For the last hour I’d been in the booth and for the last hour I’d struggled. Through the glass, I could see the expressions on the faces of my bandmates turning sour out of worry. They tried to hide their frustration with my frustration, but I knew we all felt the same way. This was the first big road ditch we’d hit in the studio and I hated that it was because of me.

Just the day before, I’d been in the same vocal booth and had finished my session for a song in less than an hour. I was always conscious about the musicianship required for any song I wrote for the band. We wanted to be able to perform every song we had. Did I have it in me to write songs that explored a more dynamic vocal range? Of course. But if I was all in on vocals, that would impede my ability to play bass at the same time. Rich and I both thought it was important to be able to sing live on par with how our recorded vocals were.

The demo for the song I was recording vocals for in the studio today had been pretty standard when we made it. We’d recorded a live run-through of us playing the song. Everyone in the band contributed instrumentally by the end of the song. But Grant heard something else when we played the demo for him. He quickly went through what we’d tracked and made his own mix. He stripped the song down to vocals, lead guitar, bass, and drums. He asked what we thought and of course we thought it was a better arrangement. Then he asked what we thought of me singing—really singing—the hell out of the song.

I didn’t write a song that was vocally demanding and I hadn’t intended to record one either. Grant had a different idea. He wanted me to have a moment. Just by virtue of the instruments that we played and wrote with, Rich’s songs were usually piano-driven and mine were guitar-driven. Grant promised that this song would be best served by neither; it would be best driven by the vocals, with the instruments serving only as compliments. We all knew I had it in me, he’d said, and in fact I’d already proven it with one of our acoustic covers a few weeks earlier.

When I argued that it wouldn’t be practical to record a song in a way that we couldn’t replicate on stage, he immediately pointed out that I wouldn’t have to play bass when we played it, because there were five of us in the band and only three instruments in the song. Grant got my band to gang up on me. They reminded me that the whole point of Anthony joining the band two years ago was to make things easier on everyone. Having a second guitarist meant we sounded better and we didn’t have to compromise our visions as much because we could play better music with five people rather than four.

Grant pushed for us to push our boundaries. We could all play multiple instruments but the duty of singing fell on Rich’s shoulders and my shoulders. Trevor contributed to the back vocals sometimes but only in small bursts. I tried my damned hardest to fight Grant’s suggested alteration to the song. The Automatic Flowers had never been about how well we could sing. I didn’t think that the kids, our fans who listened to us, did so because of our vocal abilities. I didn’t think it was fair, either, that there would potentially be a song on the album that seemed like it was more about me than the band.

The album was arranged chronologically: through the breakup and into the better days. This song fell right in the middle of the album. I was willing to bet that Grant put it there on purpose, to convince my band to convince me to go all in with the vocal delivery. The song was one of the first I’d written right after Rich and I broke up. The lyrics were pretty raw because that was how my emotions had been. And that was what the middle of the album needed, a gut-wrenching blow to prevent any lulls. It needed my moment.

So I was outnumbered and my boys got their wishes. I was focused on my vocals for this song. Except my moment was so not happening in the booth. I got more wrong than I got right. Usually, for lead vocals, I did a first take where I sang through the entire song without interruption. Once that was laid down as a skeleton, we went back and focused on sections that I could improve upon. Today though, my first take was basically a wash and would be scrapped in its entirety. We moved on, tried it again, and I’d gotten through the first verse and chorus by the skin of my teeth. Grant kept cutting me off. It was problematic for me that my voice on the demo was far off from the way I was singing for the record because I didn’t have a reference. Just because I sang louder, it didn’t mean I was singing with more power or better. He insisted that I work through it.

The session was only going to get harder. I was almost done recording the second verse. The most vocally challenging part of the song followed: a chorus repeat, the bridge, and the second chorus repeat. At the rate of my hits and misses, it was going to take me four hours to sing a four-minute song.

Just as I thought I’d completed one good line, to finish off the verse, the music in my headphones stopped abruptly and was replaced by Grant’s speaking voice, which sounded slightly robotic through the talkback system. “You can do way better than that.”

