-> with the band chapter 1
warning: romance, 18+ minors DNI due to smut in later chapters; also, people pleasing, anxiety, codependency (not with harry), huge amounts of really ugly fabric from the 60s, repression. not for larries :(
A/N: this is a slow burn love story. and my first story post on tumblr! i’ve won some writing contests but haven’t ever written anything this long. feedback so so so welcome.
Izzy reread the message on her phone, confused. Her best friend Meg was begging now: her texts had gotten desperate. Meg was never up this late and she never sent her songs. What was she up to?
Izzy opened the song Meg sent and hit play: she gave it a few seconds, and a lone beat cut across her room.
It was the hottest day of the year, and Izzy lifted one foot, then the other, to help them breathe in her room’s old shag carpeting, feeling the soft air from outside across her soles. The beat was joined by a single guitar and seemed to melt into the summer air. It was dark and hypnotic, with a low hum that floated underneath the melody. Izzy tried to imagine the lead singer, lips together, making the sound that filled her bedroom.
Wednesday night in August, the last week of the summer. Her mom was out, but she would be back soon. Izzy leaned out her bedroom window, checking for signs of her parents’ car; the street was silent, the air thick and humid. Izzy took a deep breath. She had three secrets now—two hidden in her closet—that no one knew, except her best friend.
She always meant to do something exciting when her parents were out. Tonight, Izzy disappointed herself again: her big rebellion was an extra bowl of cereal. They would be home any minute.
Izzy hated that she was 24 and still listening for her mom coming up the stairs.
She went back to her laptop. Izzy scrolled Pinterest, colorful pins of interesting people doing colorful, beautiful things flying past: pretty towns where you could walk everywhere, big groups picnics in big city parks, girls in bands, dresses she had nowhere to wear. Izzy had spent a long time living in her laptop, but she could feel that tonight, something was different: something had been building all summer. Her phone pinged again and she read the text message from Meg, her best friend: concert tomorrow??? you said stay up, this is staying up
Meg was 25 and married and happy and had all the things. House, electric car, and pretty soon, a baby, probably. She had done everything right. She asked her husband out in university, in a lecture she and Izzy took together, just like that. Izzy had watched her do it, stunned. Meg just walked over, smiled, said something about coffee after class, and that was it. Meg said she had been rejected by guys many times before and you just had to get used to it. Izzy didn’t really believe her—someone as beautiful as Meg, rejected? Meg said it was the price of admission for dating. Izzy thought it was pretty transparently pity/advice. Surely, someone would come and find her. That’s what Izzy hoped for, but at the same time, in some part of her, Izzy knew that hope was expectation without reason. Realizing that had been the beginning of the three secrets.
She missed him. Her ex, from… last year? God, it had been a whole year. She tried to shake it off, disgusted with herself, but she couldn’t help it.
The feeling of his hands on her hips sometimes washed over her in moments like this—his fingers in her mouth, his teeth on her neck—when she was alone in her room, another night in.
A moment of self awareness burst through: Roger? She missed Roger? This was bad. She had to get out. She could almost see The Boulder in the middle of her room, the flaw so excruciating he broke up with her the second she told him about it. The Boulder wouldn’t go away on its own. And she wanted it gone.
Izzy’s phone pinged again. It was one of the two dating apps she played with on her phone. Using up almost all of her energy, she opened the app and read the message:
It was from someone named Noah, who Izzy had never spoken to before—Izzy didn’t even remember matching him. WTF? She closed the app.
Meg was part of a club called the marrieds—at least, that’s what Izzy called them in her head. Girls just a little older who seemed to have figured it out years ago, populated by Lauren (tall, serious soccer player, serious anxiety), Olivia (tiny, yogi, “wellness lifestyle coach”), and Mia (former friend of her cousin Lydia, former lunatic). Sometimes, it seemed like a club she wouldn’t ever get to join.
