by H. L. Logan
Our Harmony
Pitch Perfect Book 3
H. L. Logan
Contents
Introduction
Summary
1. Kendra
2. Melany
3. Kendra
4. Melany
5. Kendra
6. Melany
7. Kendra
8. Melany
9. Kendra
More from H.L. Logan
Preview: Lost Hearts
1. Chrissy
2. Lucy
3. Chrissy
4. Lucy
Copyright © 2017 by H.L. Logan.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This story has been adapted from a book previously published as Heartbeat by Harper Logan.
Introduction
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Summary
“My life was definitely smack dab in the middle of a monsoon season.”
Life for Kendra Ellings has been on a downward spiral. After walking in on her boyfriend with another woman, Kendra finds her ability to play the drums vanishing into thin air, and with it her scholarships to Beasley University’s prestigious music school. In a last ditch effort to rediscover her mojo, Kendra decides to try busking in the streets—a decision that brings her face to face with the gorgeous and flirtatious businesswoman who will change her forever.
What is it like to feel that passionate about something?
For Melany Crawford, routine is king. Her strict discipline and willingness to sacrifice everything for her business—including love—earned her millions at an early age. Now, Melany can’t help but feel like something is missing. When a projectile drum stick brings a sexy street drummer into her life, Melany thinks she might’ve found that something—or someone.
She was just a one night stand. I don’t even really know her.
Their night of passion was never supposed to be more than a one-time fling, but now Melany can’t get Kendra out of her head. How can Melany, the entrepreneur who’s never been in a relationship in her life, convince Kendra to give her a chance? Will Kendra be able to get over her fears and find love and music again?
1
Kendra
They say when it rains, it pours. If that’s true, my life was definitely smack dab in the middle of a monsoon season.
I stared up at the weekly schedule tacked on the cork board in the restaurant’s back room, counting and recounting my posted hours. They couldn’t be right—I’d only been scheduled for two shifts that week, a drastic cut down from my usual. That was only six hours of work. Even with tips, that was barely anything. I was scraping by as it was, so how the hell would I afford rent now? Or food?
My co-workers, who were also gathered around to look at the schedule, grumbled to themselves and shuffled away. It seemed like I wasn’t the only one who had time cut.
I know exactly when my monsoon season started, and like any decent monsoon, the rain came down hard right from the get-go. It was seven months ago when I decided to take a spontaneous weekend trip back home from Rosebridge to Manchester to visit Max, my then-boyfriend. I showed up at the bar he played gigs at—Max was a bassist—and I hoped to give him a surprise in the back room. Only, it was me who got the surprise. I burst in, a big bottle of our favorite Belgian beer in my hands, and there he was on the couch with his dick in some groupie’s mouth.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget the way he reacted. How his eyes barely widened, and how he said “Kendra, what are you doing here?” so nonchalantly as he continued to sit there, making no effort to stop what was happening. The girl doing the sucking looked my way and actually started going harder—slobbering, gagging, the whole deal. She was putting on a show, like this wasn’t the first time they’d been walked in on in the back room.
For a brief moment, the bottle of beer felt disturbingly close to becoming a deadly weapon. Instead, it exploded on the ground next to my feet and I was out the door without looking back. I don’t know if I’d ever felt such intense rage and sadness all at once. I was never going to go back to that town.
Max and I met in our high school orchestra class. I was a drummer who also played timpani percussion, and Max was a bass guitarist who also played the upright bass, and we decided to form our own rock band with some friends. Things between Max and I started to become more than friendly, until eventually we were officially boyfriend and girlfriend—our firsts. I can’t remember who was the one who initiated it, but after being cheated on, I started wonder why I’d been with him in the first place. Max wasn’t super attractive or anything. He was a good musician, and that’s probably why I’d felt something for him, but honestly, I wasn’t that even into guys in the first place. Had I loved him? I thought I had, but now I wasn’t so sure. Now I wasn’t so sure I even knew what love was.
After that, the rain continued to pour on my sad little life.
It felt like all of my focus went completely out the window. My grades dropped in all of my general ed classes, and drumming, something that’d always come so easily, now felt distant and unnatural. I couldn't keep tempo. I couldn’t focus. I kept fucking up even the most basic rudiments. Dr. Adler, my drumming mentor and the man I respected the most at Beasley University, told me I was losing it. I failed the class and got put on academic probation. I lost my scholarships. At the end of the last fall semester, I was forced to drop out.
And now, four months later, my work hours were slashed. It rains, it pours; monsoon season.