“Okay,” I answered into the pop filter that protected the microphone in front of me, holding back my sigh. I couldn’t afford—literally—to stand around and argue with my producer.

The situation was that he told me to jump and I asked how high. Just because I was frustrated and scared, I didn’t doubt that the result was going to be better than I expected. That was what we were paying him for, after all.

“I know that you believe in what you’re singing because this came from you. But right now I don’t believe you.” Grant went on, “I need to believe you. I want to feel what you felt when you wrote about this lovesick pain.”

I nodded. “Got it.”

“I’ll start it from the top of the last section,” he told me, leaning forward in his swivel chair.

That just meant he was making me do the last two lines over again. I scanned the lyrics sheet in front of me quickly, words that I already knew by heart because they’d come from my heart, and then looked up through my side of the glass in the booth into the control room. I gave Grant a few more nods as I prepared to sing again. Trevor was sitting beside him in an identical chair at the soundboard where the sound engineer would have been sitting if we were recording the album anywhere but Grant’s newly built studio. Behind them, on the couch, were Rich, Parker, and Anthony.

No one was texting or staring up into space. They were all engaged, watching me. Having my bandmates and best friends all there to watch me was daunting and, I imagined, added to my struggles. I’d long accepted that anyone that listened to our new album was going to know exactly how Rich and I felt. Our album told a great story, going through the breakup, the pain, and the healing. I was excited for people to hear it. But in the studio, we were in the pain stage, and it was uncomfortable for me to sing about in front of my boys. It was different when they just sat there as opposed to when they were playing a song with me.

I was showing weakness and my most vulnerable side. I felt exposed. Getting over Rich and getting over a relationship that had failed for seemingly no reason was something I’d had to do on my own. I obviously didn’t have my best friend to help me through it, and I never would have burdened the rest of my bandmates with my pain. Neither Rich nor I brought the topic up for discussion until we had the band meeting where we came up with the wild idea that we should release the way we felt as music. But through the processes of songwriting, demoing, and recording, I kept my pain to myself. I had to. That’s what my song was about. I needed something that was just my own.

It’s easy to forget that pain isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It can make you stronger. It can help you stand alone.

I took a deep breath as Grant cued the music back so I could repeat the line I’d just done. I hoped I could use the nervous energy that seeing my bandmates gave me as power. And I hoped that power could be translated into the song. As the guitar track poured into my headphones, I closed my eyes, blocking everything else out when I began to sing.

My hands floated up and tapped at the empty air in time with every syllable I sang. Being in an isolation booth to record vocals was always awkward for me. I was used to singing and playing bass guitar at the same time. Even if there were times when I sang but didn’t play, I was used to it being there, something to hold onto. It was standard practice to track every part of a song separately in the studio, but boy did I feel weird singing without my bass. If this song panned out the way Grant expected it to, it would be the first song I performed without my bass strapped over my shoulder.

It was also standard practice to record the majority of the instruments before recording vocals. Since Grant’s vision of the song was driven by the vocals and not the guitar or the piano, he wanted me to sing first. I had only the lead guitar track in my headphones to keep me in time. Today was a world of different. The second verse ended and launched right into the first repeat of the chorus. I kept going, singing with a little bit more of a pronounced urgency than the initial chorus. Grant cut the track right on a pause for a breath, a good place for an adlib. I took a step back from the microphone as I opened my eyes.

“So, two things,” Grant held two fingers up for effect, “first, the end of the verse was really good. And your transition into the chorus, I liked that, too.”

“Not pitchy?” I wondered.

I thought it might have bordered on pitchy.

“No, great control,” he shook his head. “Now, second thing, be careful when you say ‘water’. It sounded a little too much like ‘wider’ on that last take.”

“Water, water,” I repeated the word in my singing voice, stressing the pronunciation.

Grant gave me a thumbs up. “Yup. Just like that. Go again?”

“Sure,” I agreed and mimicked his actions, giving a thumbs up of my own.