Izzy stood and went to her mirror. It was something her mom had put in her room, just like everything else that was there. She still - still! - lived with her parents, above the clothing store where she had worked since high school. It was a small, stripmall town near a big city she went into once a year if she was lucky.
Izzy looked at herself in the mirror, still in her work drip. Or anti-drip. 100% polyester. Beige. She tucked her hair behind her ears and contemplated her reflection. She had tried to turn the outfit into a clean girl look with some gold earrings, but it wasn’t working—it could never work! The skirt and blouse and vest (yes, a vest) were fucking crazy: ruffles, epaulets, buttons - and not like those cool, 80s buttons people are wearing - it was like something from the uncool part of the 80s. The part her parents were still stuck in. She didn’t hate her body or her face; she had done the work on body acceptance, against all odds (the odds being her parents). But did anyone look good in beige ruffles? Like, anyone alive? Why did she have to wear these things every day? Why couldn’t the store sell something from the last 10 years?
She had tried—she had gently hinted to her mother that they might consider some new suppliers. But her mom wanted to please her own mother, who had selected the suppliers herself when she opened the store. The relationships with the designers were long, decades long. And they still had customers; it’s just that they were older and older, and fewer and fewer, each year. Izzy had been named for her grandmother, Isabella, who came her with nothing and built a store and a business with her bare hands. Her mother ran the store, and someday, it would be passed on to Izzy. She had gone to university for business for that purpose, with minors in literature and music - really, those subjects were more than half her classes. Izzy had always told her mom that she wanted to take over the store and loved to work there, and her mom had no reason to believe otherwise.
Izzy went to the door of her room and cracked it open, looking down the hallway both ways. Her parents door was right next to hers. The hallway was empty.
She couldn’t hear anything.
She walked over to her closet.
Her phone pinged again: come on, music babe! maybe they’ll pull us up on stage and you can solo, lol
Another ping: Her BeReal alarm. Izzy looked around her room, and smiled, laughing a bit at herself. What was there to take a photo of? A photo of her cousin Lydia popped up: one tit almost out of her shirt, mid-twerk, at a party of some sort. Like a normal person her age.
Another message from Meg: so?? have you gotten to the chorus yet?????
Izzy listened cautiously, and not hearing her parent’s car in the drive or feet on the stairs, she turned up the song Meg had sent. It was good, actually. Really good. Holy shit, it was like Queen by Perfume Genius but better—it sounded like summer. Like a summer not in her room in her parent’s house. She checked the title: it was something by Harry Styles, who she hadn’t listened to a ton before. Truthfully, she had been kind of living under a rock and hadn’t crawled back out after the pandemic.
Raspy and strong, the voice was crying out for something. Izzy eyed her closet.
She paused to listen for her parents one more time, then creaked the closet’s old accordion doors open. She had to use her whole bodyweight to shift aside the heavy hangers of polyester, the many leaden and sunken ruffles in beige, brown, and black. Her whole wardrobe was from the family store. Anything else was a betrayal. But Izzy had betrayed her family for the first time this year, and the dress had arrived this morning.
She took the dress out. The betrayal was green and short and in a natural fabric that didn’t make her fingers itch, with an open back so her skin could breathe.
She stuffed the package it came in further back in the closet as a reflexive precaution.
She held it up in front of herself in the mirror, putting the hanger over her head. It was beautiful. It made her look her actual age. It was a dress you could go on a date in. Where some guy might ask you out for a drink or dinner or maybe one of those carnival dates - a date everyone had seemed to have been on, except for her, with cotton candy, a ferris wheel, and a cheap stuffed bear won at a huge cost at a booth.
Izzy picked up her phone and turned up the song again. She opened the message from Meg. She replied: yes. let’s goooo.
She didn’t hear the car pull in.
