- Yazoo, Only You -
- January 5th -
We were rigged and ready for our first gig of the new year.
Ethan was as usual pale and nervous and I was wondering what I could do to ease his mind.
So I was sat on an amp box next to him as he was twisting his fingers and looking lost.
My usual encouragement of asking him to focus on me had him looking at me with a tilt of the head and a dry smile.
"Yeah... you know that's not going to work," he muttered.
I frowned.
"Why is that?" I asked.
"Izzy... just... don't!" He mumbled.
"Don't what?" I asked feeling genuinely confused.
"Because you're doing my head in," he said and shook his head.
I frowned. He obviously didn't need me.
For the first time since I started in the band he didn't want me to talk him through the nerves.
There was still that urge to touch him. That intense hollow feeling that felt like it could only be removed by skin contact. So I stood and ran a hand over his head as I walked past him towards the stage. As my fingers slipped through his hair his hand came up to grab mine.
Without looking up he squeezed my fingers.
"I wish you wouldn't do that," he said.
"Why?" I asked.
He looked straight at me with a warning look before letting go of my hand.
Standing up, close enough to touch, he stared straight into my eyes with an upset expression.
"Cos you're messing up my hair," he said on a heavy exhale.
I looked at his hair, falling messily over his forehead as usual and brought my hand up to "fix" whatever I had messed up. Not that he had ever really cared about the hair before.
But I did.
It was the perfect kind of wavy, thick hair to run my fingers through.
And my mind was full of ideas for situations where my fingers and his hair would become more closely aqainted.
His hand clamped around my wrist and his mouth was in a tight line, stopping my dirty train of thought before reaching gutter-station.
"Just... don't," he muttered as he released my hand and walked away.
Leaving me staring after him wondering what the hell I had done wrong.
On stage he made me feel like the biggest fool going. I was doing my usual stage flirting and getting absolutely no response.
He was being downright grumpy and annoying.
Thankfully Simon was enjoying himself and with him I was doing some seriously dodgy back-to-back moves and jumpy dancing as normal.
We had "Freak like me" as a standard on our setlist and suddenly I felt like amping it up a notch.
Just to see if I could.
I already had the show down to strutting and some shimmying moves, but I needed some new tricks.
I trusted Simon to get my idea.
He knew me well enough to nod when I at the first chorus locked my eyes on his with something between a challenge and a question.
I sauntered over and got right into his face while grooving along to the bassline. I made sure the audience caught the play-flirting as I pretended that Simon was the hottest guy on earth for a few beats.
I ran a finger up his chest, along his jaw and generally acted sluttier than I ever had in my life. And he was playing it right back at me.
Leaning into me as I walked behind him and loving the attention.
But this was Simon.
Someone I trusted with my life. So play acting was safe. I could trust him. And it suited the song.
I turned away from him to face the audience and spotted Ethan looking at me with a tight look on his face.
I raised my eyebrow and decided it was only fair to give him some attention too.
Besides he was acting all weird and I decided to loosen him up.
With or without his participation.
We were on stage and paid to entertain after all.
I crossed the stage and locked eyes with him doing more or less the same as I had with Simon only not quite as amped up.
It didn't feel like play acting, but somehow it felt real. I let myself go, revelling in the fact that I could basically stand there, in public, and tell him straight to his face that I wanted him. It felt liberating to have the song as an excuse to flirt with him so openly.
Where Simon had been grinning and enjoying the act, Ethan's eyes became darker and there was a look on his face I couldn't quite read. Simon had been all smiles and smirks, Ethan stayed tight jawed and serious.
I let my butterfly farm have a field day with my flirting and couldn't have wiped the smile off my face if I had tried.
Despite his grumpiness I still found myself looking for that little piece of softness in his eyes or that little smile he usually had while playing. Whatever was bothering him, I wanted to take it away.
After a few beats I gave him a playful wink before I turned back to the audience to finish the song. My sultry act had Oddball grinning and the audience roared to life at the final beat. I felt like I was flying.
All in all we were doing a great gig.
If it wasn't for Ethan being a total grouch.
- January 7th -
Vero was in her usual seat next to mine when I came in on Monday. The whole previous week she had boasted about how she had snuck out from her parents house to see Alex and shown us a necklace he had gotten her for christmas. This morning, however she was unusually quiet. Her face waz make up free and she had pink splotches on her face.
"What's wrong?" I asked, secretly feeling the dread of an upcoming too much information attack.
"Alex has found someone else," she muttered.
In all Vero's shallowness and sensationalism, she seemed to actually care about Alex. God knows why, the guy still struck me as a lecherous creep.
"He spent ew years eve in bed with some skank," Veronica sobbed.
Amazed at how some guys obviously had no use for both their heads, I gave her a spontaneous hug.
"He's too stupid for his own good," I said.
"I know right? I would have given him all the sex he'd want. And it wasn't good enough," Vero huffed.
"You'll be fine," I reassured her before returning to my sketches.
During the break, Simon sat next to me on the bench outside.
"What's the deal with girls and sex?" He asked.
"The deal?" I asked.
"Yeah... Like Ellen... and it feels kinda wrong saying this to you, but I'm confused," Simon started.
I nodded for him to continue.
"I mean... She says she wants to, but then when we almost get into it, she changes her mind," he muttered.
I smirked at him.
"Is Simon the sex god unable to score?" I asked, trying to hide a laugh.
"Simon the sex god is very capable, thank you! The trouble is she won't let me... well... show her my moves," he muttered looking unusually embarrassed.
"Has she said why?" I asked.
"No. She just said about wanting things to get serious. I thought we were. And there are only so many cold showers I can take!" He huffed.
I laughed at his hopelessness.
"Do you actually love her?" I asked.
