The Paris of Our Dreams, page 31
Eric wondered why he hadn’t been informed about or invited to work on music together. He didn’t say anything, but that annoyed him—a lot. He had been suffering alone, and both Marie and Mike were working on music without telling him? What the fuck? That hurt his feelings. He didn’t need a reminder that both Mike and Marie were better musicians and songwriters than him, but it was the only thing that he had ever felt slightly good at. That only made him feel like they really didn’t want or need his presence.
Fuck it.
He decided to stop running after people, feeling like he was begging for people’s presence and attention.
Eric tried to respect Marie and Tom’s relationship and Mike’s actions, but he found himself suppressing more and more things and getting angrier and angrier. He wasn’t even sure why or at whom he was truly pissed off—probably himself.
What finally made him snap was that Marie was the one to complain about their distance. About how he seemed to not be trying to spend time with her anymore. How he seemed to be distant. First, she was worried about his partying, and now she was complaining about his sudden unsociability? It was a matter of time until he had to say something, and of course it didn’t come out very well.
“Eric, why the hell are you acting like this?” said Marie, surprised by his reaction. “I’ve been telling you that I’m trying to help Tom, and I told you to check on him as well. Please don’t be jealous.”
“I’m not jealous.”
“Yes, you are. You’re acting jealous. Please just talk to me. What’s wrong?”
“I’m not jealous, but it’s so precious how now you are saying that I’m not giving you enough attention, when for the last weeks you’ve been spending all this time working, alone, or with Tom, when I kept asking you time and time again to hang out…”
“Eric, come on. Clearly, you’ve been feeling jealous of me spending time with Tom, right?’
“For fuck’s sake, I told you I’m not jealous of you and Tom! I’m just annoyed by how you’re now saying I’m not giving you enough attention after these last weeks.”
“Okay. I’m sorry. You’re feeling left out? I know I’ve been busy, but I can only do so much, Eric. I’m trying to do my best. I’m sorry I complained when I haven’t been the best at finding time for us. Can we please start over and talk about it?”
That discussion was making Eric feel stupid and needy. That made him angry. He didn’t know how to say what was wrong with him.
“Baby, can you please sit down and talk to me?” Marie sat on a couch in her bedroom and put her hand by her side, inviting Eric to sit next to her.
He was annoyed and angry, he didn’t feel like sitting. When she noticed he wasn’t going to sit by her side, she slowly nodded her head and put her hand back on top of her leg. “Okay,” she said and sighed. “I’m frustrated because I haven’t been able to spend time with you, and the last few times I tried, our plans seemed to fall through or we haven’t really been able to enjoy each other’s company. I know I’ve been extremely busy, and I understand if that has frustrated you. I know I’ve also been spending a lot of time working on my own music, since Tom asked to help. I’ve been seeing him quite a bit, but you know how it is when we’re working on music and recording right?”
“Why the fuck are you working on your music with Tom? Have you changed your mind about going solo?” said Eric. “I understand things have been hard at the school with Mike, but why would you completely shift your focus like that?”
“I’m just working on my music. Who said anything about going solo?” Marie asked, surprised. “Yeah, maybe, I don’t know. I’ve been very honest with you since the beginning about that, Eric . . .” She took a deep breath. “Is that what’s been bothering you? You know they were interested before, but that hasn’t changed at all. I just decided to accept Tom’s help since he’s in Paris and willing to help me, and it’s been helpful to both of us. I really haven’t thought about starting anything by myself, Eric. I’m just trying to play music and you know, be a good friend…”
Silence. Eric had been feeling uncertain about his band’s future for months now, but it had always been okay because he had a life in Paris with his family and friends.
With everything that had been going on, everyone seemed to be moving on in a different direction, and he was now feeling like Marie was eventually going to leave him and his band. Mike didn’t look like he was going back to their band, and Eric wouldn’t be able to get his band back by himself.
“Eric, please? what’s wrong? Talk to me,” said Marie, trying to bring Eric back from his thoughts.
“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong . . .” He sighed and shrugged his shoulders. “Just work on your music, I guess . . .”
“Baby, come on.”
“I’m sorry, Marie. I have to go. I don’t know what else to tell you, and I might need some time to figure out what’s bothering me. I am sorry about my reaction, and I understand your side. I miss spending time with you as well. We’ll talk more soon, okay?”
