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Their first gig in New York was at the Roseland only because Three Tickets To... opened for The Shimmers before they became a joke. Well, Jeremy pretty much thought they were a joke at the time, but the two bands were on the same label for three weeks back in 2004 when the Shimmers had been just as briefly in the national consciousness. Jeremy disliked them on more than a professional level after he overheard Trey asking Jamie, "So is it hard for you that they're, like, fucking all the time?"
"Is what hard for me?" Jamie had said in that deceptively neutral tone of voice he had.
Trey went lower, conspiratorial, which - Jeremy thought, standing outside the dressing room - he should have done in the first fucking place. "I just mean, dude. What if it fucks up your band, you know?"
"Dude," Jamie had answered. "If they weren't together there wouldn't be a fucking band." Trey had shut up after that and Jamie had been surprised but pleased when Jeremy saved him the best selections from the muffin basket for the next three days. But Rog liked The Shimmers, or at least liked getting retarded with them, which amounted to about the same thing, so whatever.
Still, watching from the sidelines, Jeremy took a certain mean satisfaction in the fact that the crowd had responded to his band more. Ed didn't know how to work them, either, encouraging the over-21 audience to dance and telling them to sing along when they clearly didn't know the words. When Jeremy had checked in with the merch table there had only been about 25 units of Three Tickets To...'s CD left. It wasn't the biggest crowd they had ever played but it was close and in this strange, dirty and brightly-lit city it felt like the beginnings of a promise.
He heard Finn before he saw him, could recognize his footsteps by now. Finn enveloped Jeremy from behind, his shirt still sticky and damp from the show, and rested his chin on the top of Jeremy's head, his hands worming their way into Jeremy's front pockets. Jeremy leaned back with his full weight; Finn was thin but sturdy like a bamboo reed. "You haven't showered yet, have you? You're getting your sweat all over me."
"I've seen your lyric notebook, Monson," Finn said. "You're into body fluid metaphors. You think it's romantic."
"Your face is romantic, oh snap," Jeremy said and felt Finn's shoulder shake when he laughed. "You know, so I'm standing here, trying to think of something nice to say about these guys..."
"Life is too short for gimmick bands," Finn said. "But you got to feel sorry for the one-hit wonders. They gotta know they're riding a dying dream but they still got to go out there and do it. There's a noble tragedy to that."
"Yeah, when I look at Ed out there, I immediately go 'man, Hemingway'." But Jeremy said it without heat since Finn was nuzzling his ear. "Maybe Steinbeck."
"That's right," Finn said absently. "I should lend you my copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls, you'd like it." He paused before he said, with a certain elaborate diffidence. "You gonna hang out with the guys after the show?"
Rog was, Jeremy knew for sure, but Jeremy's tolerance for partying had gone down a lot now that he a consistent sex supply. Jamie was already camped out on the phone with that photographer from Chicago. She'd walked into the photoshoot putting her hair up with a pencil and Jamie had pretty much not stopped smiling since. "Don't think so. Why?"
"I was going to meet up with some old friends. It'd be cool if you want to come."
It was weird that Finn made the suggestion so tentatively, like he was expecting Jeremy to knock it out of his hands, but that was Finn all over; careful with Jeremy, as if there were any chance Jeremy would throw him away. "Your New York friends? You have New York friends? What am I saying, of course you have New York friends. We could be in the Alps and you'd be all 'hey, have you ever met these sherpas I hung out with? They were doing it before it got all commercial.'"
"Before the reality television sherpa craze kicked in," Finn said. "So you want to come?"
"Yes, I do," Jeremy said pointedly. "Idiot. Of course." Finn craned his head around to see him smiling and he smiled back, wet hair in his eyes and the stage light reflecting off his face a brilliant blue.
They took a cab downtown, which was a kind of surreal experience. One of the techs, Brad, grew up in Brooklyn and told Jeremy once that he hadn't ever been afraid of the dark as a kid, and Jeremy could see why now. New York didn't really have a night, more profoundly than even the hustle of the crowds would suggest. It got dark but once removed, at a distance. There couldn't be that sensation of lying sleepless in your bedroom, feeling the black rolling in. But also Finn didn't seem to know exactly where they were going. He just told the cabbie, "Go across third street. I'll tell you when to stop." and spent the ride scanning out the window with an arm over Jeremy's shoulder.
