(Even When It's Not) About You

Can't Hear You Now

Epilogue

December 22, 2019

Rob walked out onto the back patio and sat down. It wouldn't be long until Mike was home. They'd gone separate ways that morning... Mike into Warner, while Rob stayed to track some drum parts. With the twenty year anniversary of Hybrid Theory coming, the five of them had started to work on some new material. It was Rob's day to work on stuff, and Mike and Brad were meeting with their team about some promotional ideas. Everything was in the early stages, and that never required the whole band. Rob had been practicing more frequently in the past few months since Mike wrapped up the Post Traumatic tour, and it didn't take him long to get to his satisfaction the tracks Mike had requested.

He was looking forward to the new year. They had planned a trip to Portugal after the holidays. Mike wanted to see the place Rob had disappeared those months after Chester passed, and it felt like good closure. Sharing the peace Rob had found in that place with Mike felt important. Rob had managed to book the same small Airbnb place in mid-January, and they would still be there on his birthday. Forty-one. He was turning forty-one, the last of the six to hit that mark, but he wouldn't be the last to pass it.

Chester. He still misses you, you know.

Rob squinted out at the pool. He'd found Mike's notebook in the studio, the one he'd scratched lyrics in for his solo album. It felt like Mike had left it there on purpose. Rob couldn't remember a time Mike had left any of his writing laying around, not before or after they had started living together. He'd sat at Mike's work station and flipped through the pages carefully, looking at the notes and doodles, the scratched out words and entire lines he'd written over and over until they were right. Mike's heart lived in those songs, and even though Rob had heard them many times, the raw intimacy and grief, the self doubt, the desire to overcome - it was all apparent in the process he could see in the notebook.

They had worked through a lot in the past two years. Rob closed the notebook and left it where he'd found it. One of the biggest lessons he'd learned in that time was that his identity wasn't just one-sixth of Linkin Park. Nor was Mike's, Brad's, Joe's, Dave's, or Chester's. For so long it had seemed that was the case, that they were all only part of a whole. It had been almost mind blowing to realize they were all whole on their own, while at the same time being a fraction of the thing that made up so much of their identity. He wasn't just Linkin Park's drummer, and discovering that he was more - a son, a brother, an uncle, a friend, a surfer, a musician, a lover and a partner - it had been the answer to the question he was seeking in those first bleak days without Chester, when Rob walked away from the band.

Now it felt right to walk back toward the band and that identity, and make something come from those ashes. Together he and Mike had created something personal and fulfilling outside of the band, and going into 2020 they were ready to join the rest of the guys for their next chapter. They were all ready to prove everyone wrong who wrote them off as has beens once the shock and grief had dissipated.

He's better now. We all are. The dust has settled, and it's all going to be okay, at least for the five of us. And me and Mike. Neither of us are going anywhere. Rob got up and headed into the kitchen. He had one more dish to knock out before Mike got home, and he couldn't wait any longer to get started.

Rob was absorbed in his cooking when Mike walked into the kitchen an hour later, a pink backpack over each shoulder. The chaos that accompanied three kids under ten came with him, though his son was carrying his own backpack. The twins were knocking into each other in their excitement to get inside and get their shoes off. All three - four if you included Mike - of them were ready to get the festivities started.