Grant’s vacation house in Sherwood Park had three bedrooms. At the moment, two of the rooms were shared by five musicians that had spent their formative years in BC. My roommate for the next two months was Parker, our drummer in The Automatic Flowers. Our time in Edmonton would be the first time since the band had started touring that I wasn’t rooming with Rich. The five of us all usually slept in the same room anyway when we were on tour—hotel rooms were such an expensive necessary evil, even when they were “cheap” hotel rooms—but when we did have roommate choices, it had always been Rich and me together. This time he was rooming with Trevor and Anthony, the two guitarists in the band.

When I got to the house, I switched backpacks, grabbing my larger one that contained all the necessary supplies of the day and a change of clothes, mindful not to wake Parker or Grant and his wife, Larissa. I locked myself in the main bathroom of the second floor to get myself ready. There were two makeup routines in my repertoire: one for daily and one for live performances. Both were built around the same thing—winged eyeliner. Using a felt-tip liquid eyeliner, I’d highlighted my green eyes the same way since the last year of high school and now, at 22, I had it down to a three-minute routine.

On tour, I didn’t usually do my makeup until after we’d loaded in and had sound check (if there was a sound check) at a venue because it was full-on for stage lights: heavy mascara, blush-laden cheeks, lips lined to perfection and tinted with red or vampy lipstick. Today was a demo day, an ordinary day, except for the fact that we were filming the majority of our two months making the album. Because we were self-reliant, we were filming an extended EPK documentary of our ‘making of’ ourselves. Anthony, who’d joined our band two years ago, had been working on a fine arts degree in Film & Video when he quit school to go on tour. So, for documentary’s sake, I went through with my quick daily makeup routine: light mineral powder concealer and foundation, mascara once my eyeliner was dry, and a conditioning lip stain just for a little color.

I didn’t hear a peep from inside the room Anthony shared with Rich and Trevor. Just as Parker had been in his top bunk in the room we shared, the rest of my bandmates were still asleep. Theirs was the only room on the main floor of the house and along the hallway that led to the family room, which had double French doors that opened up to a deck. It was the quickest route to the barn, faster than going back out the front door.

A keychain with a single key was sitting in a bowl of marbles on the coffee table. I grabbed it before I walked out to the deck, my backpack slung over my shoulder. Upon entrance through the barn side door, the triangular sound lock entryway presented two inner doors to the live room and control room, respectively. Once I had the overhead lights on in the main room—the live room—I smiled to myself. The original owners of the property had used the barn for their horses. Our producer extraordinaire gutted the place, creating a control room out of the tack room, enclosed isolation booths where the horse stalls had been and eliminating the loft for a big live room with exposed rafters. Grant had done such a beautiful job reimagining the place to turn it into Prairie Barn Studios. It was my first time inside the studio by myself and it was still morning. I could get a lot of work done.

Within thirty minutes, I was surrounded by my work. I was sitting on the floor, on one of the throw rug covered hardwood floors, my laptop and spiral notebook both open. An acoustic guitar was sitting in my lap. The lyrics for the forthcoming album were already written. Now it was a matter of putting them to music, turning them into songs, and creating rough demos that we could work off of.

There was a different amount of work done for each chunk of writing. I had sound bites on my computer: some were guitar riffs or chord progressions that I’d played around with. Some were just me humming a pattern a couple of times. I tried to get ideas into sound as soon as I came up with them. They didn’t have to be extravagant from the start. That’s why I had my bandmates—we would eventually figure it out together and make it whole.

Our album would have 12 songs on it. Since Rich and I were the singers in the band, we wrote all the lyrics. Half of the songs would be his breakup lyrics, and the other half would be mine. We’d completed one demo the day before. We had to finish three more by the end of the week to be on schedule. Our eleven weeks in Edmonton were well planned: 3 weeks to demo, one week to rehearse and tweak, one week off, 4 weeks to record, one week of post-production and a week of allowance, just in case.

The song we would be doing a rough cut of, hopefully by the end of the day, was one of mine. It would be easier for me to give Trevor an idea of what I wanted him to play on the lead guitar, and Rich an idea of what I wanted him to do on the keyboard, if need be, if I made progress on the song on my own. My songs were usually the louder, guitar-driven ones while his were more structurally controlled and upbeat. There wasn’t always a place for his percussion on my songs. Sometimes there wasn’t a need for his percussion on his own songs, but we had yet to write any music without the bass. It was always a self-validating thing for me: our band wasn’t made up of boys and a girl so I could look pretty, sing a few lines, and wave a tambourine around. No. I was integral.

