Serenade Me: A Rockstar Romance (Rock Chamber Boys Book 3)

by Daisy Allen

  He stares at me, pupils locked on pupils for a moment, unwavering. Dead hard.

  And then he pushes off me, and is gone.

  Fuck.

  ***

  Meditation is not working.

  Yoga is not working.

  My chai latte that may or may not be generously spiked with rum is definitely not working.

  My brain is splitting in two knowing Anca’s sitting just a few feet away in front of me on our private charter plane, and Jez, just a few feet behind.

  He’s been staring me for the last few hours, I can feel his eyes boring into the leather of the seat. As if he knows every indecent thought I’m having and is just waiting for me to get up and declare it or ravish his sister right in front of him.

  We spent the day in Annecy rehearsing for our big concert in Nice tonight. Not that I could concentrate. I spent half the time telling myself that I couldn’t do this to my Jez, not after everything he’s done for me. Not just as a bandmate, but as a friend.

  Then I’d turn, and there she’d be, and with just a slight glance, my whole body would jerk alive. She’s only been a part of my life for a few days, and already I can imagine the whole future ahead with her.

  But I can’t do it.

  I can’t do it, Jez.

  So I sit here, torn between the two of them, body and mind in constant turmoil, staring straight ahead, until I can tell her. It’s got to end.

  “Fuck-a-doodle cock!” Dennis’s voice rings out from his seat in the back.

  “Whoa, calm down old man, you’ll have an attack… in that spot where others have a heart!” Brad jokes as we all get up and huddle around our manager.

  “Shush, B!” Hailey admonishes him before handing Dennis a drink, “What’s going on Dad?”

  “Just got an email from the guy on the ground in Nice. The theatre’s been shut down by some inspector. We’re out a venue tonight.”

  “Shit crickets!” Hailey curses, and I catch Jez’s eye as we both suppress a laugh; she sounds just like her Dad. For a moment he forgets and flashes me a grin, but it fades fast and his face turns hard and he looks away. The act makes my heart constrict and I physically feel ill. We argue and banter all the time, but even when we argue over something more serious it’s never something that stops us being able to communicate.

  “So – what do we do? Do we have to cancel?” Sebastian asks.

  Dennis sighs and looks up at us without answering. He looks tired and despondent. “They said there’s no way they can get the venue open in time for tonight.”

  I don’t need to look up at my friends’ faces to know that they’re all scrunched up like mine. The last thing we ever want is to disappoint our fans. We have the same memories of having saved and then lining up for tickets, traveling for hours to get to a town for a concert, only to go home, never getting to see your idols. Things out of our control happen all the time, but it doesn’t stop it from downright sucking.

  “Guys?” Anca’s voice cuts through the silence. “I think I have an idea. I’m not sure it’s doable but it might be worth giving it a try.”

  “Sure, spill it.” Hailey tells her.

  “Um…” her voice wavers and she starts to sound nervous. “Nah, it’s stupid.”

  I watch Jez out of the corner of my eye and see him go over to her, whispering quietly into her ear and giving her shoulder a squeeze.

  She opens her mouth and he nods, giving her some encouragement.

  “Well, um, I spent a semester in Nice in my junior year, and down by the beach they hold concerts all the time. There’s a stretch along the esplanade and I’m sure you can set up a basic sound system and there’s pretty much unlimited room along the beach there. My class used to perform there a lot, lunch time concerts and stuff.”

  “You did?”

  “Um… I… um, I didn’t personally. Um.” I catch her eye and give her a little smile which seems to calm her down a little before she continues. “But, er, my class and my bandmates did. I’m sure I could even give some of the local musicians a call. Maybe we could make a free concert out of it? Might be easier to get the city to agree to it then?”

  No one says anything, taking in Anca’s words. The silence grows for a few moments and then Hailey shoots to her feet.

  “You.” She points to Anca, who takes a step back in response.

