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Most days, Luke spends the majority of his time waiting for band practice to start. It’s not like there’s anything else for him to do. He can’t get a job without risking word getting back to his parents, can’t hit any good clubs in the middle of the day, can barely drag himself off the couch half the time when the studio feels so still and his stomach feels so heavy and he can’t even focus enough to pick just one reason to feel bad about himself instead of letting his brain cycle through disjointed half-thoughts about every fuckup.
The music makes it all worth it. Alex and Bobby and Reggie make it all okay. Rehearsing together makes him feel like a real person after mind-numbing days that threaten to eat him alive; of course it’s all he can think about when they’re gone.
Today, his anticipation is doubled by the fact that he’s got a new song to show them, and tripled by the importance of this particular song. It’s not just something new for them to play, it’s a gift, the way Finally Free was for Alex and Crooked Teeth was for Reggie. God knows Bobby deserves a good gift.
Luke doesn’t know what he’d do without him. People always think Bobby doesn’t care about anything, but they’re always wrong—the couch Luke’s been sleeping on every night is proof enough of that, not to mention all the safe foods he keeps on hand for Alex, or the fancy hair products Reggie likes taking up all the space under the bathroom sink. And even though Luke and Alex and Reggie made music together before they even knew Bobby, they couldn’t be a band if it weren’t for Bobby giving them a space to practise and letting them all crash at his place after late gigs while they all thanked their lucky stars that they’d never have to worry about Bobby’s parents catching them and grounding them for life.
Bobby is a good person and a good bandmate and a good friend, and he deserves better than he gets, in pretty much every regard. Better things from the world, better things from his family, better things from his best friends.
Luke is determined to give him something good. He’s determined to be a better friend than he’s been.
See, he’s starting to think that maybe they’ve had things all wrong about Bobby’s parents. Or maybe not his parents – they’re pretty much what Luke expected, as in, never there. No, it’s more how Bobby feels about it that Luke thinks they didn’t get before.
He always assumed Bobby felt the same way about it as the rest of them: that he thought it was cool, that he loved the freedom of not having anyone to answer to. Compared to Luke’s mom constantly trying to take away the one thing that makes him feel alive, Alex’s parents insisting on controlling every little thing he does, and Reggie’s holding a high-stakes competition for who can poison the atmosphere at their place the fastest, parents who just leave their kid alone seemed like a dream come true.
It’s only in the last few weeks that Luke has realised Bobby was just playing along, and it’s actually a soul-deep, lethal kind of awful when the people whose whole job it is to care for you barely seem to notice you exist. Bobby still acts the same, but now Luke can see the facade for what it is. He can see how his smiles are too thin when the other guys joke about it; he can see how quickly he always redirects those conversations.
And fuck, Luke knows now how quiet this place gets with no one around all day. It’s no wonder he can’t function when the boys are gone, when he has to spend most of his energy trying to keep the emptiness of the Shaw house from sinking into his skin and leeching all the life out of him. He doesn't know how Bobby's done this for so long. He doesn't know how he missed it for so long, how much Bobby must be hurting.
He isn’t about to just let it keep happening, to let Alex and Reggie keep poking a bruise they don’t know is there, to let Bobby sit with that pain all alone. Luke knows what that’s like.
Plenty of people know the facts of his whole thing with his mom, but they get it all wrong anyway. They treat it like it’s so simple: she didn’t want him in a rock band, so he left. They don’t see how hard he fought to stay, how every argument where he tried desperately to make her see his side was him begging to be able to stay, begging for a life where he got to keep his music and his home. They didn’t see how the worse things got, the less being at home felt like an option at all, when all that home meant was fights that kept getting worse, and walking on eggshells for days, and looking everywhere for some way to forget that his mom would be happier if he was anyone but himself. Running away felt like tearing his heart in half with his hands, but staying would have felt like forcing it to stop beating altogether.
Nobody else sees that. As far as most people are concerned, Luke is just a stubborn, selfish teenager, and he can’t stand being misunderstood like that.
He can’t just sit and watch the same thing happen to Bobby, especially not by his closest friends.
Besides, Luke kind of owes Bobby. Bobby has done so much for him, so far beyond what Luke could ever truly thank him for, let alone pay back. Luke isn’t all that good at the whole caretaking thing, and he’s not in a position right now where he has much to offer, anyway.
But he’s good at music. He’s good at spinning feelings into lyrics and melody, at communicating in this way. This he can do.
So, yeah. The song is important, because Bobby is important, and now that Luke has finally figured out how to tell him that, the wait is killing him even more than usual. The lyrics take up every corner of his brain; tiny fragments run through his head out of order as he paces the floor, and when he blinks, a pre-chorus is printed on his eyelids:
I need you to share the parts that they don’t see.
