Nashville Boxed Set #1-3

by Bethany Michaels

  “No, it’s just a few boxes and a couple of bags of boring clothes.”

  I slid off the stool. “Hang on, I’ll give you Syd’s old key.” I dug in my pocket and pulled out my lucky Elvis head key ring. “Give me your keys.”

  Dillon stood up and pulled out two keys on a cheap plastic keychain imprinted with an insurance agent’s name and number and handed them to me. I transferred the extra key from my ring to his and handed them back to him. “There. It’s official.”

  He smiled. “Guess so.”

  “I’m going to head back and clear my junk out of Syd’s old room for you.”

  “See ya at home, then.”

  I headed for the door and threw a look towards the bad boy with whom I’d made mental plans earlier. He raised a pierced eyebrow. I gave him the “another time” wink and felt his eyes on my ass all the way to the door. Damn, he’d be hot, no doubt. My pulse quickened just thinking about what hidden body parts might also sport piercings. But finding a guy for sex was easy. Finding a guy I liked who wouldn’t eat all my Doritos and hadn’t seen me naked was almost impossible.

  Chapter Two

  By the end of the first week, I was convinced I’d made the right decision in asking Dillon to move in with me. By the end of the first month, I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it sooner. He was neat and quiet, he always paid the bills on time, and he never tried to cop a feel.

  He also volunteered to do the cooking, which was fine by me since the extent of my culinary expertise was peanut butter-and-banana sandwiches and microwaved lasagna. If I had known living with a nice, boring guy was so great, I would have hit the nearest electronics store years ago and picked myself up a houseboy or two.

  It was nice not having to worry about the money, too, even though I was working a lot at Blue River studio down on Music Row and making decent money singing demos.

  It wasn’t always easy work, though. Those creative types were so insecure. One minute they think they’re the greatest thing since latex lingerie and the next minute they’re ready to slash their wrists over a misplaced chord.

  A lot of songwriters who hired me were egotistical assholes who thought they were the next big thing and that as soon as their demo hit the streets, Tim McGraw and Kenny Chesney would be throwing down in the alley outside the studio to determine which of them got to record that sure-thing number-one hit.

  Right. If you think some of the songs on the radio are bad, you should have heard some of the shit I got to sing. Sometimes it was hard to keep a straight face long enough to hit the right note.

  Writers were freaking picky, too. I could sing the same lyrics fifty times the same way and still, the fifty-first was what they were looking for. They might accuse me of being half an octave off what was on the sheet music, when I was damn sure I wasn’t. Some days were a real test of my limited tolerance for jackasses.

  I adjusted the headphones over my ears, wet my lips, and took a deep breath, preparing for take number fifty-two. I closed my eyes and waited for the music to cue up. I didn’t even need the wrinkled-up lyric sheet at that point and I knew my voice wasn’t going to hold out much longer.

  “Okay, Becca, from the top again. Let’s try it with the new bridge just to see what happens this time.”

  “Okay,” I said, smiling at Ryan, the cute tech behind the sound board. Loved the earring. He was getting desperate to please the jackass writer renting studio time today, and I’d help him out.

  “And try to stick to the lyric sheet this time,” grumbled the writer standing behind Ryan, pacing like his dick was on fire.

  I bit my lip. I wanted to say that I’d sung a million demos and I had a feel for what was going to hit and what didn’t have a prayer. This one was definitely prayerless even if it gave up sex and joined a convent. But hey, they paid by the hour, so really, what did it matter what I sang or how many times? It was their dime. I kept my opinions to myself.

  The twangy sound of the sappy broken-heart love song filled the earphones and I closed my eyes, mentally preparing to sing the song again. I had perfect pitch, which came in handy in my line of work. I let the music wash over me as the studio, the anxiety of the songwriter, even Ryan and his smokin’ hot earring all faded away. There was just the music and my voice.

  I took a deep breath and let my diaphragm expand, locked in my breath, then performed the song as if there were no audience. The music swelled in the headphones and I sang the stupid song, hitting every note, every lyric perfectly.

  When the music faded, I opened my eyes and looked through the window into the mixing room.

