him, Dy. Not charity nice. Normal nice. He's my best friend and he just got his ass handed to him by a girl who upgraded her lifestyle. I'll be in Lisbon, then Madrid, then wherever the next panel is. Two months. You have the card for groceries. He eats like a truck."

"Okay."

"And don't tell him I told you the girlfriend part in detail. I already did. Just don't repeat it back at him."

He hung up before I could ask what detail.

TJ knocked at 8:40, which was late for a man with nowhere else to go and early for a man who had driven until he couldn't stand the inside of his own head. I opened the door and understood, immediately, why Nick had said don't hover.

He was bigger than the hallway. Grey cap pulled low, dirty blonde hair, wavy and stuck to his neck under it, a beard that had been trimmed and then ignored. Blue grey-ish sad eyes. T-shirt damp at the chest from the drive, or from the box he'd carried up himself. Arms thick, blond hair on them, a few small tattoos I didn't read. Grey sweatpants. A duffel over one shoulder and a hard guitar case in the other hand, held like it weighed more than it did. He smelled like a car and a body spray that had given up somewhere in Nevada.

"Dylan?"

"Yeah. Nick's in the shower. He said to let you in."

"Cool." He didn't come in yet. He looked past me at the glass, the lights, the couch that wasn't his. "This is nicer than he said."

"He lies about money until he's in the room."

That got half a smile. It didn't reach his eyes. He stepped in, set the case down like it might break, and stood there with the duffel still on his shoulder until I told him he could drop it.

"Junk room's down the hall." I said. "It's bad. He wasn't kidding."

"I figured." He looked at his boots. "Thanks for this. I'll be out of your way."

"You're not in the way. You just got here."

Nick came out in a towel and a dress shirt, because Nick could do both at once, and the room changed. They hugged the way men hug when one of them is not okay and neither of them is going to say it. Nick clapped TJ's back twice and pulled off.

"You look like shit."

"You look like a realtor."

"I am a realtor. A better one than your drummer phase." Nick glanced at me. "Feed him. I have to leave in forty. Dy, the paint is in the closet. He knows. Don't let him talk you into doing it."

"I can paint." TJ said.

"You can start, not finish." Nick said. "There's a difference."

They had twenty minutes of a friendship I wasn't in. I made pasta carbonara because it was what I had in mind for my dinner. TJ sat at the counter and didn't offer to help and didn't take his cap off. He watched the city. Every so often his knee bounced and he stopped it with his hand. When I put the bowl in front of him he said thanks like I'd lent him money.

Nick left the way Nick left. A list. The Wi-Fi. The neighbor who complained about bass. The spare key, which he put in TJ's palm and then looked at me.

"Be kind to him." he said to both of us I guess. "I'll call when I land."

The door shut. The elevator dinged in the hall. The apartment got larger and quieter at the same time. TJ stood in the middle of the living room with the key in his fist.

"So…” he said.

"So…”

"I can take the couch tonight. Room's a disaster. I saw it."

"Nick said not to let you."

"Nick's on his way to the airport."

"Nick's still right." I nodded at the hall. "I'll help you move the boxes. Not paint. Paint is tomorrow, when it's light."

He looked at me like he was waiting for the catch. There wasn't one I was willing to say out loud. He was my brother's best friend. He was 28 and I was 23 and he had a guitar and a busted thing in his face, and I had been alone in this apartment for most of the year every time Nick flew. That was all I was going to admit.

The junk room had been a guest room in the listing and a storage unit in real life. Nick's old suits. A broken lamp. Boxes of my college stuff I had promised to sort. TJ didn't complain. He lifted what I pointed at and put it in the hall, and he was careful with a box that said DYLAN — DON'T, which was more than Nick had ever been. His shirt rode up when he reached. Abs, a trace of hair on his stomach, a tattoo low on his ribs I didn't stare at. I stared at it. He didn't notice, or he let me have it.

"You work from here?" he asked, over a box.