He made the cabbie stop in front of a corner whose only distinguishing feature was how it was remarkably non-descript and tossed him a twenty before leading Jeremy down a set of stairs. "Is this a bar?" Jeremy asked.
"Yeah."
"I didn't see a sign."
Finn shrugged as he opened the door. "It's called the Freudian Slip."
"Cute name," Jeremy said, and the sound of his voice landed with a dull thud inside the room.
It wasn't a dive bar, from Jeremy's admittedly limited experience with the genre, but it certainly wasn't a velvet-and-glitz LA club either. It was one room, smallish, full of warm wood tones and rounded angles but not very many people. A few at the booths but the bartender was leaning over the counter, writing something in a ledger, clearly settled into his downtime.
He looked up when they entered, though, and raised his eyebrows with a sort of cautious surprise. He sort of slouched his way upward until he was leaning heavily against the bar with his hands instead of his elbows. "Well," he said. "Look who's here."
"Hey Erik," Finn said. He went up to the bar and brought Jeremy with him by virtue of holding him around the waist. "How have you been?"
"You know, can't complain," Erik said. "You should have told us you were back in town. How long are you staying?"
"Just for the night," Finn said, swinging onto a stool. "We have to be in Hoboken tomorrow. You know how touring is. Just crazy."
"Sounds like," Erik said, with that same, almost cynical, caution. His gaze flickered to Jeremy. "So, you've been busy."
"Really busy," Finn agreed. He nodded in his direction and said, "This is Jeremy."
Erik's mouth sort of pursed up to one side and now that there was a minor flaw to it, Jeremy began to absorb how beautiful he was. Wild curls and big eyes and a complexion like milk, something to him that was elegant and untamed. That just figured, didn't it. Jeremy made himself smile under the scrutiny and Erik returned it, big and only slightly insincere. He extended a hand. "Hey. I'm Erik."
Jeremy shook it, making sure to keep a firm grip. "Hey. Jeremy Monson. Finn's bandmate. Boyfriend. Hi." He had to find a way not to speak in staccato bursts like an old-timey telegraph when he was nervous.
"Pleasure to meet you," Erik said. "Please, sit down. You want anything to drink?"
Jeremy unknotted his scarf. "Thanks. A PBR, please."
"Blue Moon for me," Finn said. He didn't look mad at the bandmate label or the hasty correction, but he was sort of smirking.
Erik busied himself at the taps. "So what kind of music does your band play, Jeremy?"
Which was a weird question, but if Finn was introducing him to an ex-boyfriend it made sense that they hadn't really kept in touch. "Um... it's hard to define it, you know? I try to stay away from labels, they're sort of limiting? I don't know, we've been getting a lot of press about how we're post-emo but that's just... weird. I don't know. I mostly just try to get away with copying Thom Yorke."
"Radiohead," Erik said after a beat. "Awesome." He passed Jeremy his beer on a coaster but gave Finn something vividly pink in a martini glass. Finn just sipped it though, without complaint or even seeming to register the disparity.
"So..." Jeremy said. "Did you grow up in New York?"
"Nope," Erik said easily. "But we've lived here for a couple years now."
"We?"
"My wife and I."
"So... you're married." Erik looked about Jeremy's age, maybe a little younger or older. Jeremy saw a lot of people who were practically zygotes get engaged back in Utah, but it was a little alienating in more sophisticated areas. "Uh, cool. So... how do you know Finn?"
Erik's mouth made that odd little quirk again, maybe more amused this time, and he looked over at Finn. Finn didn't say anything however, just raised his cosmo in a mock salute. "We're related actually," Erik said. "Second cousins."
"Cousins!," Jeremy said, genuinely enthusiastic with relief. Finn came from a weird family but he would have said something if he had ever dated his cousin. "Awesome. I mean, I'm glad to get to know the people Finn's close to. You know."
"Mmhmm." Erik and Finn were having one of those elaborate, silent communications conducted through facial contortions and eyebrows. Jeremy wasn't sure what exactly was being conveyed. It made him feel a little small, still only being an amateur anthropologist when it came to Finn. Erik turned back to Jeremy, sunny again. "So have you been enjoying New York?"
