by Elle Greco
“Herbal tea with honey,” I said to the woman, who started ringing up our order.
“I’ll have an Americano,” he said, pulling out his wallet, which hung from a long chain attached to his belt. “Your throat okay?”
I smoothed my hand down it and shrugged. “Fine. Just not used to doing so much vocal work.”
“You should look into voice lessons,” he said.
My blood went cold. Voice lessons? How bad did I sound? No wonder Sage had looked like a combination of perplexed and annoyed throughout the entire recording session.
Johnny caught my deer-in-the-headlights look. He cupped my chin and swept his thumb along my cheek. “You sounded great, doll. Angelic, even.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Angelic” wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for, but I guess it was better than tone-deaf.
“I only meant that you should get some lessons to strengthen your vocal cords. No sense in putting all this work into a solo career just to watch it crash and burn from a vocal injury.”
“You’d have a great point if I was going to have a solo career,” I said as he took his credit card back from the cashier. “Thanks for the tea.”
“You’re a cheap date,” he said with a wink.
Why the hell was he being so nice?
We made our way to the end of the counter to wait for our drinks. “But what are you doing cutting an EP if you aren’t going for a solo career?” he asked.
“Johnny, I just needed some cash. Rafe hooked me up with Bobby so I could sell some songs to his other artists,” I said. “I didn’t expect Bobby to make me part of his artist roster.”
He shook his head but added a grin, which crinkled his eyes. He’d always had a devilish smile. It was one of my favorite things about him. But now it made me uneasy. All day, he’d been a different Johnny than the one I dated. Kind. Attentive. Unusually patient in the studio, even when Sage had told him his rhythm was off. The Johnny I knew would have blown up at a comment like that. Maybe it was because it had been coming from Jamie Sage? Or maybe he’d grown up?
“It was a smart move,” he said. “The songs are good, Jett. Better than good, to be honest. And they are songs that you should sing yourself.”
The barista deposited our drinks on the counter. We grabbed them, and I followed him to a small table in the corner.
“Why do you say I should sing them?” I asked as we settled into the seats.
“You write from the heart,” he said. “It needs to be you. You bring the soul.”
“Thanks, I guess,” I said, blowing on my tea. “Too bad Jamie Sage doesn’t feel the same way.”
“What do you mean?”
“He spent the entire recording session scowling at me from the booth.”
Johnny laughed. “That’s just Sage. If he was unhappy, he would’ve walked out. Trust me. I heard shit got ugly fast when he walked out on a certain diva from the Bronx.” I smirked and focused on dunking my tea bag. “Look, this is some of the best music to come out of En Fuego in a long time. Don’t sell yourself short.”
Well damn, that was nice of him. And very unlike Johnny.
I eyed him warily. “You wouldn’t just be bullshitting me for old times’ sake?”
He winced. “Ouch.” I lifted an eyebrow and took a tentative sip of my tea. “Okay, I deserved that. I was a shit to you.”
“Are you apologizing?” I asked, keeping my voice low even though the place was empty.
“No,” he whispered back. “Maybe I was an asshole. But you were going on the road with Rogue, and they picked your little sister as their drummer. Over me. I don’t know. You’d be pissed too.”
I paused, the paper cup touching my lip. “I wouldn’t have taken it out on you.”
He met my eyes. “I needed to grow up.”
“Did you?”
He nodded. “I learned a lesson or two.”
“Right,” I said, setting my tea on the table. There was an awkward silence between us, begging me to fill it. So I did. “But you’re a working musician, that’s cool.” And… I sounded like an idiot.
“So are you.”
“I’ll feel that way when I deposit my first check,” I said. “Now I’m broke and crashing on Rafe’s couch.”
“You need a place to stay?” he asked, placing his hand on top of mine on the table.
“Johnny—”
“I’m asking as a friend, Jett, no strings.”
I bit my lip to hide a smile. “I found a place.”
“Yeah?” he asked.
“Tiny studio. Near here.”
“Decent location.”
“Yup,” I said. “The place is small but was just renovated. Good closet.” My grin got bigger. “I’ll be out of Rafe’s hair. He can go back to his regular life.”
