A Beautiful Melody (11 page)

“Give it back!” Naomi squeals, chasing Lachlan who’s successfully evading her by putting Theo’s drum kit between them.

“No way, I want to see what girly crap you’re going to end up making us all play,” he teases as he holds what looks like a journal out of Naomi’s reach.

“Don’t think that’s going to save you. I can still whip you with my bow from this distance,” she warns, flicking her arm out and getting him in the shoulder.

“Ow!” he laughs, flinching away from her as she hits him repeatedly. “Ow! Stop it. Alright, alright, I’ll give it back. Just stop whipping me.”

He moves around the drum kit and holds the book out
to her, his other hand held up in surrender. She snatches the book back quickly and gives him one last whip for good measure.

“Hey!” he winces. “I gave it back.”

“Dude, you totally deserved that. You don’t mess with other people’s music journals – they’re like diaries,” Jack informs him, laughing at the whole scene that just unfolded in front of him.

Admittedly, I’m having a good laugh too. Lachlan didn’t go to our school, and he doesn’t write music, so he doesn’t get how sacred those things are – you just don’t look inside.

I move over to Naomi, who’s shoving the book deep into her oversized bag. “You’re writing lyrics?” I enquire as I move next to her.

She looks up at me a little awkwardly and bounces a shoulder before she looks down at her hand and inspects one of the many callouses that have developed on her fingers from all the hours spent playing. Her da
rk lashes hide her eyes from me. She seems so small and delicate and I have the urge to scoop her up in my arms and protect her from the world.

“It’s nothing. I’m just playing around,” she tells me, seeming a little embarrassed now.

“Well, you’ve got me interested. I’d love to know what you’re writing about.” I lean down a little so I can speak quietly. “I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours,” I suggest, my mouth turned up in a grin. I know I’m teasing, but I can’t help it, I love making her blush.

“You’re incorrigible,” she laughs,
glancing back up at me. But it’s there – that blush I was after is blooming across her cheeks. I guess this is what I’ve always really liked about Naomi. She has this innocence about her that the other girls I spend my time with don’t have. They are all very bold and know exactly what it is they’re asking of me. But Naomi, she’s never thrown herself at me. Even though I can tell she’s attracted to me. It makes her… special.

“I’m a lot more than that,” I grin before nodding toward her bag. “Seriously though, I’d like to hear your lyrics.”

She leans up against the low shelving unit and tucks her hair behind ear. “Oh they’re really nothing special. I’ve just had the melody to the song Theo’s been working on in my head and I jotted a few things down. The rest of it is all old stuff that I’ve been playing around with since school and there’s some classical themed stuff from my uni days. Normal stuff… you know?”

“Yeah, mines probably very similar, although minus the classical stuff, I’ve never written anything along those lines.” I lean back on the shelving next to her and fold my arms across my chest. “You’ve never said why you left ANU. Why didn’t you finish?”

“I don’t know,” she sighs. “I guess I just lost heart. I went from being the best in our school to being just like everyone else. I wasn’t so special there – heaps of students could play even more instruments than I can, and they could pick up the music and play even better than I can, and I guess I just got lost, you know? Everyone there was vying for the same positions in the orchestra, and I realised that it wasn’t what I wanted. I didn’t want to be an instrument in an orchestra. I didn’t want to fight like everyone else was. The competition just took all the fun out of it, so the moment I started to dread opening my violin case, I decided that I’d had enough, and I left.”

I sit and listen, nodding as she speaks. Lachlan and Jack have moved over to listen as well. It’s something we’ve all been interested in know
ing, especially when the music school at the Australian National University is supposed to be the best in the country. Everyone who wanted a career in music applied there – hell, I even applied to go there, but I didn’t make it. I went to the Conservatorium of Music in Sydney instead and studied music and social sciences – I got my degree and all, but it was just another big party to me. I’m sure it wasn’t anything like what Naomi was doing in Canberra.

“I know a lot of people think I wasted a great opportunity, but I just couldn’t keep doing something I wasn’t enjoying. I mean, what’s the point in getting a coveted position in one of Australia’s top orchestras if you’re not really into it? It’s pointless right?” she explains, looking at each of us as we all make some sort of agreeable noise.

“Well, I’m glad you dropped out Nomes,” Lachlan adds.

