A Favour

C6: Battle Of The Bands

Within a few seconds, she was gone, leaving us to stand backstage as the customers talked their drunken faces off.

"Thanks so much for being here, Jack," Mark said. "If it weren't for you, we'd probably be just as drunk as those idiots."

Taking a peek from just behind the backstage door, he pointed to two female patrons seated on barstools, their bras hanging from the lips of their seats. Just as he'd pointed them out to me, they dove into a make-out sesh, leaving Mark to quickly look away.

"Well, we wouldn't be that drunk."

"I dunno, Mark – you look like that type of guy to me," Bob teased.

"I've got a girlfriend!"

"Who's playing doctor with our missing drummer."

Bob then elbowed Mark, seeing as his expression implied that he didn't take too kindly to the joke.

"Lighten up, will you?" he suggested. "We're about to go on stage, and I'm sure these people aren't in the mood for some depressing seriousness. Hence the name 'The Anti-Depressants?'"

"Where did that name come from, anyway?" Felix asked, directing it mainly towards Mark, the seeming leader of the band. (He was the centre of the posters. He had to be.)

"Oh, nothing," Mark scoffed, turning his back to the four of us to rummage through a small pile of messy papers. "It was just dumb. But we're stuck with it, so..."

He didn't finish his sentence. Instead, he clutched at a paper he'd stumbled upon, thrusting it forward like some sort of "A-ha!" moment. He then handed the paper to me, allowing me to awkwardly take hold of it and read its contents – if I were any sort of drummer or musician of any kind, I would be able to recognize it as sheet music (which I obviously did).

"It's extremely simple. Like fucking Row, Row, Row Your Boat. For the song, we were mainly focusing on the vocals and a soft melody, meaning the drums will only be of importance during the chorus."

Then, once again, he bent down into the pile of papers, shuffling them about messily to finally lift them up, retrieving what he'd apparently been looking for. He turned to me again, handing me a pair of drumsticks as he did.

It felt amazing, the way they nestled into the crevices of my hands, the way they so easily obeyed my orders to twirl, to dance with the music I intended on smacking them into. The way they were so smooth against my skin despite being made of wood, the way they could so easily be controlled, as if I were already their master even though we've only known each other for a few minutes. It was like being Harry Potter and getting your wand back after a year's suspension, finally regaining control over a long-lost friend, someone you'd come to miss after even the slightest break – it was seemingly dumb, yes, to fall so easily for something I'd only known for such a short amount of time, but it made sense to me. (And, besides, it wouldn't be the first person I'd fallen for within minutes that day.)

"You seem to be pretty interested in those sticks," Wade interrupted my moment of love and lust.

"It's just been a long time," I answered too quickly, too breathlessly.

"Apparently."

Mark's fingers grazed mine at that time, but only for a second, so that he could lower the drumsticks, forcing my eyes to meet with his (although it was impossible for them to fall on anything other than his irises).

"You're not gonna bail on us or anything, right?" he asked, the sweat-enforcing lights reflecting off of his eyes. "Like, you're not going to go up there and do absolutely nothing, or you're not gonna sabotage us?"