It worked well enough, at first. Carrie didn’t make any over-the-top overtures of kindness towards Robbie, but she wasn’t cruel to him, either. She just sort of ignored him and let Milla deal with his drumming.

I liked Robbie, though. Despite what his aesthetic choices and playing style might have suggested, he was a laid-back dude who fit in well with the rest of us. Milla was the same way, although she had a giggly energy about her that some people might have found off-putting. She was overweight and not conventionally attractive, but she was an excellent bassist.

Carrie, however, continued to be uptight. She might’ve dressed in peasant blouses and cotton skirts, but her personality was like a brillo pad. I knew I couldn’t simply ignore her, though. “Carrie,” I said one afternoon as we were finishing our practice, “what exactly are we going to be playing when we play live?” We had been practicing by singing songs by various bands we all liked, but I didn’t intend for us to be a covers band once we actually began playing live. “The old Big Raunch songs?”

She shuddered. “Of course not. They were awful.”

“What?” I asked. “How were they awful?”

“Maybe it’s just my personal opinion but I think the using the word ‘fuck’ more than three times in a row automatically qualifies a song as awful.”

She was talking about “The Hoods and the Pot,” which I personally believed had been our best song. Archie and I had collaborated on it after finding out that some of our classmates who we hadn’t particularly liked had been busted smoking pot one night. Archie had wanted to just laugh at them in the song, but I thought it would be better if we tried to get into their shoes. The title was Archie’s, though. As was the idea to have one line go: “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck it’s the cops/ fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck they’ll steal my pot.”

“That was my friend’s fault,” I said. “Besides, I don’t understand why you’re putting my old band down so much when Nathan was the one managing it.”

“And he was also the one who made the crappy creative decisions, I assume?” she asked.

“No.”

“Good. Glad you admitted that.”

I sighed, still having no answer to my question. “So what then, your songs?”

She stared at me with equal amounts derision and annoyance. “No,” she snapped. “Do you really think I believe that you and Robbie are even capable of doing those songs justice? They were for the coffee house crowd. I’m working on new material for the kind of places we want.”

I was relieved. “So what’re they about?” I asked.

“Whatever I want them to be about. You’ll see them when they’re ready.”

“I assume you’re writing the guitar parts as well?”

“Considering I’m a more talented guitarist than you are, yes.”

“Can’t you just say one thing without being a bitch?” I asked, halfway-teasing, but halfway serious.

“Oh really Alex? What would you want me to say? What do you think would be the appropriate thing for your lead singer to be saying?” Her sarcasm was nearly tangible.

“Never mind,” I responded. “I really just don’t get you sometimes is all.”

That night I went home and was nearly mauled by my cousin Abby. “Alex Alex Alex Alex!” she exclaimed, jumping up and down in front of me. At eight years old, Abby was nearly five feet tall—typical of my father’s side of the family. She’d grow up into some sort of giant WNBA player, but right now she was just an awkward elementary-schooler.

“What? What is it?” I asked.

“Daddy won the award!”

Oh, God, I thought. The all-important American Wine Award. As happy as I was for my uncle Eric, I was not looking forward to the party that was sure to come as a result of this.

My living situation isn’t exactly normal. My parents got married when my mom was already at least two months pregnant and settled into a small house on Wild Rye Way in Napa. When I was five, my father left for his native Sicily. His brother Eric stayed around, though, opening a winery and staying in touch with my mother, until his own wife left him and we moved into my uncle’s mansion right above the wine cellars. My mother and my uncle have been dating and cohabitating since I was sixteen. Abby’s more like a sister than a cousin, although biologically that’s still our relationship. My mother says she never wants to get married again—the arrangement she’s in now seems to suit her well.

I brushed Abby off of me. Carrie’s words were still stinging me a little and all I really wanted to do was go upstairs and sleep. I didn’t want to hear about whatever theme my mother was planning to have for the American Wine Award party, or what I’d have to do to prepare for it.

