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Patrick took a deep breath. He tried not to let it freeze in his chest, and the plane touched down. Being in New York would be just fine. It would feel good to get out a little. And underneath that, in a place he didn't quite dare put into words, part of him acknowledged: I'm doing so much better. I can handle this. After all, he repeated to himself, there's more to being a musician than sitting in the studio, right? His agent Vanessa used those words on him all the time.
It wasn’t true. You could very easily be a musician by sitting inside a studio in your very own basement, surrounded by nothing but your instruments and your mixing board, and Patrick knew this from experience. What Vanessa was trying to say, because she was his agent and paid to keep track of these things, was that you couldn't be a music phenomenon from inside the studio in your basement, you couldn't be famous. You couldn't be a rock star was what she meant. After arguing with her for almost as many months as he'd stayed behind the studio door, he had given up—or given in, and agreed to start thinking about album promotion, even though the thought of promoting an album that wasn't finished made him sick to his stomach. Pete would have been proud.
So, he thought, arrive in New York today, drinks with friends and maybe a show tonight, if he could find something small, and a meeting with the publicist Vanessa had recommended first thing in the morning. He could do that.
When he got to the Crush offices the next morning, his stomach was churning and his hands were slick with sweat. It was the first time he had been there alone, and the reception area felt huge and deserted in a way he didn't remember from before. The suicide girl behind the desk pouted at him when he told her who he was, and punched a button on the office phone. A minute later a man came out from the back offices.
The man did not look punk at all, thought Patrick, who tried very hard to never make judgments like this and hated when people said someone wasn't punk enough because they were wearing the wrong belt or shoes. But the guy had on a white shirt that was unbuttoned one button too far, with tiny buttons that held down the points of the collar, and blue jeans with the faded spots carefully dyed into them. He did not look like any music genre except Top 40 radio, and maybe more like the commercials than the songs between them. Patrick could feel a headache beginning to start behind his eyes.
“Heyyyy,” the man said. Patrick frowned. The man smiled hugely in response and shoved out his hand with a practiced flourish. “My name's Donovan Spencer.” Patrick put out his own sweaty hand and they shook. To the man's credit, he did not wipe his hand on his jeans afterward. But as he took his hand away, he pointed at Patrick and kicked the smile up a few notches. “Call me Donny,” he said.
Donny? thought Patrick, and then, god, did he just do a finger-gun point at me? He glanced at the closed door of the Crush suite and wondered if he could make an excuse about having forgotten some important papers in the cab. Or in Chicago.
“Come on back, Pat,” Donny said, starting down the hallway behind the reception desk, and Patrick could still hear the enthusiastic smile even though his back was turned.
“Uh, Patrick, please,” Patrick said to Donny's back. He followed him into a meeting room.
“So,” Donny said. “Patrick.” He pointed Patrick to a chair and then sat down across the table from him. He took out an expensive-looking pen and clicked it. ”Vanessa says you need a little help on publicity for your album. That's great.” From the perfunctory way he said it, Patrick guessed he would have said “That's great” to anything—I hear your band broke up and your sister has cancer. That's great. The pen clicked again.
Patrick nodded and didn't say anything. He could feel his brows pulling together even further and tried to smooth his expression into expectant, or blank at least, and steer it away from threatening.
Donny plunged ahead; apparently Patrick's input wasn't necessary for this part of the conversation. “I listened to your demo, and it's sounding pretty good. I don't know about Soul Punk, I'm not sure what it's supposed to mean, but Vanessa tells me you're pretty set on it. That's great, we can work with it.”
“Great,” Patrick echoed.
“The most important thing right now is that you release something. It doesn't have to be on vinyl of course, just toss it up on YouTube or something. Remind the world who you are.” Donny smiled broadly.
“Can that wait?” Patrick asked, frowning in earnest now, thinking of the dozens of songs in various pieces and multiple versions, scattered throughout his studio and in his head. He wasn't ready to let any of them out into the public eye, not yet.
“No.” Donny gave his pen a final click and put it down on the table. He fixed Patrick with a gaze. The smile was gone. “It can't wait. The Black Cards are already touring.”
Jesus. Patrick jerked back from the table between them, his chair squeaking its outrage against the floor. He felt his face folding into shock and disbelief, his rock star confidence dissolving.