“He can’t live the heathen lifestyle with you on his couch?”
“I had to give up Nikki and Dion’s couch because their heathen lifestyle bled through the thin walls,” I said, my face burning at the memory. He twisted his face in feigned shock, and I laughed out loud. “Look, I don’t mean to sound like a prude, but it was just way more information than I needed.”
“Best to get out before Rafe gets sick of his celibacy,” he said with a squeeze of my hand. I gave a noncommittal shoulder hitch, since Rafe’s celibacy in his apartment ended last night.
“So I’m good,” I said. “But thanks for the offer.”
He released my hand to cup my chin, tilting it to meet his gaze head-on. “I did you wrong, and if I could take it back, I would. I don’t have a lot of regrets, but letting a good woman go like I did is top of the list. You were it for me, Jett.”
“Johnny,” I said, jerking my face out of his fingers. “It was a while ago. A lot’s happened, and we’re both different people now.”
“I’m a better person,” he said. “Let me prove it.”
“Look, Johnny, you don’t need to prove anything,” I said, my eyes darting around the café. This was a conversation I did not want to have. “What time is it? We should get back.” I scrambled to my feet, the chair sliding back from the table with a loud scrape on the concrete floor.
Johnny stood up with me. “I didn’t mean to upset you. All I meant was we’re good together musically. Like Buckingham and Nicks. So let me play with you. We’ll do this band thing, and the rest… well, where it leads, it leads.”
His hand snaked around my waist, and my spine stiffened.
That was it. All this. The nice Johnny. The kind Johnny. The different Johnny, the one who’d “grown.”
That was all bullshit.
Johnny was ambitious. He was playing me so he could play with me.
The bell on the front door jingled, and I stilled because I didn’t want to make a spectacle. Johnny dipped his head down and whispered in my ear, “I just need you to know, I should have done right by you, and I regret it, deeply. Been regretting it for a while now.”
God, he was laying it on thick.
“Johnny…” I said.
“In my defense,” he started, and his hand splayed along my lower back, his fingertips touching the top of my ass. “Honey, seriously. I was stupid—”
I reached behind me and grabbed his hand, lifting it away from my rear end. “You’re still stupid, Johnny.”
He chuckled, but I wasn’t being funny.
“The past few months have put a lot of shit into perspective,” he said. I tried to walk away from him, but he stopped me with an arm around my shoulders.
“Johnny, come on,” I said, adding an eye roll. I hiked my shoulders up, but he only latched on tighter. “Jesus, Johnny, let go.”
“Not until you listen to me, Jett.”
“I don’t need your arm around me to listen.” This time I twisted my body, but his fingers were like sticky tentacles.
“I don’t blame you for the eye roll. Hell, I’d roll my eyes too. But—”
“She told you to let her go,” Rafe’s voice snapped over the music, electrifying t
he room. My breath caught as Johnny twisted me into his side, moving his arm from my shoulders to my lower back, his hand splayed on my hip.
“What’s up, Rafe?” Johnny asked, extending his free arm out to offer a hand to Rafe. Instead of a bro-shake, however, Rafe yanked Johnny toward him with such force that Johnny dropped his arm from around my body.
“I said she told you to let her go,” Rafe repeated. “But you didn’t.”
Shit.
Rafe looked like he was ready to rip Johnny’s head off. As much as I would have loved to watch Rafe coldcock Johnny, I still needed the asshat in the studio.
I stepped back from the two of them and began grabbing my things from the table. “Look, Rafe, it’s no big deal. We gotta get back to the studio. That Jamie Sage… he’s a taskmaster.” The sound of my false laughter echoed in my head.
“Frieze, it wasn’t all that long ago that you stepped out on Jett,” Rafe said.
Oh shit. Here we go.
“Rafe, let’s leave it alone,” I said.
“I was the one sitting with her on the tour bus while she cried her eyes out.”
Goddammit. Rafe was on a roll.
My face burned from both humiliation and anger. No one, I mean no one, wanted their ex to know how bad their rejection had burned. I sure as hell didn’t want Johnny Frieze to know that he had made me cry.
