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The studio smelled like burnt coffee and acoustic foam. The weight of a long day followed by an even longer night settled onto Maddie’s shoulders and made the stack of pizzas in her hands feel heavier than they had been on the walk from her car.
Bobby looked up at her from his place at the console in the sound booth and smiled.
“Hey there,” he said, sounding tired himself but you wouldn’t know it if you looked at him.
Bobby, as always, was the picture of calm grace in the center of creative chaos. Steady and tall as he leaned against the console and watched as the band played through a track.
“You’re playing too fast, Buck!” Chimney’s voice carried over the monitor from the recording studio.
“Well, maybe it should be faster, Chim.” Buck sniped back and Bobby muted the monitor with a press of the button.
Maddie lifted her brows high on her forehead.
“I take it I came just in time,” Maddie said.
Bobby shot her a fond exasperated expression with a tilt of his head as he took the pizza from her.
“We’re definitely reaching the point of hangry. You sticking around?”
It was funny. Bobby Nash had been the one person Maddie had taken the longest to warm up to. Sure, she knew now that the kind smiles were sincere and the devotion he had to the band, to her brother, was genuine. But close to two years before? When her brother had come into their apartment smelling like dish soap and fried food with a card in his hand from some random guy that he’d met at the bar asking him to come to the studio? Who was “trust me this guy didn’t seem like a serial killer” according to Buck?
Yeah right.
She’d had her reservations.
And she’d made her skepticism very clear when she’d gone with Buck to meet him much to Buck’s embarrassment and annoyance.
But Bobby had turned into one of the nicest people she’d ever met. He cared about Buck, actually cared about him, and was quickly becoming fluent in the nuances of Buck. She watched as he put the time and energy into her brother like no one else had ever bothered to do before—not even their own parents—and quickly solidified himself as someone who Buck could trust. Buck loved easily but his trust was something a little harder to win. He’d been disappointed more times than she could count— enough times that to be cared for without strings attached by anyone but Maddie was a constant surprise for Buck—so, when it took almost no time at all for her brother to adore Bobby it’d been a shock for sure.
Maddie had to admit that the feeling was mutual, though. Bobby was kind and warm and wasn’t afraid to tell Buck when to get his head out of his ass. Bobby was an important person in Buck’s life. Given that for the longest time that had been solo title for herself, Maddie understood the magnitude of that gift. Buck loved with his whole heart and he did so unguardedly.
To be loved by Buck was like hearing a symphony for the first time. It knocked you off your feet and consumed your whole soul.
She’d been pleased to see that Bobby understood that too.
“Who else is going to eat the green olives and pepperoni with Buck?” She asked.
The door to the recording studio open with a dramatic flair as Tommy leaned against the door frame and sniffed the air.
“I knew it! Maddie brought pizza!”
And it should not be as humorous as it was to watch eight grown adults practically trip over one another as they raced through the too small doorway and swarmed the food.
Maddie was sitting in the Jeep with a barely concealed tremble in her fingers as the adrenaline surged through her veins. Her coffee sat untouched in the coffee stained holder nestled in front of the center console. She should drink it. She would need the caffeine to stay alert and to keep her feet moving but her heart already felt like it was pounding against her ribcage and threatening to fall out in anticipation alone.
It had been since Doug kissed her goodbye and headed off to the hospital that morning. She’d smiled at him, dreamy with sleep while she pretended the hand shaped bruise on her arm still didn’t throb, and wished him luck. The chief of cardiovascular surgery was letting him assist with a heart transplant of a fifteen year old girl who had been on the waiting list for three years. It was a big deal for the hospital but more importantly for Doug. They were going to celebrate when he got home.
That was Doug’s plan at least.
Maddie’s butt had gone numb from how long she’d been sitting in the driver seat but as soon as the sign flipped to ‘open’ she was out and hurrying to the door before the owner could even turn away.
He smiled at her and held the door open for her to walk inside. Maddie tried to return the smile with one of her own but it felt like it’d been years since she’d worn hers. She was out of practice.
“What can I do—”
“I need to buy that guitar back,” Maddie said and then flushed when she realized how desperate she sounded despite her polite tone. “Please.”
The owner’s eyebrows arched high onto his forehead as he turned to look at where Maddie’s gaze had been fixated on since the moment she’d parked outside the pawn shop. She couldn’t look away. She’d been too afraid that if she did, it would disappear. And if that guitar disappeared than so would her little brother and a life without Buck in it was a life without a melody to get her from one day to the next.
So, she sat in her car and kept her eyes fixed on it and watched as the sun peered up into the sky and reflexed the gold roses etched in the frets through the window.
Now, she was close enough that she could practically touched it.
The owner turned his back to her and reached up to pull the guitar from the mount on the wall and placed it on the glass counter.
Maddie sucked in a sharp breath through her nose and let her fingers graze over the deep blue body.
“How much?” Maddie asked, trying not to be impolite but the clock started ticking the moment the open sign was flipped at eight o’clock.
Optimistically, she had six hours.
Realistically, she had maybe four.
“Two thousand,” the owner said and Maddie winced.
That was nearly double what she’d paid for it the first time.
“Would you take fifteen?”
She’d been able to save a little under a thousand in cash without Doug noticing. There was another three hundred she’d explained away for groceries and paying off her parking pass at the hospital and then two hundred that she could withdrawal from the ATM without Doug receiving a notice.