“The Bl—?” He sputtered a few more non-word syllables that started with B and C. “Who the fuck said anything about the Black Cards?” he finally managed to spit out.
Donny was still gazing at him, apparently unperturbed by Patrick's outburst. Right now, he was looking less like the douchebag Patrick had originally taken him for and more like a psychiatrist, sitting behind the table with a pad and his pen and studying Patrick calmly. Donny said, “He's the one everyone will be comparing you to—you've got to know that. If you're going to have a post-Fall-Out-Boy career, it needs to measure up against his, at least for right now.”
“Oh my god.” Patrick stood up, pushing his chair away and shaking his head angrily. He did not come here to talk about the fucking Black Cards, and most especially not with a sellout corporate douchebag whose idea of music was probably Hootie and the Blowfish. He wished he had some papers to snatch off the table to make his exit more dramatic. Or maybe he didn't, because he had a strong suspicion his hands were shaking too.
“Patrick, I'm not trying to be hard on you,” Donny said. “I don't make the rules. I just know how to follow them, because that's my job. It's your career we're talking about here. People deserve to hear about you, and we can't let any—” he waved his hand vaguely, “extraneous circumstances get in the way of that. That's what managing publicity is.”
The Black Cards were hardly extraneous, Patrick thought violently. They had everything—a catchy name and a logo designed by god knows who because Crush certainly didn't provide that kind of branding support, anyone looking at Patrick's sad website could tell that, and a singer who, despite the fact that she had a fairly commonplace voice, was beautiful and had big boobs, and that wasn't an area Patrick could really compete in. And most of all, they had Pete. Pete Wentz who knew everyone and could ask anyone for anything and get it. Unlike Patrick, who was shrinking smaller and smaller by the second, who had to be coaxed and threatened by his agent to even set foot outside his basement. Patrick, who apparently couldn't even make it through an introductory meeting with a publicist without having a complete breakdown.
“Patrick?” Donny said.
Patrick pinched the bridge of his nose. His head really was pounding now. “Yeah?” he said, and his voice sounded a bit whimpery, even to him, and then, after a beat when Donny didn't answer, he said weakly, “Okay.” Slowly, he sat back down.
“Okay,” Donny repeated calmly. Not That's great. For a second, Patrick didn't hate him quite so much.
Donny consulted the notepad in front of him. “The first thing you need to do is pick a song you're ready to release—just one, that's all we need. Email me the title as soon as you've decided, and send a new version if it's different from the demo. And tell me who does your website. I'll work with them; we need to spruce it up a little. And you have a Facebook fan page?”
“Yeah, sort of,” Patrick lied.
“Great,” Donny said, nodding and writing something else on his notepad. “I'll make you a new one.”
“I'm sure it'll be compelling,” Patrick mumbled.
“That's what I'm here for, buddy,” Donny said, flashing the smile again, and pointed at Patrick, double finger-guns this time.
Patrick sighed. They talked a little longer—or Donny did, and Patrick added a few reluctant nods. When Donny slid his card across the table, Patrick took it.
Patrick almost dropped his phone in the elevator as he was dialing Vanessa , because his hands were still shaky and unreliable. When she picked up, he asked if someone had body-snatched her publicist or if she really was friends with such a douchebag.
A douchebag who, along with being a complete and utter tool, apparently also had the uncanny talent of mind-reading Patrick's unspoken fears and saying them out loud, to his face, within minutes of meeting him. Vanessa was a cut to the chase-type person. Maybe what she saw in that idiot wasn't a mystery after all.
He assumed she was listening patiently, like she usually did, but then he heard her giggle. “Okay,” she said, “He's a teensy bit of a douchebag, I'll give you that. But I promise you, he's good at what he does. Patrick, you try to do everything by yourself. It's not a crime for someone to need help, especially you.”
“No, not especially me.” Patrick felt a surge of fury, an echo of the rage he'd felt in the office when Donny had mentioned the Black Cards. “I do not need a douchebag like him telling me what to do. I am a musician, and he is not, and he doesn't know the first thing about soul.” Patrick could feel tears in his eyes. It was too soon to be out like this, too soon to be in New York. This city had never been his scene.
