Page 87 of Too Close To Home

That man on stage, behind the lights and kit, looked completely different from the man Harrison had questioned in his parents’ kitchen a day ago.

Looser.

Alive.

Harrison couldn’t stop staring at him.

The movement, the control, the effortless way his arms rose and fell with the rhythm—it was understandable why a band like Neon Arcade, rising stars of the British indie scene, had wanted him. Jake owned that drum kit. It was an extension of him. Even now, on the low stage of a crowded village pub, he played as though the room were ten times the size. Deacon might have been front and centre, guitar in hand as he belted out Foo Fighters’ Monkey Wrench—much more Harrison’s era than anyone currently on that stage—but Harrison barely registered him.

All of his attention remained fixed on Jake.

Couldn’t even tell me who drummed on Nevermind.

The memory brought the faintest smile to Harrison’s mouth.

He could.

The door beside him suddenly swung open, forcing Harrison to step back as a group of lads spilled onto the pavement, laughing loudly while one of them fished a vape from his pocket.

“Sorry, mate.” One held the door open.

Harrison hesitated.

Crowded pubs hadn’t been part of Harrison’s life for a long time. Not since Chris. The noise. The crush of bodies. Beer and sweat and too many conversations fighting to be heard over the music. Once, all of it had been normal. Their downtime. Chris had loved live music. It was one of the things Harrison had first been drawn to.

Well, that and his hands.

His arms.

The sheer brute size of him.

But the music had become theirs. Gigs in packed little venues. Festivals where they camped in shitty tents and drank far too much for three days straight. Staying up until sunrise. Fucking under the stars when they were young and reckless enough not to care who might stumble past.

Christ, they’d had fun.

Harrison sometimes forgot that part.

Grief had a way of reducing twenty years to the way they’d ended. The suspension. The arguments. Chris withdrawing further into himself. Then that final fucking day.

But there had been so much before it.

They’d been young. Stupid. Fucking happy.

Now it all felt like someone else’s life.

Music rolled out into the night, and somewhere in the middle of it was Jake Whitton, behind his drums, apparently capable of lighting up an entire room, and doing what Harrison had already discovered he did irritatingly well.

Drawing his attention.

So Harrison stepped inside.

Heat hit him first. Then the noise. The pub was louder than it had looked through the window; the band midway through another song as the crowd cheered along. Harrison edged his way towards the bar, weaving through people until he found a small patch of space at the end, where he could see the stage clearly.

Jake caught the light each time he leaned over the kit, the steady strength in his arms driving the rhythm through the room. Every strike of the snare rippled through the floorboards and into the crowd. It was impossible not to watch him. Impossible not to picture the version of Jake Whitton who should’ve been playing arenas instead of on a low stage in a village pub.

And impossible for Harrison to ignore the quiet pull in his chest.

“You like him, Harry. You can admit it to me, at least.”