I sat there for a second in silence. Then, he reached over, patted me on the shoulder and chuckled.
“Happiness is like a butterfly,” he said. “The more you chase it, the more it will elude you. But if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.”
By the time he had finished, my eyebrows were in a heap at the center of my forehead.
“It’s Thoreau,” he said, chuckling some more. “Didn’t you ever learn that in school?”
I laughed.
“Can’t say I did, sir,” I admitted.
A moment passed, and my smile started to fade.
“Does that really work — the whole letting go and coming back thing?” I asked.
His eyes fell to the tiles on the floor before they found my stare again.
“Some of us spend our entire lives hoping it does,” he said. “And for some of us lucky ones, it does. But, boy, I have a good feeling that for you, it’ll work. Just be patient.”
I smiled and lowered my head again as he got up and scooted the chair back to its place against the wall.
“And don’t do anything stupid in the meantime,” he said over his shoulder as he made his way to the door again.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ll try not to, sir.”
“Oh, and by the way,” he said, stopping at the doorway, “didn’t you just get some big, fancy job on the department in St. Louis?”
I smiled.
“Yes, sir,” I replied.
“That’s no small feat,” he said, shaking his head. “But if you’d ask me, I’d say they got the better deal. You’re a damn good firefighter, Stephens.”
My eyes traveled to the floor.
“Thanks, sir,” I said.
“And Will,” he said.
I looked up again.
“Turn some lights on. You’re going to end up lookin’ like me by the time you’re thirty,” he said, smiling and tugging on his glasses.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
My stare remained on the dark doorway for a few seconds, even after the chief had disappeared through it. Then, eventually, I lowered my eyes to my phone’s screen again, and I retraced the letters I had formed just minutes ago. Slowly then, I watched each one disappear as I backspaced the message out of the phone and repeated the chief’s words in my head: Just be patient.
Chapter Nineteen
The Band
“Hey, so Will, I heard you can sing?” I heard a voice call out.
I looked up and saw Matt charging toward me.
“Where’d you hear that?” I asked.
“Through the grapevine, I guess,” he said, panting and stopping in front of me.
“Geez, Matt, you ran five steps,” I said, starting to laugh.
“I know,” he casually said. “I didn’t warm up first.”
I smiled at him and went back to working on the hose.
“So, this band canceled at this bar my friend manages in The Loop,” he continued. “And he can’t get anybody last minute, so I said maybe we could do it.”
I stopped and looked up at him again from where I was kneeling.
“We?” I asked.
“Yeah, Daniel plays the drums; Chris plays the bass; and I play the keys,” he said. “We get together every once in a while, but our singer’s always been a floater. None of us can sing.”
He laughed and handed me a screwdriver. I cautiously took it, as I judged his face.
“Listen, I know you’re new to the station and St. Louis and all, so if you don’t want to, that’s okay too,” he added. “We’re getting together to run through some songs tomorrow night at eight at my house. If you’re there, great. If not, I’ve gotta a guy who I know will do it.”
I watched him cup his hand around his mouth.
“He’s just, you know, a filler — not the best songbird in the cage,” he said.
He dropped his hand then and picked up a wrench.
“Just think about it, and let me know,” he said, ambling back toward the door again.
“I’ve heard you’ve got some talent, Will,” he called out over his shoulder. “You’ll be doing us a big favor, and who knows, maybe you’ll have some fun.”
He smiled a wide grin and then disappeared into the breakroom.
I kept my eyes on the breakroom door, just in case he reappeared again to tell me that he was pulling my leg or something. Seconds drew on, though, and he never returned.
“Where’d he hear that?” I whispered to myself, as I went back to screwing on the nozzle.
It was Friday night, and I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I had already found her number ten times in my contacts only to set the phone down onto the TV dinner table and stare at it for another twenty minutes.
I finally snapped out of my latest trance and spotted the remote balancing on the edge of the couch. I quickly snatched it up and powered the television to life.
The next thing I knew, I was flipping through each channel, only stopping briefly on each one and then flipping to the next. And within seconds, I was already back to the beginning of the order. I let out a sigh and then hit the power button on the remote, causing the screen to go black again.
What was she doing now?
I stared at the black screen for a couple of minutes, lost in my thought, until my eyes eventually landed on my phone again. Something told me not to reach for it, but my hand went for it anyway. And just before I could touch it, its display lit up.
My heart instantly started a fast, rhythmic pounding against the walls of my chest, as I quickly snatched up the phone and peered into its glowing screen. Next, I forced my eyes into a frantic search for the sender of the message, until they eventually stumbled upon a name and stopped cold.
It wasn’t her.
I let out an exhausted and heavy sigh. Then, I took a second before picking my heart up off of the floor and following over the words in the message: You comin’, buddy?
I took a deep breath in and then forced my eyes shut and let out a frustrated groan. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear I was going crazy in this little apartment.
When I opened my eyes again, my guitar was staring at me from the corner of the room. I cocked my head then and narrowed my eyes, focusing all of my attention on the six-string.
Moments passed. Then, I glanced up at the clock on the wall.
“What the hell,” I said out loud, before standing up and shoving my phone into my jeans pocket.
I made my way over to the corner and snatched up the guitar. Then, I grabbed my coat from a chair and my keys from the kitchen counter. And within seconds, I was out the door and heading for Matt’s.
“Will, you made it,” Matt cheerfully shouted, as he swung open his door. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
“Waiting?” I asked.
I watched his eyes fall to the guitar in my hands.
“You can play too? Great,” he said.
He pulled me inside by my coat’s sleeve.
“Guys, look who’s here,” Matt shouted into the garage.
I shyly entered the doorway and stood stiffly inside its frame.
“Will,” Chris yelled out first.
“Hey, does this mean we don’t have to call Jim?” Daniel asked no one in particular.
Chris burst into laughter.
“Okay, okay, let’s get going,” Matt said, raising his voice over Chris’s laughter.
Then, Matt shuffled over to a keyboard and took his place behind it.
“Will, we play a lot of covers — all sorts of stuff,” Matt said. “Do you know ‘Brown Eyed Girl’?”
“Yeah, the girls love it,” Chris shouted.
I lowered my head and smiled.
“Yeah,” I said, nodding my head. “I do.”
“Okay, we’ll start with that, and if you got any, you let us know,” he said to me.