“I really don’t know what to do with you sometimes,” Stan muttered.
Ben pressed their foreheads together. “I’m not going to smoke,” he said, too low for the boys to hear. “I don’t want any.”
“You can do what you want.”
“And what I want,” he murmured, “is to see what you’ve got on under that skirt when we get home later.”
Stan kissed him on the nose. “Behave and you will.”
When Tone got back he immediately began skinning up, and Summer arrived a few minutes later with a cool box full of beers and fancy sparkling water, and bowls for the chilli that she sent Geordie back to collect.
Stan helped himself to the sparkling water and noticed Ben stuck to his water instead of taking a beer. He also passed on the joint the first time it was passed around.
Stan went through to the store room part of the studio and grabbed the two big beanbags that he’d bought many years ago, secretly pleased they were still there. They were far comfier than the tall stools.
He kicked back in one of them, and Ben took the other, angling it so he was facing Stan rather than next to him.
“You want food?” Summer asked, holding out a bowl full of the chilli.
“Yes, please.” He sat up properly to eat it, burning his mouth on the first bite. “This is good,” Stan told Ben. “Thank you.”
“It’s one of only three things Tone knows how to make,” Ben said with a grin. “It usually turns out good, though. He learned how to make it from a roadie from Texas.”
Ben had unplugged his guitar and played little riffs on a loop while they ate.
“I like that one,” Stan said absently. He could, and had, watched Ben play guitar for hours.
“Hmm?” Ben tried it again, adding a new little flair to the end.
Stan grinned at him encouragingly.
“Plug it in,” Geordie called from across the room.
Instead of doing it himself, Ben waved the end of the cable in Summer’s direction until she came over and did it for him. She rolled her eyes, but she did it anyway before going back to her conversation with Jez. Tone was too busy concentrating on his food to pay much attention.
Stan was watching closely, though.
Ben and Geordie kept eye contact as Ben picked up the riff again and Geordie worked on figuring out the bass line to go underneath it.
“No, go back,” Ben said, playing something again.
“Gotcha.”
It was fascinating. These guys could be at each other’s throats one minute and making actual magic a few minutes later.
“Tone, give us a beat,” Geordie said.
“Uh….”
“Oh, give it here,” Stan said, hauling himself up off the beanbag to go and collect the spliff and the ashtray. He hadn’t smoked in a really long time, but like all of Tone’s weed, this was smooth and sweet.
“Cheers, babs.”
Tone picked up his drumsticks and found a thumping, earthy beat that gave the tune Ben and Geordie were working on some depth.
When Summer plucked the joint from his fingers, Stan grabbed a notebook from his bag and started scribbling his thoughts down.
He’d never been a creative writer. Not in the sense of poetry, or lyrics. Stan was very good at painting a picture with words, describing something real and making concepts easy to understand. More importantly, he enjoyed that far more than trying to write something that was a reflection of himself.
He wasn’t aware there was something bubbling under the surface, apparently needing to burst out of him in what Stan could only describe as an exorcism. It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t nice, but the God-damn relief he felt from being able to scrawl his thoughts onto a piece of paper left him almost shaking.
“Hey,” Ben murmured, knocking his ankle against Stan’s. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” Stan blinked. Tone’s weed was apparently as strong as it was smooth.
“Can I see?”
“It’s not for you,” he said, only realising that truth when he spoke it. “It’s for Summer.”
She looked over at the sound of her name. “You’ve got something for me?”
“I don’t know.” Suddenly self-conscious, Stan closed the notebook. “Never mind.”
“Nah, come on. We have a very serious circle of no judgement in here.”
Stan huffed a laugh and reluctantly handed her the notebook. “Well, I hope I’m included in that.”
She read through his messy scrawl while the others went and got more drinks from the cooler. When she looked back at him, she was wearing an expression Stan couldn’t read.
“You sure?” she asked.
“No. It’s up to you.”
“This is incredible,” she said sincerely. “Holy shit, Stan, I didn’t know you could write like this.”
“Neither did I,” he said with a laugh, and reached for his water for something to do with his hands.
“Jez, can you give me the melody?” Summer asked, taking the notebook over to the keyboard where Jez was programming the chord progressions into an app.
Stan watched as Summer figured out how the words fit to the music, and Stan was pretty sure they didn’t in places, but Summer was better at this than he was and made it work. She came back to crouch next to him a few minutes later and carefully plucked the pencil from his fingers.
“We need to put a break in here,” she murmured, marking it on the paper so he could see, “and there’s a few beats here that are missing.”
Stan helped her put it together, feeling less like a fool with her open enthusiasm for his lyrics. Not that he’d known they were lyrics when he wrote them.
“It doesn’t rhyme.” Stan pushed his hair behind his shoulder.
“It doesn’t need to, not with something like this.” Summer closed the notebook and tapped the pencil against it. “If you don’t want me to share it, we keep it right here, okay? Just for me and you.”
He loved her then, in that moment. “You sing it. Not Ben, or anyone else.”
“You just wrote our banger,” she said, a grin spreading across her face.
“Oh God.”
“We’ll credit you.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
Summer looked horrified at the suggestion. “We give credit where it’s due,” she said emphatically.
“Oh God,” he said again.
Summer leaned over and kissed his cheek. Then she straightened up. “Come on, boys. Let’s give this a go.”
Stan listened for the next hour as the song came together in a way he could never have imagined. By the time they were done, Summer had scrawled the title “Girl Things” across the top of the page and underlined it three times.
Until then, Stan hadn’t realised how much he’d been struggling with himself over the past few years. It was almost like now that he had his anorexia under control—not cured, but in a better place—he’d let himself believe that his outward expression didn’t matter so much. The little rituals that he’d always loved, from the small things like getting his hair done and painting his nails, to taking the time to put on makeup in the mornings and wearing clothes that had been designed to be worn by women, had somehow fallen away.