It was all she had.
Maddie looked up at the owner and watched as he weighed her offer. He was a heavier set man with the hairline that was thinning out even though he couldn’t have been older than forty. The smell of cigarette smoke wafted off him with ever rub of his hand across his face.
“You said you were buying it back?” He asked, looking up at her and Maddie bit her lip to keep her impatience from showing.
She didn’t have time for a story but he wanted one anyway.
“I bought this for my little brother and our parents sold it to you so I would like to buy it back, yes.” She was short and to the point but there was no way she was letting that guitar move off that counter away from her.
Not after the way her brother had broken down in the emergency room, scratches scabbing over his face with the blood still fresh on his skin and tears in his eyes, begging her to help him. Not after seeing Buck, her baby brother, looking at her so broken and so defeated.
“Well, what about music? Your guitar?” She had asked and felt her heart rip to pieces at the quiver of his lip.
“They sold it, Mads,” Buck had said. “When I went to school, Mom had Dad take it to a pawn shop. I-It’s gone. I’m so sorry!”
It’d been the final straw. Something in Maddie had snapped and she’d vowed then and there in that hospital room that she was not going to let her brother wither away. Buck wasn’t allowed to be ground down into dust and forgotten in the wind, never to be talked about again.
She refused.
“I can do eighteen,” the owner said.
Maddie felt her stomach give out. Did she have time to run back to the bank? That was another three hundred, a hundred more that would send an alert to Doug’s phone. Sure, he was in surgery but—
Maddie caught the glimmer of her engagement ring on her finger. The diamond was a cushion cut surrounded by smaller diamonds on a sterling silver band. It’d taken her breath away when Doug had gotten down on one knee, his charming smile wavering with emotion, as he held the ring proudly pinched between his fingers.
It’d been styled after his mother’s and he’d stared at it on her finger the whole night.
It didn’t leave her breathless anymore. Now, it smothered the breath out of her every time she so much as dinged it against the table top.
Her hands shook as she pulled it off, yanking as it caught on her knuckle, and put it down on the counter. It fell with a rattling clank against the glass.
“What about this?”
The owner— his name tag read Dan—looked down at the ring and then back up at her with a frown.
“Ma’am,” he said, not touching the ring. “Are… Are you all right?”
His eyes drifted to a tired display, one that Maddie had seen in countless restrooms and in every cubicle in the ER.
Are you or someone you love in trouble? Know the signs of abuse.
“Are you in some kind of—”
“I’m fine,” Maddie said with a shake of her head, easy when she had the practice. “How much for the ring?”
Dan stared at her for another moment and Maddie nudged the ring closer until he took it in his hand and lifted it to the light. He pulled out a loupe from a drawer, inspecting the stone, and checking to make sure there wasn’t any sign theft. Maddie let out a shaky breath and ran her fingers across the smooth surface of the guitar again.
It still looked the same as when she’d gotten it for Buck for his sixteenth birthday. Doug had been annoyed she’d spent so much but he’d been even more upset that she went back to Hershey without him. But Doug never really put up much of a fight when it came to Buck.
Maybe it was because he knew that if he had, she wouldn’t have stayed as long as she did.
But he’d tried everything to keep her in Boston. The trip was too far. Buck would be sixteen and wouldn’t want his big sister around. Doug made a point of reminding her again that Buck wasn’t her kid and it wasn’t on her to make up for where her parents lacked.
He’d been right on that count.
It wasn’t Maddie’s job to make up for the mistakes of her parents.
But Maddie did it anyway.
She was glad she made the trip. Her parents hadn’t planned anything for Buck’s sweet sixteen. Her mother had stayed shut in her room and shrouded in stale grief when Maddie got to the house. Maddie didn’t even think her parents had even uttered the words ‘Happy Birthday’ that day. At that point in her life, she’d known all the excuses, heard them before during all the times her parents could’ve been there and chose not be, but Buck was hearing their sad song on repeat. He never knew the happiness of before; just the bitterness of after. At least with Maddie, that sad song wasn’t laced with resentment that their mother could barely keep from her voice whenever it shook too hard.
She didn’t even know what it was that made her pick the guitar specifically.
Maddie’s own sweet sixteen had been a night to remember. Her friends had thrown together a party at the local diner where they’d eaten too many fries and a fountain of chocolate milkshakes before heading to Hersheypark in the Dark. Nobody had batted an eye when she’d brought Buck with her but her friends were used to her little brother tagging along by then.
“Are you sure you want to come, Evan?” She’d asked. “It’s going to be scary and most of the people there are going to be big kids.”
“Please? I won’t bug you.” She’d never been good at saying no to him even then.
Buck had been seven and worn his pirate costume he’d put together for Halloween that year. And while her friends had shrieked themselves hoarse every time a zombie or some guy with a chainsaw startled them as they walked to rides, Buck had clung to her side and grinned so wide his face had to hurt.
He’d spent the following week trying to scare Maddie any chance he could get but he was still at that stage where kids didn’t know the strength of their own footsteps.
It’d been one of her best birthdays that she could remember.
She wanted the same for Buck.