***
Eric was so frustrated with Marie and how she had completely turned the tables on him that he ended up venting about it to Alice, Jan, and eventually even Mike.
He wanted to know why Mike was doing what he was doing instead of accepting his, Isa, and Marie’s help.
Mike had sold a few songs to their label for other artists. He said he didn’t tell Eric about it because he felt ashamed about doing it. He was feeling like a sellout for selling his music to other bands (that he didn’t like) and even having to write some pop music that he really didn’t want to write. It wasn’t bad money though, and future royalties could eventually be a big help.
Eric wasn’t happy about that: again, he felt almost betrayed by his friend for not telling him about it beforehand.
Mike hadn’t offered to rejoin the band again, and he hadn’t asked for Eric’s help. He preferred to sell his music alone than call on his supposed best friend. As if Eric needed any reminder of how he hadn’t been able to create a single song by himself since he stopped touring.
With Mike, however, he gritted his teeth and didn’t say anything because, again, he needed to be supportive, like his friend had always been of him. Mike had always been the guy that wrote their songs, and given not only Eric but Liam and Jack a bigger share of the songwriting credits and revenues that he actually needed to. A non-negligible amount of money that they had made should have gone to Mike’s pocket. He just couldn’t turn his back on his friend at that point. He was not Samuel.
He called his dad again. Nothing new.
“Dad, I understand what you’re saying, but please, I need to find a way to help Mike. I don’t care about the money. He’s family, dad, and if there’s one thing you taught us, it’s that we help family, no matter what. I don’t care how bad of a business decision it is for me; can you please help me find a way?”
“Okay, give me some time, and I’ll see what we can do . . .”
Chapter 51
There were many things in the air those days: Things that no one was willing to talk about or even daring to comment about because it felt like the world could fall apart by only mentioning it.
Mike’s debt, Eric’s semi-recent breakdown, Tom’s lack of direction after his last disappointment with Katherine (although no one, apart from Marie, knew about it), Marie’s increasing distance from Eric, probably because she was getting hurt by being avoided herself. And even Isa and Gustavo seemed to have created this mental distance from everyone and from all of these problems. Jan was working full-time as a bartender/waiter in a pub in the 20e and almost never saw them anymore. (He was living super far away from them now.) Alice had gotten an internship in a cultural magazine—her French had finally allowed her to, and her experience at the festival had helped her get it—and was trying to take some side courses around the city. She was planning on going back to Brazil after her internship was over, finish her masters and try to work on her first novel for a while. Eric’s parents, too busy with their company, hadn’t showed up in Paris for more than two months at that point, and when they had last tried, it was another embarrassing silence that reigned over them.
Even though everyone was there for everyone, it seemed like it would have been easier to have dinner at the Élysée than to get all those people back together again. Let alone try to have some fun.
Isadora had made new friends, and every day, she seemed to be busy with them or with the school. Alice also made new friends, especially after she had started her internship, and was having a hard time trying to balance her time between all her commitments and her new fling, a French guy from Bretagne. Yeah, in the middle of all that, Alice started dating a French guy. Her presence too became rare. Spending less and less time with Alice was also hurting Eric, and not in a romantic or jealous way. He definitely had noticed that their relationship was indeed purely platonic. Her dating another guy had definitely proved that. He just really missed having his friend around and knowing she would eventually be leaving again was definitely not helping. In his head, when thinking of Paris, of his new home, she was there, being the amazing friend she had been since day one.
And then, making the perfect storm even more perfect, winter had hit hard and ugly. It got dark before 6 p.m., and it was cold, windy, and wet with dirty mush on the streets.
Eric sometimes caught himself wondering if all of that was his fault. If they were blaming him for things not happening in Paris like they had dreamed. If they were actually avoiding him. If things would get better if he just disappeared somehow, again. If he just ceased to exist. He lost days to those dark thoughts, wandering around Paris, trying to avoid being recognised.
But no . . . Life was happening. Yeah, life. What a bitch, huh?
