Power Trio

The tech is a human named Neil, early middle-aged, clad in indie sleaze jeans and an Alfons v-neck. He buzzes them into his workshop, which smells like lacquer and is full of luthier projects and hanging instruments. After a brief exchange of pleasantries and a hand-off, during which Neil says “right on” eight times, they exchange numbers, secure a deadline of Monday, and depart without Evan’s bass.

It’s like he’s left a limb behind.

“I’m really sorry, Evan.” Kell nudges him as they meander back to the Shed. They’re taking the long route, basking in the changed season. The entire neighborhood has the same idea. A flock of brownie kids go hurrying by, shouting and chasing each other.

“It’s all good. I was acting like a dunce at the Shed. It was just a volume pot. I almost bit poor Thekla’s head off.”

She laughs. “Don’t worry about Thek. She’s dealt with some fucking prima donnas. We all know how important that bass is to you.”

“Still. I lost my cool.”

“You’re a musician. You get to freak out sometimes. That’s passion, baby. I may or may not have thrown a cymbal out a window once, back when I was an idiot.”

“That is punk rock.”

“That’s dumb as a rock. Those things are not cheap.” She shakes her head. “I’m still an idiot, but I’m a much more lovable one. And I know more about drums.”

“How long have you been drumming?”

“Bout six years,” she says. “How long have you been on bass?”

“About twenty,” he says.

“Jeez, Ev. What, were you like a kindergartener?”

“Not quite that young, but I had trouble reaching the end of the neck. I learned on that exact prelate p-bass, too. Though it didn’t become all mine until later on.”

“It was your mom’s, right?”

“Yep. She was my teacher.”

“And this was down in Nashville?”

“Chattanooga, actually. We weren’t in Nashville until I was a teenager and…” He realizes he’s still not ready to talk about this. “And things got kind of shitty.”

“I hope you consider yourself done with the shitty things period.”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, I’m good now. You guys basically saved my life. Well, you, in particular. That first jam we did, it felt like someone was digging me out of my grave.”

“That was some excellent noise we made.” Kell grins at the memory. “I still wish I’d recorded it.”

“I hope I’m not speaking out of turn,” Evan says. “But I have a feeling that Thekla didn’t want me in, and that if you hadn’t insisted, then I wouldn’t be here.”

Kell shrugs. “When I met Thek, I was in the middle of a string of dogshit ideas, and a good chunk of them were about a boy. She was just looking out for me. Anyway, she likes you now. You can trust me on that.”

Evan remembers Thekla’s bare back and the way her bra strap sank, just a little, into her soft flesh. “I know she does.”

“If I saved you, it’s only because she saved me,” Kell says. “Seriously. You would not have liked me before I met her. I didn’t like me. But she had this way of looking at me like I was the coolest bitch on the planet, and suddenly I had this sexy, mature, all-her-shit-together tattoo artist in my corner, playing music with me, and whenever I thought about doing something stupid I was like, ‘what would Thekla think if I did this?’” Kell’s face is glowing. “And now everything I do is just trying to impress her. Which is kinda fucking lame, but not a bad way to direct your life.”

Evan chuckles. “The way you talk about her, it’s like you have a crush.”

Kell giggles. “I guess it is, isn’t it?”

“We should get you a t-shirt that says ‘What Would Thekla Do?’ on it.”

Kell doesn’t reply. After a few moments of quiet, Evan glances over. She’s chewing her lip. “Like, what do you mean by a crush? Like a friend crush or a crush crush?”

Evan’s brows knit. “I was just kidding.”

“Oh!” Kell exhales. “Duh. My bad.”

They walk in awkward silence.

“That would be weird, right?” Kell says. “If I did. Like that wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“She’s my best friend. And we’re in a band together. It’s not…” Kell stares at the ground in front of her. “I don’t know.” Evan has never seen her look this anxious. Connections are forming in his brain. The sidewalk starts to crumble below his feet, further with every step.