He went back to the drop of the chorus and my cue was the sentence where I sang the title of my song. My lazy pronunciation of ‘water’ was in the line right after. When I redid the lines and finished out the chorus, I made sure to enunciate, hopeful to not repeat it again. The most challenging part of the song was up next and it would be best approached if I felt positive going into it. I started to get really unsure of myself if Grant had me going over a section of the song more than a couple of times. The first verse had taken more than a half-hour to get through because of that.

But Grant didn’t stop me abruptly this time. I thought I was getting better. The song was coming together and just in time I was developing a knack for what focused vocals had to have, both in tone and emotion. The guitar track stopped playing in my headphones in the space for vocal pause between chorus and bridge. I was done my first chorus repeat. This time when I opened my eyes, Trevor and Grant were both on their feet. Larissa, Grant’s wife, was seated in Trevor’s chair, a hand poised on her very pregnant belly.

She was all smiles from ear to ear as she spoke to me through the talkback. “There’s somebody at the door for you, Delia.”

What?

“Uh…” I stammered. “I…”

“You know what? It’s fine,” Grant sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Your voice is getting a little too raspy for the big bridge anyway. Let’s take five.”

As I exited the booth and subsequently the barn, all I could think was that I was lucky we were in Sherwood Park. I was lucky Larissa was so pregnant that she waddled and that she had been home to bring me the news of the visitor. If we were in a studio in LA, if the love of Grant’s life wasn’t free to walk over because it was on the grounds of her home, I might have gotten reprimanded instead. I knew better. I was familiar with studio etiquette. You couldn’t just have people show up to see you. The only people that should be at the studio were those that were directly involved in recording on any given day. Recording time was meant to be sacred and uninterrupted by outside distractions.

In my defense, I hadn’t been expecting any visitors. I hurried from the barn toward the front of the house, cutting across the yellowing prairie lawn rather than taking the fabricated gravel pathway. Even though I hadn’t asked for or been granted any permission for visitors, I already knew who it was. I’d made a couple of friends in Edmonton—a few of the kids in the local scene had been to every single one of the small gigs we’d played since we’d been in town. But only one person knew how to get to Prairie Barn Studios to make the bold move of showing up unannounced.

Ben. He was standing awkwardly beside the driver’s side door of his automobile when I made it to the front of the house. It was game night for the Oilers and if he leaned against the Lincoln, he ran the risk of dirtying his perfectly pressed dress shirt—checkered and lilac in colour. As I approached, Ben’s posture improved and he removed his hands from his pockets.

He squinted against the late afternoon light for a moment. “Hi.”

“Hi, Ben.” I stepped out of the direct light cast by the setting sun and continued, “You can’t really be here right now…is everything okay?”

It felt sort of like the way I’d greeted him after he got his concussion. Except this time, I was busy and he shouldn’t be showing up to see me in the middle of the day. In his game day attire, he should have been on his way to the arena, which was in the complete opposite direction of Sherwood Park. I never saw Ben during the daytime once he dropped me off at the ranch in the morning after our nights together. I’d been sleeping with him long enough to know that hockey guys had routines they followed on game days like mid-afternoon naps and pre-game meals before showing up to the arena a few hours early.

“I…Sorry,” he apologized. “I called you a couple times and I texted you.”

“Oh. I haven’t even looked at my phone since lunch,” I answered. “We’ve been in the studio for the last couple hours. I’ve been tracking vocals for the last two.”

“Shit. Actually I knew you would be. I’m sorry for interrupting,” Ben apologized once more and even hung his head. “I…wow…this feels stupid now.”

I frowned. “It must not be stupid if it brought you half an hour in the opposite direction of what you’re dressed for. What’s up?”

“I saw this before I went to nap earlier,” Ben reached into the breast pocket of his shirt, “it was sitting on the bathroom counter.”

Between his thumb and index finger he held my raven ring. My mother’s ring.

“I know I’m going to see you later but I…” he trailed off, voice going softer, “I remembered what you told me about it and I thought it would be better if you had it with you.”

He’d thought right. I was so used to the weight of my mother’s ring on my hand that my hand didn’t feel right without it. The only time I took it off was when I went to shower; I didn’t want the silver to ever tarnish because I couldn’t replace it. There were plenty of Salish carved rings in the world, but none like mine that held the story of my parents. I knew soon after Ben dropped me off earlier in the morning, when I got ready for the studio day ahead, that I forgot to put the ring back on after I stepped out of the shower at his place. I also knew that I’d be back at Ben’s apartment before the night was over and I would get it back, nothing to panic about.