I stuck my head into my manager Herschel’s office and cleared my throat to get his attention. He looked up from a laptop surrounded by receipts and paperwork. “Hey, Kendra,” he said, pushing up his glasses and smiling weakly. “I know why you’re here.”
“What happened, Herschel?” I asked. “Two shifts?”
“Everyone had to take cuts. You’ve seen how slow things have been the past two months. It isn’t getting any better. I’m doing all I can to keep everyone on staff.”
“You’re thinking of letting people go?” I asked, shocked.
He sighed. “I shouldn’t have said anything. Just keep your fingers crossed that things pick up.”
“Herschel, I can’t lose this job.”
“If it were up to me, we’d all get raises and I’d make it rain hours,” he said. “But it’s not up to me. Anyway, you do realize you’ve missed a lot of work the past few months? And you’ve had a problem mixing up orders—I see you zoning out sometimes. What happened, Kendra? What’s going on with you?”
I winced. “Nothing is going on. Just some personal stuff.”
Herschel eyed me. “Well, nothing is happening yet. But really, Kendra? Little bit of life advice here. If you can’t afford to lose a job, then don’t wait until things hit the fan to try and secure it, hm? I’m a nice guy, but there’s only so much I can do when Mr. Miyaguchi steps in.” Mr. Miyaguchi was the place’s owner.
His tone pissed me off, but there wasn’t an excuse I could give that wouldn’t have been a blatant lie. It was true—I’d been screwing up at work. It was probably a lucky thing that I hadn’t been let go already.
“Right,” I said, nodding. “I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks.”
I turned to leave.
“Kendra, hey. I don’t mean to come off as a dick. Just keep your shit together and I’ll do what I can,
if the time comes, alright?”
“Thanks, Herschel,” I said honestly, and went out to start my shift.
If I lost this job I’d be absolutely screwed, but even as it was, I couldn’t count on fate or luck to get me more hours. If this was how things were going to go, I wouldn’t be able to afford living in my apartment. There was no way I was going to leave Rosebridge. There was no way I was going to go back home to Manchester to live with my dad.
I would choose life on the street over that.
I need to make more money.
This was a wakeup call. I had to get my life back on track. I had one area of expertise. Could I get back on the drums? I hadn’t been able to sit at a drum set in months. I fell apart when the sticks were in my hands. But what else could I do?
When I got home from work that night, Monica, my roommate, was on the couch deeply involved in a video game. “Fucking son of a bitch! I’ll fuck your mom, asshole. I’ll pee in her fucking butt.” She pulled off her headphones and gave me a wave. “Hi, Kendra,” she said pleasantly, her tone doing a complete flip. “How was work, my dude?”
“Fucked,” I said. “My hours got cut. Can we talk?”
“Give me five minutes. Let me just fuck these noobs up, and I’ll be right with you.” She slipped her headphones back on.
I went to my room and changed out of my work clothes, then went to the bathroom to wash my face. I let my hair down from the ponytail I liked to keep it in, and brushed it out. What am I going to do? I thought, looking at myself in the mirror. My eyes had bags underneath them. It seemed like all I’d been doing was sleeping these days, but I still felt tired.
I had to get back on the drums. It was the easiest way I could make money. If I could get back on the drums. If I could play, then I might be able to find a gig in a band somewhere, or at the very least, give lessons.
Lessons.
The thought literally made me feel sick. How could I even think about giving lessons when I couldn’t even stay in school? How could I give lessons when Dr. Adler said I wasn’t any good anymore? It just wouldn’t feel right to charge anyone to learn from me.
I splashed some cold water onto my face, trying to fight away the sickening despair that always seemed to be lurking in the back of my mind. I was doing everything I could not to break down crying.
Deep breaths.
When I went back out to the living room, I found the couch empty except for Monica’s headphones, and I could hear the microwave going in the kitchen. I sat down on the couch to wait for her to come back. In the opposite corner of the room from the couch sat my drum set. Covered up by one of my bedsheets, it looked like some unwanted troll wrapped up in rags, banished to the corner. I stared at it, and found my pulse starting to beat faster. Shit, I was getting anxious just looking at my drums.
Drums had been a part of my life since I was young, and they were probably the one thing my parents did right for me. I was immediately drawn to the way they made me feel physically when I played them, not only the impact that the sound had on my body, but the energy that welled up inside of me as I found the rhythm.
They were the perfect way to let out the frustration I felt from my parents’ constant fighting. I could drown out the noise of my dad’s drunken curses. I didn’t have to hear about my mom’s infidelity, or the walls getting smashed and dishware breaking. I could just exist in my own little world, drumming away in the garage. It came to the point where I hardly missed a day drumming. It’d become a part of me. Starting in fifth grade, I always had drum sticks tucked into my pocket or my backpack. I joined the marching band and the school orchestra. I was good—damn good—and everyone at my school knew it. People who didn’t know my name still knew me as “that drummer girl.”
