Mara Wants Sex, Wyatt has a Proposition: The Ember Files - Log 10
To read the previous log - Log 9.1 - click here.
Case Subject: Vega, Wyatt
Filed from: Palm Springs HQ
Classification: Emotional Volatility; Observer/Subject Mara Luz Analysis
Date of Occurrence: December 8, 2023
Editor’s Note:
Last we saw Wyatt Vega, frontman of Lo-Fire Radio, he was crumpled on Mara’s couch - sweaty, wild-eyed, drained from years on the road. He smelled like cigarette ash, old sex, and the back of a rock club speaker. Mara, ever the sardonic anchor, wrapped her arms around him just before he dropped this:
"Don’t flip out. Just listen."
Mara wanted dick, but she was intrigued by Wyatt’s seriousness.
We pick up here, with Mara recalling how it all started.
Before I get to the harebrained scheme he proposed, let me back up and tell you what you need to know about us.
Wyatt and I have been saying "I love you" for about three years. The first time was four months into our relationship, April 2020, in my old house in Raleigh. Before I ever moved west. Before the Institute flagged him as a high-level risk for emotional contamination.
It happened on a Sunday.
We were fighting because he left my back door open and my elderly beagle, Tater, bolted like he had places to be. I chased his chonky ass ten blocks, heat rising in my chest like lava. Dragged him home, threatened to spank him, and locked him in his crate.
Then I walked straight into the living room and hurled the first thing I could grab - a ZZ Top CD jewel case - straight at Wyatt’s mouth.
Mara: Tres Hombres.
I remember because we’d snorted coke off it the night before. The case cracked his lip and chipped a tooth. He wiped the blood, laughed, and said:
Wyatt: Billy Gibbons is still one of my favorite guitarists. I love you.
Mara: I said it back. Of course I did.
We had sex for three hours. When it was over, I let Tater out of his crate, and the three of us walked around the neighborhood like nothing happened.
Wyatt later stole the CD case, mounted it in plexiglass, and hung it in his overstuffed, velvet-draped studio in Laurel Canyon. I assume it still has traces of blood and blow. A love token. A relic.
Fast forward about a year.
By then he was already on the road. He’d started the tour before the record was even finished. Mixing tracks in hotel rooms. Sending last tweaks from green rooms. Once it dropped? He just stayed out there. A tour that never ended.
He called me from some shitty dressing room somewhere, needing praise.
Wyatt: So? What do you think of the record?
Mara: It’s muddy. Like it was recorded in a wet cardboard box.
Wyatt: Are you fucking with me?
Mara: No. It’s unsettling.
Wyatt: How the fuck would you know anything about music? Just because you’ve fucked a bunch of pussy-ass dudes in bands?
Mara: You mean like you, you limp-dicked bastard? You asked for my opinion. Do you want honesty or cheerleading?
He ranted. About his wife. His dead dad. The journalist suing him. Claimed I didn’t understand what he was going through.
Mara: Your dad died four years ago.
Wyatt: So? It still hurts.
Mara: You want someone to cry with you, call your mother. Or your manager. I’m not here to validate your tantrums. Most of the shit in your life is your own doing.
Wyatt: Fuck you. Don’t talk about my mom.
Mara: Didn’t say a word about her. But I could. God, I hate a mama’s boy.
Wyatt: What else don’t you like about the record?
Mara: It sounds like a one-man band with a head injury. Like you’re beating a tambourine with your foot, strumming a guitar with your teeth, blowing a harmonica out your ass, and smacking a cowbell with your floppy dick.
He hung up. The digital version of a slammed door.
Two hours later, he called back.
Wyatt: I don’t want to talk. I just want you to know - I love you. I’m in love with you. I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what we are. But that’s it. Bye.
Click.
The album went on to sell like wildfire. Tour dates sold out. Critics said it was the best thing he’d done in a decade.
And here we were, still together. He showed up on my couch. Eyes heavy. Heart heavier. Reeking of sweat and devotion. Fuck, I was already back in love.
He said he had a proposition.
END OF LOG 10
To read the next log - Log 10.1 - click here.