"Oh yeah, definitely! It's my first time, but Jamie - our drummer - lived here for a while and so did Finn - of course you knew Finn lived here before - so they gave the rest of us a tour. We spent a while in Soho and then walked over to... uh, I'm forgetting the name of the street, there are a lot of kiosks and hipsters?"
"St. Marks?" Erik guessed.
"Right, yeah, and we even got to see Central Park before soundcheck, so that was awesome." Jeremy took a long swallow of his drink. "So, do you go to school here?"
"No," Erik said, without any trace of sheepishness, which was unusual. "I do some freelance work but mostly I run this place."
"It's really great. Really... homey," which was the wrong word but Erik didn't seem insulted. "Do you own it?"
"Technically my wife does," Erik said. And okay, now it was beginning to fall into place: pretty young thing, wealthy wife. She was probably in her fifties and letting Erik bum around on a monthly allowance. Jeremy wasn't sure if he was repulsed or impressed. "But she mostly just deals with the bank. I'm in charge of the daily operation."
"That's cool. I mean, doing your own thing. Finn was the first person who convinced me that not going to college didn't mean I was morally bankrupt."
For the first time, Erik seemed to actually relaxed. "That's upward mobility for you. We had the greatest generation telling their kids they wouldn't amount to anything without higher education and the baby boomers believed them. Now you need a degree to do anything. Fuck that noise."
Jeremy nearly choked trying to get his beer down fast enough to answer. "I know, right?" And it's like - okay, this is from a personal perspective, obviously. But in academia it's all about technique and exploring form and self-expression doesn't matter. You need theory but man it's not everything."
A woman came up to the bar, a twenty in hand, but Erik waved her off. She blinked, snorted and stomped back to her table. "You want to make music, you go out there and you just make it."
"That's what I'm trying to do," Jeremy said. "Me and Finn."
Erik looked like he had more to add but another woman walked up, a different one, and they were both stunned into silence. She had to get up on her tip-toes to do it, but she gave Erik a kiss on the cheek. "Honey, go and get booth four's drink order. The customer you brushed off is pretty pissed."
"Whups," Erik said, but he sounded almost genuinely contrite.
The girl shrugged and then turned with a cascade of pale hair to hug Finn a little awkwardly over the bar. "And you! Long time no see, stranger. I love the CD - we play it all the time!"
"We do?" asked Erik.
Finn wrapped his arms around her, slow and deliberate. "Thanks, Sarah. That means a lot coming from you. You've always had good taste. He smirked pointedly at Erik. "With a few notable exceptions."
Sarah let him go to tie an apron around her waist, the movement quick and practiced. "Jeremy Monson, right?" she asked, looking at him. "I recognize you from the album art."
"Are you a model?" Jeremy asked with dreamy fascination before he could stop himself.
She just smiled. Jeremy was pretty sure he would never quite recover. "Well aren't you the sweetest thing."
"I'm, uh... that would be a really lame come on, right? So it's a good thing it wasn't one of those. I'm gay! And you're married!" Jeremy scratched his ear. "So that's cool."
She turned to Erik, who was watching with clear, malevolent delight. "Booth four."
"Fine," he grumbled. Erik swatted her on the bottom lightly on his way over.
"Anyway," she said to Jeremy. "Thanks, sweetie, but even if I wanted to be a model I'm not tall enough." Erik wasn't that tall himself and she barely brushed the tops of his shoulders, but Jeremy was pretty sure exceptions could be made. She looked more like a Waterhouse painting than a real person, all soft shimmery lines, fine as china.
Finn rubbed the back of Jeremy's neck. "It's cool, don't blush. Sarah's pretty special."
"You," Sarah said evenly. "Are a flirt. And a will of the wisp. Next time you come to town you call first. Go help Erik. You want to talk to him privately anyway. I know you."
Finn gave Jeremy a kiss on the cheek that was more a surreptitious earlobe-between-the-teeth maneuver before he ambled away. He towered over Erik's shoulder. Erik just gave him a mildly dirty look.
"So you're a fan?" Jeremy asked Sarah.
"I bought the album as soon as it came out," Sarah confirmed. "Because of Finn, obviously, but I really ended up liking it. You guys are doing some interesting stuff."
