I've Never Lit a Match

Alex watched Layla as she tapped the toe of her boot on the sidewalk. The black makeup around her eyes was a little smudged from sweat and she had all that thick hair piled atop her head with bobby pins. Her acoustic hung from the strap around her shoulders like she was some drawling country sweetheart.

They hadn’t brought her with them just to play Ingrid Michaelson covers out across the street from their parked tour bus, her guitar case laying open for spare change. When Alex found her he had half-jokingly checked in to make sure she knew this and, after she replied with a [I ]pshh Gaskarth, I’m just havin’ fun, he settled himself down onto the sidewalk to listen.

Actually, now that he was thinking of it, this was the first time Alex had ever heard Layla sing in-person, other than under her breath along to the stereo in his car. This whole thing had started with her anonymous voice on that demo CD, slipped into Rian’s car stereo like a joke. After that, it had always been hastily-made recordings, thirty-second clips of new songs that she sometimes felt like emailing him, but until now he had never witnessed her.

He sat at Layla’s feet, looking up at the way her pink lips played with each word. They bit with authority into the verses, while the glaring sun had her eyes squinting a bit and her cheeks flushed. Alex listened, watching her easy smile and thinking that, despite the Amy Winehouse bun and the way her t-shirt was clinging to her sticky-sweaty chest, Layla seemed really put-together while she was playing.

Alex loved watching her play. He was proud of her like they were much older friends than in reality. He sat there watching, occasionally clapping along with a beat, and thinking about how they really only knew each other because of that demo CD. He remembered how he and Rian had seen it on their band manager’s cluttered dining room table one afternoon and got curious. It was destined for the trash – hopeful musicians are always sending demos out to people whose job was not to listen to them – so they went ahead and snagged it. At most, they thought they would hear maybe one halfway catchy song or get a little laugh out of it on the drive home. They hadn’t expected to be so interested in what they heard.

Alex remembered how he and Rian let that whole first song play without saying anything, and how they agreed they needed to find the girl who had written it. Now, here she was standing in front of him with her guitar, finishing up a cover of – surprisingly – a Christina Aguilera song, played to a handful of charmed strangers on a Philadelphia sidewalk. And Alex was friends with her, was proud of her.

He was looking up at her, smiling all dumb at how she turned a pop-diva ballad into this rad acoustic piece. “Wanna partner?” He asked, nudging the toe of his sneaker into the back of Layla’s shin. “I can play guitar,” he offered to accompany her.

“I’m good,” Layla waved him away with a smile and a perky shrug of her shoulders, saying that tonight he gets the spotlight so he should at least let her have the daylight.

“Fair enough,” he shrugged. “So, you ready for tonight? Excited?”

“Ha-ha,” she made a mock-mortified face. “What do you think I’m trying to do here?” she asked sarcastically, strumming her way into a new song.

Layla had explained to Alex, a few songs ago, that this tiny outdoor set was like a warm-up for her. She used to do stuff like this all the time in Boston, she told him; she played in parks, on street corners, and in subway stations. When she and Kris were dating, they used to go to this one coffee shop near Aiden and Brant’s apartment and play duets together. Layla thought one of these simple, familiar sets – played to small groups of passers-by who were only sometimes listening – would be a comfortable way to ease herself into tonight’s show. Because, no, she did not feel particularly ready for tonight.

See, officially the guys had brought her on tour to play rhythm guitar for them, which was easy and boring and didn’t require any mental preparation. Unofficially, though, she was their first opening act. Before the actual show started and any of the advertised bands went on, the plan was essentially to throw Layla on stage with her acoustic and a mic stand. She still wasn’t technically part of the show, but rather somebody the guys were just planning sneaky, impromptu little sets for. They were going to have her play right when the doors were opening, while people were milling in and getting their drinks and herding themselves right up against the barricade. The lights would probably even still be on while she was playing.

Tonight was going to be overwhelming. Still, she wouldn’t begrudge the crowds of impatient All Time Low fans tonight if they got bored with her. She knew that she wasn’t really supposed to be there (which is part of what was making this so overwhelming). Her name wasn’t on the ticket; she wasn’t getting paid. It wasn’t much, just something over the summer to slowly get her name out there to anybody listening, which probably wouldn’t be very many people anyways. They had a few dozen flyers printed with her name and the link to her soundcloud, a spare microphone and her acoustic guitar, and a grassroots one-show-at-a-time mentality. She hadn’t planned any of it, but she was always down for what came next – just as soon as the appropriate nerves wore off.

