Page 18 of Best Friend Burden

When the piece finally ended — after both Natasha and Peterson took multiple refrains and allowed each other some of the most imaginative solos I'd ever heard in my life — all we could do was stare in silence, completely speechless.

Natasha removed her headset and looked over at us.

“How was that?” she asked. It wasn't in a showing off sort of way. It was genuine, like she wasn't even there to witness it. Because she wasn't. She was in that musical zone with Peterson. “Did I sound alright?”

“What's her name?” Ernie asked.

“Natasha Tau,” Jackson told him.

Ernie nodded and removed the vape from his mouth as he leaned into the microphone.

“Natasha,” he said, “I've never used the word 'perfect' to describe anything in the history of this studio.” He paused. “And I'm not about to.”

I could see the look of trepidation on Natasha's face as she waited for the follow-up.

“Because that was not perfect. Not even close.”

Her shoulders fell, and her expression dropped along with them.

“No,” Ernie said, “that was so good, it left perfection in the dust.”

And she absolutely beamed at that.

I wanted to be happy for her, and a part of me was. But there was a sense of disappointment in myself. I had gotten to a place where I thought I was pretty good. But next to her, I looked like a grade schooler fiddling around for the first time on a recorder.

For the first time in my musical career, I felt obsolete.

CHAPTER7

***MELODY***

As I worked on the salsa that day, I made a deal with myself: I would try to be who I wanted to be and what I thought everyone else wanted me to be. And while that was certainly a great life lesson, I meant it specifically for the restaurant. I would never understand Los Angeles sensibilities, so rather than try to adapt my recipes for them, I would make the food I liked and hope that they'd adapt to the Central Texas cuisine, which would be as authentic as I could possibly get it using West Coast ingredients.

While I thought this would be freeing, it forced me to go up against my harshest critic: myself. The night before, I had put some food together, thinking that Kiefer had been gone from Texas for a while now, and it was good enough for California. That was wrong. It was condescending. And it was lazy. I was going to provide my customers with the most flavorful food I could create and, if it was too spicy for them, well, too bad!

The salsa I was making was getting close, but wasn't quite right. I'd been spending all day on it, and it was still missing that something to give it just the right amount of kick. While trying to come up with what I needed to add, Kiefer came in through the door and, with him, his brother, Jackson, who I hadn't seen since high school either, and a tiny little thing with a great big smile who introduced herself as Natasha.

“So what happened today?” I asked her after the formal introductions. It was clear she was just exploding with information to share.

“I thought I was just going in for a tour,” Natasha said. “I walked away with a job.”

Jackson was overjoyed, but Kiefer looked absolutely drained, like he was ready to go to bed and sleep for days, if not weeks. It’s something that was noticeably different about him now versus in high school. Sure, he had his emo elements, but there was a hope and optimism in him that had vanished during the decade we’d been apart, and its absence left a dark hole in him that I dearly missed as a friend.

“A job?” I asked her.

“Yep!” she said. “He offered the job and was going to call someone to put the contract together, but Jackson was able to have his office draft one up in an hour, and Ernie and I signed it before the end of the day. I'll start right away as a studio musician, just like Kiefer. But now Kiefer can spend more time on orchestration and production.”

“That's great!” I said, and gave this stranger a hug. She jumped up and hugged me back with so much energy that I nearly fell over.

“I imagine you came back here to celebrate,” I said, then looked at the kitchen, which was as much a disaster as it was the night before, if not more so. I'd managed to undo all the cleaning that Kiefer and I had taken care of and learned nothing from it. Oh well, it was just a mess. Messes were fixable issues. I'd be able to clean it back up and get it as good as new.

Still, it didn’t make the best impression.

“Sorry about the mess,” I told her.

“It’s no problem,” Jackson said. “We weren’t planning on staying long. Kiefer said to come back here and park so we could all carpool together somewhere together.”

“There's this place out in West Hollywood called Raindrop,” Natasha said. “It's super hip.”

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