  “I think that was the best take yet,” Ryan said, giving me a thumbs-up.

  Jackass didn’t seem to agree. I saw Ryan arguing with the writer—silent, since the mic was off. He gestured towards me. The writer shoved his hand through his hair and finally nodded. I was gaining a reputation as one of the best demo artists in town and I was sure Ryan was pointing out this fact to Jackass. I loved it. Finally he threw his hands up and stalked out of the room.

  Ryan hit the intercom button. “Let’s knock off for today, Becca. Start fresh in the morning.”

  I ripped the phones off my head, fluffed my hair, and tossed the crumpled lyric sheet in the garbage can before strolling into the control room like a queen.

  I plopped down in the empty seat at the board. There were like a million and one slides, buttons, and red lights. I didn’t know how anyone ever figured out how to run this thing without electrocuting themselves, let alone how they actually made the music sound good. But talented engineers and producers did it time and time again.

  “What’s his problem?” I asked, reaching for my water bottle. My voice was getting a little raw and I took a cool drink. “I thought that last take was pretty good.”

  Ryan nodded. “It was technically perfect.”

  “Technically?”

  “You’ve got a great voice, Becca. You hit the note every time. Perfect rhythm. The bass undertone of your voice really is something I don’t see much and you always nail the faster, rockier tunes. But the ballads—” He shook his head. “There’s something missing.”

  I frowned. “I don’t understand. A song’s a song. I just sing what’s on the paper.”

  He nodded. “I think it’s that something extra Roger is looking for. Some connection to the lyrics that infuses them with genuine emotion. I mean, haven’t you ever fallen in love and had your heart beat to hell?”

  I took another swig of water. Clearly there was something going around today that had turned everyone in to wet tissues. All except for me. “Nope. And don’t plan to. Love is for suckers.”

  Ryan spun his chair towards me and his gaze moved over my body. “Oh come on, you don’t believe that.”

  I weighed the hour or so of hot sex Ryan’s gaze promised against the consequence of having to work with him afterwards. “Love makes you weak, makes you do stupid things. You give up all of yourself for the other person and he shits all over you before he walks out the door, taking your self-respect and most of your checking account with him.”

  Ryan sat back in his chair and looked at me as if I’d grown two heads. “Geez. Angry much?”

  I smiled, willing my blood pressure to return to a normal and healthy level. “I’m not angry. I’ve just seen what ‘love’ can do to a person.”

  “Point taken. So you don’t date? Ever?”

  I stood up, pulling my snug V-neck top down a little, showing more cleavage than the designer had intended. Ryan’s eyes followed the stretch of every fiber. “Date? No. I prefer hot, sweaty fucking. And maybe a quick bite afterwards.”

  The guy swallowed hard. Pure lust was thick in the air between us, and I considered locking the door and having a go at him right on the board, but some of those buttons looked kind of sharp and I was out of Band-Aids.

  I gave him a slow wink, picked up my purse, and sauntered out the mixing room door, knowing he was watching the way my hips swung from side to side, imagining hims
elf getting a piece of my action. “See ya tomorrow, Ryan,” I said, my voice having taken on a sexy, raspy quality from the hours in the studio.

  “Hey!” he called after me. “When am I going to get you in the studio to record your own stuff?”

  I ignored him and walked out the door. He hounded me about laying down tracks and making a record of my own, but I was perfectly happy trying to make other people’s dreams happen. I didn’t need all that pressure.

  I felt his eyes on me all the way to the door. I admit it: I liked that sense of power, that rush I got when I knew some poor guy being led around by his dick was totally under my power. Love? No way. I’d never give up my power for something as useless as an emotion that would look all sweet and rosy one day, then turn on me in an instant. I’d spent my childhood and half my adult life dealing with the aftermath of other people’s romantic debacles and wasn’t about to fuck up my own life, too.

  I headed down Division Street towards my apartment. I tried to forget what Ryan had said about the lack of emotion in my singing. Most things in life rolled off my back, but when someone said something about my singing, well, it didn’t roll off so much. The bad thing was that I didn’t really understand what he meant by the emotion thing. I mean, I wasn’t a method singer. So what if I hadn’t actually ever been in love? I’d also never lived in coal country. Did that mean I couldn’t sing a Loretta Lynn song?