"I wish I had known," Jeremy said. "We would have put you on the guest list."
"Finn's notoriously bad at keeping in touch. He wanders through like a stray cat. But next time, yeah, I'd like that."
Jeremy looked over his shoulder one more time. "What do you think he wants to talk to Erik about?"
"Like you don't know," Sarah said, one hip cocked out. "Don't worry. Erik likes you. Otherwise he wouldn't have actually bothered to keep having a conversation."
Jeremy finished his beer on a small wave of absurd satisfaction. "Erik's cool. How long have you two been together?"
Sarah made an exact copy of Erik's stricken, amused face. Maybe that's what they meant by couples growing to look alike; over the years they just began to mirror one another. "Oh, ages. Childhood sweethearts and everything."
"Cool," Jeremy said. And then, confessionally, "I'm sort of in the middle of that right now."
"Finn played a hand in getting us together in the beginning," Sarah said. "He's a good guy."
Finn as a matchmaker had never occurred to Jeremy. He found the idea oddly charming. "The best."
Sarah tapped her fingers a few times against the counter top and said, light and acidic as lemonade. "He deserves to be happy."
Jeremy blinked, faltering slightly at the warning. "I - yeah, I know. I wasn't being flippant."
She tilted her head to the side and then nodded, apparently satisfied, and started drawing him another beer. "So is that a theremin on the third song?"
"Did you seriously talk to Sarah about Star Wars for three hours," Finn asked at four-thirty in the morning when they were trying to hail a cab. He more or less was holding Jeremy up.
"I won't lie," Jeremy mumbled, burying his face in Finn's armpit. "Stuff happened."
"So," Finn said, a beat later. "Did you like them?"
"I did," Jeremy said. "I liked them indeed, Finneus. I liked meeting your friends."
"They liked you," Finn said, sounding pleased.
"I passed the test?"
Finn looked a little startled, but then he laughed, chuckling down the octave. "Yeah," he admitted. "But of course you would."
"I'm pretty awesome," Jeremy agreed sagely.
Finn tilted his chin up with two fingers and kissed him. Finn's mouth was sweet and syrupy; cranberry juice and something more alluring. "You don't even know."
***
It was a fucking hectic day when they played Madison Square Garden. Promos most of the morning and afternoon, a grueling soundcheck, the gig itself, which... wow. And then a radio spot afterwards, quick before the party. It was two in the morning before they could stand still long enough to check in with each other.
Jeremy gestured to the bottle in Finn's hand. "Diet or zero?"
"Zero."
Jeremy swiped it and chugged almost half before coming up for air. "Fuck."
Finn whirled a strand of Jeremy's sweaty hair around his finger. Roger had called first shower and basically hadn't left. "I know. You okay?"
"Yeah. I'm just basically never coming down." Jeremy looked around the club, industry people mostly; a good mix of welcome and necessary. But still. "Want to ditch?"
"Yes," Finn said gratefully. "Let me just tell Rob we're giving him the slip."
They snuck out the back. Outside there was a quick fumble, collars grabbed, and they were kissing against the wall, messy and frantic. It was the best way to ride the adrenaline out sometimes. Contact. Jeremy mumbled into Finn's mouth, "Erik and Sarah's?"
Finn nodded, still breathing hard through his chest. "Sure, yeah." He added, slightly guilty. "You know, you don't have to wait until we're in New York to see them. I think the bar's actually somewhere in Prague."
Jeremy hadn't known that, but it fit the rhythm of things he had been learning over the past three months. "Still," he said. "It's tradition."
Finn nodded, pulling his shirt down from where it had rucked up, and they got into the SUV that was idling for them by the curb. They ended up finding the entrance closer to Alphabet City, which was actually pretty convenient as they had been looking at real estate over there.
"Rockstars," Erik said when they came in, equal parts greeting and identification. It was actually pretty busy tonight; he carried a tray full of shots and gestured for them to partake. "On the house for your big night."
It was a clear liquid, ouzo it turned out when Jeremy was expecting vodka. He did his best not to make a face. "Thanks."
Erik grinned cheekily. Jeremy tried to scrutinize him through his new lens of insight, and maybe the pieces made sense in context, but Erik still just seemed like Erik, pretty and impish and savvy. "Be with you in a minute. It's crazy tonight. Sarah's up at the bar though. I know she wants to say hi."