“Kell,” he says, gently. “Do you have a crush on Thekla?”

“I mean, a friend crush, maybe.”

“What’s a friend crush?”

“It’s like when you have your best friend, but you also think she’s really sexy, and, uh…” Kell goes silent as they cross a zebra stripe intersection. A motorcycle guns past a couple feet behind them and Kell absentmindedly flips the driver off, not looking back.

“You’ve seen her!” she finally manages. “You know what I mean!”

There’s a dull ache spreading through Evan. “Thekla’s hot.”

“She’s hot as fuck. Her ass and titties are like a third of her. But I’m not…” He’s never seen Kell so unsure. “Evan. The, um, the general vibe might fool you. But I’ve never actually slept with a girl. Like I've been on a couple dates, but they didn’t pan out. I’ve never, um. You know.”

Despite the hollowness in his chest, it’s fun to see Kell like this. She doesn’t get flustered. “You still haven’t said ‘no’, you know.”

“Okay. So maybe it’s not no. Maybe… Jesus, you’re really going to make me say this out loud, aren’t you?”

“I don’t think I could ever make you do anything, Kell,” Evan says with a sad smile. He feels as though he’s watching a plane take off with her inside it. Like he’s giving away two futures at once.

“Maybe I have thought about what it would be like. To be with Thekla.”

“How much thinking are we talking about? Like an idle curiosity thing?”

“Not exactly…”

“Kell. You know how I don’t pry?”

“I really appreciate that about you.”

“I’m prying.”

“Fine. God. Maybe I’ve been thinking about it all the time, for months.” Kell rattles a laugh and shoves his shoulder. “There, you dick. Happy?”

He doesn’t answer that. “Are you going to do something about it?”

“Not that easy, dude. There was—” she sighs. “Before you showed up, before Thekla even, it was me and Sion and a guy. Ragan.” His name rolls off her tongue like she’s spitting up blood. “And we were a thing. We met at a show, we started working together, we got together… and it was bad for me. It was very, very bad.”

She gives a kick to a crumpled soda can, sending it skittering down the sidewalk.

“I’m not saying that it was because we were bandmates, not at all. But it was part of it. It made me let him in too far. And then drumming, which is usually this thing I do to get out of my head and stop thinking about all the bullshit, now there he was, in the room. Inescapable. And Thekla and you aren’t like him. At all. I was a dumb kid. I know every mistake I made now. And I wouldn’t make them again. But I guess I’m just…”

She runs out of words as they walk past a block-wide park. They listen to the sound of families playing, dogs barking. Thekla and you, she said.

“I guess I’m scared,” Kell says.

“Do you think it would be like that with Thekla?” Evan asks.

“Better, I guess. No.” She shakes her head. “Not a guess. I know it would be better. I think it’s like that already, in a lot of ways. Even if I’ve never named it, it’s how I’ve felt for a while now. I’ve just been a pussy about it. Evan, you gotta understand. She picked up the pieced after Ragan. I kind of rebuilt my life around her.”

“I know the feeling,” Evan says, then immediately wishes he could unsay it.

Kell’s eyes narrow. “You do?”

“Forget it.”

“No way, Evan H.” Kell puts on a comic tone of mock-outrage, but the tension is still there, flighty and strained. “You don’t get to pull this shit out of me and then weasel out. You were gonna say something.”

“This is why I shut the fuck up and play my bass,” Evan says. “You’re putting me in the bright lights.”

“That’s right, I am. Now take it from ‘I know the feeling.’”

“Ok. Ok. But you asked.” Evan takes a deep breath. “I know the feeling, because I’ve kind of rebuilt my life around you.”

Kell’s eyebrows go up and stay there. Her gaze slides away from his, back to the street before them.

Amazing job, Evan. Your first genuine friendship in New Laytham. And you just drilled a hole in the bottom of the boat.

