Dateless {Incomplete}

5 - Where He Begs For Mercy

The day had been such a change of pace for me, so when we ended up at the venue and radio stations the next day, I was sort of a mess. Addison was at the hotel, sleeping in her room since I had to leave early for interviews, and each one held a similar question about my relationship status.

"Are you currently dating anyone?"

"We've seen you with a brunette around Toronto. Are you two together?"

And each answer was hesitated. Cause I didn't know if it was because I was sure it was a lie, or that it was a lie and it made me realize we weren't like that to each other in real life. Or maybe it was because I wanted us to be, but I knew it wasn't that way.

"Yeah, Samantha. She's great. She just got back from vacation and surprised me for my birthday." I smiled, as expected before the next questions came around.

"Well do you think she's the reason we haven't been seeing any Twitter convos from your friend Camila?"

"No. She definitely isn't. It's more because of tour really. I'm close to finishing up my North American leg of the Handwritten tour, and I'm still working on polishing Illuminate, so I've been whole kinda of busy." The response was quick and sort of defensive, and it occurred to me after I spoke that I was defending Addison as if she were my actual girlfriend. Which was a slight problem.

Once my interviews were done for the day, I hustled back to my hotel room, asking Dave to grab a mic and keyboard as I started putting together a makeshift recording studio. The interviews had given me more inspiration for the one song I had drafted on the bus a few days before. Once it was all set, I grabbed my electric guitar and my notebook, making my way to the hotel room again, only to come across Addison standing in the hallway waiting for me. At the sight of me her face lit up, and she smiled.

"Hey! What're you guys up to?" She asked, leaning against the wall as I stopped to speak with her. She was wearing ripped jeans, and a white tank, which somehow paired well, but I didn't focus on that.

"Ah, we're recording another song for the album." I spoke truthfully, knowing she deserved to know what was happening.

"That's awesome! Can I come in to listen?" At this statement my stomach almost flipped. Why it did I wasn't sure since Addison had heard me sing before. Maybe it was because it was just her and my team there, or that my voice would be raw. No music, no back vocals, pure front vocals. That and this process took a while to get a feel for the song, since I hadn't actually written the music portion of it. It seemed that I was overthinking it because she spoke up. "If you don't want me in there I get it..."

"No, you can come. Sorry my brain is just moving a mile a minute today." I awkwardly chuckled, opening the hotel room door for her and following her in, guitar case slapping me in the back, almost as if it was slapping me. Addison took a seat on the box spring that was left since the mattress had been taken off and moved against the wall to be used as a noise cancelling wall. It was the best we had, considering we were miles from a real studio, that we had no access to as of currently. I set my guitar case on the floor opening up to reveal the familiar colored instrument. I grabbed a chair, and an app chord that would record the guitar once I plugged it in. Once I had done just that, I messed around with chords, figuring out the key I wanted the song to be in. I found a few notes and figured out where they laid on the keyboard in front of me, making a pattern out of them. The guitar was the easier part, allowing me to add a reprise to the music from the piano. "Have we got a drum track on file?" I asked standing up and looking at the laptop that was running the entire program. I took the mouse, looking for the pre-records my drummer has made before the tour started, playing at least three versions of the drums he had, picking out two I liked and put them in the track, before starting to sit down and work out the piano and guitar melodies. It took me about an hour for both, and to lapse the three elements together, before we finally could even think about vocals. When that aspect came around, I recorded bits and pieces I might want to have as backups before starting to get to the actual vocals. We tried starting from the beginning, me reading off the lyrics from my book, only to make them stop. "There's something missing. It sounds too sudden if that makes sense?"