You Remember Me, Right?

Chapter 19

Luke didn’t know what to do. Whenever the two of them were together, there was this unspeakable tension and Luke hated it. The amount of tension was so thick that you could cut off chunks of it and build a pretty stable house. Something happened between the two of them and Luke had to figure out what.

 

Beca and Luke had been friends for years, going to concerts together and talking about their future plans. It was almost like they were the same person. Both of them cut off the outside world and just focused on their friendship and their music because that was all they really needed. He took refuge in her room, away for his crowded house. They would listen to her music, editing the tracks and blending the downbeats. Most of the time, they would fall asleep in the late hours of the night, illuminated by the glow of her computer screen. And it was fine. It was perfect.

 

They still did that more often times than not. Luke considered Beca’s home his own home. Atlanta wasn’t as bad as they both had thought, but they still got hit by memories of the dancing lights and busy sidewalks of their city. In Atlanta, sure, they had booked a few gigs here and there. Actually, it was easier to book gigs because there wasn’t as much competition. In New York, everything was always a struggle but they both kinda liked that. They liked playing unknown bars in the downtown area or laying their CD’s on top of ones at the record stores, hoping that some famous record producer would find them.

 

He remembered how the two of them went from making music just in their houses to being asked to play at school events to finally being paid to do gigs at real clubs. There was always something more, something new for them to reach for in the city. In Atlanta, the farthest he could reach was college and for certain, he didn’t want to go. College this, college that was all that was talked about at his dinner table. That might’ve been one of the reasons that he started to bring chinese food over to Beca’s every few nights to get away from it all. They would eat lo mein out of the paper containers while trying their best to use chopsticks.

 

College was something that he and Beca were on the same page about; it was just an extension of high school. For them and for what they ultimately wanted to do as their career, college wasn’t really the best option. They needed to go to Los Angeles and start working on their reputation. In Los Angeles, he would be away from his overbearing parents and she would escape her own.

 

It all seemed so perfect when they were younger. At school, Beca would write down their plans in Los Angeles, doodling record companies on the sides of her loose leaf paper. As they got older and they were sent brochures of colleges everyday, their desperation to leave exponentially increased. Luke started to look at apartments to rent and Beca started to look for paid internship opportunities.

 

They were so close, they could just feel it. But then they moved to Atlanta. They moved away from the city that fueled them to do better, work harder, and achieve greater. Beca found friends, people that Luke generally liked, but people that stole her away when Luke needed her most.

 

In New York, he was able to waltz into her house whenever he wanted to see her always in the same place, her eyes glued to her computer screen. Now, his visits became less and less, secluding himself to his room. Many times too many did he open Beca’s door to find it empty, the only sound coming from the brushing of the tree branches upon the kitchen window.