She always seemed to be down for whatever, Alex thought, especially where music was concerned. Layla impressed him. He imagined some music writer someday describing her in an article, detailing how she got her start by hitchhiking through the music scene. Her carefree spirit and tough work ethic matched up and got her places and Alex thought it was pretty badass how she went about it. He knew that, in high school, she toured all the way down to Nashville fronting a punk band and now she wrote mostly these intricate, poetic songs that had an almost sensual type of beauty to them. She was everywhere, in this very interesting, seamless way.

Alex got up, brushed off his pants, and – with a cheeky comment warning Layla to try and keep from watching his ass – walked back towards the bus. He knew she would be fine tonight. He knew she knew that too, despite the faces she kept making whenever he brought up the show. She was already out there playing, working through nerves; she knew what she was doing. Layla, he understood, was already a grassroots rock star and he loved how she went about it all so casually, like it wasn’t even that big of a deal. Because, honestly, it wasn’t.

Now that they were friends, Alex had a friendly respect for Layla, though his respect had actually developed out of initial feelings of intimidation. If he’s being totally honest here, he was damn nervous the first time he called Layla (and the second and third times too). He had dialed her number and then sat still for a moment before actually hitting ‘call’ because how was he even supposed to introduce himself? He did manage an awkward introduction, though, vaguely explaining who he was and how he knew who she was and then explicitly explaining how infatuated he was with her music. Alex remembered how Layla thanked him very politely but then had almost been borderline rude trying to end the call and how he just kept talking to her because he was too excited about that amazing fucking cover of Into the Mystic to let the girl who sang it dismiss him so quickly.

He was really fucking excited about this girl. He had been when they first starting talking and he couldn’t seem to stop spitting out frenzied compliments and all these ideas about how to kick-start her career and he still was then, after just watching her play for an audience of four on some sidewalk on the first day of their tour. Layla gave him this feeling… She was the kind of musician so right and seamless that listening to her just makes you want to go make something of your own.

Alex climbed the steps onto their tour bus and found it almost entirely empty, save for Jack sprawled out in his bunk, limbs hanging limply over the side as he distractedly scrolled through the twitter feed on his phone.

“Hot as hades out there,” Alex stripped off his sweaty t-shirt. “What happened to everybody?”

“Nice tits,” Jack hooted, sitting up and wriggling his eyebrows.

“You know it, babe!” Alex winked before bending over to grab a new shirt out of his bag, letting Jack grab his ass as he got up and walked into the small kitchenette. He came out a second later, pulling the new shirt over his head, and sat down across the table from Jack.

“I don’t know. I was napping,” Jack answered. “Vinny said something about an arcade down the street earlier.”

“Cool. Beans.” Alex picked up his phone, scrolling through a few unread texts without responding. He sat back in the booth seat, propping his feet up into Jack’s lap beneath the table. Jack flipped open their tour manager Matt’s laptop, left unattended, and the two sat in a drowsy mid-afternoon silence that was not at all characteristic of the way things usually went when they were left alone together.

Jack Barakat and Alex Gaskarth had been friends since their freshman year in high school, when Alex was the new kid who had transferred from a private school and they sat together in Algebra I acting like typical asshole fifteen-year-old boys and talked Blink 182 and Fall Out Boy in the back of the classroom. There was a girl in that class named Courtney that Jack had had a crush on at one point. She sat a few seats down from them and, one time, Alex wrote her a pretty obnoxious love poem and signed Jack’s name without telling him. Turned out, she was a lesbian and she and Jack just became good real bros. Alex never really quit talking to girls on Jack’s behalf though.

By January of their freshman year, the boys had met up with Rian and Zack and started playing Blink and New Found Glory covers in Rian’s basement. What started out as a stereotypically crappy high school cover band eventually turned into a few gigs playing out and, ultimately, signing with Hopeless on Valentine’s Day of their senior year. The boys had been living together on buses and acting like those same fifteen-year-old assholes in the few years since.

The two of them perked up, shifting out of their spacey stares, when the door swung open again and Layla walked in.

She set her guitar case on the floor and dropped a handful of cash and coins onto the table, her tips from playing at street-performer that afternoon. “Here’s my rent,” she joked.

“Fuck off,” Alex told her, pushing the pile of coins and the few bills back across the tabletop.

“No, seriously, though, How am I supposed to feel okay with mooching around on the bus for free all summer?” she asked, “What do you want me to do? Sell merch?”

