Under Control.

chapter thirty three.

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Albert had been trying very, very, hard, for several weeks now, to convince Nora to come to a show.

After the first no, he'd settled for just the afterparty, and then, as a last resort, the soundcheck. But to all, still, Nora had said no. She'd said it sweetly and managed it somehow without dragging up any unease, but it was still a rebuff. And so in the end, getting a yes had become a fight to the bitter end between two of the most stubborn bodies in the East Village.

Albert, as it happened, had been carefully formulating a plan to get her to say yes since almost the exact second he had returned her call and heard her voice humming down the line at him on that fateful night all those weeks ago. And as it stood, said plan involved Fab and the rest of the band — plus maybe Cat, but pointedly not Julian — and it had them all doing the one thing that Nora had been very specific about not doing.

Al's reasoning for going against her wishes was that she had originally said the thing about him not showing up to her office back when she had also been prepared to cut all ties with him, and them all, altogether. But things were different now. Or, so he hoped.

In the weeks since the initial incident — and the slightly smaller but no less significant incident that had occurred slightly thereafter — Nora and Julian had been fine. She'd shown up to the apartment a few times without Albert having to drag her there, and the two of them had stood in rooms, light and dark, busy and not, and been perfectly civil with one another. They'd shared a smoke one night, and bought drinks for each other on another. They'd sat together at tables — not together-together, but near enough — and they'd talked about menial things and made nice. The only giveaway that anything even remotely untoward had gone down between them at all was the occasional nervousness that other people put on them, first — usually Nick, or Fab, and with a foot placed firmly in their respective mouths — but if it wasn't for that, then it was barely there. And particularly so if you didn't know what it was that you were looking for.

Unfortunately for him though, Albert did know what to look for. And so he saw all of the longing looks Julian would cast Nora's way when he believed he had successfully disappeared into dark corners, or when he was just too shit-faced to know that he wasn't hiding his lovesickness as well as he thought he was. And he saw too the way that Nora gravitated toward Julian's still-wobbly self, despite herself. Al saw that she still loved him in all the little things she did, like minding his crutches, or making sure he didn't loose them. He saw it in the way she watched him sadly as he stumbled around a room, or in all the ways she cared about him when Julian didn't care enough to care for himself.

So in the end, Al had reasoned that even though it upset him to see both or either of them as sad and hurt as they were, it wasn't his place to do anything about it. And he hadn't forced them to figure things out, either. They just had. And so despite the fact that he still had his questions about how all of that peace and civility had come to be and when, being able to have both of his friends in the same room at the same time was a small mercy, and it was one Al wasn't about to take for granted.

And especially not now that their lives together with the band were hurtling out of control, somehow more and more with every passing day.

Tomorrow night's show was a hometown sellout, and Albert selfishly wanted Nora to be able to see it and experience it all with them and in a way that was altogether unlike the last time she had done, in London. It wasn't that he wanted to prove anything to her, necessarily. He just wanted her to be there — he wanted to bring her along. Because the truth was that the bigger and more unreal things got, the more important it felt to be able to have people around who helped to keep their feet on the ground. And few people were better at that, than Nora.