“The guys say I depend too much on my muse,” he tells me, almost mockingly. Like he doesn’t believe in that sort of thing. He tilts his head to the side, blowing a strand of black hair out of his face. “And it’s true in a way, I suppose. I do wait for inspiration to strike. At least when it comes to writing, creating. Because unlike Mason and Shawn, who spend hours locked away, forcing shit out—testing and reworking it until they’re ultimately lost in a web of words and sound—I...wait.”

He licks his lips and stares off behind me.

I can’t even be distracted by his thinking face this time. I’m too wrapped up in what he’s saying.

“And I find that it’s usually only then, when they’re all bleary-eyed and ready to murder each other, that I come in,” he says on a shrug. “I hear what they don’t. The...underlying heartbeat, if you will. I’ll find it with my drums first. Beat it into submission. And once I have that figured out, I’ll play around with the guitar, piano, whatever. Tweak it until it flows. I don’t know; I just can’t seem to ever find the words until I know its heartbeat.”

It’s only then that I realize he hasn’t just been strumming or plucking at his guitar. I don’t know how I missed it before. The percussive slaps to the body, to the side, to wherever he can reach as he finds his groove. How he can do both at the same time boggles my mind, but I’ve seen videos before of people playing guitar this way.

“Damn,” I breathe.

“Shut up,” he grumbles, looking down. His face flushes the slightest bit, and I have to bite down on my smile. And my urge to reach out and lift his chin.

“So that’s how you learn?” I gesture vaguely at the music playing when he looks up at me. “You just listen...find its beat...and just go from there? Just like that?”

He searches my eyes. “I guess.”

I laugh to myself. “He guesses. Dude, that’s fucking amazing. When did this even happen? When we were kids, I distinctly remember you wanting to have nothing to do with Mason and Izzy’s whole music obsession.”

He scowls faintly. As if with a mind of their own, his fingers find their way to the chords needed to play along to the song as the first chorus comes on. Does he even realize he’s doing it?

“My dad had a piano,” he says quietly. So quietly, I have to strain to hear him. “It was my mother’s. I wasn’t allowed to touch it.”

Somehow, somehow, I just know he learned that lesson the hard way.

“You resented it,” I realize.