by Sienna Blake
Thank God for mid-semester break. All the students had gone home, leaving the college empty. I had one week where I was freed from my teaching duties and the inevitable interruptions, questions, and insipid flirtations.
And from her.
Having the college basically to myself meant that I didn’t have to wait until the night time to take over one of the recording studios and remain undisturbed.
I dropped my pencil onto the sheet and rubbed my face. It was past midnight and I was in one of the recording studios. I’d been working on this song for hours and I still couldn’t get it right.
It was about a girl who’d come back into a boy’s life when he wasn’t expecting it, bringing up all old regrets and pain.
It had nothing to do with Ailis Kavanagh.
Nothing.
My stomach growled, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten since…lunchtime. I stood up, stretched, and headed out the small studio in search of something to eat. Nothing on campus would be open. I’d have to grab a greasy takeaway from one of those all-night joints nearby.
My boots echoed off the corridor as I walked through the dim, using my phone as a torch.
A light coming from under one of the doors up ahead caught my attention. No one should be here.
As I got closer, I could hear the muffled sound of someone playing a guitar. And singing.
The hairs on my arms rose. I’d recognise that angelic voice in my sleep.
I stopped at the door and as quietly as I could, I turned the knob and pushed it open just a crack.
Inside the practice room was Ailis, seated alone with her guitar cradled in her lap. She was facing the door but was so engrossed in her song she didn’t look up. Her beautiful face was open, her emotions exposed, hair falling down over one of her shoulders, eyes lowered, sometimes squeezing shut when her emotions were too much for her to bear.
I recognised the song in an instant.
“She”.
It was the song I wrote for her all those years ago.
One that I’d wanted to use on this record but dismissed because there was something about it that I couldn’t get right.
She moved into the chorus and I flinched. She’d altered it. Used the essence of the melody that I’d created but tweaked it, adding flare and trills to places I’d never thought to place them.
That was Ailis’s secret talent. When she felt a song, she instinctively changed it, rearranged it, improvised just like some of the greatest, most natural singers did, like Ella Fitzgerald.
She was feeling my song. And she was turning it into something…magical.
A feeling grew in my chest, that buzz that I got whenever inspiration took hold. I knew what I needed to finish this record.
39
____________
Ailis
I was meant to go home over the midterm break. But instead I disappointed my parents and stayed in Dublin, determined to go into the practice rooms every day and work on my singing.
You have the most raw talent, the most haunting voice of anyone I’ve ever met.
To see you shortchange yourself makes me so fucking mad I want to break something.
I wasn’t doing for Danny. I was doing it for me.
I held my guitar in my lap and closed my eyes, pretending I was up onstage again back in The Jar, the lights shining down on me, the crowd crammed around the stage, all eyes on me.
I began to play, just chords to start with and a few riffs. The crowd faded in my mind, the only person left standing there was Danny. My fingers moved of their own accord and I recognised the song he once wrote for me flowing from my fingers. I began to sing.
Really sing.
In the safety of this silent room, every single emotion I’d felt when we were younger poured out of me, memories lighting up my heart like fireworks. All the while Danny watched me from the invisible stage in my head. I told him everything I felt. Then and now. I exposed my soul to him.
I could almost feel his eyes on me in a quiet, shocked study.
I could almost smell his cologne on the air.
I moved into the chorus; before I knew what I was doing, I was improvising and adding bits that felt right. Like a dancer who had gone off script, I allowed the inspiration from within to guide me. Like a child chasing a butterfly across a field.
This song was draining me, sucking all these complex feelings for Danny from every dark place that I’d hidden them. At the same time the energy coursing through my veins made me feel like I was flying. Like I was invincible. Immortal.
Until I opened my eyes.
To find Danny standing there at the door.
I gasped, my fingers freezing on the guitar, cutting off all sound.
Oh God.
What was he doing here? How long had he been standing there? How much did he hear?
“It’s rude to eavesdrop, you know,” I said.
Yes, I know eavesdropping was meant to be about listening to someone else’s conversation. In a way it had been a conversation, although one-sided. That song, his song, was my way of talking to the boy I used to know.
Danny took a step farther in, closing the door behind him. Tension swelled up to fill the room, his nearness already causing sweat to pool at the base of my spine.
He just watched me, a humbled look on his face. I wasn’t used to him looking at me like that. If he just scowled maybe I’d feel more comfortable, more on familiar territory.
I stood. “You want the room? Fine, I’ll go.”
He raised a hand as if to motion me to stay. But he didn’t speak.
The longer the silence, the more embarrassed I became, the more pained and scared at not knowing what he thought of my rendition of his song. The song he wrote for me so long ago.
“Say something?” I snapped.
“That…” his eyes were softer than I’d seen them in a long time, “was fucking beautiful.”