It wasn't the first time he'd cried on the phone with Vanessa, but he still hated it. “I'm doing this on my own terms,” he said, his voice breaking, and suddenly he couldn't say any more, couldn't say that Donny had mentioned Pete, the asshole, both of them assholes, and when would he see the day when he could go anywhere without people talking to him about Pete fucking Wentz?
“Patrick,” she said gently, “Of course you're doing this on your own terms. No one's arguing that.” She was silent for a moment. “But I'm still telling you to work with him,” she said. “That's my final word. Because pretty soon you're gonna have a gorgeous album on your hands, and we have to figure out how to tell people about that. You can't just keep it under your hat the way you do with everything. I won't let you. I sent you to Donny because he's the best I know. All I'm asking is that you give him a chance.”
Patrick made an angry, disgusted sound into his cell phone, and stopped listening even though she was still talking. But he already knew he would take her advice, no matter how much Douchebag Donny and his psychic asshole powers turned his stomach.
Vanessa probably knew it too, which was why she let him get by on 'uh huhs' for the rest of the conversation, and didn't press him on any specifics about the meeting. She had the knack of seeing right through his defenses—the cynicism, the shyness, the frustration, all the things that made him tear apart his songs and rewrite them a dozen times too many, and made him never want to sing in public again because he was sure no one would get him or his music. She saw through it all like nobody's business, while most other people were busy worrying that Patrick was angry with them, or that they'd hurt his feelings. It was a talent not shared by very many other people in Patrick's life. Historically, there had been one, to be exact—one other person who could see through him like that. Ever. And now that that other person had his own band and wasn't personally care-taking Patrick's career anymore . . . well, Patrick told himself, that was why he'd had the good sense to hire Vanessa. And apparently he'd just added Donny, the amazing douchebag publicist, to his team. Patrick wiped his eyes on his sleeve before he got back out onto the street.
* * *
When the hiatus was official, he and Pete had still talked at first. And then Patrick realized he was too angry to stay friends. So he had told Pete not to call, because apparently losing the band he'd invested his entire adult life in wasn't enough for him, he needed to lose the biggest relationship in his life too.
And even then, Patrick hadn't fully realized. He wasn't aware of missing Pete, only of being angry at him, but the anger hit so deep in his chest. He'd never felt anything like it.
Somewhere in the blur of dark months, he had stopped thinking about professional egos and artistic differences, and started thinking about messy breakups—the romantic kind. For the first time, Patrick wished he had more experience in that department. He really hadn't had time for a proper girlfriend in, what, the last decade? Or maybe ever? His breakups had been understated affairs, no screaming and only a few tears, mostly just a shared acknowledgment that Patrick wasn't really available to commit.
It was because of the band, the touring, the writing, the studio time—all those things kept him romantically unavailable. Patrick had always explained it as creativity, the price a musician paid for his art, but now he was realizing it was more than just being a rock star; it was also being Pete Wentz's best friend. That's what took up so much time and space. It filled him up like a helium balloon and there was no room for anything else. And Patrick had liked it that way.
He remembered posing in front of cameras, wailing himself breathless on stage, the exhausted triumphant drunken nights, all of it with Pete beside him and both of them dizzy with the feeling of being invincible together. The bright lights washed away everything else, and he and the band were the only people at the center of a whirlwind of sound and fame and spotlight glare. And Pete was always the closest. Andy and Joe were there, but father from the epicenter. It was always Pete there pressing his face against Patrick's chest while they played, always Pete wrapping his arms around Patrick's shoulders, always Pete pretending to sneak a kiss when the cameras were watching.
It was in those moments, in front of cameras with Pete draped all over him—beautiful, charismatic Pete—that Patrick learned to tolerate people's eyes on him, to feel like he might have something to show the world.
And now he was alone. How could he have let that slip away? Patrick started to wonder if he was looking back on the best years of his life. He remembered the events in his head, but the story didn't quite hang together, like the dissolving plot line in a bad movie. There was the big talk with the band, where everyone got a chance to lay it out on the table—all the pieces that didn't fit anymore, everything that had gone wrong the months since the four of them had started to go out of sync. Patrick had maybe yelled a little bit, but no more than his fair share, and he certainly hadn't been the only one.