I had the metronome out, trying what I thought would be the leading riff at different counts, when the door of the live room opened. With a cup of tea in his hand, Rich shut the door behind him before walking into the room.

“You’re up early,” I told him.

He laughed, setting his mug on top of an amplifier. “Not as early as you.”

For a moment the only sound in the room, with its enhanced acoustics, was the metronome ticking back and forth. I guess he’d gotten my text. He knew I was working alone because I’d woken up elsewhere and had only recently returned to the ranch. He spent the next several minutes setting up the keyboard and xylophone in the middle of the room. Our gear trailer (which was usually towed by our van) had been parked and emptied since we made the long drive from Vancouver, all of the gear strewn around inside the live room. Grant had some really awesome gear in the studio that we couldn’t wait to use, including his grand piano and some vintage guitars, but since our recording time—the time in Edmonton we would actually be paying for—was a few weeks away, we couldn’t use it yet. We were demoing exclusively with our own gear.

“So where were you?” Rich finally asked when he was done and back to sipping tea.

I stood up and sighed. “I…I made a friend.”

“Yeah?” he peered at me with his grey eyes over his Earl Grey. “Your friend take care of you?”

Oh, he did more than that.

“We were drinking. The responsible thing to do was just stay over.” Rich had set up two stools around his instruments. The second was facing him, in front of the keyboard. I sat down and held my guitar against my chest.

I didn’t owe it to him to explain that I didn’t reply to his 1 AM text because I’d been having sex with a handsome stranger. That didn’t mean I wanted to throw it in Rich’s face either. He was my ex-boyfriend but he wasn’t the enemy.

He nodded. “I’m sorry that we fought after the gig yesterday, Delia.”

“I’m sorry, too,” I apologized. “I didn’t have to be so stubborn. I probably should have just gone to the party with you guys.”

“Well I don’t know about that,” Rich shrugged. “You made it into the studio first this morning.”

I smiled. Without words, he was telling me that he accepted my apology. Neither of us had to say anything more about the way we’d acted the night before. Silent communication was something we’d been doing since we were teenagers. Part of the reason we’d been such close friends practically since the day we met was because we just understood each other. So many things could go unsaid.

“How long have you been in here anyway?” he wondered.

“An hour or so,” I said after glancing at the atomic wall clock.

Rich powered on his keyboard, a Nord Electro 2. “So, tell me about your song.”

“Uh…” I paused. “Well I think I have the arrangement down. But it’s not done yet.”

He shrugged, nonchalant. “Let’s work on it together.”

His words were a little shocking. Our last real collaboration seemed eons ago. We’d written all the words and music for our EP and first album together. Writing our old material had seemed almost easy at the time. We could just sit in a room for a couple of hours, start with a small idea and finish with a whole song laid out on the acoustic guitar or piano. Writing post-breakup was so much more difficult. I couldn’t bounce ideas off him because all of the things I wrote were about him or about us.

The first time the band talked about our next album was the first big breakthrough for Rich and me. We were honest with each other. It turned out he was writing just the way I was, except from his perspective. We figured out that the honesty of the songs might be hurtful, but it was going to help us heal. Our relationship had never been a secret to anyone, least of all the kids who listened to our band. If we could be honest with ourselves about the breakup, then we could be honest with them and share what we’d both separately been holding on to.

But the work we’d done for the new album was just that, separate. We had an easier time being on tour together after we decided to move forward with the new album but that didn’t make us ready to collaborate immediately. We had to work up to that. The demo we’d just done the day before was one of Rich’s songs. I hadn’t heard any of the words until we were all together as a band and he was explaining his instrumental vision.

Now he was offering to change that by working on my song together. There would be no surprise in front of the guys. It was so reasonable of him, not just for the album’s purpose but our friendship as well. It was a step in the right direction back to the way things were before we’d fallen in love with each other and made a mess of everything.

I hooked the guitar strap over my shoulder and took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s get to work.”

---

Just as I expected, the guy with the downtown apartment and fancy car never called me. But I was wrong thinking I would never hear from him again. It was just a few days later that I ended up exchanging text messages with him. I re-read his initial message over a few times as I found myself on a bus into downtown, en route back to his place.

It’s Ben. Can I see you again?

The wording was very specific, I thought. He hadn’t asked me to hang out. Nothing about it suggested that he wanted to do anything date-like. I thought the same thing sitting on the bus as I’d thought when I responded the day before: it was a booty call. Well, technically it was a booty text.