“We already have a merch guy. His name is Vinny and he’s a drunk,” Jack countered.

“I’ve met him.” Layla slid into the booth beside Jack, nudging Alex’s feet out of Jack’s lap and replacing them with her own.

“Well,” Alex began, “you can begin by not kicking me out of my footrest, ya know, for starters. But, no you’re not gonna sell merch because the merch girls always screw the lead singers and, darling, this ain’t that kind of band.” Layla rolled her eyes and Alex laughed at her but continued. “You’re on the tour to play, because we invited you. Chill out, alright?”

Alex let it go without even bringing up the fact that Layla’s merch-girl plan made literally zero sense. She wouldn’t have any time to sell t-shirts between her opening solo set and her second gig playing with the guys. He just let it go, watching Layla get up and scoop the tips back into her acoustic case.

“Alright, fine but, if this gets awkward and money ruins our friendship…it’s your fault.”

“Okay, Belle,” Alex teased and Layla went off to change into clean clothes.

Alex got up, smacked the back of Jack’s head as he walked by, and headed for the door. Jack followed, leaving Layla alone on the bus to call Jenna and talk through everything that had had happened so far that week.

They talked for forty-five minutes, Layla tucked inside her bunk and Jenna back home sitting on a rocky New England beach and crying because she had just finished reading My Sister’s Keeper. They covered the bases and, once their conversation distracted her from that miserable book, Jenna asked all the unnecessary questions and a few decent ones too:

Yes, Layla missed her, but she wasn’t hysterical-homesick. No, she hadn’t kissed any of the guys yet. No, she didn’t exactly plan on it. The bus was, well it was a tour bus. It was exactly what you’d expect a tour bus to be like. Yeah, Alex used Layla’s middle name like a pet name but, no, not like that. They weren’t flirting. She was going to play five of her own songs tonight but she hadn’t decided which ones. Jenna made suggestions. Layla was cool with those ideas. She was nervous but confident. Jenna told her break a leg, boo.

When they hung up, Layla reached for her bag on the floor and pulled out a journal. It was pink and white with the word ‘memories’ stamped in a loopy, bubblegum font on the front cover. Layla’s mom had given it to her after graduation, saying she should record her summer on the road in it. There were lined pages for journaling, a few inspirational or nostalgic quotes printed in some of the footnotes, and slots to tuck pictures into. It was cute, if a little corny. Layla’s mom was into corny stuff like that, the kind of woman who decorated her living room with those wooden block-letters that spelled words like ‘family,’ ‘patience,’ and ‘friendship.’

Layla wasn’t really one for journaling in the traditional sense, but she did have stacks of notebooks in her bedroom at home full of poetic ramblings that served as archives for potential song lyrics. She rolled over onto her stomach and took pen to the pages, until about twenty minutes later when Zack, Jack, Vinny, and a few of the crew guys thudded up the steps and into the bus. They took her with them for some drinking game backstage that was, apparently, traditional before the first show of every All Time Low tour.

It was after the game, when Layla was sitting on the sticky floor backstage, that Alex found her and offered a pep talk.

“Ya ready?” he teased, offering a hand to pull her up.

“You know it,” she stood, smoothing out the skirt of her dress.

Alex hugged her from behind, forearms locked around her shoulders. “I was told like ten-ish minutes ago that it’d be ten minutes till you could go on… so I think we’re set.”

Layla nodded, pulling apart from Alex to step closer to the stage and peer out into the club. The doors had opened a few minutes earlier and people were slowly milling in. The lights were on but they weren’t florescent. The stereo system was humming a Katy Perry song.

“Is it cool if I cover ‘The Girl’s a Straight-Up Hustler’?”

Alex quirked an eyebrow, surprised, but responded, “Yeah, totally!” Truthfully, he was a little excited at the idea of hearing Layla cover one of his songs.

“I think that’s a good way to get people’s attention at an All Time Low concert,” she explained.

“Good thinkin’ Lincoln.”

“Thanks,” Layla laughed a little nervously. “Alright. Let’s do this thing. You gonna watch?”

“I’ll be right here,” he promised. “Rian’s in the sound booth with Evan, said he wanted prime seating.”

“I think I need a push,” she said.

“Break a leg, Layla Belle,” Alex told her, reaching out with his knuckles to nudge Layla between the shoulder blades. The background music faded as she walked onto the stage, where a lone microphone stand and her acoustic were waiting.

Alex followed, hushed the fans shrieking at the sight of him, and introduced his friend before leaving her alone onstage.