But Buck had really started to retreat within himself after Maddie left. She’d seen it in the way she would find him curled up with his headphones tucked in his ears and his notebook in his lap when she would come home for the holidays. He didn’t have friends like Maddie had growing up. He was friendly— she didn’t think there was a person alive who couldn’t at least see that— and being on the football team helped but he’d taken solace in his music like it was the only comfort left to him. When the air of her parents’ house was stale and flat like a tomb that hadn’t been disturbed in centuries, Maddie could always follow the sound of the piano to find Buck.
That was, until she came home the year Buck was fifteen, and there was no music to follow because her parents had sold the piano.
The scoff her mother had made when Buck had asked for a guitar that Christmas had given Maddie an idea of what she was going to get Buck for his birthday but she just didn’t know what.
The shop employee had showed her a few beige acoustic Yamahas and even a chrome Epiphone Hummingbird that had been within her price range. But then someone had opened the door and the sunlight had glimmered along the frets where the roses were tattooed across a striped ebony neck and bled into the blue body. It’d been triple what she’d planned on spending and Doug had been furious, but nothing was worth more than the way Buck’s eyes had lit up when she presented it to him. He’d carried it around like it was a precious as a newborn and Maddie had rarely seen him apart from it since.
Except for when he’d shown up in the hospital that afternoon after crashing his bike and begging her to help him because the idea of going back to that tomb, to their parents, without his music was enough to have Buck break down sobbing and looking so lost.
Dan sighed as he held her engagement ring in his too big fingers.
“All right,” Dan said, looking up at her through a thick layer of hesitation. “For the ring and three hundred dollars, I will trade you the guitar.”
Maddie was pretty sure the ring was more than double what Dan had asked for originally but she wasn’t going to argue with him. She didn’t know if it was pity or what because he was essentially taking less than what she’d offered but she agreed and pulled out the three hundred in cash.
Maddie signed the dotted line and was walking out of the pawn shop with the guitar in hand in less than an hour. She placed it in the back, making sure to stack the pillow and quilt from the guest room around it to keep anything from denting the wood, and hurried to the driver seat.
Her hand felt lighter as she twisted the steering wheel of the Jeep. The ring had felt heavy on her finger the night Doug had slid it on after he proposed. Now she felt unchained, untethered, and terrifyingly yet thrillingly unattached.
But she didn’t have much time and she still had a few stops to make.
“Here you go,” Chimney said as he dropped a slice of his pizza next to Maddie’s pepperoni and olives. “One slice of adult pizza full of sausage, mushrooms, and green olives. All things our Buckaroo doesn’t like with the bubble crust free of charge.”
Maddie cheered as she pulled the doughy bubble with her fingers and threw a grateful smile at Chim. Chimney and Maddie had had a soul searching conversation one night at the bar after a long week where Maddie was two glasses of wine in and Chimney had been resenting the mediocre pizza the bar had served when they realized they shared the same love of pizza toppings. Buck hated mushrooms and sausage usually cost a little extra so they settled on pepperoni instead when the money had been tight and they were still struggling to get their feet under themselves when they settled in LA. It’d been their compromise— green olives for Maddie and pepperoni for Buck—and their go to treat for days that seemed endless and Buck and Maddie felt small in a too big world.
A green olive and pepperoni pizza had been their first meal in their one bedroom apartment and was as much of a staple as Buckley Popcorn nights.
But nothing beat the deluxe and Chimney was the only other person Maddie knew who felt as passionately about it as she did. Chimney ducked his head down and returned back to the other end of the conference table with a blush on his cheeks. Maddie pretended that her face wasn’t warm as well.
Buck made a disgusted noise at the back of his throat.
“Why don’t you two just date already?”
“Buck!” Maddie hissed as she tossed an olive at his head. “We’re just friends.”
The salty green ring bounced off his forehead into his awaiting palm and he popped it in his mouth with an eye roll.
“Sure,” Buck said, shooting her a knowing arch of his brow. “I’m just saying. You could do a lot worse than Chim. He’s a good guy.”
Maddie bit off the retort before it could leave her lips about how neither of them had a great track record for picking the best partners. Buck’s expression didn’t shutter close at the mention of Abby’s name quite as much as he used to but that was still a bruise too fresh to joke about just yet.
Chimney… wasn’t like that. They were friends and he was sweet.
And he had impeccable taste in pizza so…
Buck’s leg bouncing rocked the table enough for her water ripple in her cup and she narrowed her eyes as she took her brother in. Buck was toying with a piece of pepperoni with his fingers, ripping it in half before popping part of it in his mouth and chewing absently. His eyes flitted from one member of the band to the other, blue eyes glazing over in that faraway daze he sometimes got when the nerves before a show kicked in.
She’d always suspected that Buck had struggled with anxiety—it’d been all the more apparent as he got into his teens— but now that they had an official diagnosis, it made things a little easier to catch. Back when she’d been a nurse, Maddie had witnessed more times than she ever would imagine, especially in the ER where patients came in scared out of their minds because something was wrong and they didn’t know why, the relief people got after receiving a diagnosis. It was like they could finally exhale after hours of holding the pain and worry tight in their chests.
It’d been the same when Buck had finally agreed to see a therapist that Bobby recommended. Having a name to the feather always poking you at your side had been like the first soft landing after an endless flight. It gave Buck a name for all those weights in his stomach and the fluttering beneath his skin. It named the monsters in his head that told he wasn’t good enough and stole his breath away at times where his palms were sweating and his hands would shake. It’d explained so much in such a small amount of time and with it brought an arsenal for Buck to defend himself against the hammering of his heart and the nerves that made his chest tight.