I should have guessed that Ben would hit the panic button for me. He was a romantic, after all. He wanted to fall in love with someone (not necessarily me) just like my parents had. The significance of the ring wasn’t lost on him. My heart skipped a beat.

“That’s really sweet of you to come all the way here,” I said as he dropped the ring into my upturned palm. I quickly slipped it onto the ring finger of my right hand and touched Ben’s elbow. “I appreciate it.”

He shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “It’s nothing.”

No, it wasn’t nothing. I’d been dumb to be so carefree about leaving it on the bathroom countertop. He’d been concerned. “Thank you,” I mumbled.

To make sure he knew that I meant it, I grabbed his shoulders for leverage, standing on my tip toes and giving him a full-on kiss on the mouth. Ben’s hands fastened onto the small of my back and he caught my bottom lip in between both of his own. We kissed a few times, innocently, tongues put away and eyes fluttering.

When we were finished, Ben ran his thumb down my jawline from my ear to my chin. He flashed a tiny smile, lips pursed. “Guess I’ll see you later, Mins.”

I probably had more jump in my step as I walked back to the barn once he’d driven off. The weight on my hand was a comfortable one. I barely even noticed the ways my bandmates were occupied when I went back into the vocal booth. My ring felt like good luck. Earlier I hadn’t considered its absence one of the reasons that I’d been struggling so much with my song, but now I felt more me. And seeing Ben when I wasn’t supposed to was refreshing. His visit felt like good luck, too.

“Why don’t we just run through the bridge one time first,” Grant said once he was situated back behind the soundboard. He held a can of root beer in one of his hands, Larissa was gone, and Rich had taken over the second swiveling chair. “We’ll build from there.”

In the booth’s silence, I took a large gulp of water and waited for him to cue up the music. I looked at my mother’s ring and thought about Ben. He was my friend and he’d been looking out for me. Grant played back the section of the song I finished before we’d taken a break. There was a very short vocal pause, just a few strums of the guitar, before the bridge launched. I imagined myself coming in and singing before he stopped the track.

“So you got your cue?” he asked, hitting the talkback control on the soundboard. I nodded and gave a thumbs up again, like I had earlier. “Alright, next playback we’re laying down vocals.”

“I’m ready,” I responded confidently, adjusting my headphones to my liking.

Grant’s eyes were focused on the main flat-panel monitor directly in front of him for a few moments, probably adjusting the frames of the two tracks he had in front of him. When he looked up, the music started playing from the chorus again. I closed my eyes and focused on the moment I’d just had, the word exchange and the kissing, even if it was the opposite of what I was about to sing. I relaxed and breathed deeply.

My voice broke into the song, big and perfectly pitched. I clenched my fists through the hardest parts with urgency and delivered what I wanted in the right timbre. There was room for one small breath before the end and I took it. My end approach was controlled. I made sure that I was singing through the emphasized single-syllable words and not yelling them. I knew I’d channeled the ‘power’ Grant wanted from me.

The smile on my face was identical to the one on Grant’s when I rounded off with an adlib. I let out a big sigh as the sound cut out of my headphones. I felt the way that I did when I sang on stage, but with so much concentration, I knew it was the best sounding verse I’d ever sung before. If I had it in me, then damn it, I was going to have to learn how to have it in me for this song every night that we played it when we went on tour. But I did have it in me.

“Wow.” Grant leaned forward in his chair. “I don’t think we even have to do that over again.”

“That felt really good,” I proclaimed.

Grant had one more remark before we went on to finish the song off with some chorus repeats. “Now I think you should get visitors more often, Delia.”

---

My body was in recovery mode in the post-sex afterglow. Ben had an arm wrapped around me, holding me close. Both of us had been in high spirits when we met up earlier in the night. As a result, we shut the bedroom door behind us and went at it like rabbits.

