“What do you want to listen to?” he asks. “I can’t sit in silence.” He heads to his laptop that’s hooked up to the sound system and the large TV. “Pick a decade.”
“Nineties?”
“Okay, who?”
“How about Smashing Pumpkins?”
Jem rubs his cheek. “Nah. Chili Peppers?”
I shrug. “Your house.”
He scrolls through a list on his laptop. “Must be some classics we both like.”
After more debate, we settle on a random mix of ‘90s indie rock. Back to Ruby and Jem whose strong wills won’t bend, choosing a band we agree on takes time. “Sounds awesome on your system,” I say.
“I’ll always have the best.”
I twirl noodles around my fork, and side-glance him. “What colour is this song?”
Jem closes his eyes. “Red.”
“Really? No, blue.”
“No way, there’s black in here too.” He opens an eye.
“What colour is “Rising”?” I ask him.
“Orange.”
“I always saw red. I guess you get to dictate the colour of your own song.”
“No, the music dictates colour it looks. There’s a lot of G in and that’s red.”
“No, G is green.”
Jem pouts but his eyes show his amusement before he looks away and silently eats his meal, abruptly stopping the conversation.
“I’ve never met anyone like you,” he says eventually.
“A lot of people say that to me.”
“Same. For the first time I feel comfortable around someone,” he says to his noodles.
“You’re comfortable around the band, surely?”
“Yeah, early days and as a kid we were all similar but never the same. Dylan’s closest to me, understands the power of music like I do, but we lost each other.”
“You lost yourself.”
He frowns. “I guess. Dylan stopped the drugs; I didn’t.”
Jem is opening up again and my heart swells that he’s chosen to trust me. “If you were an addict, you wouldn’t meet anyone you felt yourself around because youweren’tyourself.”
Jem sets his box on the table. “Have you known any addicts?”
“Some friends at school got into that shit. My brother steered me clear. I smoked weed a few times, but the drug wiped me out and interfered with the music too much. That’s why I can’t understand you choosing drugs.”
“There’s a lot we don’t understand about each other.” He tucks a loose strand of hair behind his ear.
A lot we don’t want to share.
Again, conversation killed. Although Jem’s different around me than a few days ago, loosened and a sense of humour poking through, he’s still never far from the world of his memories.