I’d never answered a booty call before. I’d never gotten one before. Replying to Ben’s ended up being kind of a relief. I hadn’t really thought about how sexually frustrated I was in the months after my breakup until Ben had sent me into sexual elation. In the days following our night together, I’d secretly felt about as horny as a teenage boy.

Scrolling down the conversation window, the rest of our exchanged messages had to do with arrangements. He’d asked if I could meet him the next night, tonight. I told him I would take the bus into the city in the evening. The earlier we started, the more rounds we could go for, right? He told me I could just show up, that he would be home all night.

The bus stopped right in front of his building, just on the other side of the street. Thank God for suburban commuter routes. After checking for cars, I ran across the street instead of waiting for the crosswalk. An older woman was stepping out and held both the security and lobby doors for me as she saw me approaching. I nodded my thanks at her before heading straight for the elevator.

Ben lived on the 20th floor. The ride up hadn’t seemed so long when we’d been making out as it did when I was alone with only elevator music for company. The condo building was relatively new, definitely built in the last five years, but nothing overly fancy. It was standard: modern décor in the lobby, geometric patterns on the tiles, slate-coloured walls in the hallways, and perfectly identical doors on all the units.

The door to Ben’s place was a solid copper colour with the unit number, 2007, embossed on a chrome plaque. I rapped my knuckles against the door a few times and played with my favorite accessory, the carved silver ring on my right middle finger, then looked down at my outfit. I didn’t really own a lot of sexy clothes in the sophisticated sense. To be honest, I only really knew how to be “hot” in the rock musician kind of way, because that was what I wore on stage—that was when I looked my best. I had on a little navy blue dress under a bomber jacket, paired with my worn-in Doc Martens 8-hole boots. Peeking out from one of my boots, my leg tattoos were somewhat visible under the sheer black polka dot tights that I hadn’t wanted to wear but, alas, it was mid-September in Edmonton, already too chilly for my taste.

I frowned at the door when there was no answer. Ben said he would be home all night. In fact, I knew he was home because I could hear the TV faintly through the door. I knocked again, louder, and crossed my arms over my chest. He had told me that I didn’t need to text him that I was on my way. There wasn’t a doorbell. Maybe I should’ve waited for him to buzz me up?

Finally, I heard a scraping noise behind the door and then it slowly opened. I looked up into Ben’s crystal blue eyes. He blinked at me a couple of times.

“Delia,” he sounded confused saying my name.

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

He didn’t look like someone who knew he was about to get laid. He wore mesh shorts and a white t-shirt, the faded ink on the front advertising some burger joint in Philadelphia. His sandy brown hair was flattened down on one side, made more obvious because his hair was so short.

“I’m…I’m fine.” He sighed, “Sorry. I completely spaced on our conversation yesterday…yesterday morning.”

Well, shit. I felt my cheeks heat up with embarrassment. His last words sounded more like a question than a statement. I was prompt. I’d dressed hot keeping in my mind that he was going to help undress me. He, on the other hand, wasn’t even sure what time of day he’d sent out his booty call.

“Oh,” I blushed. “I…um—I—”

Ben touched my arm, prompting me to stop my blubbering. “Come inside.”

He still sounded confused. I was a little confused myself as he welcomed me into the little entryway of his home. So he forgot that he’d said he wanted to see me, but seeing me at the door, it was cool, he still wanted to ‘see me’ anyway? Seriously, he was terrible at casual sex, and it had nothing to do with his performance.

A few steps and we were standing in the vicinity of the kitchen.

He rested one of his hands on the granite countertop of the little breakfast nook that housed the sink. Then he gave me a sheepish look. “I got a concussion a couple of hours after I was texting you yesterday. That’s why I forgot about tonight.”

My jaw dropped. “Are you alright?”

I knew I’d already asked him just moments before if everything was okay but it felt worth repeating. I’d never had a concussion but given what I’d heard about them from friends who’d gotten them by being in mosh pits or accidentally getting kicked in the head by crowd surfers, they were no ice cream sundae.

“Yeah, I’m okay. It was only minor. I’ve been headache-free all day,” Ben answered. “But I injured my neck a little. It’s still pretty sore.”

“Oh, Ben.” This time it was me who touched his arm. “How did that happen?”

“I, uh, I was playing in an intrasquad game yesterday…” he trailed off, pausing for a moment before speaking again, “I’m on the hockey team here.”

An intrasquad game?

Then it clicked with me. Not ‘a’ hockey team. The hockey team. “Wait, do you mean the Oilers?!” I screeched.