I’ll come in if you just open your heart to me.
It’s not okay you spend so much time on your own
When no one’s home.
And in between checking the clock and the driveway a thousand different times, when he flips open his notebook to look back over everything just one more time, his eyes keep falling to the second verse:
Thing is you had to grow up too fast
No one was ever there to have your back
You’re on a different track
Your band is your new family.
I’m telling you you don’t have to hide
All those feelings you keep inside.
Now tell me, would I lie?
I’ll prove that you can believe me.
It’s the only way he could have said it, and all he can think about is getting Bobby to hear it.
When the boys finally arrive, Luke tries to stretch his patience a little further, because contrary to his wishes, band practice doesn’t actually start the second everyone walks in the door. They all love music, but they love each other more, and usually it takes Luke at least a few minutes to get them focused. Even if he’d prefer to jump straight to music after waiting all day and do all the other catching up afterwards, he knows they don’t operate the same way, so he always at least makes an attempt to be chill. He’s extra antsy today, though, so he doesn’t wait long before he calls out, “So! Are we ready to get started?”
Alex and Reggie share that look where they’re not quite rolling their eyes at them but they basically are, but he knows it doesn’t mean they’re upset at him, it means . . . something else. He doesn’t actually quite know. That he’s being a little too Luke, maybe, but they love him anyway.
It doesn’t matter much, anyway, because he’s way more focused on Bobby as he passes out copies of the song and tells them, “I thought we could start with this? I just finished it last night.”
He’s shared a million songs with them before, but usually they’re messier—he can’t remember the last time he finished one on his own. Usually he throws them 75 percent of a song, max, a rough sketch with missing pieces and lines he knows are wrong but won’t know how to fix until Reggie sings them back to him and Alex points a drumstick at him and says, “Okay, no, try it like this” and transitions that feel clunky until Bobby pulls them onto their tracks with the perfect chord. As long as he’s got the heart of it, he’s good to go.
He’s never given them something so complete. Something about that sharpens his concentration, makes him zero in on their reactions (on Bobby’s reaction) in a different way. He always watches to see if they like what he’s written, but not like this. This is anticipation like holding his breath instead of like bouncing on his feet, like playing poker instead of pinball.
Bobby is always hard to read, and Luke is always bad at reading anyone, but with all his focus pointed at him like this, there’s no way to miss it. There’s absolutely no ambiguity in the way Bobby’s jaw goes tight as he scans the page, the way his fingers crumple the edge of the paper when they curl into a fist. “Fuck you,” he says, deadly quiet. “I’m not playing this.”
Luke isn’t scared, but this kind of cold empty lightning-flash feeling is one he only associates with terror. The way it pricks at his skin, it feels like a layer of ice is going to form over every exposed part of him, and the only way he knows how to fix it is to crank everything up a hundred degrees, to pull at the anger glowing in his stomach and cut into Bobby’s space and demand, “Why not?”
For a second, it looks like it’s going to work; for a second Bobby looks ready to set him on fire. “You know why not, you asshole—”
And then he cuts himself off. Snaps his mouth shut, dumps his guitar on the couch, and walks right out of the studio, leaving Luke to stare at the empty space he left.
A few hours later, Luke finds himself alone in the studio, still staring at that same empty space.
Alex and Reggie hadn’t hung around, and honestly, Luke can’t blame them. He hadn’t wanted to, either, but it’s not exactly like he has anywhere else to go. Running away as much as he could is what landed him in Bobby’s garage to begin with.
Still, without them the studio feels too cold and too warm, cavernous and suffocating, empty and overflowing. The space feels too big for Luke, yet his feelings seem too big for the space. Luke’s done countless push-ups (they just made him feel more wired), and tried to play his guitar (as if he’ll ever be able to write again after this disaster) and lay with his eyes closed, but sleep laughs in the face of the events of the afternoon.
It’s a lot. He resorts to sitting on the couch, doing nothing but bouncing his legs with his head tipped back, staring at the ceiling. It’s starting to get less familiar the longer he looks at it, which feels backward, yet fitting.
He doesn’t know how he got it so wrong.
He just—he really thought he knew Bobby, and it’s not like he didn’t have any evidence for that. He definitely knows how to make Bobby mad, knows that it drives him insane when Luke moves too close or quotes his words back at him in arguments or keeps pushing the same issue over and over and doesn’t let Bobby back out and keep giving non-answers, knows all of the right buttons to push to make Bobby want to bite back at him.