She gave them both hugs. Jeremy had hit one last growth spurt when he was nineteen, which he had spent several terrifying months trying to keep from Roger, and nothing brought it home like being able to tuck her head under his chin. "You must be pretty excited, huh boys?"
Jeremy felt like he had gone through excited and out the other side, somewhere zen and hyper-aware. "Yeah, definitely."
Sarah let him go and looked between the two of them. "Just you guys today?"
"Kylie flew in from Chicago for the show," Finn said. "And Rog... isn't quite in the right place yet. They both send their love though."
"Well, tell them I missed them." Sarah nudged Finn. "We need another case of that Sam Adam's pumpkin ale from the back. Erik's so busy, can you get it?"
"Manual labor?" Finn asked, but his shoulders had already slumped in acquiescence. Jeremy would never have gotten that reaction out of him; there would always be areas where pretty girls had the advantage over pretty boys. "Save me a seat, Jeremy."
"Sure thing," Jeremy said and Finn threw them both a salute as he went. Jeremy tossed his jacket over the stool next to them and sat down.
"So," Sarah said, resting her elbows on the bar. "Madison Square Garden. That's pretty career-defining. was it just entirely amazing or kind of disappointing in a way?"
"Are you Psyche?" Jeremy asked.
Sarah paused, caught in a freeze-frame, before tapping her fingers against the counter. "So you've been extra busy lately."
"It's just, you know," Jeremy said. "The first letters of your names match up. And the Freudian Slip."
"Yeah," Sarah sighed. "Erik thought he was being cute." She straightened up. "I'm glad he told you. It was about time."
The two spheres of Jeremy's terrible brain were pretty polarized on that issue, but it didn't seem polite to share that with Sarah. "But Psyche was human, right? But you..."
"I'm a lot older than I look, yeah." Sarah raised a perfect eyebrow. "I guess you could say I'm ethnically human at this point."
"Oh," said Jeremy.
"This is strange for you, isn't it?"
"Sometimes," Jeremy said. "I mean, it is objectively bizarre, right? And that hits at weird moments. I mean... you know, right? Was it...?"
"Ah," she said. The crowd was a gentle roar around them now, white noise, and Sarah looked less like a hipster and more like someone who knew old secrets. "You're asking me for tips."
"You keep sending Finn out of the room whenever we come in," Jeremy pointed out. "You've been waiting for me to want to talk about this."
She just hummed as she sorted through the cash register, like the hit didn't even register. "Well, it was slightly different for me."
Jeremy had spent a lot of his recent life looking at Wikipedia. "You had the whole, like, saga thing."
"Honey, everyone has a saga," she said. "But I meant that while you weren't presented with the whole picture, I was acting under false pretenses."
Jeremy was quiet. Sarah worried her lower lip for a moment before continuing. "I told you once your boy had a hand in it. He and Erik got into all these pissing contests back then. He told my dad I was destined to marry a terrible monster, the most fearsome creature in the world. Very tongue in cheek. I thought it was a punishment for being beautiful, which felt pretty crappy at the time. It wasn't like I had any choice about being beautiful."
"But you two fell in love," Jeremy said.
"In the dark," Sarah said. "PBR?"
"Hoegarden, please."
She grabbed a glass from under the counter. "Anyway," she said brightly. "Being chosen isn't supposed to be easy. But don't let yourself get too caught up in the big picture. At the end of the day no relationship is easy, but you're in one of the few that's absolutely worth it."
"Did Erik teach you that?" Jeremy said, to be a little mean.
Sarah snorted. "Erik's specialty is the initial attraction. That's why Finn was always breaking his heart, none of his beautiful people ever stuck around. But you fell in love with him in the dark too, in a way. Maybe that's the only way it can work."
"The only way what works?" Finn said, carrying a case on either shoulder like a lumberjack. "Here's your beer, devil-woman." His shirt was still drenched from the show and his lips were chapped and his voice was still a little hoarse, and Jeremy felt himself make the quiet little choice he had made a thousand times before.
"You can have one as a reward," Sarah said.
"Cool. Hey," Finn said. "That's my seat?"
Jeremy took off his jacket. "Yeah," he said. "It is."