Miles Away

Chapter 3 - Catching Prey

Chapter 3
Jagger
Catching Prey

“How did the mall thing go?” I asked as Wyatt came through the doorway of Cooper’s apartment.

“Pretty good,” he simply stated, not seeming excited. “Some people liked our stuff. Others…well they don’t know good music when they hear it.”

I smiled at my laptop’s screen as I finished writing an email back to Richard, the head of Sun Room Records. He had informed me that he had a lot planned for the band for the next couple months after we arrived inCalifornia, and I was pretty excited to get everything started.

"What are you doing?” Wyatt asked, popping the top off of a beer. “You can’t be doing work.”

“Hand me one dude,” I said, pointing to the can in his hand.

He went to the fridge and threw one across the room at me. “Coop’s not going to like us drinking his stash,” I said, grinning.

Wyatt grinned back at me, sipping from the can. “It’s not like he’ll freak out on us. But seriously, what are you doing?”

“Email,” I said, swallowing a mouthful. “Richard was letting me know what he expects of us when we get down there.”

“And what’s that exactly?” He sat down on the arm rest of the sofa, trying to get a look at the screen.

“Well we have a house set up for us by the beach, which is pretty rad. He wants us to start touring after we pop an EP out, which we have a two month deadline for.”

He sighed. “Are you kidding me? God, he acts like writing songs takes two minutes.”

“And you act like you actually write the songs,” I noted.

“I write my own riffs, which counts as writing to me,” he grinned, downing the rest of his drink.

“Starting early, are we?” I questioned.

He nodded. “Luke, that kid who plays lacrosse or whatever, is holding a party at his place tonight. Want to go?”

“I’m up for it. Not like I have anything else to do,” I shrugged. “What did you do with Matty?”

I realized Matty had yet to walk through Cooper’s doorway and Wyatt was supposed to be promoting us with him.

“I dropped him off at his mom’s place. I figured he wouldn’t be up for partying,” he smiled knowingly.

I let out a laugh as I downed the drink in my hand just like he had before. This was what Wyatt and I did every weekend, at least when I wasn’t busy dealing with school. We’d have our own party before actually joining the party, and ended up face down drunk by the time we even ended up home. That is, if we did end up home. Most of the time I ended up in some unknown girl’s bedroom before I snuck out in the mornings.

Wyatt Larson and I had been best friends for almost four years. I’d met him at some party when I was searching for other band mates to work with and he told he was pretty good at guitar. A few lessons from me and a couple months later, we became a two man band, searching for the final two members of the group. We’d foundCarsonthrough Cooper, who just so happened to be his uncle, and discovered Matty on Youtube.

For a kid who was anxious around people almost one hundred percent of the time, you could put him behind a drum kit and he was a completely different person. When we contacted him, he was a little indecisive at first, but finally called us back two days later saying he was in.

I was closest with Wyatt out of everyone because he knew what it felt like to have a disapproving dad and an unwelcoming mother. We bonded in a way that I couldn’t with Carson or Matty and became tighter as the years went on. We were pretty much the same person, except I wasn’t as cocky as he so willingly showed to everyone. The only bad quality we shared was that we tended to drink a little too much, too fast. But we knew how to handle it.