And then later the same night, he had talked with Pete alone.
“Patrick, are you serious?” Pete kept shaking his head; he had dark circles under his eyes and he looked devastated.
Patrick tried to explain that the music wasn't right anymore. Tried to explain how the music he felt in his soul, the beat that throbbed in his veins, was set at a slower burn, smoky and smoldering. He was looking for groove, not just swagger. The music he wanted wasn’t just kids wailing away on drum sets in a garage.
Patrick couldn't tell if Pete wasn't listening or if he was in shock that their band was probably falling apart, only that nothing Patrick said made a difference. Pete's broken expression didn't change. Trying to talk to Pete about your soul, and trying to get him to understand it wasn't the same thing as the heart he wore on his sleeve, available to anyone and everyone, was impossible. Patrick remembered how hard he'd tried to explain himself to Pete, then and other times. It never seemed to work. Remembering how he'd tried made Patrick's heart hurt.
And then he'd spent months on his own, in the echoing solitude of his basement, convinced he was writing songs, expanding his artistic horizons, and not hiding. One day he made a list of his songs and realized how defensive they sounded. I've got no confessions? What kind of person said that? Someone who had more to admit to and just didn't fucking know it yet.
He realized that afternoon that he was mostly still writing about Fall Out Boy, or worse, just about Pete. About Pete fucking Wentz, against whom he still had no defense, even though they hadn't talked in months. And the only other thing the stack of songs told him was he still couldn't quite write lyrics yet. Patrick felt like he could have handled it if the songs about Pete had been good songs, instead of songs that were only partway there. He threw half of them away that afternoon.
It was like a bad breakup, like the worst breakup. Recognizing Pete's fingerprints on the songs felt like finding things around your apartment that belonged to your ex. A shirt under the bed and underwear balled behind the closet door, only you couldn't give any of it back because you weren't speaking to each other. After he threw out the songs, Patrick spent the evening wishing he had the guts to show up on Pete's doorstep instead. He would shove the songs, all the worthless scraps of paper, into Pete’s uncomprehending hands. Here, these are yours, he would say. You left them with me by accident.
“Whatever you need to do, honey,” Vanessa had told him on the phone, when he told her about how big the throw-away pile was. “As long as you're being honest about what you have to say, it's okay to have a few false starts.”
Patrick had stopped writing after that.
“You take all the time you need,” Vanessa told him when they talked next. “This is hard work.” Which was maddening, because what Patrick had been trying to explain was how he wasn't working, that was the problem.
A day or so later, proof that the universe hated him and loved Pete, just like he'd always known, the Black Cards put their first full music video up on YouTube. He found the link in his email because Joe sent it to him—proof that Joe was easygoing and kind, and that Patrick was the sensitive one who couldn't get over anything even after months had gone by, and that Patrick's self-esteem was basically a house of cards. Patrick had always known that too.
And the video. The woman's face was everywhere, and Pete only showed up in a scene or two, but all Patrick could hear was Pete's voice; the video was drenched in it. The woman sang the words, but the voice was only Pete’s. Patrick knew exactly who Mister Fame was, and it was not that woman, Bebe Rexha—it was not her. She was a puppet, and Mister Fame had the strings in his hand. Patrick felt sorry for her, and it made him feel a little ill. And maybe it wasn't only her he was thinking about.
Sometime after that, he stopped getting out of bed most days.
“I'm not having a breakdown or anything. It's not like that,” he told Vanessa when she called to check in on him.
“Oh yeah?” she asked. “So what's it like?” Easy as that, like they were chatting about a new song on the radio, except somehow he hadn't managed to deflect her question.
He sighed. A breakdown, what a fucking cliché. Only someone with Pete's flair for the dramatic could pull that off. Patrick wasn't the guy who could make a redemption story out of a Best Buy parking lot, he knew that already, and he wasn't about to try.
“I'm thinking,” he finally said, because Vanessa was still apparently waiting for him to say something. “I'm trying to figure some shit out.” The silences didn't used to last like that; Pete used to be there to interject something clever during the interviews when Patrick was at a loss for words.
What Patrick wanted to ask her, in the big space where Pete's voice wasn't, was What am I supposed to do now?
