“No,” Caleb said. He knew the song that Brad wanted, even though Brad didn't even know it existed yet. But something held him back. Was it Brad's inherent callousness? He'd expected it, but Caleb discovered that it still made him uncomfortable. Like he couldn't quite trust him.
You will, he told himself, you'll get there. You don't have to give him everything at once. Just pick something else.
“How about this one?” Caleb said, pulling out his phone from his pocket and starting to play one of the rough demos he'd recorded.
Brad let the song play for about a minute, finger absently tapping along to the beat, eyes fluttering shut as he contemplated something. Maybe the possibilities?
Then his eyes flicked back open and the look in them combined with his words was like a dagger. “Don't you have something . . .” He waved his hands. “A little less . . . mopey? Less depressing?”
Caleb sighed. Did Brad not know what he'd spent five of the last seven years doing? His life then—and sometimes now, even with Leo adding a burst of joy and excitement to it every day—had felt like one impossible challenge, one right after another.
“Maybe something we could make upbeat?” Brad offered.
Considering this, Caleb scrolled through the demos on his phone. There was one song . . . it had somewhat melancholy lyrics, but it had a more positive message, he guessed. Brad might not think so, but if he went back to the bungalow tonight, and had to tell Leo that Brad Maxwell had thought his songs sucked, that wouldn't be the end of the world.
“How about this one?” Caleb said, feeling a little reckless. Another song he'd written in the full flush of his love resurrected, when Leo had begun to come back to life during rehearsals. It'd been easy to remember just how completely and totally he'd loved him, when Leo had morphed into his bright, dazzling, sarcastic self. The sad, gray man had started to fade, replaced by sparkling blue eyes and all that tanned skin. Leo might not have returned to the bleached blond hair of his youth, but it hadn't mattered. Nothing had ever shone as brilliantly as Leo when he was happy, and Caleb, who'd known that his feelings had never really faded, had been confronted by a billowing, ballooning desire.
The lyrics were good. Solid work, if Caleb was being honest, and he could see it being more upbeat than the demo, more pop than rock, and as Brad nodded along, he clearly saw something in it too.
“Some kind of wild seventies pop,” Brad said when the song was barely thirty seconds in. “Definitely upbeat. The lyrics support it. They're cute.”
That word again. Caleb wanted to banish it from Brad's vocabulary. No doubt he considered it a compliment, but cute? Leo was cute when he was sleep-rumpled and crabby. Caleb's semi-epic songs of love and devotion were not cute.
“Great,” Caleb said weakly. He should be fucking thrilled that one of his songs had caught Brad's interest, that he even had a vision for it. Of course “wild ’70s pop” wasn't even remotely what he'd had in mind, but if Brad thought that was a good direction, who was he to argue?
He was just a mediocre bass player in an ex-boyband, an addict who'd never truly recover. He wanted something that was his, something besides being a good friend and a lover, that he could be proud of. If that was going to be wild ’70s pop, then so be it.
“Do you have the melody down?” Brad said, and after hitting a button by his chair, he stood, and to Caleb's surprise, a few guys walked into the studio.
“I keep these guys around to add backing,” Brad explained, not even bothering to introduce them. “This is Caleb Chance, from Star Shadow.” They all nodded at him, and Caleb wanted to hold up a hand and say, “This is weird! Stop!” He'd never recorded with anyone he didn't know before. In fact, he'd only ever recorded with the other Star Shadow guys. But one of them was handing him an electric guitar, like this kind of thing happened all the time.
And maybe in Brad's world, it did.
“Let's hear the melody line,” Brad said, “it doesn't need to be perfect. We can fix it later.”
That, Caleb thought darkly, was probably the most honest thing he'd said all afternoon. Everything would no doubt undergo a certain level of “fixing” before they were done with the song.
It's just like Benji being his perfectionist self, Caleb insisted, but he didn't quite believe it. Maybe because Benji and Brad Maxwell didn't seem very alike after all.
———
Leo practically pounced on him the moment he walked back into their bungalow, head throbbing, exhausted from their long session. But, he thought, trying to stay optimistic, they'd recorded a song. Maybe it wasn't anything like he'd written it, but it was still objectively good. Caleb knew it.
“How was it?” Leo said, linking his arms around Caleb's neck. Normally Caleb might give him a bit of a boost and carry him, Leo's legs locked around his waist, into the other room. Into the bedroom, specifically. But he was too tired tonight. Brad was a fierce perfectionist, way more than Benji, and he'd pushed and prodded and pulled, until Caleb had wanted to go hit him over the head with his guitar if he said one more word about radio likability or pop presence.
“You're underselling yourself,” Brad had said every single time Caleb had protested that he wasn't in this to be the next Ariana Grande.
Maybe he was. Maybe he didn't even give a fuck anymore.
“How was it?” Caleb repeated, slumping down onto a chair in the living room, and pulling Leo onto his lap. “It was fucking hard work. You think Benji is bad when we get into the studio? Brad Maxwell makes him look like a slouch.”
“Ouch,” Leo said.
“But we got a song, I guess. A good song.”
Leo perked up immediately. “Can I hear it?” Like he knew it was about him, without Caleb even having to say so. Which was sort of fair, because Caleb freely admitted that everything he was, was wrapped up in Leo.
He had the polished-up demo on his phone. He could pull it out right now and play it for Leo. It'd be baring his soul, far more than he'd been baring it for Brad and the random musicians he'd brought in. Of course, if they knew anything about him, they probably knew he was dating Leo Humphries and had been since practically the beginning of time, but it was so much more personal because Leo knew he meant every single word he sang.
“Uh,” Caleb said. Suddenly not sure. What if Leo didn't like the direction they'd gone in? He was a producer too, sometimes, and unsurprisingly had many strong opinions. That was why Caleb hadn't asked Leo to produce his solo material—he could see them butting heads all the time, because their processes were so different. Leo liked to experiment with a hundred different ways to record a song before deciding on one, but Caleb usually enjoyed finding the right way and then sticking to it. Or else he had before meeting Brad. He wasn't sure they would gel well, and he felt a pang of regret that he hadn't just asked Leo, and made this break an actual break. He could've spent all afternoon out in the sun, lying on the beach, only pulling Leo away when the desire rose too strong, and he needed him more than he needed to breathe.
But Brad was what he was committed to now, and he would have to be okay with that.
“You don't want me to hear it.” Caleb heard the tension in Leo's voice and felt it in the line of his back and shoulders. “Why not?”