I’d been having a rough day before Ben showed up at the studio. He turned it all around. I didn’t have to stay in the vocal booth for much longer after our little visit, it just clicked. When my vocals were done, it was time to track drums, which I was not involved in. I was done for the day and I was happy to just watch and listen until we were all done for the day in the studio. Despite the emotional intensity of the song, all of us in the band were pleased with the result. It was exciting to have something on our upcoming record that we’d never considered before.

A happy band meant a happy meal. We went to Boston Pizza for dinner, where they had the Oilers game on, and I got to watch how Ben’s night went. Parker pinched me under the table when a close-up shot of Ben was shown and I’d nearly dropped my iced tea into my lap. He only looked three-quarters as good on TV as he did in person. Personally, I thought he looked hottest when he was scruffy, on his back, and guiding me down his length. Hot or not, Ben got more than eight minutes of ice time and the Oilers beat the St. Louis Blues 4 to 2.

We’d both ended up having good days, and the satisfying sex to top off the night was the icing on the cake. Not five minutes into cuddling and Roscoe was already scratching at the door. Ben hadn’t even traced over a single one of my tattoos yet. He slid out of bed and slipped into his boxer briefs that had been discarded on the floor before walking to the door and turning the door handle to open it.

Roscoe bounded into the room and jumped right up onto the bed. What a spoiled kitten. Ben let him do whatever he wanted. The feline stopped in front of me, tail straight up in the air and curling over at the tip. He was a happy and confident cat. He meowed at me once and I scratched under his chin. With a face as cute as his, it was no wonder Roscoe got away with everything.

“When do you leave on your big road trip?” I asked Ben.

“Uh…” Ben disappeared momentarily into the tiny walk-in closet. I heard the switch of a light and a bit of shuffling. When he returned, he was holding a red shirt in one of his hands. He handed it to me before answering my question. “I leave on Wednesday morning.”

After playing so many games at home in the latter half of October, the Oilers were going on a road trip that was nearly two weeks long. Their next game was a few days away and tonight had been their last home game until they got back. When Ben got back, we would only see each other for about a week before he went on the road again and The Automatic Flowers returned home to prepare for our next tour.

Unfolded, the shirt Ben gave me to sleep in was, like most sleeping attire, faded. This one had a vector silhouette in the shape of Australia on it along with the words I’d rather be down under! Like all of Ben’s clothes, the shirt was too big on me, but it was comfortable and soft from so many washings. What was important was that I was wearing a thick cotton shirt, in case Roscoe decided to get frisky in the middle of the night. It was always me he targeted, since he liked to cuddle up to me, and I’d already woken up with a scratch on my chest once before.

“Does that mean you have the next two days off?” I continued the conversation.

“We do have practice on Tuesday morning,” Ben responded as he crawled back into bed, “but yeah, they’re off days.”

“You should come to my birthday show on Tuesday night,” I suggested.

Roscoe settled in against me as Ben snaked his arm back around my waist. “You’re having a birthday show?”

“Well, it’s a show that’s on my birthday,” I clarified as I petted the cat’s back. “It’s our only real show in Edmonton. We’re playing a full set. The stage will have spotlights and everything. We’re the direct openers for our friends who are headlining.”

Our eighth week in Edmonton was the one we’d planned our whole schedule around, our off/allowance week, the one where we got to play a real show. Our friends in Barley Grow, a band from Tuscaloosa, knew that they were touring through Western Canada around the same time that we’d be in Edmonton. We set it up perfectly so that The Automatic Flowers could be billed as their ‘very special guests’, along with the two other opening bands they were touring with, on the night that they were in town. It just so happened that that was the day I turned 23. I was pumped. Playing shows was a huge part of the fun of being in a band.

Ben’s follow-up question came with a creased brow. “Your birthday is the day after Halloween? That must suck.”

I laughed. He was right. In general, on the day of my birthday, people were either sick from the candy or hung over from the costume parties. Everyone liked Halloween; they didn’t like the reality of the day after it. “It’s pretty crappy. But having a show to play this year makes it better.”

“Well now that I know it’s your big night—”

“Only if you don’t have other plans,” I interrupted, and added, “and if you want to.”