He still emailed with Andy and Joe from time to time. It was awkward, sure, but they managed it for old time's sake and it was starting to get easier. But with Pete, it just wasn't the same. Why was it that all laws of normalcy lost their power when it came to Pete Wentz?
Patrick thought you had to have slept with someone for things to get this messy. Well, not for Pete, of course, he could sleep with anyone and it hardly mattered, and he could wrap it all up with nothing more than an apologetic smile and a goodbye text in the morning. That was why Patrick had made him stop calling. He had to make Pete stop treating him like the end of Fall Out Boy was just another fling that he could smooth over with a crooked smile and some cryptic text messages. Pete had to stop acting like this change hadn't knocked down everything in Patrick's entire life.
That's how deep the anger went, Patrick was finally realizing—deeper than everything. He could hear it behind every new album he bought and see it behind the lines on his staff paper. He could feel it echoing inside his studio. It was deeper than the songs that were finished and the ones that weren't, deeper than his mediocre lyrics and deeper than anyone’s music career.
After he lay in bed for long enough, in the quiet, he realized that the only thing that went deeper than the ocean of his anger and hurt was the music—the groove, the smoking groove he could still feel in his blood and skin, the one he had tried to explain about to Pete that Pete had never understood.
That was something, Patrick supposed.
Later on, hours or days later, or maybe longer, Patrick got up. In the bathroom, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, and he looked pale and pasty as hell. The dark circles under his eyes reminded him of Pete, on the night when it was all ending. He looked almost as wrecked as Pete had then.
Patrick thought about Pete gingerly to see how long it took for the hurt to come, like probing a wound with his fingertips. It still hurt, but Patrick felt a bit less involved in the pain, like it belonged to someone else. He turned to face his reflection and lifted his arms. He could see the bottoms of his ribs. Weird. He leaned closer and touched the dark places under his eyes, then looked away.
For a while after that, Patrick took it easy, like he was nursing himself back from a terrible hangover. He didn't eat much of anything. He drank a lot of water and walked in Riverside Park and tried not to think about anything but the sunshine on his face. And after a few days, when he realized he could still feel the music in his blood, he tried his hand at writing again. He got a few phrases and chords down on paper. The music was still there, and the anger had loosened its hold a little bit.
* * *
Thirty-six hours after the meeting with Donny the douchebag publicist, Patrick was back in his basement studio. Everything was like he remembered it, but it was different too. The studio looked a tiny bit more like a recluse's hideout.
Patrick looked around and rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. He took a deep breath. He shifted a pad of staff paper and a handful of pencils to make a space on the table and moved three empty soda cans from the table to the floor.
An hour later, he had a rough list of every song there was now, even the songs that were only pieces, with tiny tick marks next to the ones he liked. Some were finished—a lot were. And some were pretty good. He was relieved to see that the list was longer than he thought it'd be. The question was which one to send to Douchebag Donny?
I need the one that sounds most like me, by myself, not with Pete, Patrick thought. The new me. Patrick Stump, solo artist. Even if he's a guy I don't know very well yet. Even if I'm not sure I like him. Or the music he makes.
Patrick skimmed over the list again. Some of the songs had working titles and the bits and scraps had names like sad but uplifting/Gm. His eye lingered on one title. Nostalgia. No, not that anymore. I make my own luck now, he thought, and I don't stand in anyone else's shadow. He crossed out the song's title and wrote in Spotlight instead.
The Black Cards still annoyed him, even if he regretted how he had reacted in front of Donny, and it wasn't because they were bad. They were okay. Pete was out there doing it. He was putting together actual songs, real music, not just words and embarrassing drunken screeds on the internet. It sort of hurt, not to be part of that.
But Pete was doing it—Patrick could give him that, at least. The realization rested in the place where the anger was starting to recede.
We both are, he thought. That's what they'd taught each other in the time they were together, and that had to be enough to see them through for now.
Coda
Fuck, Pete thought. Fuck Patrick.
The den was dark now, since Pete hadn't bothered to turn on any lights when he got online three hours ago, when there was still some light lingering in the sky. But the image was huge and bright on his screen. Patrick, all dressed up and so thin, and surrounded by glowing balls of light. Patrick in the spotlight, all by himself, looking perfect. Perfectly confident, perfectly sure of himself, even perfectly put together. All the things he hadn't been before the hiatus.