Despite his cursing, his words were like liquid, warm and soothing, slipping through the cracks of my armour to melt my defenses. My heart tugged, remembering how sweet he used to be to me. I suddenly recognised the young boy I once fell in love with.
No. I didn’t want to remember the good in him. I didn’t want to think that a piece of the old Danny was still in there. It was easier to just hate him. It was easier when I thought he hated me.
I shuffled. “That might be the first real compliment you’ve paid me.”
“Take it. It could be the last one you ever get.”
I let out a small laugh and nodded. “Then, thank you.”
“I forgot how natural you are. How instinctual you get when you get your hands on a piece of music.”
“Dear God, two compliments in one day. Danny, don’t exert yourself,” I said in a sarcastic voice to cover up my shock.
He smiled a little.
“I want to offer you a special project,” he said, appearing to choose his words carefully. “It would be…great for your career.”
“What kind of project?” I asked cautiously. Danny hadn’t been nice to me in a long time. Why would he start now?
“I want you to work with me on my album.”
My brain shorted out. He wanted me to what?
“I-I’m not a songwriter,” I stammered. The only songs I’d ever written were when I wrote with Danny, and I barely contributed anything.
“I’m not asking you to write anything. I just want to give you what I have already and let you…” he waved his hand, “play around with it. Alter it. Rearrange it. Improvise with it, whatever inspires you. That’s all.”
“You want me to play around with your songs?”
He nodded. “I’d give you a writing and composition credit on the album.”
Oh my God.
A credit on an album. On his album. This was major. So friggin’ major I could scream. This could set my career up.
His eyes softened. “Be my muse, Ailis.”
I sucked in a breath.
I had been his muse
once. Then he rejected me, broke my heart into a million tiny pieces. Even now my heart was just a jumbled, taped-up ball of those broken pieces. I would not survive if he broke it again.
“No.”
He frowned. “Fine. We’ll work out a small royalty cut, too.”
My eyes bulged out of my head. He wanted to pay me a cut for it too. His album could sell millions. Even if I got a lousy one percent…that would mean thousands of dollars.
No, I couldn’t. He was not going to screw around with me again. I wouldn’t let him.
“Thank you for the offer,” I said slowly, “but I’m going to have to decline.”
Shock flashed across his face. “Excuse me?”
“I can’t accept your offer.”
His lips pressed together in obvious displeasure. “Can I ask why you’re refusing to work on a project that any other student in this whole fucking college would sell their mother for?”
I swallowed hard. Was I making a mistake? Was I throwing away an incredible career-altering opportunity? The chance to graduate with credits on an album. The opportunity to earn royalties, money I sorely needed.
I reminded myself of the pain he caused me. I reminded myself of how hateful he’d been. And of the fragile part of me that was still desperately in love with the Danny I used to know.
Nothing good could come from spending all that time with him.
“I think it’d be a bad idea to work…with you,” I admitted.
“Why?”
“Because, you and I…” I waved between us, “we don’t like each other.”
“I like you just fine.”
Liar. “Well, I don’t like you.”
He snorted. “Everyone likes me.”
No, it wasn’t that everyone liked him. They wanted to be him. Or just plain wanted…him.
Me included. I promptly told that stupid voice inside me to shut up.
“We can’t go five minutes in a room together without you insulting me.”
His eyebrow twerked up in amusement. “I’ve been here for five minutes. Haven’t insulted you yet, have I?”
“The night is still young,” I said through gritted teeth.
“In fact, I paid you a compliment. Two, actually.”
“For which I am grateful and still convinced that you were abducted by aliens and replaced with some sort of cyborg.”
He let out an amused snort. “Your imagination has always been a wonder to me, Dearg.”
“There.” I pointed at him.
“There, what?”
“An insult.”
“What insult? I complimented your imagination.”
I frowned at him. “You called me Dearg. I hate it when you call me Dearg because I know it means something bad.”
He rolled his eyes. “So I won’t call you Dearg anymore. Do we have a deal?”
“No.”
He strode forward, grabbing my upper arm so I couldn’t get away. “You’ll do this.”
I lifted my chin. “You can’t make me.”
His eyes flared, wild with what looked like desperation. “If you do this special project, I’ll bump your grade up to an A. If you don’t…” I’ll fail you. He didn’t have to say it.
I froze.
“That’s blackmail,” I squeezed out of my throat.
He shrugged. “Take it or leave it.”
I closed my eyes, unable to stand his gaze on me anymore. Unable to maintain eye contact with him. His eyes were always too intense, like looking directly into the sun.
Still, I could smell him, his musky cologne and the smell of his leather jacket. I could feel the heat rolling off him, the intensity all too much.
Danny O’Donaghue had always been too much for this world.
Too much for me.
But I had no choice.
“Okay,” I said, trying to ignore the feeling that I was sealing myself into my own tomb. “I’ll work with you.”