But Buck still tried to hide it. He still thought he had to swallow back all the messy feelings inside so that his friends didn’t have to see it.
So that Maddie didn’t have to see it either. She knew it was hard for him to open up that way. Their entire childhood had been one reprimand into the next. Sit down, shut up, and don’t bring attention to yourself. It was disrespectful to breathe life into a room that was shrouded in mourning.
They’d gotten so used to the instinct to suffocate that they almost didn’t even realize they were doing it anymore.
That time of her life with Doug had been horrible but it’d also given her a chance to know what it was like to laugh and not worry about being scolded for it. Buck never got that chance. He still kept things inside, locked away, and quiet so they wouldn’t disturb anyone else.
Except when he was singing of course. When he was singing all bets were off. Buck sang like he was striped to the bone and all those hidden layers were gone so that everyone could see how his heart was operated by the sun twisted with melodies.
“Buck,” Maddie said, sliding her hand over his fingers that were plucking against the table like he was imagining playing his guitar. “You all right? What’s got you all twisted in knots?”
Buck’s fingers curled into his palm beneath her hand as a flash of surprise crossed his face. He sucked his lip in between his teeth and ducked his head down as if he was considering lying to her.
“I’m fine.” Had been Buck’s catchphrase since he was eleven and a counselor had cornered him at school after noticing he’d been living a life of near impenetrable silence.
But he never could keep anything from Maddie.
“We’ve got one more song to record for the demo,” he said.
Buck nudged the rest of his pizza away with a push of his knuckles with his free hand.
“Okay,” Maddie pressed when he didn’t elaborate further. “You’ve recorded a few of them now. What makes this different?”
She pushed his plate back towards him. She knew that when his stomach was twisted in knots, he tended to lose his appetite. But she doubted he’d eaten anything other than his coffee and muffin that morning and he’d barely finished his slice.
Buck grimaced and pulled his hand away to tear at the crust with his fingers.
“It’s all me.”
Maddie leaned forward in her chair when he whispered his confession to the table.
“What’s all you?”
“It’s my song, Mads,” Buck said just as quiet and just as raw.
“So? You’ve written a bunch of songs. Bobby’s heard them and he liked them, didn’t he?”
Maddie knew that despite his insecurities, Buck held people’s opinion of him in little regard. People that didn’t matter at least. But Bobby? The band? Maddie? Buck held their opinions almost too highly. So high that he had to stand on his tip toes to reach it sometimes.
The crust twisted until Buck’s thumb went through a hole and coated his fingers with sauce. He dropped it onto his plate again with a sigh and Maddie handed him a napkin.
“Buck,” Maddie said. “Talk to me.”
The napkin wrinkled beneath Buck’s fingers and captured his attention for a chorus of a few blinks of his eyelashes.
“It’s our song,” Buck said.
Oh.
“The one you wrote when we—”
Buck bit his lip again and nodded, his mouth quirking upward into a small smile.
Suddenly, she understood the nerves as a missing puzzle piece slid into place at the mention of their shared memory. The 118 had done a handful of pop alternative rock songs that pleased the record label and got their foot in the door to most of the radio stations on the West Coast. But now that they had the positive reception from all parties, they had more wiggle room to take risks.
Buck’s song—their song— was something different. It was a captured heartbeat.
It was also a shift in the sound Buck had sung before; a shift in Buck’s singing that she didn’t think the bandhad heard him sing before. Sure, they’d heard Buck’s songs that were fun and showed off his guitar skills but they hadn’t heard this version of Buck. The kind of version that was sung under his breath when he was feeling lonely. The version that kept him company all those years in his silent solitude.
His oldest companion beside the consistent, stinging rejection.
“Would you sing it with me?”
Maddie nearly choked on her own spit and Buck snorted as she scrambled for her water. The others turned to look at her as she gasped for breath and Maddie glared at Buck as he smiled at her.
“Buck!”
“What?” Buck asked like he didn’t just ask her to sing with his band in a recording studio for arguably their most important demo album of their career.
“Buck, you know that’s not my thing.”
She wasn’t like Buck. Maddie sang in the car, the shower, and under her breath. That was about it. Her parents made her learn piano but she always hated the recitals. Her parents came to one but then her mom had gotten that distant, wet look in her eyes that lingered in her gaze and brewed into a dark mood and it’d been like they hadn’t been in the room at all.
Maddie didn’t like playing for ghosts.
“Please,” Buck said, his smile dropping so that she could see the layer of insecurity that he tried to bury deep inside. “It’ll sound super depressing if it’s just me.”
And Maddie highly doubted that. Buck packed too much emotion, too much untapped expression into every note he sang that even a funeral march would’ve been something haunting and beautifully complex if Buck sang it.
But she also knew this was new for him. Knew that now that their demo album had done well, they had a real chance to solidify their sound as a band. But that sound needed to spin around Buck’s voice and the pressure of that had been a hot spot light on her little brother that was burning his cheeks a little.
She knew what he was asking. He was asking her to hold his hand as he shared a piece of himself with his friends.
“It’s just the demo,” Buck added. “You know the song a-and if the band likes it and the label likes it then we can get them add Karen on full time as another backup singer instead of just a few gigs.”