“Yep, me too. Because if you had’ve gone on, you’d be playing the philharmonic or something and we wouldn’t
be going on tour with fucking
Radio Silence!
” Jack whoops, high-fiving Lachlan as he does.

“Thanks guys,” she laughs.

“Speaking of the tour. Where the hell is Theo? We need to get this rehearsal in,” I say, looking over my shoulder at the door that leads into his house.

As I open the door, I hear Marcus wondering where I am, and I’m not surprised he’s the one sitting right next to Naomi as they all huddle together gossiping about god only knows what – hair products or something, knowing this lot.

“Alright ladies, let’s get this done,” I say, as I stride over to my drum kit and pick up my sticks.

“All business today huh?” asks Jack as he immediately heads over to his keyboard.

“Yes, and you should be too. We’ve got less than a month to get these set lists down and to get everything recorded so we can make the most of this tour. I just got off the phone with the tour manager and we’re going to be playing ten shows in three weeks. There’s not much time off in between. So if we aren’t capable of playing this stuff together in our sleep then we’re going to end up sounding shit by the end of it. So get your arses into gear, and stop your fuckin’ gas bagging.”

“Yes sir!” Naomi smiles, saluting me before she picks up her violin. I can’t help but crack a smile. Despite all of my earlier reservations, she’s actually been really good for the band. She lightens the mood and has a way of making me realise that I don’t
have to be serious all the time. Just like she always did I guess.

I can’t really express how glad I now am that she came back into my life. I’d been carrying so much anger and resentment toward her around with me for years, and now, knowing that it was all a stupid misunderstanding due to my douchebag of a brother, it’s as if a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders
, and I’m finding my friend again.

I didn’t realise how much I had missed her friendship, she’s always been the only person who seemed to fully understand me. It’s like she’s always seen me for me – even when she didn’t really remember who I was, she still seemed to understand me, she still made an effort with me. I guess even if everything was true I still would have ended up forgiving her. I was already struggling to stay mad at her – how can you be mad with someone who gets you? It’s impossible.

“What’s first?” asks Jack, “Can we do
It’s a Crime
? I need to loosen my fingers up a bit.”

“Sure,” I say. “When we finish up, we’ll order pizza and work out our set lists for the tour. We’ll try and get something we can all agree on.” As I look around at each of them, they’re all in complete agreement. “Let’s do this,” I call out, as I set my Mac to record the session and sit down at my kit.

Jack looks at me for confirmation to start and I nod, positioning myself for when I start to play while I listen to the solemn notes that begin the song. I have to say that right now, I’m actually feeling happy. Everything seems to be coming together. The band, my life. I can only see good things happening right now.

After a month of preparations, we are all packed and ready to travel around the country supporting Radio Silence on their multi city tour of Australia. They’re playing every big venue there is. So it’s going to be almost a month of flying around the country, staying in hotels.

If you don’t know who Radio Silence is, then you must have been living under a rock for the good part of ten years. Most days, you can’t make it through
a day without hearing one of their songs. You’ll hear them on TV, in movie soundtracks, on the radio – hell, you’ll even hear them in the freaking supermarket or while you’re standing in a lift. They’re that popular.

They started off as a little indie rock band
in England, some place called Gloucester. I have no idea where that is because I’ve never been there, but the whole point is, that they’re kind of like us. They produced their own album, played as many shows and festivals as they could and finally got noticed when one of their songs,
Vagabond,
caught on.

For a while, that’s all their fans wanted to hear an
d they’d refuse to play it. Dan Stolle, the band’s front man and song writer, said that he always hated the song and just couldn’t stand playing it anymore. Right now, they’re on their tenth world tour and all reports are saying that they’re playing the song again.

Fans are going mad, tickets have been sold out for months. Extra shows were scheduled and they sold out too.
It’s epic, to say the least.

Do you understand what this means for us? Radio Silence has
legions
of fans and
we
– Matiari – are going to get to play for them. This is phenomenal!

But, between you and me – when I think about standing on that stage, it
frightens the hell out of me. I mean, what if they hate us? I remember going to a concert a few years ago. It was a pretty well-known band, but the supporting act was just horrible. They did this weird thing where they ran around the stage, fluttering their hands at their sides while ‘flight of the bumblebees’ played.

We all sat in stunned silence, wondering what the hell was going on and when they stopped, a member of the audience yelled out ‘
You Suck!’

They gave him the finger and started playing
a song that had little musicality to it while they wailed indecipherable lyrics.

