Page 1 of Silver Sweet

1

TOM COBALT

I’m fucked.

Not like “my life is over” fucked.

I suffer from the extreme inability to quit on myself—even when people quit on me. I’m more afraid of my dream decaying into nothingness than I am of what I might do to keep it alive.

Which is why I’m on Craigslist right now.

I’m nearing embarrassing levels of desperation.

“Here’s one.” I stop on an ad and zoom in on my laptop so my brother behind me can see. “This guy is looking for a guitarist near Union Square. He says he plays bass and he’s a singer-songwriter.”

I need a bassist. Like by tomorrow.

I also would like a drummer.Basically, I need to reform my shattered band, and searching Craigslist for potential musicians is the only solid solution I’ve had in weeks.

Eliot peers over my shoulder, a strong hand clasped on the desk chair where I’m seated. He taps the keyboard, demagnifying the ad. “Only two sentences of information?”

“He just says to contact him if interested,” I explain. “He gives his name. Blaine Thomas.”

“I’ve never met a Blaine I liked.”

“Dude, I don’t care if he’s named Beef Hotdog right now.”

Eliot points at another ad. “Check this one.”

“I still think this Blaine guy has potential,” I say, but I go ahead and open the other ad and skim the details. “Uhh, this girl is looking for a guy to sing folk music with her in Brooklyn.” I cringe just imagining myself singing Mumford & Sons covers in a coffee shop where no one gives afuckingdamn. Because why would they? They’re not there to be distracted by my life-changing, transcendent vocals. They’re there to sip their lattes, pop in earbuds, and worry about some business report due the next day.

I’m going to be ambient background noise.

Elevator music.

My face twists in a harsher cringe. I blink repeatedly, and I swallow down distaste like a four-year-old learning to eat their veggies.

It’s good for you, Tom.

I could convince her to join my band. Maybe the label would be interested in a guy-girl duo. The type of music, we could work out later.

“Maybe…” I grimace more.

“We don’t do Brooklyn, brother,” Eliot says.

We live in a luxury high-rise in Hell’s Kitchen—apartment 2166—but he’s not snubbing Brooklyn because it’s beneath us. He got in a bar brawl in a Brooklyn pub a few months ago when some drunk idiot called our oldest brother a cunt.

Charlie wasn’t even there, but that didn’t stop Eliot from defending his honor, me joining in, and our bodyguards pulling us out.

I sigh hard at the laptop. “I can’t be picky about where in New York someone is eating and sleeping. I need a viable band to present to the label in two days.” I click back into the list ofads. “And I doubt Charlie would even care that we’ve sworn off an entire portion of New York on his behalf.”

Eliot tips his head. “Vrai.” He saystruein French.

After he dismisses three more potential ads—one of which was reasonable, except for the demand that the guitarist be right-handed (I am right-handed…but still)—I whirl around on my six-foot-four, towering, loyal-to-the-bone brother.

Eliot Alice Cobalt is only eleven months older than me. He’s myclosestbrother in more than just age. I know things about him no one else does. I tell him everything first. Between the two of us, secrets are hard to find, and out of my family—out of the Cobalt Empire—I would’ve never imagined he’dmake duct-taping my band back together more difficult.

“What’s with the pushback?” I question. “I’d expect this from Charlie or Beckett. Not you. Okay, yourarelyshoot down my harebrained ideas.”