Maddie tried to swallow past tightness in her throat. Buck’s hand dwarfed hers as he bumped his knuckles against her fingers. He ducked his head down and looked up at her through his big long lashes with his blue eyes that always got him into trouble.
“Please?”
Maddie sighed and threw another olive at his face.
It felt like everyone in the grocery store was staring at her. Eyes burned at the back of her head as she threw a bag of coffee grounds into her basket. A look that lingered too long as she grabbed a box of blueberry muffins. Pointed and accusatory that made Maddie want to turn inward and cover the soft parts of herself to protect her stomach and face.
It didn’t really matter what she was getting. She was filling her basket with things she was barely paying attention to and settling them over what she’d really hurried into Walmart for. The phone with the prepaid minutes was concealed from view by Twizzlers and Goldfish crackers. She would’ve preferred to skip this stop but the risk of Doug finding the phone had been too high for her to get it beforehand. She already knew he was tracking her cellphone and while he may have been in surgery for another two hours, she didn’t want to risk the chance of him seeing her across town instead.
The woman at the cash register said nothing of Maddie’s almost mindless haul but Maddie sat poised with her card ready for a quick exit all the same.
“Would you like cash back today?”
“Yes please,” Maddie said, smiling even though it made her cheeks ache to hold onto it for too long. “What’s the highest amount?”
“Hundred.”
Well, that was another hundred more in cash than what she had. It would have to do.
Maddie took her bags and forced herself not to run to the Jeep as the press of time settled on the back of her neck.
She had one more stop to make.
Buck looked right at home as he settled his guitar into his lap across from her but Maddie felt like she had a million butterflies trapped in her chest. She wasn’t like Buck. She’d spent so long building up walls around herself brick by brick to protect all the open and vulnerable feelings that somewhere along the way she’d forgotten where the gate was and lost the key.
But this was important to Buck. He was sharing a piece of himself with people whose opinion mattered a great deal to him and he was asking for her help. She’d never told him no before and she wasn’t planning on starting just because her voice was going to stick out like a sore thumb alongside the rest of the band.
Besides, if it turned into a total disaster, they could always record it again with just Buck. They went through dozen of takes on tracks and already had a solid list to add to the demo that even she couldn’t bring down the power that was The 118. It was fine. It would be fine.
That was what she kept telling herself anyway.
“Here,” Chimney said as he handed her a pair of pillowed headphones that were too big for her face. “You can hear the booth through these and then Buck and me. I’ll be the guy with the piano.”
Maddie wrinkled her nose at his stupid joke that always made her laugh even if she’d heard it a million times. Chim chomped his jaw with a smack of his gum as he ducked his head, bashful and cute, and grinned
“You’ll hear three tones and that’s when we’ll start. Remember it’s just a raw demo. It’s supposed to be imperfect even though I don’t think there’s a thing you could do imperfectly. You’re going to be great.”
It was an assurance that Maddie didn’t quite believe because she was nowhere near the level of “good” as Buck and the others, but hearing it from Chim made it a little easier. It also made the butterflies in her chest flutter for a whole different reason too.
Buck plucked away at his guitar with an aimless twitch of his fingers, something he always did when he was nervous or restless. Maddie didn’t know if the others were used to it by now or simply didn’t notice the way Buck tracked them across the room but she couldn’t help but roll her eyes.
“Buck,” she said and wide blue eyes swung around to stare at her. “It’s going to be okay. It’s a good song.”
Buck’s teeth released his bottom lip to stretch into a one sided grin. A real one. One that was related to one of his blinding grins that could light up a room and make you forget that darkness ever existed.
Maddie used to live off of those grins growing up.
Chimney struck a note on the baby grand piano and Tommy slid his bow across his cello that filled the air with a low groaning melody as he checked that he was in tune. Hen’s violin followed with a whine that Hen stretched out like honey. Tommy and Hen, whenever they played together, always reminded Maddie of a thunderstorm when the grey clouds drifted into the sky on a chariot of wind filled with electricity.
Maddie felt shivers crawl up her spine and pebble into goosebumps across her skin.
Her stomach twisted again. They were the only ones in the studio but the glare of the window into the booth where Bobby and the rest of the band were watching was hot on her neck as a blush colored her cheeks.
She looked to Buck again and watched as he adjusted the microphone so it would be closer to him without him having to lean over.
It wasn’t like he was at home. He was home.
Buck’s music, Bobby, the band, they’d all brought color back into Buck’s cheeks.
The nerves were there in the way he kept fiddling with his guitar but it was like he was settling into his skin and breathing freely without the added weight of baggage keeping him down.
Maddie turned her hand onto her fist when her knocking wasn’t answered and slammed down on the doorbell with an impatient push of her finger.
It wasn’t frantic, though her heart was pounding in her chest now that she was so close, but determined. Her parents may have shut her out and that was fine. But she wasn’t leaving until they opened the door.
Maddie’s mom swung the door open with an annoyance that seemed to vibrate throughout her whole body until she was trembling with it. But Margaret had always been like that. Still and haunted until anything close to a too hard or too dark feeling took over. Then she trembled with it like a pressure cooker ready to burst. A ghost turned into a vengeful spirit of who she used to be before everything happened. Before she let her grief shadow over her and resented the fact that Maddie and Buck wouldn’t let her drown them too.
Margaret’s face flitted in surprise before that spark of resentment hardened her expression.