“Seriously, Rafe. Drop it,” I said through gritted teeth.
“And now you have the audacity to put your hands on her? When she told you to back off? It’s like you like making her cry or something.”
“Rafe, I was handling it,” I snapped.
“A piece of shit like you does not get to touch her,” Rafe kept going. “You should not even look in her direction.”
“God, Rafe, I said I was handling it.”
Rafe rounded on me. “It looked to me like you were handling jack shit.”
“Rafe, dude.” Johnny turned to me, his face a mix of shock and what appeared to be genuine concern. “I didn’t mean—”
“Oh no, you meant,” Rafe said. “And now you think you deserve another shot with her?” He jerked his head toward me. “You’re gonna have to go through me first.”
Johnny’s back stiffened at the threat. His hands balled into fists. “Is that so?”
They started circling each other, pushing chairs out of the way.
“You three need to step outside or I’m calling the cops,” the barista barked from behind her espresso machine. I looked over, and she was holding up her cell phone, the numbers nine-one-one dialed and her thumb hovering over the green phone icon.
“Yeah, we can take this outside,” Rafe growled.
“I look forward to kicking your ass on the sidewalk,” Johnny postured.
I looked between the two of them having their adolescent face-off in the middle of a coffee shop. They claimed to be fighting about me, but it was like I didn’t even exist anymore.
Assholes.
“That’s it,” I snapped. “You two go out on the sidewalk and measure your dicks. I’ve got an EP to finish.”
I turned on my Doc Marten booted heel and stalked out of the café. When I reached the door, I tossed them a middle finger for good measure before storming out. The barista applauded.
24
“We got it,” Sage said into my headphones as my acoustic guitar strummed the last chord. I glanced up at him and saw, for the first time today, his toothy grin. He had a beautiful smile. “I think that’s the best track on the EP.”
I warmed at the compliment. After over ten hours in this small box separated from Sage by glass, it was the most—and the most positive—feedback I’d received from him about the recording session.
I opened my mouth to respond, but he cut me off. “Hold up, I’ll come in.”
I nodded and removed my headphones. Sage turned to Johnny, who was slumped on the couch in the control room, and said something that made Johnny slump farther into the cushions. Rafe stood sentry beside Sage, his arms folded across his chest. His expression was stone, totally unreadable.
After I’d stormed out of the café, Rafe and Johnny had followed close behind, bickering the entire way. To say that Sage had been unhappy with what had followed me into the studio was an understatement. He was so livid that he’d made both guys stay in the control room while I cut the final song as an acoustic.
This was my punked-out girl power anthem.
It was not a slow acoustic jam.
Since I’d run out of patience before I had even exited the café, by the time we got to the studio, I had a diva meltdown that would’ve made Presley proud. I’d only stopped short of collapsing in a pool of tears because not crying was a point of pride.
After I’d pulled my shit together, I apologized to Sage—a move that was definitely not Presley-like. Then I did the song his way, without recording it, just to try it out. And I’ll be damned if it didn’t sound good. By the time we started recording, we only needed two takes before Sage declared it would be my first single released to radio and on streaming. While we waited for Bobby Gee to crawl his way through the LA traffic, Sage had had me lay down a third take just to be on the safe side.
Sage bounced into the recording room just as I stepped into my boots. His face, which had been dialed in at “scowl” the entire day, was now beaming.
“Jett, girl, third time’s the charm,” he said, sweeping me into a bear hug. I yelped and waved my arms helplessly as he lifted me out of my untied boots and off my feet. “I’m stoked we did the third take. It was fierce.”
“Yeah?” I asked when he put me down after a fast spin. I rubbed my hand along the front of my neck. “I thought my voice was rough.”
“You were a little raw, but that’s exactly what the song needed,” he said. “I don’t want you to sound like fucking Auto-Tune. You are the real deal. It was Joplin-esque.”
My brows launched nearly into my hairline. Did he just compare me to Janis Joplin?
I glanced at the engineer booth again. Johnny had disappeared. Rafe had Sage’s headphones on, taking in every word. He gave an agreeing nod then winked at me, and my stomach warmed.
