Page 44 of Best Friend Burden

At the same time, I wasn't humble enough to be completely okay with the fact, either. I wanted to record at least one thing that Natasha couldn't improve upon. Day after day, though, throughout multiple takes, maybe even without realizing it, Ernie would ultimately choose her contributions over mine.

A calmer man would have accepted the obvious — that I just wasn't playing at her level. My job was safe in that I was working more in the capacity of a sound engineer alongside Ernie, offering suggestions for the production that he would take or leave while balancing the levels and ensuring that the recording quality was both clear and pristine as well as not so crowded that it would turn to mud when played through crappy speakers or $10 earbuds.

As the time went by, things got a little busier, so I became more necessary. But it was clear from the assignments where I stood. While Natasha got to play on the bigger and more complex releases, I was delegated to the bubblegum stuff aimed towards breaking into the Top 40.

There's nothing wrong with this, of course. But one can only play so many three chord songs before they all tend to blend together.

Meanwhile, I would still make a point of heading into the engineering room whenever Natasha was playing to revel in her brilliance.

Jackson stopped by the studio at the end of the day to pick Natasha up, but Ernie wanted her to stick around a little while longer to play a piano part on a track that wasn't quite working, hoping that would fill in the gaps and make it work.

“It'll just be another hour or so,” Ernie insisted.

“Cool,” Jackson said with a certain glow. I'd never seen him quite like this before and I couldn't explain it. “Hey, Kiefer, want to grab dinner with me?”

I looked over at Ernie. “You need me?” I asked, hoping that the answer would be yes.

But he shook his head. “We've got it under control,” he told me and waved me and Jackson aside.

“Great,” I said. That was a lie. It was not great.

* * *

I took Jackson to the food court right by the studio — the one where I first ran into Melody after all those years. It seemed like forever ago, but, in reality, what was it? Only about three or four months? I wasn't counting the days, but that seemed about right. In that time, my love life had shifted into overdrive while my career was stalling. Maybe even stuck in reverse.

Why did life have to work that way? Why couldn't everything be working in all areas at the same time?

Then it hit me: Three months? Had it really been a full three months? Because that would mean...

“How long have you and Natasha been seeing each other?” I asked Jackson.

His face turned a light shade of pink I'd never seen on him before and you could tell he was like a fish out of water.

“I don't know, she is cool and I am cool with keeping her around,” he said.

The reaction said more than words ever could. Jackson was a guy who'd never been in a relationship for more than a month, last I'd checked. If we were somewhere around the three-month mark and he was still coming by her work to pick her up at the end of the day, excited to see her, wow, this was huge for him.

“This is the longest relationship you’ve ever had, isn’t it,” I said with a goofy grin. “This isn't another one of your flings.”

“Shh,” he said, putting his finger up to his lips. “Don't cramp my style, you weirdo.”

“There's a word for that, you know,” I told him.

It was often a silly thing to expect change in this world. People tended to stay the same, and it was foolish to believe them when they told you things were going to be different going forward. Bad habits were hard to break.

But maybe things were different this time. Maybe she really was the one for him. I liked working with her. She had a good head on her shoulders and was obviously phenomenally talented, but more than that, I liked that she was good for Jackson. I liked seeing him like this. It was a sustainable happiness at this point, as opposed to his overwhelming bursts of love and lust that were, honestly, exhausting even as a spectator.

It was selfish to think about it from my point of view, but it was difficult to keep up with their names and remember details about his current flings when we'd go out to eat together. I'd confuse the details. The worst was the time he got back together with someone ,and I didn't recognize her. Even after she'd told me we'd met before, I still couldn't place her or remember a single thing about her.

The discomfort didn't last too long, though. She was out of his life again within ten days, and I told Jackson to warn me ahead of time if something like that ever happened again.

“I'll give you a hint,” I told Jackson. “That word starts with an 'L.'”

“Stop it,” he said.

“No, no,” I said, teasing him. “I’m glad my brother is finally growing out of his frat boy ways.”

“I was never a frat guy,” he said.

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