“Maddie? What are you doing here? It’s—” Her eyes landed on the guitar in Maddie’s hand and her shoulders sagged. “Don’t tell me you bought that thing again?”
“Where’s Evan?” Maddie asked, not bothering to answer her question.
She didn’t have the time or energy to waste on a fight.
“Maddie?” Her dad’s voice was lighter in his surprise but it always was.
Unlike their mom, Philip never resented Maddie or Buck for moving on past their grief. But he never defended them either. He sided with Margaret every single time.
Maddie glared at him as he stepped up behind her mother’s shoulder, laying a hand there in support.
“How could you?” Maddie bit out. “You knew how much this meant to him and you took it away.”
“Oh, stop being dramatic,” Margaret scoffed. “You’re making a scene.”
“It isn’t practical anymore, Maddie,” her dad said with an appeasing tilt of his voice. “Evan needs to find something he can make a career out of. Something that he can do to sustain himself and not some fantasy of—”
“Your father and I are not going to support you and your brother making reckless decisions. The world is an uncertain place and you have to protect yourself. We can’t do it for you.”
“Yeah,” Maddie nodded. “You made it pretty clear that your love was conditional.”
Margaret recoiled like Maddie had smacked her but that was always her way. Retreat when the world seemed unfair because it refused to stop turning.
“Maddie,” Philip said with a sigh, rubbing circles into her mother’s back. “I think you should go.”
“Not until I see Buck,” Maddie said.
The guitar creaked with how tightly she was holding the neck and the press of the strings rubbed at her palm.
“It was clutter.” Her mom snapped.
Clutter? Maddie reared back in disbelief and stared at her parents. How could two people be so out of touch with someone who slept just down the hall from them every night? Who wanted nothing more than the simple acknowledgement of his existence?
Who loved and only asked to be loved in return?
Clutter?
Maddie shook her head.
“You are both so unbelievable. This,” she said, holding up the guitar, “Is his life. You don’t get to take that from him.”
“Well, it’s not coming back in this house,” Margaret said, stubborn as always and lashing out because it was easier than to accept that there was another thing she couldn’t control.
“Don’t worry.” Maddie shoved her way through her parents and into the house. “It’s not staying.”
“Maddie!”
But Maddie ignored her parents and climbed the stairs. Buck’s room was down the hall—the farthest bedroom at the end across from her old room where it was out of the way and tucked aside— with the door closed.
“Buck?” She tried twisting the handle but the lock kept it from moving.
Maddie knocked, softer than she had the front door.
“Buck?” Maddie called through the door. “Buck, it’s me. Open up please.”
She felt the handle tremble as Buck undid the lock and swung the door open. His bed head was wild as if he’d shoved his head under the pillow and kept it there for hours. But his eyes were red and puffy and his lips were swollen from where he’d bitten down on them and rolled them between his teeth. Like he’d been trying to keep quiet. The cuts and road rash on his face had scabbed over in angry welts but the bruising had crept in a familiar storm of purple and blue swirls climbing up his jaw.
“Maddie?” He croaked like he’d been crying and given the state she’d found their parents had left him in, desperate and alone, she’d believe it.
She held up the guitar and watched as his face dropped in shock before tentative fingers curled around the neck.
“Y-You... how?” He asked, holding the guitar like he couldn’t believe it was real.
Maddie shook her head.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m leaving and you’re coming with me.”
Buck blinked at her.
“I-I-I don’t... what do you mean? W-Where?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Maddie said with a pained smile. “As long as we go. Will you come with me?”
There wasn’t even a pause before Buck was nodding, a glimmer of a grin on his lips. “Yeah.”
And Maddie didn’t actually think Buck would say no but it was a relief to hear all the same. The weight on her shoulders slipped away as she grinned back but she still held the tight anticipation of adrenaline in her chest as a reminder that they didn’t have much time.
“Okay,” she said. “Pack what you can. We leave in twenty.”
She didn’t know how she got so lucky. How she ended up with a little brother she adored more than anything else in the world. And he was her world. He always had been. She’d just forgotten for a while. But something right settled over her heart like a warm palm against cold empty fingers as Buck turned back into his room and dragged out a duffel bag from his closet. She watched as he dumped football gear onto the floor and started stuffing the bag full of clothes, cables, and his stack of notebooks he kept hidden in his dresser before she turned and made her way downstairs.
Her mom had disappeared somewhere, not that Maddie was surprised because she never could face the consequences of her own misplaced resentments, but her dad stood tall and solemn in the kitchen. Maddie walked past him and went into the study where she knew he kept the tall filing cabinet of important documents for the family. She found Buck’s file in the back and pulled the whole thing out.
“Maddie,” Philip said, soft and resigned like he always did when he found himself in the middle and always took their mother’s side anyway.
“You have to promise you won’t take him off your health insurance,” Maddie said as she checked for Buck’s birth certificate, social security card, and records. “At least not until I can get him set up with Medicaid.”
“You don’t have to—“ Philip broke off with a sigh.
Maddie pinned him with a look, one that was used to this despondent lack of a fight, and was calling it for what it was.
“Promise me.”
Her dad blinked at her and there was something so sad in his expression. Maddie used to feel bad for her dad. Her mother put him in this position every time. Made him be the bad guy when he didn’t have to be. But he was just as implicit. He could’ve tried. He could’ve given a shit and he chose not to.