40
____________
Danny
For the thousandth time today, I asked myself what I was doing locking myself in one of the college recording studios with Ailis Kavanagh. Why was I forcing her to work so closely with me? Forcing her to be alone with me?
What did I tell myself about staying away? What did I tell myself about no distractions?
Except she wasn’t a distraction. She had somehow become my muse.
I let out a frustrated huff, tapping my foot on the floor.
“The more you hover, the more nervous I get,” Ailis complained.
She was sitting on a stool in the centre of the soundproof booth, the microphone set up before her mouth and another one positioned at the height of the guitar’s sound hole.
“I’m not hovering,” I said as I stared over her shoulder to the rough piece of sheet music I’d placed on the stand before her.
I was hovering. Truth was, I was nervous. I’d never shown anyone—not even Rickie—a new piece in its early draft. Here I was asking Ailis Kavanagh—my kryptonite—to play it.
She swung her head around to face me. “At least give me some space,” she said. “To breathe,” she added in a mutter just within my hearing.
She was right.
I shouldn’t be in this room with her.
I should be as far away from her as possible.
I let out a huff and glanced once more to the pencilled sheet music before her. I should have made a copy of it. It was my working version, in pencil, marked over in places, lyrics missing, chords unfinished.
“Don’t ruin the sheet music,” I growled. “It’s my only copy.”
I spun on my heel and walked out of the soundproof booth into the recording studio adjoining it. The studio and booth were separated by a glass window so Ailis and I could see each other.
I sat at the sound deck and leaned against the edge of it. Through the window Ailis watched me, her attention on me rather than the music or her guitar resting on her lap.
I grabbed the hanging microphone in the booth and pressed the talk button. “Whenever you’re ready.”
She nodded. I watched her delicate shoulders relax as she curled over her guitar, the side of her wide-necked sweater falling off one shoulder, her hair piled on her head exposing her pale neck, a stray lock falling down over her forehead, pink lips pursed as she studied my song.
I had never seen anything more beautiful.
41
____________
Ailis
I went through the verse and chorus in my head to familiarize myself with this song, a slow rock ballad.
The speaker in the wall crackled.
“Any time today, Dearg,” Danny’s voice came out.
I ignored him. If he wanted me to help him, I was going to do it my way, take my time.
This time I played through the chords on my guitar, running my eyes over the lyrics, hearing them being sung in my head in Danny’s voice.
It was a song about taking chances, a poetic plea for us all to live in the moment, to not let life pass us by. The lyrics made something twinge in me. Especially these lines:
If I shall, let me do so now,
For I may never walk this way again.
Lyrics had always been Danny’s strength. But he was right; something was missing from the melody.
“Ailis,” Danny’s voice came through the speaker, “I want to hear the lyrics being sung as well.”
Damn him. His stare was relentless, even through the glass. Even with him being in the other room, I felt it pressing against my skin.
“I can’t sing…” in front of you.
“You can.”
“But my stage fr—”
“There’s no one here,” he said, frustration colouring his voice. “Now sing.”
“You are here.”
Through the glass I swore I saw him roll his eyes. “You sang perfectly in front of me the other day.”
“That’s because I didn’t know you were being a creeper and watching me,” I snapped.
His lips twitched up slightly at one corner. He was amused. I amused him.
Asshole.
“Just try. Please.”
Please. I couldn’t remember the last time he asked nicely.
I began the intro again. When the lyrics kicked in, I opened my mouth. My voice came out in tune, but weak and stunted, straining against the tightness in my throat.
It didn’t matter. Nothing would help. He was watching me and I couldn’t sing properly.
I heard him sigh loudly through the speaker. “Stop.”
I opened my eyes, the backs of them stinging with disappointment. I told you so, I wanted to say.
“You had no problems singing before,” he said.
“Yeah, well, things change.”
“When did this problem start?”
I didn’t want to tell him.
“Ailis?”
“Can we just move on?”
“No.”
Dammit. I knew Danny. He was as stubborn as a damn mule. He wouldn’t let this go until I told him.
“My stage fright started that day in the lecture hall,” I finally admitted.
I didn’t need to elaborate. Through the glass I watched the realisation sink into his face. I only got stage fright around him. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.
“I didn’t realise that I…” he cleared his throat. “Then it’s all in your head.”
That stung.
“Close your eyes,” he said.
“Why?”
“Just do it.” His voice softened, “Please?”
Please.
The moody bastard said please.
He never said please. Least of all to me. I was so stunned that I did what he said.
“Pretend you’re alone,” he said, his deep voice breaking through into the darkness behind my lids, “just like you were that day in the music room.”
“I can’t see the lyrics.”
“Sing something else. Sing…‘She’.” The song he wrote for me long ago. The song he caught me singing.
I rolled my eyes despite my lids being shut. “I can’t. You’re here.”
“That’s why it’s called pretend. Forget I’m here.”