When the
y finished, it was like they were playing to a stadium full of fucking crickets. Not one person applauded. On top of that, the same audience member yelled out, “You still suck!”

The band then started swearing at the audience
, every one of us roared with laughter. Next thing we knew, the lead singer kicked over the microphone stand and the lot of them walked off the stage without finishing their set.

At the time, I remember laughing
. I remember re-telling the story and laughing with people again and again. Now though, I think about that band, knowing exactly how exciting it is to be the supporting act for a big name band and feel fear creep through me. What if we become that band? What if
we
get booed off the stage?

“Oi Marcus. Get your arse in the van,
” Lachlan calls out. We’re all driving to the airport together in Theo’s van so we can help to check in all of our equipment. Although I’m pretty sure that we’re all going together to make sure we all turn up on time. This tour won’t work if one of us goes missing – and there’s too much riding on it for one of us to fuck up.

I jump in the back seat of the van, with Lachlan on one side and Naomi in the middle.

“All good?” she asks as I slide in next to her and clip my seatbelt.

I blow out my breath, and nod. “Yeah
. I’m ok,” I tell her, placing my hand on hers and giving it a reassuring squeeze. The warmth of her small hand in mine is comforting, something about Naomi feels like home to me. I guess that’s why I’ve always been so careful with her. I didn’t want to ruin this… thing we have, by getting involved.

I leave my hand on hers, and she doesn’t take hers away.
We stay that way – connected – until we arrive at the airport.

“Is it bad that I’m nervous already?” I ask Theo, who’s sitting in the seat next to me. I’m in the middle of the row and he’s in the aisle seat. Lucky for him, because he’s much too tall to fit comfortably against the window or the middle where I am. Some random person who is pretending we don’t exist was the lucky one to snag the window seat.

The other three are
five rows in front of us, in the seats just near the emergency exit. That’s where there’s the most leg room. Theo, who is still over six feet tall, is the shortest of the group, so he volunteered to keep me company. He still looks slightly squished up though. Luckily this flight isn’t very long. We’re only travelling from Sydney to Brisbane.

“
Give it half an hour,” he says to me. “Your nerves will give way to boredom soon enough.”

Theo
pulls out his phone and switches it to airplane mode before plugging a set of headphones into the jack. My eyes stray to his playlist as he thumbs through the songs. I notice an eclectic mix of rock, metal, and alternative music. Some of it I know, some of it I haven’t heard before. But from the looks of things, we have very similar taste.

He stops on Aiden Price’s
I Recall
and offers me an ear bud. “You want to listen as well?” he asks.

“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t want to get my ear gunk on your headphones,” I explain
, causing a deep belly laugh to rumble out of him. It sends chills through me, starting at my chest and working its way in ripples until I’m sure I feel a tingle in my fingertips and toes, and I guess maybe somewhere else too…

“I can deal with your ear gunk,” he smiles, offering it to me again. This time I accept it,
plugging it into my ear as he presses play and adjusts the volume so we can listen, but still hear each other speak.

“So, I’m still working on those lyrics,” he says. “We’ve been so busy preparing for this tour that I haven’t had a chance to finish them.”

“Tell me about it. This has been one very busy month. I did have some thoughts on those lyrics though. I actually jotted them down. When we get to the hotel I can show them to you. My notebook is packed with my luggage.”

“Yeah?
I’d like to hear your thoughts,” he smiles.

Hearing him tell me that he’d like to see the lyrics just sends me soaring
, and I struggle to keep a huge grin off my face. When we were in high school we used to share our thoughts on our compositions all the time. I can’t begin to explain how wonderful it is to feel like we might be able to go back to that again.

Conversation flows fairly easily between us. We talk about how we feel about the tour, how the band is playing together. We have a short conversation about a few changes we could make to some of the songs and whether or not we should play any of our new songs or throw a couple of popular covers into our set list. But eventually
, we fall quiet. It’s not that we’ve run out of things to talk about, it’s just that it feels comfortable to be near him again, and I hope that he is feeling the same way too.

Theo lays his head back against the seat and closes his eyes. So I remove the bud from my ear, and pull my replacement Kindle out of my bag and power it up, ready to lose myself in the world of romance for a few hours.

“What’s that? A tablet?”
Theo asks, his eyes now open as he watches what I’m doing.

“It’s a Kindle – an ereader,” I inform him.

