Drugs & Candy

Chapter Nineteen

October 21st 2013.

"Alex!" Jack yells at me from downstairs, making me jump thinking the house must be on fire or something.
"ALEX ALEX ALEX!" He yells again as I'm scrambling to get up, fearing the worst. I hear him bounding up the stairs.
"What? Holy shit!" I wind up with a grown man tackling me onto the bed, kissing me all over.
I wrap my arms around him and smile with each kiss "Well Jesus if you wanted to kiss me all you had to do was ask." I smirk.
Jack sits up, still on top of me much to my dismay. I hate being trapped.
"I got the job Lex! The one at the high school!" He grins at me, leaning down to kiss every inch of my face again.
I laugh and flip the switch, kissing him all over his face instead just to show him how obnoxious it is.
He flips it right back on me again, so we fight like that for a while, just being as annoying to each other as humanly possible. I sit up after a while, shoving him off of me with a smirk.
"Asshole." He grins at me, "I got it though, Lex!" He's so excited, it radiates all around him. His eyes have a sparkle in them that I haven't seen in a while, that trademark grin of his is stretching from ear to ear, and his energy and aura around him is pure joy and excitement, it rubs off on me a little.
I hug him tight "That's amazing! When do you start love?" I kiss his cheek.
"Next week, I'm really excited. It's gonna be great, I'm gonna be great at it I think." He sounds so positive, and having semi-professional experiences with him, I'd have to agree.
"You will be great, you're a great therapist. Just uhm. Don't hit on any of them." I bite my lip at the taboo joke.
Jack's eyes go wide as he smacks my arm "Alex! Ew! They're teenagers!" He laughs though, because he knows I'm not serious. I'm just making a play on our relationship.

I decide that I'll take him out to breakfast today, since I've got some cool news of my own. It's not as significant as his, but I'm pretty excited for it.
We sit at our table outside on the restaurant's patio eating our breakfast and enjoying the view which happens to be a ton of cars and the most eccentric people walking down Sunset Boulevard. I rarely come to this obnoxiously famous street, but Jack wanted to eat at Eveleigh, and I have to admit it's a good restaurant. That and the fact that Sunset is far less obnoxious than Hollywood Boulevard if we're using a 1-10 obnoxious scale. Sunset is about a 6. Hollywood is the full blown 10.
"So I've got some cool news too. They need me in the studio to work with some artist named Kayzo. He's trying to get the music recorded before he brings a vocalist in, and I haven't worked on much of his type of music so I volunteered to do it. I want to try my hand with that genre, try to steer out of just the alternative and radio pop stuff. His sound is like dubstep, kind of like Skrillex I guess. I don't know how to describe it. It sounds really cool though, so I'm excited for that." I smile, taking a bite of my scramble, raising my eyebrows at a woman who seems to be talking to nothing at all. I wonder if I ever did that when I was high. I feel bad for her.
Jack smiles at me "That's awesome! When do they want you to do that?" He asks curiously.
I shrug "They're sending the files over to me so I can listen and see what tweaks I can make, so sometime this week I guess. Today if I put myself into it all day and decide where to go and what to do with it. As long as we're in there this week, Kayzo is kind of on a time crunch for the music, since he's trying to find a vocalist. Apparently he had one but they bowed out." I look at the lady again, she seems to have calmed down. Maybe she isn't high. Maybe I was just being judgmental.

October 25th 2013.

Jack's on his last weekend before he starts his new job, and I've been in the studio all week mixing this music and it sounds incredible.
I look at the lyrics Kayzo, or Hayden, has handed to me. They're pretty cool. I turn the music he's got up and pace around the studio singing the lyrics, fitting them in. I'm doing so because I'm trying to help him think of any artists he can invite onto the track. He's thinking of a female singer, and I agree with him but then again a male singer could be nice.
I sing the lyrics over and over again, trying different pitches to see if anyone pops into my brain. For a minute, I think of Hayley Williams or Patrick Stump but Hayden shoots that down.
"Dude, you could do it." Hayden says to me out of the blue on probably our tenth run through of the song, scratching off our list of potential vocalists.
I pause the track and raise my eyebrows "Excuse me?"
Hayden smirks "You could do it. You've got killer vocals. They're rough but you know what you're doing, it's a little grunge and I like it. It fits the lyrics." He shrugs, clearly enjoying the mixture of shock and deliberation on my face.
"Just go into the booth and do a run. Just see what it sounds like." He urges and I sigh and agree.
We record the damn thing five times. He seems the most pleased with the third.
I listen back and honestly, I have to say that I'm a little bit impressed with myself.
"You're my vocalist, I'm keeping it." Hayden says with a grin.
I stare at him "You're serious, aren't you? I mean what if it sounds like shit by the time it's mixed and mastered. Then what?"
Hayden shrugs "Then I do it again and find someone else if I have to. I have time but honestly dude I could mix this right now and release it if I so felt like it. I've been doing this shit in my house for years before I ever decided to do any studio work. Let me just mock something up." So he is serious.
I plop down on the couch and shrug "Go for it. You know what you're doing." I watch him as he takes over the board, mixing a rough demo. It takes him about three hours to tweak everything to his idea of perfection. He hits play and I'm impressed. "Look. That's not even the final product. Please dude, I haven't found anyone that I think fits and I've been through a lot of ideas. I'm not asking you to join me on some tour and magically become this famous singer. Just be the dude who does me a solid because your vocals are killer and fit perfectly with this song. Plus I mean you get a cut of the payout each time the song is purchased or streamed. Money just for being a good singer. Come on man." He seems like he's dead serious, so I agree. Hayden says he'll bring me a contract sometime in the week and he's going to send the recording we did today off to get mixed and mastered just because he loved it so much. This has been by far the weirdest recording process I've ever done in my entire career, but still, the idea of me singing on a track was exciting.