He wanted to go back in time, before the festival, where the future seemed so bright, so naively glorious and easy. They were there, together. A family. They were truly happy for a second in time, no? They had an amazing home. They had an amazing summer. Now everyone seemed to be avoiding that apartment for their lives. Eric was pretty aware he was one of the worst of them.
Yes, they were truly happy for a second in time. There was a time in his life when Eric was truly happy. Now he was scared shitless that maybe that moment was gone forever. That he would have to go back to the darkness and pain that had constituted his life before. He didn’t really know what other option he had. What other kind of life could complete him . . . give him some purpose.
He had gotten better because he felt connected to people. Connected to his family. He had felt like he could be happy . . . like they were there for him and that he could be there for them. That he was able to be good to Marie—able to love her—and that they could have fun. That he could be excited about life again. He’d felt that he could control himself and be better—that he didn’t need to be Eric Meirelles all the time. He could just be Eric.
All of that was fading away.
***
If no one did anything, they wouldn’t make a second festival, and their little family would vanish as time passed by.
Mike would have to deal with those debts for twenty years, and God knows that he didn’t deserve it. Their band would stop existing for good. Jan would think no one in Paris cared about him; after all, he had come to Paris to help and have never ever gotten anything out of it—only problems—so why wouldn’t he go back to touring with another band?
Eric could feel Marie getting more and more distant from him, slipping away, trying to build something that he felt didn’t include him. He knew it was his fault because of how he had handled the last few months, and that wasn’t helping him mentally. She had more than once tried to get him talking again, and in his frustration, fear, and anger, he had again pushed her away. He knew he was messing up, but he just didn’t know how to stop it. He didn’t know how else to handle all of that.
Isadora and Gustavo would remain in the middle of that storm and get even more distant from him until Gustavo finally moved to the States to study (probably in less than a year now).
Alice, Marie, and Tom would become ghosts from his past. And Eric . . . Eric would float or get completely stuck to the ground, however one might define it. He had no idea what his life would be, and he was afraid going back to screwing everything up would be his default.
Their Paris, like the one from his childhood, would cease to exist.
No, whatever it was, Eric had to do something. He just had no idea what.
***
Eric tried to do the same thing he had tried once, years before, when he got his guitar and found his partners, thinking, You start something and the universe helps you.
Once again he got his guitar, not to train (as he’d still been doing now and then over the past months) but to actually create something. Something that could change his life again. Bring them together again. Something that would be able to tell his friends and family the things that he wasn’t able to express on his own. Something that would explain to Marie how much he loved her and how much he was feeling like a failure for not being better to her. That he truly cared and trusted her—and missed her.
Something real.
He was sitting in the studio whenever it wasn’t being used and trying to create something. Every day. Because it was all he knew what to do . . . with his anger, his pain, his fear, and his hope.
And God . . . it sucked.
It actually seemed like anything he was trying to create was getting worse as the weeks passed by. Any of Mike students that he had met would have humiliated him, and he felt like shit because of that.
I mean, he was Eric Meirelles for fuck’s sake.
But not in that room. At least not alone.
If any of the guys from his band would had gotten together with him, they could’ve probably created some music together. Alone, sober, he was nothing. He had no talent. He kept thinking about how he’d never deserved to be in that band, touring around the world . . . or even to be considered a musician. He was a failure. It has always been because of Mike, and now, without him, they were done. It was over. He just needed to face it. Even without wanting to, he started getting even more frustrated with both Mike and Marie for the simple fact that they were working on music for other projects. They should all be together. Why couldn’t anybody else see that? It was the only true way out.
More time went by, and nothing looked like it was going to change. But Eric kept going, with the obsession that somehow, in the right time, all of that would be able to fix things, if he could just keep going.
He kept suffering in that studio, day after day, even though things only seemed to be getting worse. He hated his music; he hated how much less talented than Mike he was at playing the guitar and writing songs. He could only come up with noise—to the point that his own head would hurt. If he couldn’t even listen to his music, who would?
Playing and singing became the only thing that could take away those feelings of being powerless, of feeling useless, of being afraid, lost, regretful and angry. It was the only way he knew how to handle that and the only thing that had kept him going all those years.
But it wasn’t enough. Eric finally got tired of being alone and desperate to stop all of them from vanishing from his life.