“I promise,” he said with a nod. “Evan can stay on it until he’s twenty-six. His plan should be in there.”
Maddie slapped the file closed and took the whole thing with her. It was light. Much lighter than her own when she’d done this the first time. But hers had scrapes of achievements saved in pressed pages from school. Notes and pictures and keepsakes.
Buck had never been a keepsake for their parents. Just Maddie.
“Where are you going to go?” Philip asked.
“I don’t know,” Maddie said, moving past him to go wait for Buck at the stairs. “Probably Florida.”
She had no intention of going to Florida but if Doug asked then she didn’t have to worry about her parents slipping where she really was.
“Florida? What are you—“
“It doesn’t matter.”
Maddie felt her phone vibrate in her pocket. She pulled her phone out and swallowed past the way the text from Omar made her throat tight.
They’re closing now.
Doug was done early.
It was okay. She’d planned this. That’s why Buck was her last stop. The hospital was over thirty minutes away and it would take another forty minutes for Doug to scrub out as well as any post op.
“Maddie,” her dad said and there was something in his tone that made her look up at him.
He looked... worried and it was nice to see him care. It really was. Her dad had always been a gentle soul, something he would see that he shared with Buck if he even got the courage to claw his way out of his own grief for once. But it was too little too late.
“It’s fine,” she answered to his unspoken question before she turned to call up the stairs. “Buck! Do you need help?”
“Here.”
Maddie turned as her dad held out a handful of cash. It looked like everything that had been in his wallet.
“Dad,” she said, staring at the offering like it would bite her. “I don’t—“
“Just...” He pushed the bills in her hand and curled her fingers around it. “Take the money, Maddie.”
He didn’t let go until Maddie took the cash. Her throat tightened for a different reason. Because this was her dad, the one she remembered from before that used to be there for her when she needed him. A dad that Buck never knew.
“Just... let your mother and I know when you two have made it somewhere safe.”
And she could’ve said something out of spite. She could’ve spat out her own kind of resentment and let it burn at his feet. Lashed out the way they did when Buck and Maddie didn’t sit quietly and mourn.
But she didn’t.
She swallowed that down one last time.
Buck appeared on the stairwell with his duffel bag and flannel pillow that was his favorite in one hand and his guitar case in the other. He’d changed out of his pajamas into a pair of jeans and a worn hoodie but there was no way he’d packed enough clothes in that bag. If Maddie had to guess it was filled more with his notebooks than his underwear.
Buck froze when he saw Philip. His eyes bounced between Maddie and him in a barely concealed wobble of trepidation but their dad just met him halfway and took his duffel and pillow for him.
“I’ll put this in the Jeep.”
“Grab your blanket and laundry. Do you have your toiletries?” Maddie asked as she took Buck’s guitar.
She followed Buck into his room and watched as he snatched an old hoodie material blanket he kept tucked on the side of his bed before he tossed his laundry into the plastic basket they used down in the laundry room.
“Anything else you want to take?” Maddie looked around the room for anything Buck could’ve missed.
They didn’t have time but she didn’t want Buck looking back with regrets dragging behind him. Buck’s lip disappeared between his teeth as he looked around before he shook his head, unsure and a little nervous.
“Hey,” Maddie said as she stepped forward.
She cupped his cheek and rubbed her thumb along his skin, mindful of the bruises. Buck leaned into her touch and stared at her with those big blue eyes that were going to wreck hearts one day.
“It’s going to be okay. We’re going to be okay.”
Buck sucked in a breath and nodded before he gifted her with a small smile.
“Okay,” he said, trusting and quiet.
Maddie gave Buck his guitar back and took the laundry basket and blanket for him before dropping his folder of papers on top.
Together they made their way downstairs and put the rest of Buck’s things into the back of the Jeep.
Their dad didn’t hug them goodbye. He stayed by the garage and watched them drive away with nothing more than a wave. Their mother didn’t even appear in the window to watch them leave. It wasn’t right. But it was the last time Maddie was ever going to let Buck feel like he was being pressed under the weight of their disappointment again.
“You ready?” Buck asked as the others slipped on their headphones.
Buck was older now. His lingering baby fat was gone instead for a cutting jawline and handsome cheekbones that highlighted his still so blue big eyes. But Maddie couldn’t help but still be struck by how young Buck looked. How young Buck was. Twenty-three seemed like a lifetime from eighteen on paper.
Maddie hadn’t felt her age since she was nine years old and going into Buck’s nursery to hold him while her parents let him cry. Maybe they couldn’t hear him over their own tears. But she could. She could and she wasn’t going to let something he had no control over take away his chance of joy— of life—before he had even started to live it.
Maddie swallowed past the dry knot in her throat and pulled on her own headphones. The cushions pressed into her cheeks and made her ears pop as they blocked out the sound.
“Everyone good?” Maddie heard the voice of the sound engineer through her headphones and nodded as Buck gave them a thumbs up. “Perfect, let’s just do a run through and if we need to go back and work through something I’ll let you know. Here we go.”
Maddie’s heart thudded in time with the three tones and she watched Buck and Chim nod to one another before they started to play on an inhale.
[1] Buck’s fingers rolled as he plucked his guitar strings in a textured melody that reminded Maddie of the way their Jeep used to rumble over the bumps of a rickety bridge carrying them across a river in West Virgina and Chimney’s piano dropped in like thick drops of spring rain against the window shield. Together it was like a watercolor picture from the window of a car going too fast in a storm.