“Yeah,” Ben said simply, completely calm, like it was no big deal. “The game yesterday, it was for the end of training camp.”

“You play for the Oilers,” I said it out loud as I tried to digest the new information. “You’re on the team that holds this city together.”

“Well when you say it like that…” Ben never finished his sentence as he went and sat on the loveseat.

“It all makes sense now,” I looked out the floor to ceiling windows of his panoramic downtown view and shook my head. “That’s how you paid for these digs and that amazing car. You’re a hockey player.”

“I’m actually just renting both,” he answered and patted the seat next to him, encouraging me to sit there. “The teams help get these things lined up when you move to a new team, new city.”

I laughed at that as I walked over. “This is insane.”

Music had been the love of my life since I could remember. It didn’t leave much room for deep appreciation of much else. I didn’t follow hockey, but I had a decent enough understanding of the game to understand its appeal. I understood why in any given place in Canada the people were hockey obsessed, whether it be the NHL or junior or even bantam. Now Ben was telling me he was part of the whole thing.

No wonder he seemed overly responsible on the night we met. He’d cautioned me from getting drunk, he hadn’t even gotten close to buzzed but he didn’t get behind the wheel, and he’d made sure he wasn’t taking advantage of me when I decided I was going to sleep with him. Hockey was king in Canada, and the hometown NHL teams were like religion in cities like Edmonton. I didn’t know if Ben was a rising star or just barely on the team, but it didn’t matter. A report of a player who got a DUI or a sexual harassment case would be sure to hit the media like wildfire, and the Oilers probably weren’t keen on dealing with a PR nightmare. I guess Ben had just been practical the other night.

“You could have told me,” I spoke again. “I’m a little embarrassed I didn’t know.”

Oh, God. Didn’t girls who slept with hockey players have their own exclusive club? Didn’t they seek out guys like Ben to add to the collection of notches on their bedposts? Why was he lonely and texting me?

“I don’t expect people to know who I am anywhere I go,” Ben responded and leaned his head back against the couch cushion gingerly and closed his eyes. “It’s not like I’m Sidney Crosby.”

“And who is Sidney Crosby?”

Immediately his eyes opened again. He turned his head against the cushion and looked at me with like I had lost my mind. It was a mixed look of disappointment and disapproval. I started snickering and poked him in the shoulder.

“I’m kidding. Of course I know who he is,” I assured Ben. “I live in Vancouver, remember? We were home for The Golden Goal.”

With the shake of his head, slowly, he smirked, as if he was amused that he’d believed me. He exhaled deeply.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to go?” I wondered. “So you can rest?”

He was a professional athlete with a concussion and sore neck. He was probably supposed to refrain from physical activity that could aggravate the injury. I assumed we weren’t going to be sleeping with each other tonight.

“Stay. I could use the company. Too early to go to bed—I was just going to order a movie,” he picked up the remote from the coffee table and waved it in the air. “You hungry? We can get delivery.”

He said everything like it was the most normal thing in the world. Like we were actual friends who knew each other better than having hooked up after a couple of drinks a few days back.

“I ate before I headed over here,” I told him as I kicked off my boots and peeled off my jacket, “but I do want dibs on choosing the movie.”

Ben pulled up the menu customized by his cable provider for the ‘On Demand’ selections and then handed the remote over to me. He picked up the pair of reading glasses that rested on the coffee table and slid them onto his nose as I started scrolling through the movie menu. There were a couple of big budget action thrillers and one romantic comedy. The rest were indie movies, and I read through the summaries. It came down to a comedy-drama with Will Ferrell and a dark comedy with Joseph Gordon Levitt.

My problem with Levitt was that I’d seen 10 Things I Hate About You way too many times, and he was always just the character Cameron to me, no matter how good or different his new movies were. Everything Must Go was the title I confirmed to charge to Ben’s account without even previewing the trailer. It was a no brainer. Jock types liked Will Ferrell movies, and I’d just found out that Ben was an actual jock.

A skipping sound echoed lightly in the room—not from the movie—and out of the corner of my eye I saw movement across the chocolate-coloured hardwood floor. I gasped, “Who is this little cutie?”

The movement turned out to be an adorable tuxedo kitten, black all over except for a tuft of white hair at its neck and paws. The tiny animal strutted across the floor to the space between us on the couch and the coffee table and then stopped at Ben’s feet.