He decided he had to do something: get them all together on good terms, no matter how hard it would be. He would try to go out with everyone . . . or whoever he could convince to go out with him, which in most of the cases, was only Jan (probably out of pity at that point), and sometimes Alice, when her schedule would allow her. Everyone else was busy, tired, working, or had better plans.
“Hey, man. How are you doing these days?” said Jan.
“I don’t even know anymore, to be honest,” said Eric.
Nobody said a word. Eric and Jan had been at that bar for a while, and things weren’t looking that promising.
“What about you?” said Eric.
“I’m okay.”
After a good amount of silence, Eric finally started talking again.“Hey, I’m sorry dude. I know your life hasn’t been great at the moment, and I don’t wanna give you more to worry about. I just wanted to see a friendly face and talk a bit.”
“Nah, relax, man. You’ve come to the right place!”
“No, I mean it. I’ve been looking for a better job for you again. I know it’s been harsh. You came here to help, and it seems like no one is helping you. It’s just . . . I never thought we’d still be here, you know?”
Jan agreed but started to smile and said, “It’s okay, bro. I’m improving my French, practicing with Mike whenever he can. I have some nice French girls to keep me warm at night, and there’s always beer.” Jan smirked. “It’s okay. I know that. I’m sorry your stay in Paris hasn’t been that nice lately. Besides, I can take care of myself, bro, you don’t have to worry about me. It’s not your responsibility. I know why I came to Paris and things are going well for me, really.”
“Yeah . . . No, I know, but I do. I mean, we do,” he sighed “whatever. Things are weird.”
Jan agreed with his head and said, “Things will get better. As far as Mike’s situation goes, one way or another, things will fix themselves. So, what about the band? No sign of getting back together, writing music, doing some concerts?”
Eric shrugged his shoulders. “Jack and Liam are both doing gigs with other bands in the US. Separate bands, by the way. Mike . . . is completely fucked, right? It looks like he wrote some songs for a couple of other bands and artists and is feeling pretty shitty about it. And me? I guess I just can’t leave Paris right now. I have nowhere else to go. I feel like I’d be abandoning everyone. Not that me being here seems to be helping anyone. So all of that sucks.”
“Yeah, I get that. Shame.”
“Yeah . . .”
They kept eating.
“The worst part is that everyone is just growing apart, man. Not even six months ago, we were inseparable,” said Eric.
“Yeah, this sucky winter isn’t helping either, eh?”
Fuck it.
He decided to stop running after people, feeling like he was begging for people’s presence and attention.
Eric tried to respect Marie and Tom’s relationship and Mike’s actions, but he found himself suppressing more and more things and getting angrier and angrier. He wasn’t even sure why or at whom he was truly pissed off—probably himself.
What finally made him snap was that Marie was the one to complain about their distance. About how he seemed to not be trying to spend time with her anymore. How he seemed to be distant. First, she was worried about his partying, and now she was complaining about his sudden unsociability? It was a matter of time until he had to say something, and of course it didn’t come out very well.
“Eric, why the hell are you acting like this?” said Marie, surprised by his reaction. “I’ve been telling you that I’m trying to help Tom, and I told you to check on him as well. Please don’t be jealous.”
“I’m not jealous.”
“Yes, you are. You’re acting jealous. Please just talk to me. What’s wrong?”
“I’m not jealous, but it’s so precious how now you are saying that I’m not giving you enough attention, when for the last weeks you’ve been spending all this time working, alone, or with Tom, when I kept asking you time and time again to hang out…”
“Eric, come on. Clearly, you’ve been feeling jealous of me spending time with Tom, right?’
“For fuck’s sake, I told you I’m not jealous of you and Tom! I’m just annoyed by how you’re now saying I’m not giving you enough attention after these last weeks.”
“Okay. I’m sorry. You’re feeling left out? I know I’ve been busy, but I can only do so much, Eric. I’m trying to do my best. I’m sorry I complained when I haven’t been the best at finding time for us. Can we please start over and talk about it?”
That discussion was making Eric feel stupid and needy. That made him angry. He didn’t know how to say what was wrong with him.
“Baby, can you please sit down and talk to me?” Marie sat on a couch in her bedroom and put her hand by her side, inviting Eric to sit next to her.