“You like reading?”

“Yeah, I love it. And this means I can carry a whole library full of books with me.”

“Yeah? What are you reading now?”

“Oh, you don’t want to know,” I laugh, waving my hand at him in an attempt to
cancel out the subject.

“Tell me. I’m interested.”

“It’s a romance. Girly stuff. I love them,” I admit, feeling a little defensive all of a sudden.

“There’s nothing wrong with romance. I’d have a bigger issue if you said you were reading War and Peace
, or something like that – no one really likes that book, they just say they do to impress people.”

I can’t help but laugh
at the image of some uni students I’ve seen lugging around that giant thing, trying to look cultured while reading it.

“W
ill you read to me?” he asks, pulling the bud of the earphone out and stopping the music.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. We’re going to be travelling a lot, we’ll have plenty of time to read a book. Why don’t you pick a book and read it out to me.”

“Um… alright.
” I scroll through my library, trying to find a book that doesn’t ride the line between romance and erotica. I’m sure I’ve got some clean romance on here… “Oh here,” I say when I find one. “I’ve had this one downloaded for a while now. It got really great reviews. It’s about a girl who’s really spoilt and ends up getting in trouble and having to redeem herself through community service. Sounds kind of boring, when I try and sell it like that,” I laugh. “But I’m sure there are some good life lessons in there.”

“And t
his is the plot of a romance?” he asks, brows raised.

I nod,
tapping the screen to open the book. The story opens with bunch of rich brats having a party and doing drugs like it’s the normal thing to do.

“See I don’t get that,” Theo says when I pause. “Why
is it, just because you’ve got more money than you can possibly spend, would you go and ruin your life with drugs? It’s just stupid as far as I’m concerned.”

“Do you want me to pick another book?” I ask him. “I’ve got heaps.”

“No, no. This is fine. I just hate drugs is all. Keep going, I like listening to your voice.”

We exchange a brief look and a smile, as he leans on the armrest between us, his head on his hand an
d he positions himself so he can see the words on the screen as well. As I look at him, I have this great urge to hug him. So I do – I can’t help myself. It’s a little awkward because we’re sitting next to each other, and I think I’ve shocked him a little. I only hug him briefly, but he hugs me back and I hear him release his breath in a low sigh.

“What was that about?” he asks as I sit back and pick my Kindle up again.

“It’s just nice to know that the Goth boy I used to know is still in there somewhere. I’ve missed you and your view of the world Aramis,” I tell him.

He chuckles a little. “Just call me Theo now. But thanks, I guess I’ve missed
you too. You were kind of the light to my dark,” he admits, and my heart does this little skitter thing across my chest.

“You should write that down you know.”

“Which part?”

“The light to my dark. It sounds like something you could use in a song.”

He smiles and nods. “Yeah. That’s what I’ve missed,” he says more to himself than to me, as he slides the pen out of the bottom of his phone and writes the lyrics on the screen. I can’t wait to see what he turns those few words into.

Sliding the pen back inside his phone, he sets it on his lap and turns back to me. “Alright, keep going,” he prompts, nodding toward my kindle.

It’s gone to sleep now, so I press it on again and resume the story, sneaking glances at him every now and then, to check that he’s still listening and doesn’t look too bored. All the while, thanking the cosmos for returning my friend to me.

By the
time we land, we’re about ten chapters in, the main character has just started her community service helping impoverished kids and the guy who’s to be her love interest is giving her a hard time for being so spoilt all her life. She thinks he hates her, but you can tell there’s more to it than that.

As we stand up to
disembark from the flight, I stash my kindle back inside my bag, sliding it on my shoulder.

“I hope you’re going to finish reading tha
t to me. If I don’t find out why Ethan’s got it in for Kasey, I might lose my will to live,” he jokes as he steps out into the aisle, blocking the path of other passengers as he lets me out in front of him.

“You don’t have to listen to it if it’s boring you,” I state,
talking to him over my shoulder as I slowly move toward the exit.

“No, I like
it. I really do want to know what happens,” he assures me, his voice soft and low as he leans toward me and speaks so only I can hear. There’s something about Theo, the rumble of his laugh, the deep tone of his voice – it’s like a caress, gently running down my spine, causing my skin to prickle with goose bumps. “It’s been fun. I meant it when I said I like listening to you,” he adds quietly, leaning even closer so I can feel his body brushing against me.