Buck looked up at her as they went through the second set of chords and he sucked in a breath before he leaned into the microphone.
“Drown out…” It was surprisingly not as bad as she thought it was going to be hearing the sound of her voice through the speakers of the headphones.
Buck grinned at her before he let himself be lulled away with his music.
“The voice that breaks the silence… And talks the joy out of everything.”
Maddie’s nerves settled as she sang again. “You were found out.”
Maddie’s phone gave a violent vibrating crash in her cupholder that made both her and Buck jump.
DOUG
His name stared up at her, accusing and furious, and stole her breath away like she was trained to do it. The instinct to curl up and hide, to be unassuming and invisible flared up her spine until she almost bowed forward. But she didn’t. She wouldn’t.
Maddie kept her eyes on the road but she could feel Buck’s gaze as he looked at her, waiting to see if she would answer.
His guitar case creaked as Buck’s hands tightened around it.
She gripped the steering wheel with her empty fingers and blinked past the tears so they wouldn’t fall out.
The phone vibrated again and Maddie took a soothing breath before she rolled down her window and threw the phone out on the side of the interstate as she crossed over the Pennsylvania border.
“And had to walk in darkness without the only thing… you care about.”
Maddie couldn’t even imagine what it must have been like in the booth. Were they as captivated as Maddie was? This was something new for them. They only knew the parts of Buck that were pushed upfront to please everyone else. The perky pop rock version of Buck that bounced on his toes while he sang. But this was different. Familiar like worn denim and a humid foggy morning. She could watch Buck play for hours but his singing, raw and emotive like this, was something so personal that it was like getting to know the deepest parts of his soul until it was like knowing your own.
It was like looking into the hottest part of a live wire and getting dizzy in the sparks.
“And we drive away and head for south … We found our way and blocked it out.”
Hen and Tommy joined in with a uniformed motioning arch of their elbows connected to the arms holding their bows. Maddie shivered as the sizzling electricity filled the air again.
“Cry alone, and die alone. Pray alone, and stay alone.”
“Maddie,” Buck said, urgent for someone who had only just woken up after sleeping through most of Virginia. “Maddie, pull over!”
Maddie shot him a look with a jerk of her head, alarmed and with her heart flipping up into her throat until she almost choked on it.
“Are you okay? What’s—”
“Pull over!”
Gravel erupted in an explosion of dust as she pulled the Jeep to the side of the road. She was already scrambling for her seatbelt, half expecting Buck to fall out of the car as if he was sick or something.
Or deciding that he didn’t want to run away with Maddie after all.
“Are you okay? Do you feel sick?” She hurried to get out but when she turned in her seat all she found was Buck practically pressing his face into the window.
He looked over his shoulder at her, awe sprinkling in his gaze, before he went back to looking out the window.
“Is that the ocean?”
Maddie sagged in relief, her heart pounding so hard against her ribcage it felt like it was going to fall out, before she closed her eyes and forced herself to take a calming breath.
The ocean. Buck had never seen the ocean.
The briefest half beat of rest before Chimney and Buck went back to plucking their springtime rain storm of a melody made Maddie feel like she was suspended midair.
“You were burned out…” That time she was less breathless and surer of her harmony.
“And save our souls were playing dead… And mine for gold in a heart of lead… And turn around and save yourself…”Buck looked up at her, open and vulnerable as he realized that he was solidifying his sound for the rest of his career. “We found our way and blocked it out.”
It was perfect.
“Cry alone, and die alone…Pray alone, and stay alone.”
The ocean gave the wind a cold bite to its harmony with the sun warmed sand beneath her feet. Maddie wiggled her toes, digging into the beach with her feet, and planted her heel down.
She looked out and watched as Buck stepped further into the tide. Foamy cold waves crashed into his shins as Buck floated on the euphoria of smelling sea salt and sand for the first time in his life.
Buck was eighteen. Eighteen and free from their caged tomb for the first time.
Eighteen and it could’ve all been taken away. Eighteen and Buck could’ve been gone. The end. No happy ever after. No bright future. Just gone and with him, taking Maddie too. That crash could’ve killed him.
But it didn’t.
“Drown out … Drown out…”
Freedom shouldn’t feel guilty.
So why did it?
Maybe it was the shame that settled on her shoulders over the fact that she couldn’t make the decision to leave for herself. That she couldn’t leave Doug and her parents and all the horrible demons that covered her memories of the last eighteen years of her life for herself.
Buck splashed up droplets of water as he slapped at the waves and laughed. A bright and vibrant laugh that Maddie couldn’t help but meet with one of her own.
That laugh, that smile…
Buck had been her one bright spot even in the roughest, darkest of times of her life, he’d been a guiding glimpse of the sun.
And he’d almost been snuffed out.
But she knew in that hospital when the tears had spilled from Buck’s eyes as he broke down what she needed to do. She’d made her decision before she’d even formed the thought.
Even if she couldn’t leave for herself, then she would leave for Buck. She would leave for them.
She picked her foot up and stepped back to stare at her imprint.
Her foot looked so much smaller compared to Buck’s footprints.
Not a ghost. Not a shadow.
Proof that Buck and Maddie were there on that beach, unapologetic for taking up space in the world, together.