  “Come ‘ere.” Hailey crooks her finger. Anca doesn’t move. Jez gives her a shove in the back after a pause and she falls towards the taller woman. “You freaking genius, you!” Hailey yells as she wraps Anca up in her arms and shakes her.

  “Uh… .ok… um… yup… it was just an idea…” Anca struggles to get out, suffocating in Hailey’s hug.

  “Hon… honey…” Dennis says, trying to pull her daughter away from Jez’s sister. “Let her go! We need her to help us get everything organized!”

  “Fine!” Hailey finally lets go of Anca, who stumbles back before Emily steadies her, giving her a big grin and wink. Anca burns bright red and my heart flutters at how she responds to the attention.

  I look away, accidentally glancing at Jez who scowls, probably from seeing me stare at his sister, and turns his head away quickly, folding his arms.

  “Well… ok! Let’s get this new show on the road!” Dennis springs to his feet, looking like a new man. “Hailey, you get onto getting permission from the city and Anca, come with me and let’s see who we can come out to this thing.” He gently leads her to the front of our chartered plane, talking a mile a minute.

  I sit back down in my chair and can’t help but watch as her face lights up as he asks her questions and ideas for the outdoor concert.

  Minutes fly by and I don’t even realize he’s sitting next to me until he speaks up.

  “She’s not like us.” Jez says, and I jump at the sound of his voice. I’m not really sure what he means, but I think he might be about to shed light on it. “She hasn’t been part of this… this world for the last ten years, like us. She’s not ready. She’s still… she’s still very young.”

  “She’s 21, Jez.” I’m not sure what I’m hoping my contribution will do.

  He just turns to me and looks at me as if I don’t understand anything.

  “That’s just an age. She’s… not ready. She’s… she’s gone through some stuff, had a rough childhood, with… you know.”

  I nod. I know how hard it was on him as well. “You brought her here, Jez.”

  “So I could watch over her. I didn’t think I’d have to be watching over one of my own bandmates as well.”

  He’s right. And being near Jez must be so good for her, I see the way he supports her. She must have missed that all these years she’s been at school and him on tour with us.

  He’s so right. And yet. I know I’m good for her as well.

  So I make a decision. A decision I hope doesn’t condemn me to hell.

  “Jez.” He turns and looks at me for the first time since he sat down. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

  He takes a pause before speaking. “You sure?”

  I take a breath and tell him what he needs to hear. “Yes. There’s nothing going on with us.” And then I heave myself out of the chair and disappear behind the curtain of one of the bed bays at the back of the plane before the acidity of the lie to my best friend burns a hole in my chest so big, it feels like my heart will fall out.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Anca

  It takes Dennis, Hailey and their team only minutes to come up with an entire strategy for the event. It is fascinating to me to watch them in motion. It’s enlightening to me to watch Hailey act with such poise, with such confidence. Dennis is firm with her, but leads with love and gives her every opportunity to make the decisions. At first, I think it’s because she’s his daughter. But then as we sit there on the plane, drawing up the plans, he never fails to ask for my opinion.

  “You’re the one who knows the place well – do you think this will work?” He asks about different aspect
s of the concert, and I can’t help but get swept up in all the excitement. The ease in which he instills confidence in me is so… unfamiliar to me, I almost get heady at the feeling of inclusion.

  The plane lands with a screech of the tires and I don’t even realize that the whole hour flight had flown by. Hailey gives me a wink as she steps off the plane, her phone already glued to her ear. I watch as the rest of the band file out, Seb and Brad drowsy from their naps. Jez stops by my seat, waiting for me to get up.

  “Ready, sis?”

  I smile up at him, I know he’s trying to ease the tension between us. I just don’t know whether it should be eased or not. Sooner or later, he’s going to have to realize, I’m not the same weak Anca anymore. I’ve grown. And he has to let me grow.

  “Ready, Jez. Just let me grab my jacket and I’ll be right out. You go first.”