"Yeah. Social. Brands. Captions, calendars, the occasional video I pretend I like."

"You like it?"

"I like the paychecks."

He huffed. "Fair."

We cleared a path to the bed, which was a mattress on a frame and nothing else. He sat on it and the frame complained. The cap was still on. Under it his hair was messy. He looked at the bare wall like it had insulted him and then like he deserved it.

"Nick tell you why I'm here?"

"Some."

"Girlfriend. Three years. She met a guy at a session. Real band. Real money. I came home and the locks were changed and my drums were in the garage with a note." He said it flat, so it wouldn't shake. "Note was not nice. That was the bad part."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I'm the one who thought a band that played Tuesdays was a life plan." He rubbed his jaw. The beard made a sound against his palm. "I'll paint this and fix this mess. I'll get a job. I won't be on your couch when he gets back. That's the deal I made."

"Okay."

"You always say okay?"

"When I don't have a better word." I shrugged.

He looked at me then. Really looked. Grey-blue eyes under the cap, tired, a little amused at his own mess. "Nick said you were the normal one."

"Nick says that so he can be the other one."

We ate the pasta on the couch because the table was covered in Nick’s documents and papers that I hadn’t had the patience to sort through. The city did its trick outside the glass, all the lights coming on in rows. He ate like he hadn't, and then he slowed down, embarrassed about eating like he hadn't. I put the second bowl in front of him without asking. He didn't argue.

"You don't have to do the dinner thing," he said.

"I was going to eat more anyway."

"Still."

He told me about the drive in pieces, not the sad parts. A truck stop where the coffee tasted like the pot. A playlist he had made for the road and then skipped because every other song was one she liked. He had played drums since he was fifteen. The band had a name I didn't recognize and a Tuesday slot in a room that held forty if everybody brought a friend. He laughed when he said forty. The laugh was a good one, short, surprised at itself. He had perfect white teeth.

"Nick came to a show once," he said. "Stood in the back in a button-down like he was appraising the building. Told me after that the snare was the only honest thing in the room. I didn't talk to him for a week. He was right."

"He does that."

"Yeah." TJ turned the fork. "He also was the first to offer me help. Didn't do a speech about my life choices. Just said the junk room was ugly and mine until I need it. That's why I'm here and not on somebody's floor in Echo Park."

I almost asked about her. I didn't. Nick had said not to hand it back. TJ filled the space anyway, smaller.

"She didn't yell. That's what I keep replaying. She said she'd met someone at a session who actually had a career, and she was tired of being the only adult with a regular income. Then she hugged me. Then the locks and the letter with some harsh truths." He stared at the glass. "A hug is a mean way to end a thing."

"Yeah."

"You ever have somebody do it nice?"

"Not like that." I kept it there. I wasn't going to give him my one bad story to match his. "Nick said she cheated on you with a famous rock star with money. He told me not to repeat it."

"You just did."

"Sorry."

"It's fine. It's true." He set the bowl down. "I'm not gonna make you hear the rest. Not tonight."

After, he opened the guitar case in the junk room with the door half shut. Not hiding. Not inviting. I was at the counter again, closing the candle captions, and I heard it. Not a song. Pieces of one. Soft, so the neighbor wouldn't have a reason. He missed a change and stopped and did it again. I didn't go in. I finished the caption. I washed the bowls. I stood in the hall with a trash bag and didn't knock. He came out at midnight in the same sweatpants and no shirt, cap backwards and still on, a glass of water in his hand like he'd forgotten what he walked out for. The chest was what the shirt had been hiding. Broad, muscular, not too much hair, a shine of sweat at the sternum from the room with no fan. Small tattoos. A cross on the left pec. Script low on the ribs. He saw me see it and didn't cover up. He also didn't pose.

"Too loud?"

"No."

"I'll keep it down. Habit. She used to say the guitar was the only quiet thing I did." He winced at himself. "Sorry. That's a weird thing to hand you."

"It's fine."