But he knows other things too, like the way Bobby gets tense in crowds but gets a different, worse kind of tense when he’s alone for too long, and he won’t do anything to get out of either of those situations but he won’t stop Luke from dragging him away or climbing in his bedroom window or talking him into staying out in the studio just a little longer, just so Luke can show him one more thing, again and again until he stops pretending he’s about to leave. He knows Bobby will never say a word about it, but he always seems a little less locked up and a little more alive after.
Luke knows Bobby never sleeps. He knows he hates feeling watched, but hates feeling overlooked almost as much. He knows how desperately Bobby wants Alex and Reggie to like him, more than he would ever let them see.
So fucking sue him for being confused, because he’s pretty sure he knows more about Bobby than anyone, and somehow he still missed that writing him a song would send him stalking out of his garage with a look on his face that said he never wanted to come back.
Even if he’d expected it to go wrong, he would’ve expected it to go wrong differently. Luke knows a Bobby who would have yelled at him, not one who would just leave like that. He’s never seen Bobby react that way.
Or, wait. He fumbles his guitar pick and drops it, when he hadn’t even realised he’d been fidgeting with it. The plastic clatter seems sharp and loud in the silence.
He has seen Bobby react like that before – once, and the context was so different that he only draws the connection now. It’s not how Bobby’s reacted to bullies or arguments about the order of songs in their setlist or whether or not Reggie owes him five bucks for pizza, but it’s how he reacted when their math teacher stopped him outside class and offered him extra tutoring.
Luke had only slowed because everyone else from their class took off so fast, and he was sick of that, how friends left each other behind so easily over things as small as crouching to tie shoes, or having no money, or not understanding whether someone is joking or serious. So he waited, hand on his backpack strap, and his memory of what exactly Mrs. Keene said is blurry, unclear – his brain doesn’t retain details like those. The details it retains are things like how Bobby couldn’t stop glancing from the floor to Luke and back again, how he kept saying okay and sure before their teacher had finished each sentence like he was pushing-shoving-urging the conversation to be over.
Then, she said something about how it was a shame to see Bobby fall behind when she knew how hard he was trying, could see how much he cared about doing well. Luke would’ve expected Bobby to roll his eyes, bark that he doesn’t care, he wouldn’t think to try, but instead Bobby froze, turned on his heel, and walked off. He ignored her and Luke both as they called after him.
Luke had just figured he was having an off day. It hadn’t seemed important at the time. He didn’t clock it as something that might happen again, and that’s landed them here.
Maybe it doesn’t matter what he saw or didn’t see, remembered or forgot. Maybe he knew this about Bobby all along. He can’t tell if he knows Bobby better than anyone else or if he doesn’t know him at all.
Bobby must not know Luke, though, or else he would have known that walking out like that was the absolute worst thing he could have done to him. Or maybe he does know, and he did it anyway. Maybe Luke fucked up so badly that Bobby wanted to hurt him as much as he possibly could.
Luke's frustration comes to a head, and he kicks his guitar pick with the toe of his shoe, flicking it into the air and sending it spinning through the air. It bounces off the garage door and makes the tin rattle. They should forget this and find a new rhythm guitarist, there are other kids in their music class Luke knows would kill to be in their band if Reggie or Alex asked—kids with garages and basements and spare rooms of their own; fuck Bobby and his stupid studio.
But that anger ebbs away almost as soon as he feels it. Luke already knows he can’t live without Bobby; that’s why he had to go and write him a song in the first place. The days of Bobby being a disposable rhythm guitarist are so irrevocably gone, shoulder-checked into the past by Bobby’s sixth sense for when Reggie’s sad, by his willingness to put his knuckles right into the jaw of anyone who’s unkind to Alex, by the fact that when Luke had nowhere to go Bobby opened up his home like it was nothing. No, not like it was nothing—like it was obvious. Like there never would have been any question about it.
They could find another guitarist, Luke admits to himself, heart sinking, but they couldn’t find another Bobby. Not if they looked for the rest of their lives.
Besides, they might not even get the chance to kick Bobby out. At this rate, he might quit all on his own, and that idea fills Luke to the brim with unsteady, too-cold nausea. He knows in his gut that he can’t get rid of Bobby, and he can’t let Bobby leave them.
He has to fix this, but he doesn’t have a clue how to make things right when he still doesn’t even really understand where he went wrong. Obviously he messed up, but no matter how many times he turns it over in his head, he can't fill in the blanks that will tell him how he managed to make one of his best friends not even want to look at him, when he was just trying to show he cares.
But Luke, of all people, should know better than to think that being motivated by love makes up for the damage done by expressing it wrong.
It's just—he knows how much this whole thing with his parents has been weighing on Bobby, and Bobby’s never said a word about it, and when Luke doesn’t tell his friends about something, it’s less that he doesn’t want them to know and more that he doesn’t want to tell them, doesn’t want to stumble through trying to find the right words and tripping over a thousand wrong ones on the way, doesn’t want someone’s eyes on him while he tries to pull the feelings out of his chest like a magician’s scarf and lay it out in neat, decipherable lines.
