Corin leaned in on my other side, sandwiching me between the twins. “Also, we’ve got a buddy who specializes in building recording studios. He’s coming up to Ketchikan some time in the next couple months and he’s going to scout a good spot to put in a studio so we can record our next album ourselves.”
“What about your contract? Doesn’t that say when and where—” I started.
Canaan took over, interrupting me yet again. “When we bailed on the tour, we bailed on the contract. It was only for one more album anyway, and they wanted to take our sound in a direction we weren’t cool with. We had to give back some of the advance, but it’s all working out. It was just money, and we’ve made plenty of that the last two years.”
“So wait, you broke your contract too?”
Corin blew a raspberry. “Try to keep up, bro—yes, we broke the contract. The label didn’t wanna let us go, and we aren’t about to let some fuckin’ suit and tie pussies in New York tell us what to fuckin’ do with our lives or our music, so we told ’em where to shove their stupid contract, and then we came home.”
I groaned again, and rubbed both hands over my face. “What a disaster.”
Canaan, this time. “Bast, you’re not listening to us. They were talking about our next album, how they wanted to us to sound more ‘commercially approachable’, meaning softer, closer to pop than hard rock.”
“We’re going indie, bro!” Corin shouted. “We get to make this album ourselves, make it exactly what we want rather than having to cater to the dumbfuck label execs. This is about us, now. Our music, our lives, our time.”
“These days, there’s just as much potential for recognition and gaining popularity by putting up videos on YouTube,” Canaan said. “Our dedicated fan base doesn’t give two shits about which label our music comes out on, they just want our music. We can do that here.”
I sighed. “Sounds like you two have this thought out.”
“We’re not stupid, Bast,” they both said at once.
“We have no plans to abandon our music career—” Canaan started.
“We’re just taking it in a different direction,” Corin finished.
“Plus, family is family, and our brothers come first,” they both said.
“Enough talk,” Baxter said, shooting to his feet. “I need booze and food.”
“I second that motion,” Brock said.
The brothers all trooped downstairs to the bar, and I hung back to check in on Dru, who was still conked out hard, letting out a cute snuffling snore now and then. I left her a note telling her we were downstairs and to join us when she woke up, then jogged down the stairs to fix food for my brothers.
Bax was already playing bartender, pulling beers and pouring shots for everyone while Xavier was in the kitchen, firing up the fryers and the grill.
I joined Xavier in the kitchen. “Know your way around the kitchen, huh, kid?”
He dumped two full bags of fries into four of the six baskets, tossed several handfuls of my hand-breaded, locally-caught cod fillets into the other two baskets, and then started tossing patties on the grill. He shot me a grin while he worked. “I work midnights as a short-order cook at a diner back in Cali,” he said. “I can only spend so much time studying, you know? And my electronics habit won’t fund itself.”
I did some mental calculating. “Hold up, X. You’re in school full-time, on the varsity soccer team, work in the robotics research lab, and you work midnights? When do you sleep?”
He shrugged, a lot like Canaan’s why does it matter? gesture. “I only need a few hours a night.”
“What does ‘a few’ mean?”
“Four or five, max. I’ve never needed a lot of sleep, Bast, you know that.”
“Yeah, but you’re crazy busy, you can’t—”
“All of the most successful, most intelligent people in history are the same way. Tesla, Einstein, Jobs, Edison, guys like that rarely slept more than a few hours at a time.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that, as I’ve heard similar stories. But why work a short-order job? With your brains—”
He gestured at a stack of plates. “Start plating buns and tartar, would you?” He flipped burgers and replaced the presses, checked the fries and the fish, and then started separating slices of cheese while talking. “I like the work. It’s mindless, and fast-paced. It gives me time to think, you know? It’s all automatic, I just kinda zone out on the rhythm and let the rest of my mind wander. I do most of my homework in my head while I’m working, and then I just have to go home and write the answers down later.”