Pete had already listened to both versions of the song, and hated them both. Or loved them both, he couldn't tell. Why did Patrick sound so sad? It made him crazy to hear Patrick so sad. And at the same time, the song seemed so wise, so seasoned.
How the fuck was Patrick getting smart off this, the train wreck of their hiatus, when Pete was just getting more crazy? Pete was writing danceable hits—no, not hits even, and Pete knew this—and his side projects weren’t going to be enough to save his marriage anyway, and now here was Patrick, getting all Kahlil Gibran, all the reed hollowed by sorrow plays the most beautiful notes, what the fuck.
Pete had read The Prophet by accident in college, because someone said it was love poetry and you could quote it to girls to get them in bed. It wasn't, but the lines like that, about the sorrow and the beauty, had kept Pete reading. The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. It had reminded him of his own life—or the gashes of sorrow did, anyway, and he was hoping the joy would show up at some point. Ten years later, sitting in the dark in his den, he was still hoping that.
He clicked play on the song again, this time the New Regrets version. As it played, he heard something he hadn’t before, and it made him freeze—the Saturdays. The Saturdays are over. Did Patrick really say that?
Pete sat without moving until the song played itself out, and then he got up quietly and padded into the kitchen in his stocking feet. He opened the freezer to get the vodka bottle, the one tucked in the back for emergencies.
It was too cruel. Too intimate. The Saturdays. Me and Pete. Pete remembered putting those words into Patrick’s mouth, giving him the torn-out sheet of notebook paper with the second draft of the lyrics for Saturday. In Pete’s mind, it had been tentative, provisional, the first time you said “we” when you were dating someone—when it slipped out by accident and you held your breath to see how the other person would react. He hadn’t said anything; he only wanted to see if Patrick would sing it. And Patrick did, and it sounded stronger in his voice, more beautiful and permanent.
Not even Patrick at his most pissed off, his most righteously angry, would say something that cruel, that pointed, let alone put it in a song and up on the internet. Would he? Pete was beginning to wonder if he could predict Patrick’s behavior at all any more. He used to be able to guess every move.
Pete took another drink. It felt like the whole song was about him, Patrick saying to him I don’t need you anymore.
But that’s what I wanted for you, Pete said to Patrick’s website as the second version played. I fucking pushed you into the spotlight, because I wanted you to have it. But you would never take it from me, not when we were together. Why? It was the only thing he'd ever had to offer Patrick, the spotlight, and now Patrick didn't even need that.
Pete clicked open a text window on his laptop. Maybe when he finished his drink, he'd be able to write something, and at least get a song out of this. That’s what he usually did with breakups, right? A couple songs, maybe a whole album. Probably not something the Black Cards could sing, but someone could.
He listened to Patrick’s song again, the Oh Nostalgia version this time. Don't fucking talk about depression, Patrick, he thought, I have the market cornered on that.
Instead of writing, though, he kept listening. And voting. There was this weird thing on the webpage where it asked you to vote for the version you liked. So Pete did. And he kept doing it. Close the browser, open it again. Start typing and let the address bar autofill PatrickStump.com. Vote. Close it again, open it again, vote again. First for one song, then the other.
Weren't online polls supposed to not let you do this? Whoever set this shit up didn't know what they were doing, apparently. Or maybe they did know—they knew Patrick, knew that closing this particular loophole wasn't important. The poll wasn't for science, it was to show Patrick the world wanted him.
Pete sniffed loudly and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He could be crying about anything, he told himself. He could be crying about the Saturday night Lifetime movie, which was exactly what he would say to Ashlee if she happened to walk out of the bedroom right now. He picked up the remote control, aimed it over his shoulder, and clicked the TV on, but didn’t turn to look at it. Ashlee wouldn’t come out. She had probably gone to sleep hours ago, and they really didn’t check on each other anymore.
No, Pete thought. He didn’t hate the songs. They were okay, good even. Patrick was even doing all right with his own lyrics. And the more Pete listened, the more he figured Patrick probably wasn’t saying Saturdays after all, which made it easier to be rational about the whole thing. He didn’t hate the songs, and he wasn’t angry. He was proud. Proud and a little sad that they weren't doing it together.