  A frown flickers across his face, and he glances to the back of the plane before sighing and disembarking.

  “Marius?” I call out to the back of the plane. He doesn’t answer. “They’ve all gone. It’s just us. We’re meant to meet at the hotel in an hour.” Still silence. “I’m not leaving until you come out.”

  “Just go, Anca.”

  “You did hear me just say I’m not leaving, right? What part of our interactions in the last few weeks would give you the indication that I’m going to change my mind?” There’s a sigh and a rustle, and his head pokes out from behind the curtain.

  He adopts a blank look on his face. “Yes? What?”

  “I’m not going to talk to a floating head, Marius, come out.”

  “What part of our interactions in the-…” he starts mimicking me. And then stops and steps out from behind the curtain. His hair is ruffled, and he looks tired. And all I want is to hug him. Be near him. Bury my face in his chest. Tell him everything is going to work out just fine.

  “Let’s go – I want to show you something.”

  “Jez-..”

  “Shhh. Come on, everyone’s gone to rest at the hotel. We have some time. I have to tell you something. Please.” I hold my hand out to him, and my heart stops as I wait to see if he’ll take it.

  He steps forward and slides his hand into mine. And it’s like there was never a moment it wasn’t there.

  ***

  We take a car from the airport and it takes us along the pristine coast of Nice. The sea lays out in front of us almost like a canvas of blue oil paint. I have to stop myself from the urge to reach out and touch it, as if I can feel the soft ripples like dried bumps of paint under the whorls of my fingertips, instead of the warm, crystal blue waters of the Mediterranean. I press the button on the side of the door and the window opens to let in a soft, salty breeze, toying with the wisps of hair on the nape of my neck.

  It’s new. It’s all new.

  It’s been over a year since I’ve been back here, and the memories of that time comes rushing back. A time of complete confusion, of darkness. Seeing it now, it’s not like coming back. It’s like arriving somewhere new for the first time.

  We sit in silence for the twenty minutes it takes to get to our destination. I gesture to the driver to pull over to the side of the road and Marius gives me a funny look before following me out of the car.

  We stand like awkward figurines on the side of the road until the car drives off, leaving us finally alone.

  I spin, slowly, first 50, then 90, then 118, then the full 360 degrees.

  Taking it all in.

  The Côte d’Azur on one side.

  The shell of the abandoned church on the other. Grey rubble and errant weeds scattering the ground. We’re more than a mile from the center of town, but you can still hear the sound of cars dodging the tourists, sandals crunching along the pebble beach.

  “Where are we?” he asks after I don’t say anything for a few minutes.

  “My class had a concert here once.”

  “Here?” Marius looks at the ruins.

  “Yeah, we had lights set up and the performers brought their own folding chairs, it was standing audience only. For the last performance concert of the year.”

  “What did you play?” I don’t say anything. “Anca? What did you perform that night?”

  “I didn’t play anything.” I tell him.

  “I thought-…”

  “I said my class played.”

  Marius is confused, but doesn’t say anything.

  “I was supposed to play. But… but I couldn’t.”

  Marius looks up at me, understanding. “Was it… your first time? The stage fright?”

  “No, but… but it was the worst. I froze, and didn’t move for the entirety of the concert. Everyone was packed up and halfway home before I got up from my stool. Me and my harp, abandoned by the side of the road in Nice.” I can’t help but let out a sound I think is a chuckle. At the ridiculousness of the memory.

  “Oh, Anca. I didn’t realize your stage fright was that ba-…”

  “It wasn’t stage fright.”

  “But-…”

  “I call it that, because…it’s easier to explain. Than what it really was.”

  “What was it?”

  I take a breath. Tell him, Anca. He deserves to know. “It was, a completely and utter breaking down of every single ounce of self-worth, self-belief I ever had.”

  “Oh, Anca. By who?”

  “By my harp teacher.”

  “What?”