“Bobby’s almost to the studio,” Sage continued. “I’m playing that track first—”
“What about the others?” I asked, biting my lip. “Did they suck?”
He laughed. “Suck? They were great. Why?”
“You just didn’t seem that enthusiastic until the last song.”
“I was waiting for this one. The others are terrific—radio friendly but with that edge, your edge. But I needed the one that would hook the listeners right away. That one song that would turn listeners into fans, fans into superfans. I think we nailed it.”
I nodded and pretended I knew what he was talking about. My eyes tracked back to the booth. Rafe was gone. I ignored the lead weight that settled in my belly and turned my focus back to Sage.
“Bobby will want to sort out a music video release for YouTube. Get that done fast so we can push forward with the tour,” he said.
My arms crossed over my chest, and I closed my eyes. Great, exactly what I didn’t want to do, another tour. And this one without my sisters. And, God forbid, with Johnny on drums?
Sage was observing me, reading the deflation in my body language. “We need to build support in key cities,” he explained. I tried to mask my disappointment with a smile, but it wasn’t lost on Sage. “Toronto, Austin. You’ll play in LA. We should talk about Seattle too, since you’ve already been there with Satan’s Sisters. Fly you in and out.”
I swallowed down my childish superstition about musicians using planes while on tour. He kept going. “You’ll open for one of Bobby’s established acts, so you don’t have to worry about carrying the venues.”
During Sage’s explanation of flights and tours and opening acts, the door to the sound booth had opened and Rafe had slipped into the room. His eyes tracked my face, and his mouth shifted into a frown.
“You good with
this, Jett?” he asked, leaving the door behind him open. When I didn’t respond, his eyes narrowed.
Sage turned, and his back straightened when he saw Rafe’s tight expression. “Rafe, you know this is how the game gets played.”
“Yeah, the thing is, Jett’s usually not down with the game,” he said. I opened my mouth to interject, but Rafe kept right on rolling. “She didn’t approach Bobby to play the game. She approached him because she thought he’d take her seriously as a songwriter.”
“Um, I didn’t approach him,” I mumbled.
“From where I’m sitting, it looks like he does,” Sage said. Guess he didn’t hear me.
Rafe’s face turned to thunder. “From where I’m sitting, I see you molding her into something she’s not.”
“We just recorded an EP,” Sage snapped. “How the fuck do you deduce that?”
“You approached him,” I said to Rafe, louder this time. Both pairs of eyes snapped to me.
“Jett, listen to me,” Rafe started.
I took a breath and continued, “No. You approached Bobby about me. I never approached him. I was looking for a job. An auto parts store or a diner or a coffee shop.”
“An auto parts store?” Sage asked, his eyebrows knitting together in confusion.
“Can you excuse us for a minute?” Rafe asked. Sage crossed his arms and didn’t budge. “Please? It’s a family thing.”
He dropped his arms and nodded, then stalked out of the studio, unhappy.
When the door shut behind Sage, I launched back in, pointing my finger at Rafe’s chest as I advanced on him. “You made the introduction. You set up the meeting.”
“I thought this was what you wanted.”
“I wanted a job, Rafe. I wanted to pay my tuition. I’m sick of crashing on couches. I want to go back to school.” My voice rose. I was on a roll. “Yeah, I want to write songs. But I do not want to go out on tour again, by myself, without my sisters. My band.”
“Jett,” he said, his voice low. “You’ll have all that.”
“Jesus, Rafe! I thought you of all people would get it!”
“Get what?”
“I’ve been on the road most of my damn life. Never settled. Never had a home. Shitty hotels, crappy tour buses, busted down vans. You know what I learned? I was not built for van life, Rafe. Then Vince came into our lives.” My voice got thick, and I forced the tears back. “And now Presley has fucked all that up in the way only Presley can fuck things up, and that is royally.” Rafe’s mouth twitched. My hands clamped on my head, and I pulled my fingers through my hair, yanking them through my mass of snarly curls with a measure of violence. “It’s not funny, Rafe. Because now I’m unsettled again. And I can’t. I can’t do that again. Shitty hotels. Out on the road. I can’t. That’s not the life I want.”