A pinky brushes his. Wraps around it.

“I’ve thought about what it would be like with Thekla,” Kell says. “I’ve thought about what it would be like with you, too.”

The world Evan was wadding up to throw away unfolds again, like a pair of butterfly wings.

“I like your beard,” she says. “I like your eyes.”

“I like your belly button ring,” he says.

She’s beaming, her cute little tusks on full display. “I like your tattoos.”

“I like your tattoos.”

“I like how you play your bass. I like listening to you.”

“I like how you drum.”

“I like your shoulders.”

“Your arms,” Evan says, “are fucking amazing.”

“This is why Thekla writes the lyrics,” Kell says. “Fucking listen to us.”

Evan laughs with delirious relief. “They are, though! You’re ripped.”

“You’re ripped,” she says.

“I’m a beanpole.”

“You’re getting there! And when you were a beanpole, you were a sexy beanpole.”

“I can’t believe this is happening,” Evan says.

“What even is happening?” The rest of her fingers join her pinky as she entwines them with his. He feels the rough spots where her drumsticks have rubbed against her knuckles. “What is this? What the fuck, Evan?”

“I don’t even know.”

“Can we—hold on.” She pulls him from the lanes of foot traffic, onto a residential street corner girded by a salmon-colored stone wall. “Evan, this isn’t fair.” Her voice is urgent. “To you, I mean. We were just talking about how I have these feelings about Thekla.”

“I’m sorry,” Evan says, the euphoria trickling away.

“That doesn’t mean I don’t want you,” she says. She puts her hands on his shoulders. Her thumb traces his clavicle and he almost swoons. “And I’m being unfair. But I don’t want to close a door I just opened.”

“I don’t want you to have to.”

“So what the fuck do we do?”

“Can we.” Evan swallows. “Can we just hold each other for a second?”

Without another word, Kell pushes herself onto him, leaning him back against the wall, and draws him into a crushing embrace. His hands scramble for purchase, then settle around her back and squeeze tight, feeling the corded muscle expand and contract with her contented sigh. She rests her chin on his head, like their first hug after the audition, but any hesitation he had then and any space they left between them is gone today.

She runs one of her hands through his hair, sending shivers up his spine, then pulls his face against her chest. Her heart is hammering. He’s painfully hard, and he’s sure she can feel it, but she presses her hips flush to his, not lasciviously, but with no concern or hesitation. He feels the sheer power in her graceful apex predator frame. He doubts he could ever escape her grip if he wanted to. But why the fuck would he want to? He breathes her in, jasmine and cigarette smoke and summer sweat.

“Will you give me some time?” Kell asks, her voice rumbling against his cheek. She loosens her grip on the back of his head and he looks up at her, admiring her septum piercing. “I have to think about what this all means. You shook it loose and now I’m overdue to actually think about it, but we’ve got the show coming up and there’s so much shit happening right now, and I need time. Is that okay? Am I being an asshole right now?”

“Of course it’s okay,” Evan says, then, trying to deflate the massive balloon of anxiety in his gut: “What kind of bassist rushes his drummer?”

Kell guffaws, a big dam-breaking laugh she cuts off when she realizes how loud she’s being. “Maybe, like, let’s check in after Glorie’s? Is that too much time?”

“However much you need,” Evan says. “No expectations here.” And he wishes that were more true.

“All right,” Kell says. “Thank you, Evan. Really. Thank you.” She expels a shaky breath, takes his hand in hers, and leads them back into the pedestrian thoroughfare. “God. I didn’t know how badly I needed this walk.”

It really is such a beautiful day.

“Can you do one more thing for me?” She gives his hand a sudden squeeze. “Can you not talk about this to Thekla?”

“I can do that.”

“I promise I will nut up and say something to her.” She’s chewing her lip again. “When I’m ready. I’m not gonna leave either of you hanging.”

They hold hands, her fingers strong and sure, all the way back to the studio.