  “He… he called himself the Maestro, which is what we called him as well. He… fell in some sort of obsession with me. And he started telling me no one would ever understand my talent. That in their world, I had no talent. That people would laugh if they heard how I played. And that… he was the only person in the world who understood me.”

  “Oh, Anca…”

  “And the worst thing is… I believed him. I believed every single world he ever said. He was a brilliant harpist. The best I’ve ever heard. The best Jez had ever heard…”

  Marius’ head tilts at my brother’s name.

  “Jez… Jez found him for me. He hired him, when the teacher I then had said she didn’t have anything more to teach me. He found the… the Maestro, paid for him, got him transferred to London.”

  “Did he know? About… about what was happening?”

  “No. Not until much later. Until it was too late. I didn’t… I didn’t want to tell him what was going on. I guess I didn’t really understand it myself. But I didn’t want to seem ungrateful. Jez is a musical genius… he would know if someone was a good teacher for me or not. He must have thought this was the best person for me. Who was I to question it? So I didn’t.”

  “He couldn’t have known this.” Marius shakes his head.

  “I know. I don’t blame him. At all.”

  There’s a pause. And we both look out at the horizon. The sun is almost reaching its peak height in the sky and the glare off the water is blinding.

  “But he does. Blame himself.” Marius muses. He understands. Of course, he does. He knows Jez probably as well as I do. In some ways probably even more.

  “Yes. But he shouldn’t. He saved me. I mean, he literally saved me. Rescued me. Broke his hand doing it, too.” I grimace at the memory of taking him to the hospital, his knuckles bleeding, his hand swollen like a grapefruit. His hand, his livelihood. And him just smiling at me, like it was nothing. Like he would do it again for me, a hundred times.

  “Oh my god. When he broke his hand about a year ago when he disappeared for a week, that was… that was with you?”

  I nod. I don’t know how much they know about me, or what he told them about that.

  “We gave him so much shit about that. We had to postpone a tour for two months.”

  “I know. I felt terrible.”

  Marius starts pacing in front of me, his head shaking wildly, the memories coming back to him, finally making sense. “He was a mess. We all thought he’d been sleeping with someone’s wife and their husband had come home at the wrong time!”


  “Ha. No. He broke it being my hero.” I shrug. There’s no other way to describe it.

  “Yeah. That he is,” Marius sighs. “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “Because I thought you needed to know.”

  “About you, or about Jez?”

  “About us both. And why we are the way we are.”

  “And why we… you and me, can’t be the way we want to be?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No, just the opposite. After Jez got me away from the Maestro, it took me a long time to get better. I barely recovered enough to pass my senior year, but I did, because I just wanted to be done and start living my life. And when Jez offered the chance to come play with you guys, I didn’t know if I was going to be able to do it.”

  “But you did. And you’re killing it. You did it!”

  I shake my head. “No.”

  “No?”

  “No. I’m doing it – because of you. And only you.”

  “Me?”

  “You helped me. That first night. And then you kept helping. You literally taught me how to breathe again. And now I can play. I can finally do what I’ve wanted to do my whole life. Except there’s one small change. Now I want to play for you. With you. You’re the reason, Marius.”

  “Anca.”

  “So – as much as I owe Jez for saving my life. I owe you for giving it meaning again. For giving me the power to take my own destiny into my own hands again. I don’t want to lose that, Marius. And I don’t want to lose you.”

  He comes over and pulls me against him. And I’m home. “What do we do about Jez?”

  “I don’t know.” I really don’t. “But we will figure it out. Together.”

  “Together.”

  I lean my head on his chest, and the thump thump that meets me spells out everything I’m feeling about him too.

  ***

  “You’re late.” Jez scowls at me as he sees us walking into the band’s suite at the hotel together.

  “5 minutes!” I reply, every cell in my body already tensing at his mood.

  “5 minutes is 5 minutes. This is serious work, Anca. If you can’t be professional then you can’t be here at all. We’re not fucking around. A lot of people are relying on us.”