  Nashville is miserable when it’s hot. Even in late September we’ll get a wave of Indian summer, as if it wasn’t enough to sweat from May to August. It’s such a cliché, but it really was the humidity rather than the heat that made it so unbearable. By the time I got back to my apartment, I was drenched with sweat. I stripped and slipped into a cool shower, letting the refreshing water sluice down my body and wash away not only the grime but my irritation as well.

  What the hell did a kid know about love, anyway?

  I toweled off and pulled on a cute little pair of boy shorts and my Love Me Tender T-shirt. I brushed out my shoulder-length dark brown hair and pulled it up in a high ponytail off my neck.

  It was dinner time, but it was too hot to eat, especially since my shabby apartment only had a sorry one-room air conditioner that did little other than suck the worst of the humidity out of the air and make a sick wheezing sound.

  I padded to the freezer and pulled out a carton of cookie dough ice cream I was sure had been there since sometime around St. Patty’s Day, sniffed it and, with a shrug, grabbed a spoon.

  I settled onto the crusty couch Syd and I had picked up at Goodwill and sweet-talked a kid to deliver for us in his pick-up truck after we’d first moved in. It was smelly, sure, and Dillon complained that the left cushion had my ass groove in it, which was probably true. But I didn’t care. I scraped the frost off the top layer of ice cream and flicked on Dillon’s TV.

  In the month since Dillon and I had shacked up I’d hardly seen him, except in passing. I worked during the early afternoon singing and usually had a catering gig or a hook-up that kept me out most of the night. Dillon, on the other hand, was an early riser. He headed over to the music store to open up the place and usually kept busy there working or giving lessons until he rehearsed with Road Kill or played a gig with them.

  I honestly didn’t know when the guy slept at all. He was a go-getter, all right. Me? Not so much. All I really wanted was a padded couch and a padded bank account and a hot hook-up every now and then, padded in all the right places.

  I turned on AMC and was tickled to see that Viva Las Vegas was on. Now, I might have had strong feelings about men and love and all that romantic bullshit, but if I did have one true love, it was Elvis Presley. The guy had a voice that sent shivers down my spine. And he was hot. Especially biker Elvis. I couldn’t even count how many times I’d watched the ’68 Comeback Special on VHS. Maybe I was like the girl in that Counting Crows song and all I really wanted was a boy who looked like Elvis.

  I sighed when my guy grinned at the girls, so young and sweet and sexy as hell. Goddamn, what I wouldn’t do to have been Ann-Margret for a day. I’d have nailed Elvis faster than he could pop a Valium.

  I put my feet up on the battered old coffee table, turned up the volume, and became totally engrossed in the silly little flick. I didn’t even realize Dillon had gotten home until I felt the couch dip under his weight.

  “Elvis?”

  I jumped a little, dribbling ice cream down the front of my top. I set the carton down, swiped at the droplet and licked it off my finger.

  “Yep. Now you know my dirty little secret.”

  “Well, the Jailhouse Rock teddy bear was sort of a tip-off.” He leaned into the cushions and put his feet up on the coffee table, too. “And the Elvis nightlight in the bathroom.”

  “Good point.”

  We watched Elvis sing a gyrate across the screen and I admired Dillon’s tolerance for the movie. Syd had never lasted more than five minutes without rolling her eyes and commenting how asinine these movies were. Sure, they were campy, but that was part of their charm.

  A commercial came on and Dillon picked up the remote and muted the volume.

  “So how was your day, dear?” Dillon asked, grinning.

  I swallowed my ice cream. It had been so long since someone had asked me that. Maybe never.“Fine, honey. Yours?”

  “Ugh. Rough. This one kid I’ve been teaching had a lesson today. Awful. No matter how many times I show him how to play C major, he can’t get it. Hits G major every time. But he keeps showing up every week and even though I feel bad about taking the money, I just can’t bring myself to tell the kid it’s a hopeless cause and he should spend the money on tae kwon do or something instead.”

