by Morse, Jody
Well, I supposed the part of me that had always hoped for a put-together family had given up, because now I found myself watching couples.
I watched as a middle-aged couple walked across the street. They each carried a briefcase in one hand, but their free hands were intertwined in one another’s. When they reached the sidewalk, the man kissed the woman on the cheek and the two parted ways.
Another couple jogged alongside one another. I mean, he could’ve been her workout buddy or something, but the way they glanced over at each other with loving looks in their eyes told me there was something more there. My best guess was that it was the start of a blossoming romance.
I continued to watch out the window until the doorbell finally rang. I glanced at the time. It was 9:15.
I rose to my feet and hurried to open the door. Colton stood on the other side looking… well, impeccable. He was wearing a tight black shirt which showed off his muscular arms, and a pair of jeans. His guitar case was slung over one shoulder and he balanced a coffee cup in his hand.
“You’re fifteen minutes late,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, well, this girl I know just insisted that I bring her coffee from Giorgi’s. It was practically an emergency. I hope you can find it in you to forgive me,” he said, straight-faced.
I frowned, playfully pretending to consider it for a moment. “I guess I’ll let it slide this time. Come in.” I held the door open wide enough for him to enter the room.
He stepped inside, his eyes darting around my apartment. “This is a cute little place. I looked into renting at this complex a couple of years ago.”
Thankfully that hadn’t happened. I couldn’t imagine what it would’ve been like to be his neighbor after our one night stand. Working with him sucked enough, but it was only temporary. I couldn’t imagine having to bump into him daily and being forced to see, firsthand, how frequently he hooked up with people.
“Yeah, it’s okay,” I said, taking my coffee cup from him. “You didn’t get anything for yourself. Would you like something to drink?”
“Do you have water?”
I nodded and grabbed him a bottle from the fridge. “I work in my office. I hope that’s okay.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, it’s fine.”
I led him down the hallway. Once we were both inside my office, I closed the door behind us. I motioned for him to take a seat on the sofa, while I grabbed my own guitar from its case and sat down in my office chair.
“So, how do we do this?” I wondered aloud. It was the first time I’d ever worked with anyone before. I had my own songwriting process, but it was pretty solitary. I didn’t even know the first thing about how to start working with someone else.
“Damned if I know.” He shook his head. “We should probably set some ground rules first.”
“Rules?” I narrowed my eyes at him. If I wanted someone giving me rules to follow, I would’ve gone back to high school.
“Rule one…we both need to agree on the lyrics. I’m not one of those sell-out musicians who will record any song. My motto is that you should write what you know. I need to feel a real emotional connection with the lyrics and stand by their meaning.”
“Me, too,” I said, breathing a slight sigh of relief. I was glad we were on the same page with this so far and that his first “rule” wasn’t anything too crazy. I’m not gonna lie; I hated following rules so much that I had a tendency to break them.
Knowing Colton only wrote what he knew or felt also made me realize something. If I wanted more insight to him as a person, all I needed to do was go back and listen to all of his albums. I made a mental note to add that to my to-do list later on. God, I was such a creeper.
“The second rule is…,” Colton said, pausing as he set his guitar case on the floor in front of him. “We both need to make equal contributions with these songs. I know they’re going to be going on your album, but I’m not going to attach my name to them if you do all the work. And if I’m doing all the writing, it’s not going on your album, period. Everything we do needs to be fifty-fifty.”
“Okay.” I nodded in agreement, even though I had a feeling I would probably struggle with this rule a little more than the first. I was going to somehow need to get past the idea of doing everything my way if we were going to make this work, but I’d known that when I’d signed up for this.
“And the last rule.” He met my gaze and held it there for a moment. “Don’t fool yourself into thinking that any of my lyrics will be about you. They won’t be.”
Chapter 9
That third rule really threw me off-guard. At first, I just stared at him in disbelief.
And there was King Douchebag, showing his royally misinformed self. Why would he assume I’d think his lyrics were about me?
Once I made it past the point of speechlessness, I finally managed to say, “Trust me, I won’t. You shouldn’t fool yourself into thinking any of my lyrics will be about you, either.”
“Oh, believe me…the idea that you would write songs about someone else has never crossed my mind.” The amusement swirled around in his eyes as he spoke the words.
I looked away from him, trying to hide my annoyance. It was clear he was making a jab about my last album. Part of me wanted to yell at him and another part of me wanted to punch him in the face, but staying civil and, ultimately, just letting it go won out.
I reminded myself that arguing over anything would accomplish nothing. I couldn’t piss him off so much that he wouldn’t want to work with me. I just needed to brush every little obnoxious comment he made off my shoulders and be the bigger person.
“Good. Now that we’re both clear on that, let’s get to work,” I finally said.
He leaned back on the sofa. “I guess we need to figure out what our first song should be about.”
A girl who wants to punch a douchebag in the face? That was an issue I felt a real emotional connection to at the moment.
I bit down on my lip. “Well, I guess that, ultimately, almost all songs are love songs.”