He was annoyed and angry, he didn’t feel like sitting. When she noticed he wasn’t going to sit by her side, she slowly nodded her head and put her hand back on top of her leg. “Okay,” she said and sighed. “I’m frustrated because I haven’t been able to spend time with you, and the last few times I tried, our plans seemed to fall through or we haven’t really been able to enjoy each other’s company. I know I’ve been extremely busy, and I understand if that has frustrated you. I know I’ve also been spending a lot of time working on my own music, since Tom asked to help. I’ve been seeing him quite a bit, but you know how it is when we’re working on music and recording right?”
“Why the fuck are you working on your music with Tom? Have you changed your mind about going solo?” said Eric. “I understand things have been hard at the school with Mike, but why would you completely shift your focus like that?”
“I’m just working on my music. Who said anything about going solo?” Marie asked, surprised. “Yeah, maybe, I don’t know. I’ve been very honest with you since the beginning about that, Eric . . .” She took a deep breath. “Is that what’s been bothering you? You know they were interested before, but that hasn’t changed at all. I just decided to accept Tom’s help since he’s in Paris and willing to help me, and it’s been helpful to both of us. I really haven’t thought about starting anything by myself, Eric. I’m just trying to play music and you know, be a good friend…”
Silence. Eric had been feeling uncertain about his band’s future for months now, but it had always been okay because he had a life in Paris with his family and friends.
With everything that had been going on, everyone seemed to be moving on in a different direction, and he was now feeling like Marie was eventually going to leave him and his band. Mike didn’t look like he was going back to their band, and Eric wouldn’t be able to get his band back by himself.
“Eric, please? what’s wrong? Talk to me,” said Marie, trying to bring Eric back from his thoughts.
“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong . . .” He sighed and shrugged his shoulders. “Just work on your music, I guess . . .”
“Baby, come on.”
“I’m sorry, Marie. I have to go. I don’t know what else to tell you, and I might need some time to figure out what’s bothering me. I am sorry about my reaction, and I understand your side. I miss spending time with you as well. We’ll talk more soon, okay?”
***
Eric was so frustrated with Marie and how she had completely turned the tables on him that he ended up venting about it to Alice, Jan, and eventually even Mike.
He wanted to know why Mike was doing what he was doing instead of accepting his, Isa, and Marie’s help.
Mike had sold a few songs to their label for other artists. He said he didn’t tell Eric about it because he felt ashamed about doing it. He was feeling like a sellout for selling his music to other bands (that he didn’t like) and even having to write some pop music that he really didn’t want to write. It wasn’t bad money though, and future royalties could eventually be a big help.
Eric wasn’t happy about that: again, he felt almost betrayed by his friend for not telling him about it beforehand.
Mike hadn’t offered to rejoin the band again, and he hadn’t asked for Eric’s help. He preferred to sell his music alone than call on his supposed best friend. As if Eric needed any reminder of how he hadn’t been able to create a single song by himself since he stopped touring.
With Mike, however, he gritted his teeth and didn’t say anything because, again, he needed to be supportive, like his friend had always been of him. Mike had always been the guy that wrote their songs, and given not only Eric but Liam and Jack a bigger share of the songwriting credits and revenues that he actually needed to. A non-negligible amount of money that they had made should have gone to Mike’s pocket. He just couldn’t turn his back on his friend at that point. He was not Samuel.
He called his dad again. Nothing new.
“Dad, I understand what you’re saying, but please, I need to find a way to help Mike. I don’t care about the money. He’s family, dad, and if there’s one thing you taught us, it’s that we help family, no matter what. I don’t care how bad of a business decision it is for me; can you please help me find a way?”
“Okay, give me some time, and I’ll see what we can do . . .”
Chapter 51
There were many things in the air those days: Things that no one was willing to talk about or even daring to comment about because it felt like the world could fall apart by only mentioning it.
Mike’s debt, Eric’s semi-recent breakdown, Tom’s lack of direction after his last disappointment with Katherine (although no one, apart from Marie, knew about it), Marie’s increasing distance from Eric, probably because she was getting hurt by being avoided herself. And even Isa and Gustavo seemed to have created this mental distance from everyone and from all of these problems. Jan was working full-time as a bartender/waiter in a pub in the 20e and almost never saw them anymore. (He was living super far away from them now.) Alice had gotten an internship in a cultural magazine—her French had finally allowed her to, and her experience at the festival had helped her get it—and was trying to take some side courses around the city. She was planning on going back to Brazil after her internship was over, finish her masters and try to work on her first novel for a while. Eric’s parents, too busy with their company, hadn’t showed up in Paris for more than two months at that point, and when they had last tried, it was another embarrassing silence that reigned over them.