Having such an integral part of who I was suddenly crumble away felt devastating. No, beyond devastating. The drums had been my refuge, but after Max, everything just went weird. I couldn’t do anything without seeing that scene in the bar replay in my head. My drumming just wasn’t the same after that, even after that memory had stopped haunting me. And after Dr. Adler told me I was losing my touch… well, I really did lose it. I couldn’t pick up a pair of sticks without having a low-key panic attack.
The microwave beeped, and Monica came back to the living room with a plate of pizza rolls. “You want one?” she asked, sitting down next to me on the couch.
“I’m okay,” I said. “I ate at work.”
“Right on. Must be nice, getting to eat Japanese food for free every day.”
“It’ll be twice a week now. They cut my hours.”
“Ow, fuck, that’s hot.” She covered her mouth and spat out a steaming, half-chewed piece of pizza roll. “Son of a god damn monkey fuck, that burned my mouth. Shit! They cut your hours? That’s fucked up. What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. But I’m already digging into my savings as it is. I’m worried. I don’t know how I’m going to afford rent if things stay this way.”
“Damn,” she said, making another attempt at the pizza roll. “You need to get a second job, like, now.”
“I know,” I said. “Any ideas? Do you know anywhere hiring?”
“Why don’t you give drum lessons? You never play anymore. It sucks that you dropped out, and shit. You were awesome at playing.”
The word “lessons” made me shiver. “No, I don’t think I could give lessons. Not right now.”
Monica raised an eyebrow. “Alright. It’d be easy money for you, you know.”
“I can’t even play.”
“Look, you gotta do what you gotta do. Just make sure you get the rent check to me at the end of the month, alright? I honestly don’t get why you’re so choked up about your drums and shit. I know you had some shit go down with your ex, but that was months ago.” She set the plate down and licked pizza sauce off her fingers. “Kendra, I know I ain’t the picture of productivity and like, success and shit, but come on. I remember when you moved into this place, I thought to myself, ‘damn, this bitch has things together.’ What happened? You need to snap the fuck out of it.”
“Hey, I’m trying, alright?” I felt defensive.
“I know we’re just roommates, but I’m worried about you. You know what? You should go to the Riverwalk. There’s a bunch of restaurants and shit down there. Maybe one of those places will be hiring. But I’m telling you, drum lessons are gonna pay way better.”
“I’ll figure something out, Monica,” I said. “I just wanted to let you know what’s going on.”
“For sure, my dude. You got this. You’re smart.” She held the plate up to me. “You sure you don’t want a pizza roll?”
“I’m good.” I stood up to go back to my room.
Monica picked up the headphones and controller from the couch to continue her game, then she held up her hand to stop me. “Oh, Kendra! I know!”
“What?”
“Fuck the restaurants at the Riverwalk. People go down there all the time to play music. Buskers, you know? You could totally do that and blow everyone’s cocks off. I can guarantee you the people walking around there will have never heard a Beasley-trained, award-winning drummer before.”
“That is a good idea, but I can’t sit in front of a drum set without having a panic attack. That’s the big problem here.”
“Then screw the drum set. You know what I do sometimes when my kill to death ratio in Rise to Duty starts to get all fucked?”
“No,” I said.
“I go reductive. I don’t play it anymore. I go back to the games I used to kick ass at when I was a kid. The simple shit. Maybe you need to do the same. Like… you could get some pots and pans and beat on those instead. I’ve heard you play; people would still drop money to see you bang on a pot.”
Street drumming on pots and pans. I’d honestly never considered doing that. I had watched a lot of street drumming videos before, and it had looked like a lot of fun. Would it make a difference? “I’ll give it a shot,” I said. “I guess I ha
ve nothing to lose.”
“Exactly.”
“Thanks, Monica,” I said. She smiled and raised her fist for a fist bump, which I returned. My drum set continued to leer at me from the corner in the room, but something about the idea of street drumming on a makeshift set of drums wasn’t triggering my anxiety. I would try it. Regardless of what happened, I needed to find a second source of income within the next few days. The end of the month was coming up, and if I couldn’t pay, I’d be out of here.
Frankly, I’d been hoping that Monica might’ve offered to cover my rent for next month. I felt shitty about it—I’d never been a freeloader in my life—but I felt like I was nearing my wits end. After the fact, I was glad that she hadn’t. She had, however, given me the second wakeup call I needed.