It always leads to him getting frustrated that the other person doesn’t understand what he’s trying to say, so he just says it louder (as if that’ll make up for the fact that trying to just talk about his feelings always feels like a bad translation, like a language he’s not quite fluent in) until he gets fed up and leaves.
The only thing that doesn't feel like that is sharing songs; it’s the closest he can get to just scooping up the feeling with his hands and setting it in front of someone, and that’s exactly what he wants.
He was trying to make things easier for Bobby. He was trying to take out the hard part and fast-forward everyone to the part where they got it.
And Bobby . . . didn’t want that. The same way he didn’t want his teacher offering him help and telling him how obvious it was that he was trying.
God. All of the pieces finally click together for Luke, leaving him with a conclusion so simple that it definitely shouldn’t have taken him all night to reach it: Bobby doesn't want to be obvious. When he doesn’t tell people things about himself, it’s because he doesn’t want them to know.
So Luke writing a song about him—telling him he knows how he feels without really being told, pulling those feelings out and putting them on display for their friends without checking with Bobby or even warning him—it's the worst thing he possibly could have done to him.
And he still has no idea how to fix it. He can’t even say he’s sorry; Bobby hates apologies, and putting him on the spot like that again will only make things worse.
He has a little bit of time to figure it out. Alex and Reggie and Bobby will all be in school again—they must be already, by now; it’s 8 in the morning and Luke still hasn’t slept—so he has until today’s practice. Assuming that they all show up. Assuming that they still have a band.
It stings, that Bobby didn’t even poke his head in through the door to say goodbye like he usually does before school, but Luke can’t be angry at him. It just makes him feel more guilty. That Bobby didn’t want to face Luke. Or maybe couldn’t face Luke. Not on such uneven ground.
Luke would take it all back if he could, but he can’t, so all he can do is try to find the next best thing, and hope it’s enough for Bobby.
It’s quiet when Luke comes to stand in front of his friends, another song clutched in one of his slightly sweaty hands, the other clinging to his guitar strap, holding his guitar in front of him like a shield. As usual, he’s spent most of the day anticipating practice. This time, it’s doubled, tripled, quadrupled by his anxiety, his certainty that this is his one chance to make things right with Bobby.
Alex and Reggie are shoulder to shoulder on the couch, both eerily quiet and still except for Alex drumming his fingertips on his knees. Bobby settles himself against the doorjamb instead, arms crossed, eyebrows furrowed. He glances behind him, at the open door.
It’s nothing like the beginning of a normal rehearsal. There’s no goofing around, no giggles from Reggie, no sound of Alex’s drumsticks clattering as someone tackles him onto the couch.
As soon as Luke clears his throat and says, “So, uh,” there are three pairs of eyes on him. They seem expectant, though Luke doesn’t know what they’re expecting. Well, Reggie or Bobby, anyway. Alex probably expects him to apologise, and if it had been Alex he’d hurt, he would, in an instant, in a heartbeat.
But Bobby isn’t Alex, so he can’t apologise, not in any way that matters. The best he can do is try to level the playing field a little. “I, um. I’ve got something new to show you guys.”
Reggie bites his lip. Alex raises his eyebrows. Bobby, impossibly, tenses further. He eyes the door again, and Luke rocks forward towards him on instinct, forces himself to keep his hands to himself and take a step back as he says, “No, wait, it’s not—it’s not like the other one, I promise.”
Bobby’s only response is the barest of shrugs. But he doesn’t leave.
So Luke takes a deep breath, and he looks back down at his shoes, and he says, “It’s called ‘Unsaid Emily.’” And he plays.
He thought he’d be singing to Bobby, because it’s a song for his mom but it’s a performance for his friend, the only way he knows how to balance things out and beg him to stay and promise to do better—to be a better friend than he’s been—but then he opens his mouth and he knows it can’t be a performance at all. Part of him still wants to keep his distance from it all—wants his friends to know what he’s feeling without having to let them see it, still—but it’s not the kind of song he can sing with half his heart.
So he lets himself get lost in it, and he doesn’t look at Bobby or Alex or Reggie at all until he’s finished, and when he does, he has to wipe tears from his eyes to see them properly.
Bobby is still here. Luke can’t read the look in his eyes, not like he can see the pity on Reggie’s face and the understanding written across Alex’s, but he hasn’t run out again, not yet, and Luke hasn’t either.
Nobody says anything, they all just keep looking at each other, until finally, Bobby breaks the silence. “‘S good,” he mutters. “Should put it on the album.”
And just like that, Luke is home again.