"You keep saying that."

"You keep apologizing."

He leaned on the doorframe. Close enough that I could smell the day still on him, salt and cotton. Not close enough to be a decision. His shoulder took up the frame. One hand on the glass, the other loose. I could see the hair on his forearm, the tired in his eyes under the brim.

"Nick said to treat you normal." I said. "I'm treating you normal. Normal is food and not making you talk about her. If you want to talk about her, the couch is big."

"I don't. Not tonight." He nodded at the glass, the lights. "This view is rude. We had a window in LA that faced a dumpster and I thought that was the art."

"Stay up if you want. I have a call at nine."

He didn't go back in. He came as far as the couch and sat on the far end, cap still on, water untouched. The PlayStation was under the TV because Nick bought things and didn't use them. I nodded at it.

"There's a racing thing. Nick's bad at it. I'm worse. You can play with me if you want a win."

"Dangerous offer."

He played. He was better than both of us, which he tried to hide and then stopped hiding. Our knees touched once when he leaned to make a turn. He didn't move his. I didn't move mine. The contact was nothing. It stayed nothing for the length of two races and then he shifted, easy, like he'd noticed and didn't want me to have to.

"You're letting me win." he said.

"I'm bad, I told you.”

"You're bad." he agreed. "It's nice. She used to hand me the controller and go to bed. This is better."

"Low bar."

"I'll take a low bar this week."

At one he stood. The no-shirt thing had stopped being a shock and started being a fact of the room. He scratched his chest, absent, and caught himself, and didn't apologize for that one.

"Dylan."

"Yeah."

"Thanks for not doing the speech. The one where it gets better and I should hit the gym and she's an idiot."

"I don’t know her. I don’t know you, so…" I said. "And it might not get better this week. The gym you can do whenever. Nick's card works at the place downstairs."

He laughed with his perfect teeth, once, real. It changed his face. Younger. "Jesus. Okay. Normal. I can do normal."

He went back in. The guitar didn't start again. I heard the mattress. I stood at the glass for a minute and watched a plane blink across the dark, and I thought about Nick in a seat already heading to Europe, and about a man in a cap in the junk room who had carried his own guitar and life in a box, up ten floors because he didn't want to ask.

In the morning he was up before me. The boxes in the hall were stacked. He had found the coffee and made it too strong. He was in the cap and a clean T-shirt and he looked like he had slept in pieces.

"I didn't know how you take it," he said, and pushed a mug over.

"Black is fine."

"Nick used to take his with sugar like a child."

"I know."

We drank it standing up, shoulder to shoulder at the counter, not touching. The city was pale. His arm was warm two inches from mine. He didn't move away. I didn't either. My nine o'clock call was a brand that wanted autumn in July. I muted myself twice because he was taping the baseboards and humming the piece from last night, off, on purpose or not.

At noon I put a sandwich on the floor outside the junk room because going in felt like an invasion. He came out with paint on his wrist and the cap backwards, the wavy hair showing, and ate it standing in the doorway.

"You don't have to keep feeding me. You’re not a maid.”

"You don't have to keep saying that."

"Nick called," he said. "Landed. Told me not to break his brother. I told him you were worse. He laughed. Then he asked if I was okay and hung up before I had to answer. That's his version of a heart."

"Yeah."

"I'm going to start the walls after this," he said. "You can ignore me. That's the other part of normal."

"I'll ignore you when I’m in a mood for it." I said. "There's chocolate in the bag by the door. Nick said you like the bad kind. I got the bad kind."

He looked at the bag. Then at me. The tired stayed. Something else showed up under it, small, careful. He took a piece out and broke it, and held half out without making it a thing. I took it. Our fingers didn't touch. They almost did.

"You didn't have to."

"I know."

"Dylan."

"Don't thank me again. Paint the room."

He took the bag. He went down the hall with the chocolate and the cap and I opened the laptop, and the apartment was no longer only mine, and I was not sorry about it yet.