Meg immediately texted back: wait, what? really? HIGH KEY THRILLED. Several skulls followed. Meg explained the band: it sounded like Perfume Genius but like better and the drummer was a snack but their new lead guitarist was a WHOLE MEAL and the opening girl band was supposed to be super amazing. Meg wrote several paragraphs about the drummer, and mentioned that Lydia had invited her, and none of the other marrieds could make it (sad face). Meg seriously stanned Harry Styles.
Light flooded across the back of the mirror; Izzy gasped, her door was open. She peered around the mirror to see her mother’s soft silhouette illuminated by the hall light behind her.
“Izzy? You’re still up?” She took a step forward.
“Just about to go to sleep. Let’s talk in the morning, I’m beat,” Izzy countered, stepping closer to the mirror to hide the dress.
Her mom stepped forward into the room. She wore an outfit in a similar fabric, but somehow, the ruffles worked on her. Izzy had no way of hiding her dress.
Her mom’s mouth dropped open. “That’s not from the store.”
“Sorry,” Izzy said, reflexively. She turned toward her mother, blocking as much of the open closet as possible.
Her mother looked the dress up and down. She smiled - a painful smile, the one she put on when her heart was breaking. Izzy fought every instinct she had to make up a story, about how the dress was delivered here by mistake, or how Meg had given it to her, and the clothes from the store were so much better. But Izzy had been trying to tell the truth lately, or more - not just blurt out any lie to mollify whoever she was trying to please at that moment.
They could hear the TV flick on downstairs. Izzy knew her dad was on the sofa, beer in hand. Her parents had never gone to bed at the same time, at least not in Izzy’s memory. The TV was always the same: some old man yelling about the woke mob and Roe v Wade. Every time Izzy tried to gently talk to her father, something came spilling out of him that was worse than she could have imagined he believed. You have a daughter, Izzy wanted to say. How could you think that?
Her mom was now looking around her daughter, toward the open closet, where the second secret was hiding. Izzy took the hanger from around her neck, put it back in the closet, and closed the doors.
“I might have to close early tomorrow. I’m going to a concert with Meg.”
“Oh, okay. Mrs. Shepherd is coming in after her shift—the dress for her daughter’s wedding. I can take that one.”
“Thank you,” said Izzy. And then, it just came out, involuntarily: “It’s an indoor concert and I needed something really light, because apparently it can get up to, like, a hundred inside. I didn’t want to ruin something nice from the store.”
“Ah,” her mom said. She seemed to relax a bit. She stepped back toward the door, and they said their goodnights.
Izzy listened to her footsteps as they faded down the hall. She looked down at her phone, to group chat she was now in with Lydia and Meg. Izzy felt guilt swelling in her stomach like a cramp. Maybe she should cancel. She should take the appointment with Mrs. Shepherd. Her mom would be run off her feet; she looked so tired.
see you in the PIT! the pit is where it all happens, Lydia wrote.
how much do I owe you for the tickets? Izzy replied. Her mother’s “that’s not from the store” was echoing in her mind. Maybe the price would be too high and she could get out of it that way. She started preparing her excuse text, something she had turned into an art: “that’s a bit out of my budget for now, but you guys have a great time and take soooo many photos for me.” She should be given an honorary degree in excuse texts. It was such as spontaneous plan, she hadn’t had the notice to mention a headache a few days before, building to an illness that would make an easy out.
they were freeeeeee no cap. you’re friends with a mega influencer, Lydia wrote. To Izzy’s knowledge, Lydia had about 4,372 followers and followed more than 10,000 people.
see you on the floor tomorrowwww 7 PM do not BE LATE this is love on tour not a drill
Izzy grinned—she couldn’t help it. A thick breeze swept in from outside. She went over to her closet and peeked at her dress, the green standing out like a single flower in a field of sun bleached grass.
Every secret was another room she could live in. And she could decorate those rooms any way she liked, and dance in them, and invite just who she wanted into them. She had two secrets left, and she wanted more. She wanted to build an entire house with them, a house of her own.
She put her headphones in, turned the song up again, and played it from the beginning.