Two weeks later I began to worry about ever having a good enough song to perform. This fear was compounded by the fact that the American Wine Award party was the next night, and that all the hot shots would be there, asking me what I was doing with my life—and I would have no answer other than “being a copy technician and part-time sommelier.” That day, though, I awoke to my cell phone incessantly playing the refrain of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

“Yes yes yes okay, I’m coming,” I groaned, flipping the screen open.

“Oh Alexander,” an irritated-sounding female voice said. Carrie, of course. “Rise and shine.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s two in the afternoon and I believe I might have just written a masterpiece.”

I could hear someone giggling in the background.

“Who’s that with you?” I asked. “Nathan?”

“No,” she said. “It’s Lauren.”

“Ah.” The famous dedicated Lauren. Wonder why she wasn’t at the animal shelter on such a lovely Saturday?

“So, want to meet up later?”

“Sure,” I said. “Ah, where?”

“Oh, there’s a little place out on Monticello road that I sometimes go. It’s not fancy at all but it’s good enough for a place to talk and drink.”

“If it’s the Corners Saloon then I know the place you’re talking about.”

“It is.”

When I got there later I saw Carrie sitting on her barstool with a notebook in her hand.

“Hey, man,” she said, beckoning me over with her fingers. Once I was seated on the stool next to her she slid a glass of Labatt’s down to me.

“You’re happy today,” I said.

“Why, of course I am,” she replied. “Look at these.”

She opened the notebook and I began reading. The first song was…odd. The words seemed lovely, but I was used to longer lines which rhymed (at least somewhat). She wrote short, non-rhyming lines instead. The topic of the song jumped around, too—from rain to beer pong to trees to sororities. “What is this?” I asked.

“Ah,” she said. “That one’s ‘Haiku.’ It’s a combination of all the haikus I’ve written over the past year. It’s weird, I guess, but since they all have a similar theme--”

“What’s the theme?” I interrupted.

“Someone I know,” she said.

“Okay.”

“That one’s not the masterpiece, though. Turn the page.”

The next song was better. It was what I had expected, some angsty meditation on life in small-town Oregon called “Smile.” “You grew up there?” I asked her.

“Yeah,” she said.

I continued drinking and poring over the lyrics Carrie had written, wishing I had my guitar with me. I could hear some of her melodies in my head but couldn’t tell if they were right or not. One thing I noticed, though, was that Carrie hadn’t written any notes as to who wrote these songs in her notebook. “What’s up with that?” I asked her.

She giggled. She must’ve been on her third beer by then. “Old habit,” she explained. “In my last band we worked on everything together, and since we never recorded anything we didn’t think it was important to write our names in.”

I nodded. This made some sense. “So are you still worried about that Doug guy sabotaging the band?”

She shook her head in a floppy way. “Nope!” she said. “This stuff is utterly grand, sabotage is impossible.” Through her tongue, “impossible” became “im-po-SEEB-lay,” and I had to laugh.

“Cocky, aren’t you?” I asked her.

“Uh-huh.” She smiled at me, her head half-tilted. She looked very cute right then, and not as hard as usual. I touched her chin, took another look at her dark blue eyes, and pulled her in. For about five seconds, it felt like one of those old movies where the hero and heroine argue forever but end up making out.

That was until Carrie batted me away, not very strongly, but strong enough for me to get the message. “Alex, no,” she said softly. “No, this isn’t—you’re my bandmate and I’m already in a relationship—“ She was tripping over her words, but they still irritated me.

“I’ve never heard you mention a boyfriend,” I said.

She laughed quietly. “I never have. I’ve mentioned my girlfriend enough times, though.”

I stared at her. “Lauren?”

She nodded. “Thought it was obvious. Guess not. Take the notebook, would you? There’s some stuff you haven’t gotten to yet. I have work in the morning.”

I nodded, feeling like a fool. “You shouldn’t drive,” I said once we were in the parking lot.

“I’m not,” she replied. “Milla’s coming to take me back to the city. And you shouldn’t be driving, either.”

“Just because I’m doing stupid things doesn’t mean I’m above the legal limit,” I snapped, getting into my truck and driving off, already feeling less drunk and more idiotic by the second.