He shrugged.
"Well... there you go. That's what she's waiting for," I said and patted his head before I returned to the last lesson before lunch.
Unusual for us, there was silence around the lunch table. Not even Oddball was making weird jokes. Ellen and Simon looked like they didn't even belong in the same room.
Simon kept looking between me and Ellen with a conflicted look as if our earlier conversation had confused him.
And Ethan was pushing some pasta around on his plate.
Slowly he lifted his head and looked at Simon.
"Hey... how many gigs have we got coming up?" He asked.
"It's slow-season. We've got nothing until valentines weekend," Simon shrugged.
"Good. Could we keep it that way? I kinda need to practice for the contest," Ethan asked.
"Sure. No problem," Simon nodded, but I could see the reluctance.
Simon's dreams of a functioning rock band was at risk and he hated it. Obstruction was Simon's number one priority and he couldn't figure out how the rest of us wanted to do anything else.
"Have you settled on what you're playing?" Oddball asked.
"Yeah. Vivaldi with a string quartet and Mozart for my solo," Ethan said without elaborating.
"Do you need a break from Obstruction, or do we just keep going?" Simon asked.
"Keep going. I'll be there as much as I can. I have the quartet practices on Mondays, tutoring with a master on Wednesdays and a shitload of practicing on my own," Ethan listed.
"Sounds like a lot of work," I said.
He shrugged back at me.
"Do you get time for your economics stuff?" I asked
"I've asked for an extension on my essay," he said.
"Just let us know if we can do anything to help you out," I told him.
"What? You're gonna start going to economics lectures for me, Izzy?" He asked looking sceptical.
I shrugged.
"Coz I can't see how you can do my practicing for me," he continued in a sour voice.
"I was only trying to be helpful!" I muttered.
"Yeah.. well. Don't!" He snapped.
The hostility hung over him like a cloak.
"I think someone is stressed out," Oddball said in a soothing sing-song.
"I'm not!" Ethan huffed.
"So why do I feel like I've walked into a house full of seven dwarves and the first one I ran into was Grumpy?" Oddball smirked.
"Because there is suddenly an eight dwarf called Annoying!" Ethan huffed and pointed at me before giving up on his food and leaving the table.
"What the actual fuck?" I asked, staring after him.
"Not exactly a teddybear these days," Ellen laughed.
"More like a murderous Ewok!" I growled and looked over at his back as he was leaving, hands stuffed into his pockets and shoulders hunched.
He was pissing me off.
And I was obviously pissing him off too.
But I didn't know why.
And all I wanted to do was run after him and...
All I could think was how I should have kissed him again on christmas day. Because the feeling of him still lingered on my lips. And by the looks of it, that emotionless kiss was all I was going to get.
"As long as we don't dress up as storm troopers we should be safe," Simon grinned at me.
"You guys are... I'm Han Solo tied to a fucking spit!" I muttered.
I caught Oddball looking at me with a thoughtful look on his face.
"You really haven't got any idea why?" He asked.
I shrugged.
"He should pick on someone his own size!" I muttered.
Oddball scratched his head and turned back to his food muttering something about spitroasts and Ewoks with a chuckle.
I whacked him over the head.
"Keep your dirty mind away from the Ewoks," I told him.
"Hey.. You brought up Ewoks, spits and the word fucking. My hormonal male brain automatically fills in the blanks!" Oddball grinned.
I started laughing.
And the world tilted almost back on it's normal axis.
"Could we go to yours this afternoon? I kinda want to have a go at that recording gear?" Odd asked.
"Sure," I replied.
"I'll let Grumpy know. In case he calms down," Oddball said.
"He said about going to string quartet practice on Mondays," I said.
"I'll let him know. In case he gets time off for good behaviour," Oddball grinned.
"Or for snapping randomly at the poor cellist," I mumbled.
"Yep. Let's hope he doesn't scare the other fragile strings with his thunder cloud," Simon laughed.
The next day Simon and I were sat again at the table in the cafeteria when Odd came in with his laptop. Ethan came trailing after with his hands in his pockets, looking sheepish.
He didn't get any food so I pushed my plate of chips in his direction when he sat next to me.
I hadn't seen him since lunch the day before. When he stormed out. For some reason I felt like apologising, even though he had been an ass.
Sharing my food was a small step.
Oddball, Simon and I had spent a few hours in my basement the night before picking random song to record using Simon's acoustic bass and the guitar and ukulele I had. Oddball had used a few boxes for drums but had mostly been happy playing with the recording equipment.
"I've just mixed what we did last night. My tutor said I can use it for my next sound-tech project," Oddball said happily as he opened a file on the computer and 'Only You', recorded the night before streamed into the room.
"Who does the guitar?" Ethan asked after listening for a while.
"Simon did the bass, and I tried to copy roughly what the synth does in the original on acoustic guitar," I said.
"Yeah. We need you to redo the guitar," Oddball said pointing to Ethan.
I nodded. My playing worked but was too hesitant and uneven.
Listening with his head cocked, Ethan nodded.
"It works like this. But if we add another guitar..." Ethan said and started humming a dum-dum-dum on top of the song we had.
With a few simple notes, he lifted the song and the arrangement from a first simple attempt at recording a song to something we could potentially send out as a demo. I coild hear that if we replaced his singing with a guitar, it would add the missing x-factor to the song.
I stared at him in awe, not even trying to hide the admiration I felt.
That instinct for what would work was just amazing.
He stopped and looked mystified at my expression.
"What on earth are you doing wasting your time on economics?" I asked breathlessly.
"For the same reason you are doing design when you should be in fine arts, Izzy," he said quietly.
And there it was.
That little blush.
That hint of a smile.
That soft look in his eyes.
That made the world a good place to be.