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“Remy—”
“No,” Remy said, shaking his head. “If it’s a mistake, like you said, then we should let it be done.”
“Can we just—”
“You already know it’s coming, Vivi. Like you said: Dating regular people like me never ends well. We’re a mistake. We’re too complicated.” He took a breath, put his hands to his head and tried to press the headache from his temples. “I was a breakup song waiting to happen, and the worst thing is, I knew it. I think I knew it all along, but I wanted to stay anyway, I wanted to believe the love letter bullshit. What the hell is wrong with me?”
He stood up, and for a moment, it looked like Vivi might stop him. She didn’t, so he turned around and walked toward the door. He heard her inhale right when his hand hit the knob, and he froze—
In an instant, he decided to give her five seconds. Five seconds to say something, to stop him, to talk to him, to do something other than let him leave. He counted.
Five.
Four.
Three—she made a noise in her throat, a gentle one that sounded like a cry, but said nothing.
Two.
One.
He left.
Then
Val became a walking conflict of interests.
He’d used drugs ever since they left Florida—various things, more out of experimentation and the desire to finally, finally do something wildly unsafe. It never concerned Remy in a significant way; it was never a habit, but rather, a hobby, and besides, Remy was fairly certain that trying to order Val around would only result in Val taking the opposite action. Tell him to write a ballad, he wrote a rock anthem. Tell him to sit quietly and pray, he ran away from home with a guitar. Tell him to feel bad, he felt proud.
So the drugs were just another thing Remy shook his head at, hoping Val would grow bored of them sooner rather than later. But then, almost unexpectedly, they became part of Val. When he wrote, he used them. When he played, he used them. They became a highway directly into his creativity, the only way he could push pass the frustration of writing song after song for other people—with a little cocaine in his body, he could find the inspiration without having to muddle through the anger and disappointment of it all.
And there was the conflict of interests—because Remy saw Val light up again when he wrote a new song, even if that light was fueled by schedule-one narcotics. Seeing him look excited, look happy, glow from the beauty of creating music after watching that light be slowly stamped out by executives and contracts and managers was wonderful. But seeing his brother’s face grow even more gaunt, seeing the marks on his arm go from indistinguishable to bright red, seeing his hair become brittle…
“I’m just worried you’re going to forget how to write stuff without help,” Remy said.Helpwas what Val called the substances. He needed a little “help” today. He could go get some “help” to finish the song the label was interested in for a new pop diva. Was there anything in the house to “help” out at the show tonight?
“You don’t just forget how to create music,” Val said, rolling his eyes and taking a long drag from a bong. He held the breath for a moment then let out the cloud of bright-white smoke.
“Yeah, but this is becoming expensive, and you’re an even bigger pain in the ass to work with when you’re on something,” Remy said, trying to keep the conversation light. “I’m just saying, maybe it can be like a Monday-Wednesday-Friday thing.”
Val set the bong down and looked at Remy hard—or rather, as hard as he could with his mind significantly dampened. “Too bad I don’t just sell out on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, huh?”
Which was true—the label wanted them in more and more often for songwriting sessions, for producing sessions, for “consultations” that were really just producing sessions the label wasn’t contractually obligated to pay them for. One day, almost a year after they arrived in LA, and six months since “Everything but the World” dropped off the charts, Miller called Remy and asked him to come to the label offices. Alone.
“We’re just not seeing the progression we want in order to keep Quiet Coyote on as an artist,” Miller said bluntly, with the sort of cool detachment that let Remy know he’d said this sort of thing a thousand times to a thousand different industry hopefuls.
Remy’s lips parted; he frowned. “But you literally emailed us yesterday and said you felt like we were on the verge of something.”
“Yeah, yeah. And I did, but now that I’ve slept on it, I just don’t think that’s the case.”
“So, like…we just stop? What happens to our songs? The second album? We’ve been writing it for months.”
“We never really found the mix of music we wanted to use on it, though, so we won’t be releasing it.”
Remy felt shot, the force of all this pushing him into the back of the expensive leather chair he was sitting in. Miller had his hands steepled, his elbows spread wide; between this and the massive executive desk, he looked a dozen times bigger and more formidable than his body really was.
“Val should be here for this. Quiet Coyote is his band before it’s mine,” Remy said.
“Well, yes, but I actually needed to talk to you alone about an additional business proposition.”