Even though everyone was there for everyone, it seemed like it would have been easier to have dinner at the Élysée than to get all those people back together again. Let alone try to have some fun.
Isadora had made new friends, and every day, she seemed to be busy with them or with the school. Alice also made new friends, especially after she had started her internship, and was having a hard time trying to balance her time between all her commitments and her new fling, a French guy from Bretagne. Yeah, in the middle of all that, Alice started dating a French guy. Her presence too became rare. Spending less and less time with Alice was also hurting Eric, and not in a romantic or jealous way. He definitely had noticed that their relationship was indeed purely platonic. Her dating another guy had definitely proved that. He just really missed having his friend around and knowing she would eventually be leaving again was definitely not helping. In his head, when thinking of Paris, of his new home, she was there, being the amazing friend she had been since day one.
And then, making the perfect storm even more perfect, winter had hit hard and ugly. It got dark before 6 p.m., and it was cold, windy, and wet with dirty mush on the streets.
Eric sometimes caught himself wondering if all of that was his fault. If they were blaming him for things not happening in Paris like they had dreamed. If they were actually avoiding him. If things would get better if he just disappeared somehow, again. If he just ceased to exist. He lost days to those dark thoughts, wandering around Paris, trying to avoid being recognised.
But no . . . Life was happening. Yeah, life. What a bitch, huh?
He wanted to go back in time, before the festival, where the future seemed so bright, so naively glorious and easy. They were there, together. A family. They were truly happy for a second in time, no? They had an amazing home. They had an amazing summer. Now everyone seemed to be avoiding that apartment for their lives. Eric was pretty aware he was one of the worst of them.
Yes, they were truly happy for a second in time. There was a time in his life when Eric was truly happy. Now he was scared shitless that maybe that moment was gone forever. That he would have to go back to the darkness and pain that had constituted his life before. He didn’t really know what other option he had. What other kind of life could complete him . . . give him some purpose.
He had gotten better because he felt connected to people. Connected to his family. He had felt like he could be happy . . . like they were there for him and that he could be there for them. That he was able to be good to Marie—able to love her—and that they could have fun. That he could be excited about life again. He’d felt that he could control himself and be better—that he didn’t need to be Eric Meirelles all the time. He could just be Eric.
All of that was fading away.
***
If no one did anything, they wouldn’t make a second festival, and their little family would vanish as time passed by.
Mike would have to deal with those debts for twenty years, and God knows that he didn’t deserve it. Their band would stop existing for good. Jan would think no one in Paris cared about him; after all, he had come to Paris to help and have never ever gotten anything out of it—only problems—so why wouldn’t he go back to touring with another band?
Eric could feel Marie getting more and more distant from him, slipping away, trying to build something that he felt didn’t include him. He knew it was his fault because of how he had handled the last few months, and that wasn’t helping him mentally. She had more than once tried to get him talking again, and in his frustration, fear, and anger, he had again pushed her away. He knew he was messing up, but he just didn’t know how to stop it. He didn’t know how else to handle all of that.
Isadora and Gustavo would remain in the middle of that storm and get even more distant from him until Gustavo finally moved to the States to study (probably in less than a year now).
Alice, Marie, and Tom would become ghosts from his past. And Eric . . . Eric would float or get completely stuck to the ground, however one might define it. He had no idea what his life would be, and he was afraid going back to screwing everything up would be his default.
Their Paris, like the one from his childhood, would cease to exist.
No, whatever it was, Eric had to do something. He just had no idea what.
***
Eric tried to do the same thing he had tried once, years before, when he got his guitar and found his partners, thinking, You start something and the universe helps you.
Once again he got his guitar, not to train (as he’d still been doing now and then over the past months) but to actually create something. Something that could change his life again. Bring them together again. Something that would be able to tell his friends and family the things that he wasn’t able to express on his own. Something that would explain to Marie how much he loved her and how much he was feeling like a failure for not being better to her. That he truly cared and trusted her—and missed her.