  “Sounds lovely.”

  “Yeah. Then Rod got all mad at me because if the kid does get discouraged and quits, the store loses its cut of my fee.”

  “Asshole.” I offered Dillon the carton. “Ice cream?”

  Dillon took the carton. “Rod’s not that bad. He’s got people breathing down his neck, too.”

  “I can’t imagine anything worse than listening to bad musicians all day long.”

  “They’re not all bad. I have a couple of students who are really good, actually. Or will be.”

  “But they suck now.”

  “Sure, but sometimes it’s about more than the chords they hit. You can see that fire in them and you just know they’ll be the kids playing until their fingers bleed and then play some more because they can’t imagine anything else they’d rather do. Reminds me of myself at that age.” Dillon took a bite of ice cream and grimaced. “How old is this?”

  “Don’t ask.” I shook my head. “You sound like the guy at the studio.”

  “He’s afraid of food poisoning, too?”

  “No, he’s the tech who went all mushy on me today. He said that I…never mind.”

  “What?” Dillon sat up and looked at me expectantly, like he really did want to know what my day had been like. “He came on to you?”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell him. I mean it wasn’t like anything groundbreaking happened, but I just wasn’t used to spilling my guts to anyone, not even about stupid things.

  “Come on, I told you,” Dillon said. He took another bite of my ice cream.

  “It was nothing, really. He just said I sang this stupid sappy song like I’d never been in love before.”

  Dillon cocked an eyebrow. “Have you?”

  I instantly wished I hadn’t said anything. It was too weird. Too open. But Dillon, with his nice-guy persona and deep, engaging eyes, somehow put me at ease.

  “Oh, come on,” he said. “Surely there’s been one. Someone in high school? Maybe a boy who walked around with a guitar slung across his back and called you ’Cilla?”

  That made me laugh and released some of the tension knotting my shoulders. “Nope. Nothing but rednecks with a cheek full of chewing tobacco where I’m from. They might pack a hunting rifle from time to time, but no guitar. Had to come to Nashville for t
hat.”

  I looked down at the melting ice cream. “Did you love Hailey?”

  He thought for a moment. “No. Not really. I mean, I cared about her, but it wasn’t like were soul mates or anything.” He smiled. “There was a girl in college, though. Broke my heart. Totally sucked.”

  I wasn’t going to go there, so I honed in on the other thing. “College? I didn’t know you went to college.”

  Dillon nodded. “Emory.”

  “I barely finished high school and swore I’d never crack a textbook again. What did you study?”

  “Economics for my undergrad. Then I didn’t know what else to do, so I got an MBA.”

  I was impressed. I mean, I knew Dillon was smart, but I never knew he was book-smart. It fit, though. He did give off that college-boy vibe a good part of the time. I’d bet he was in some Kappa-Alpha-Beta-Zeta-type outfit, too. But sitting here and now on my ratty old couch, eating expired ice cream out of the carton, I couldn’t imagine him as an accountant or CFO in a suit and tie and behind a desk all day.

  “Sounds boring.”

  He cocked his head and smiled at me as if I’d said something really funny.

  “What?”

  He took the ice cream carton and took another bite before answering. “You’re the first person I’ve ever told that to who said that.”

  “What do most people say?”

  Dillon scooped out he last but of ice cream and held out he spoon. I leaned forward and sucked the cool sweet goodness into my mouth.

  Dillon set the empty container on the table. “Most people ask me what the hell I’m doing in Nashville playing dive bars, making less than minimum wage, when I could be making a fortune sitting in the A/C and telling people what to do with their money.”

  “Why are you?”

  “I wanted to do more than make money. I wanted to do what I love.”

  “What did you parents say when you told them you were heading off to Nashville?” I pictured an older couple, very uptight, very proper, snooty.

  “They were pretty supportive, actually. They knew I’d always loved music and when I started playing some of the college bars, they came to see me a few times. Actually, I don’t think it came as that big a shock to them.” He smiled. “They’re my biggest cheerleaders.”