“This is Roscoe,” Ben informed me as the kitten proceeded to rub up against his leg. “I adopted him in the summer before I moved here and we’ve been buddies ever since. You didn’t meet him last time ‘cause he was over at my teammate’s house. His wife is gonna take care of Roscoe when we’re on road trips this season. We thought the little guy should stay over there for a while so he’ll be used to it when I’m away.”

I leaned forward and down towards the ground at Roscoe and held my hand out, wondering if he would swipe at me with one of his little paws or let me pet his beautiful black coat. He stopped his movement against Ben’s leg and just looked up at me, staring. I smiled. Roscoe’s green eyes were way better than mine. I turned to Ben, “This is a really tiny cat for such a big guy like yourself.”

“Opposites attract,” Ben shrugged. “And anyway, I need some stability in my life.”

There was an undertone in his voice that I couldn’t place. I didn’t really get his loneliness. I didn’t have to. We’d texted about me coming over so that we could sleep with each other, not share our feelings. I was okay with not knowing.

Roscoe meowed at me a single time and then jumped onto the coffee table in front of us. He quickly lay down and began grooming himself. Ben laughed. “Just wait, by the end of the movie, he’ll warm up to you and want your attention.”

The kitten was lost in his own world, comfortable on his side as he went to town on his arm. Ben looked comfortable on his side of the loveseat, too. In a lazy, slouched sitting position, his limbs were sprawled out in front of him. It took me less than 20 minutes to get fidgety. It wasn’t like I could cuddle up to him. There wasn’t anywhere else to sit, either, except for the floor.

The allure of the downtown condo began and ended there, downtown. There were nice views out the large windows, and probably while standing on the balcony, but the apartment itself wasn’t luxurious. It was just a normal up-to-date apartment that was pretty small. There wasn’t a fireplace or a mantle. The place had probably come furnished: Ben didn’t have any personal pictures up and he didn’t have a kitchen table, just a couple of barstools at the breakfast nook.

Ben’s apartment floor plan was is the shape of an ‘L’. From where I was sitting, I could see the front door and I could also see the door to the bedroom. The contents of the closet in the hallway that went toward the bedroom—which had been shut during my previous visit—were on display, a door stopper jammed under the sliding door to keep it open. It contained only a stacked space-saving washer and dryer combo and stuff for Roscoe: a scratching post, a carrier, and a litter box. I leaned against the side of the loveseat with my elbow, my palm cupping my chin. I crossed and uncrossed my legs as I smirked at a clever bit of dialogue in the movie.

“Here,” Ben sensed my uncomfortableness and handed me one of the throw pillows that had been pinned between his arm and the corner on his side of the couch. “You can put your feet up.”

Following his advice, I turned in the chair so that I was facing his profile and hitched my legs from the ground up to my chest. I wedged the pillow between my back and the couch and sighed internally. It wasn’t any more comfortable than how I’d been sitting. Actually it was worse. Ben was planted right in the middle of the cushion on his side of the loveseat and his athletic build took up so much space that I couldn’t move my legs without kicking him.

He surprised me when he went for my ankles and extended my legs so they were draped over his, my calves resting on his thighs in perpendicular fashion. Ben looked at me without lifting his head from the back of the couch. “Better?”

My head aligned with the pillow and suddenly the arch support my back got was that of a fluffy cloud. This time I sighed out loud as he rested his palms on one of my shins. “Perfect.”

Later, when I was lying in Ben’s bed, Roscoe decided I was going to be his heat source for the night and curled up against me. Ben and I were sharing the bed, but with the option of having sex eliminated, we weren’t even touching. It would be too intimate. Both of us were quiet for a long time once the lights were out. We hadn’t spoken much during the movie either. I doubt either of us expected that there would be much talking going on if the night had gone as we intended. I still wanted to fuck him without any emotional attachment. I couldn’t help but feel a little let down by his concussion as I thought about how the sex had been last time.

“Delia,” my name was a whisper off his tongue.

I thought he’d already fallen asleep. I was halfway to sleep in oblivion, thinking about his body. “Hmm?”

“I wish I didn’t get that dumb concussion yesterday. You looked so good tonight,” Ben’s voice was husky, “I’m so mad I can’t do anything about it.”

Notes

Ben's (reading) glasses and Roscoe are references to old videos. I talk about them in this chapter's notes, so feel free to read those if you are so inclined to know more about my decision to include them. I won't do it here because I don't want this to be any longer than it already is.

Thanks everyone for reading and subscribing! I'd love to know what you think. Hope you're enjoying the playoffs as much as I am.

Extended Chapter Notes