“I want to but, uh,” he moved his hand up my back, “is it okay if I bring some friends?”

“Of course you can bring other people to the show, Ben. Bring as many people as you want.” I quipped, “But can they pay for their own tickets? I was just going to put you on the guest list. I can only put one person down though.”

“Ooh,” he cooed. “Special treatment, eh?”

“Yup. I must think you’re pretty cute,” I retorted, not missing a beat.

“They’ll buy tickets. And you know what? I will, too,” Ben told me. “Actually, it’s kinda perfect. I’ll be hanging out with a couple of the younger guys on the team that night. Kinda like mentoring through team bonding, you know? We were probably just gonna end up watching an action movie. Your show will be better.”

“I don’t know,” I said skeptically. “They probably won’t hate it, at the very least.”

There were always some surprises, but I thought I knew the audience of The Automatic Flowers pretty well. They were a lot like the five of us in the band. They listened to a lot of the same music and owned the same records. Our music, and the music of the band we were opening for, we made for these kids. They were the musically disenfranchised youth and the bleeding hearts. Of course, all who showed up would be welcomed. We weren’t about discriminating against anybody’s music taste especially if they came to see us with open minds. I just wasn’t sure that a group of hockey players were bleeding hearts about music as we were.

“So what about after the show?” Ben asked. “Can I take you out for dinner?”

“You don’t have to,” was my instant reply.

Ben’s hand moved down my body again and settled on one of my thighs. “What if I want to?”

My resting heart rate had just slowed to normal and Ben’s words had it climbing up again. Since when did he want to take me out? I liked our arrangement just fine.

“Like…” I cleared my throat. “Like, on a date?”

“Yes, Delia, on a date.” Ben rolled his eyes and practically snorted. “I’m sure the idea isn’t an entirely foreign concept to you.”

“It worries me,” I admitted. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea.”

The last time he’d asked me to do something with him, to go to Thanksgiving dinner, he’d specified that it wasn’t a date and that I could even bring friends.

“Are you worried you’ll have an okay time?” he wondered. “That’s the whole point.”

I worried that Ben and I didn’t have to be naked and behind closed doors to have a good time together. I was worried that it would be a real date. Ben was so romantic that he’d probably give me butterflies if he could just figure out what got me going on a first date.

“Look, you said yourself that the day your birthday falls on the calendar is crappy. I know that I like feeling good about myself and being happy on my own birthday.” Ben asserted, “I don’t want you to have a crappy birthday. I think you should feel special.”

For a minute I was silent, considering his proposal. Did I really want to feel special on my birthday? Wasn’t it enough that I would get to play a show with my band and was enjoying my time in Alberta?

“Where would we even go?” I asked. “It will be at least 10 o’clock before I can leave the venue. What’s even open after 9 PM on a weekday?”

Ben clicked his tongue. “Why don’t you let me figure that out, Mins?”

“Alright,” I sighed, snuggled into him, and then went back to his earlier comment about how he thought I should feel on my birthday, “but not too special, okay?”

The last thing I needed was to find out that Ben was boyfriend material. I could see myself falling for him if I wasn’t careful. I wasn’t ready to be in a relationship or even be dating someone exclusively. If I fell for him, it would just create unnecessary trouble when I had to leave. One date was okay. Bed buddies was okay. I liked his body and I liked being his friend, but I didn’t want to fall for him.

Notes

We all knew this day would come...the day that I post a chapter more than 5000 words long. If you've made it this far and have stuck with me, thank you. Thank for reading.

Though it was not directly mentioned, the song referenced is "Skipping Stone" by Alexz Johnson. This live version, in particular, is the one that I based what Delia was doing on. The official album version of the song is here. The I'd rather be down under! shirt is referenced from a video clip that is completely awkward. I can't even watch this video without pausing and hiding behind my hands because it's so bad. It's a house tour video of Joffrey Lupul's apartment from way back when he and Ben Eager were with the Philadelphia Flyers. They were neighbors and Ben appears at 5:40. Also you can hear the weight of his Ontario accent and he smiles really big at the mention of his "gitch". It's cute.

Extended Chapter Notes