Something real.
He was sitting in the studio whenever it wasn’t being used and trying to create something. Every day. Because it was all he knew what to do . . . with his anger, his pain, his fear, and his hope.
And God . . . it sucked.
It actually seemed like anything he was trying to create was getting worse as the weeks passed by. Any of Mike students that he had met would have humiliated him, and he felt like shit because of that.
I mean, he was Eric Meirelles for fuck’s sake.
But not in that room. At least not alone.
If any of the guys from his band would had gotten together with him, they could’ve probably created some music together. Alone, sober, he was nothing. He had no talent. He kept thinking about how he’d never deserved to be in that band, touring around the world . . . or even to be considered a musician. He was a failure. It has always been because of Mike, and now, without him, they were done. It was over. He just needed to face it. Even without wanting to, he started getting even more frustrated with both Mike and Marie for the simple fact that they were working on music for other projects. They should all be together. Why couldn’t anybody else see that? It was the only true way out.
More time went by, and nothing looked like it was going to change. But Eric kept going, with the obsession that somehow, in the right time, all of that would be able to fix things, if he could just keep going.
He kept suffering in that studio, day after day, even though things only seemed to be getting worse. He hated his music; he hated how much less talented than Mike he was at playing the guitar and writing songs. He could only come up with noise—to the point that his own head would hurt. If he couldn’t even listen to his music, who would?
Playing and singing became the only thing that could take away those feelings of being powerless, of feeling useless, of being afraid, lost, regretful and angry. It was the only way he knew how to handle that and the only thing that had kept him going all those years.
But it wasn’t enough. Eric finally got tired of being alone and desperate to stop all of them from vanishing from his life.
He decided he had to do something: get them all together on good terms, no matter how hard it would be. He would try to go out with everyone . . . or whoever he could convince to go out with him, which in most of the cases, was only Jan (probably out of pity at that point), and sometimes Alice, when her schedule would allow her. Everyone else was busy, tired, working, or had better plans.
“Hey, man. How are you doing these days?” said Jan.
“I don’t even know anymore, to be honest,” said Eric.
Nobody said a word. Eric and Jan had been at that bar for a while, and things weren’t looking that promising.
“What about you?” said Eric.
“I’m okay.”
After a good amount of silence, Eric finally started talking again.“Hey, I’m sorry dude. I know your life hasn’t been great at the moment, and I don’t wanna give you more to worry about. I just wanted to see a friendly face and talk a bit.”
“Nah, relax, man. You’ve come to the right place!”
“No, I mean it. I’ve been looking for a better job for you again. I know it’s been harsh. You came here to help, and it seems like no one is helping you. It’s just . . . I never thought we’d still be here, you know?”
Jan agreed but started to smile and said, “It’s okay, bro. I’m improving my French, practicing with Mike whenever he can. I have some nice French girls to keep me warm at night, and there’s always beer.” Jan smirked. “It’s okay. I know that. I’m sorry your stay in Paris hasn’t been that nice lately. Besides, I can take care of myself, bro, you don’t have to worry about me. It’s not your responsibility. I know why I came to Paris and things are going well for me, really.”
“Yeah . . . No, I know, but I do. I mean, we do,” he sighed “whatever. Things are weird.”
Jan agreed with his head and said, “Things will get better. As far as Mike’s situation goes, one way or another, things will fix themselves. So, what about the band? No sign of getting back together, writing music, doing some concerts?”
Eric shrugged his shoulders. “Jack and Liam are both doing gigs with other bands in the US. Separate bands, by the way. Mike . . . is completely fucked, right? It looks like he wrote some songs for a couple of other bands and artists and is feeling pretty shitty about it. And me? I guess I just can’t leave Paris right now. I have nowhere else to go. I feel like I’d be abandoning everyone. Not that me being here seems to be helping anyone. So all of that sucks.”
“Yeah, I get that. Shame.”
“Yeah . . .”
They kept eating.
“The worst part is that everyone is just growing apart, man. Not even six months ago, we were inseparable,” said Eric.
“Yeah, this sucky winter isn’t helping either, eh?”