“So, you want to write a love song with me?” Colton stared at me with an amused look in his eyes. “Why, Viola Pierce, we haven’t even had our first date yet, and you already want to skip ahead to our break up song.”
“Not all love songs are break up songs,” I pointed out.
“When you’re writing them, they are.”
I tried really hard to keep my glare to myself. I was pretty sure he’d gotten the tail end of it anyway.
I sighed. “I didn’t say it had to be about us. Writing a love song with you, of all people, isn’t exactly on my bucket list. But we want a song that will actually sell and it’s not like we can write a song about Kermit the Frog and have people actually like it.”
“I’d like it.”
I snorted. “Because you’d be writing it.”
“I bet there’s someone out there, somewhere, just dying to hear a love song about Kermit and Miss Piggy.”
“Okay. Well, Chinese food then. No one would want to hear a song about Chinese food.”
“Hey, don’t brush that idea off. It worked for the band that did that song about the Chinese chicken. And I do love me some Chinese food.” He strummed his guitar, nodding to himself. “I can work with it.”
I sighed. “Are you always this difficult to work with?”
“Me?” He raised his eyebrows. “Here I am approving every idea you fling my way and you call me the difficult one?”
“Do you really think Sesame Street would make a good love song or are you just being agreeable to get out of here ASAP?”
“Okay Princess, what’s your idea of a good love song?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Kiss the Girl.”
He nodded. “I get it. The little crab has a sexy voice. I’d do him.”
I hoped he had crabs.
Wait, nevermind. Because then I’d have crabs. Ew.
“That wasn’t the point of the song. Sebastian wasn’t trying to get wit
h Ariel.” Why was I getting so frustrated about a Disney movie? Ugh, he really brought out the argumentative side of me.
He shrugged. “It’s all about interpretation.”
“Well, your interpretation is wrong.”
His blue eyes gleamed with amusement. “And let me guess. Your interpretation would be right?”
“Yes, because it’s everyone else’s interpretation, too. You’re the only weird one who would see it that way.”
He shrugged. “Maybe we just watched a different movie.”
“I hope you won’t apply that logic to our songwriting. Our fans will get a disaster love song.”
“Well, there’s a solution to that.”
“What?” I asked with raised eyebrows.
“We could just fall in love and then write our breakup song.” He shrugged. Then a smile spread across his face. “Just kidding. You’d twist it around and make everything my fault.”
This time, I didn’t even bother to hold back the dagger eyes. “I’ve never done that to anyone.”
“Mmhmm,” he murmured. “Anyway, we’re getting off topic.”
I wanted to grill him about what he was talking about, but I didn’t. I let him continue.
“We need to find something about love that we can both agree on,” he said. He paused for a moment with a thoughtful look in his eyes. “Why did your last relationship end?”
“I don’t actually know,” I admitted.
His eyebrows knitted together in surprise. “Really? It’s not because he went to jail?”
“Jail?” I narrowed my eyes at him. Did he know something about Jake that I didn’t know?
“Well, yeah. He killed you… except, I assume he didn’t succeed, since you’re sitting right in front of me. But he apparently tried to kill you and that’s why you wish a thousand deaths upon him.” He shook his head. “Poor guy. Sounds pretty fucking painful, if you ask me.”
The anger was boiling over now, and I was beginning to understand why everyone thought Colton King was a douchebag. He was.
“For your information, he disappeared without any explanation.” Saying it aloud for the very first time put into perspective what a douchebag Jake really was. Clearly, I had an emotional connection to multiple douchebags. Maybe D-Bag should’ve been the title of one of our songs.
“Wow. You got ghosted.” Colton stared at me a moment longer, clearly still surprised. “I’m sorry. That actually sucks.” Then he added, “No wonder you have so much song material from it.”
I glared at him. “Why did your last relationship end?”
“The better question would be why it didn’t end,” he said with a laugh. “She had some serious issues.”
For wanting to date him, I’d have to agree. “She did, huh?”
He laughed. “Serious trust issues, just to be clear. I would be on tour and she would just call and text me all day long asking where I was or what I was doing or who I was with. I just couldn’t handle it. I’d rather be alone than have someone who needs to be in constant contact with me.”
“I know that feeling all too well. I hate the clingy types.” On second thought, I realized I was the clingy type. I’d sent Jake a text message every day since we’d broken up. I knew it was a pretty obnoxious habit of mine, but I hadn’t been able to help myself. I was just crazy like that.
Well, not really. I didn’t act that way with everyone I’d broken up with. Jake just made me crazy.
At that moment, an idea hit me. “Actually, I think we might be able to work with this!”
“Yeah?” He eyed me curiously, waiting for me to tell him my idea.
“Why don’t we write a song about someone’s phone being blown up?” I suggested.
He considered it for a moment and then nodded. “Yeah… yeah, I think I like this idea. I have more than enough personal experience to put into it.”
We had experience from both angles, but I wasn’t about to confess to that.
He scanned the room. “Do you have something we can write it on?”
I grabbed my songbook, relieved that I’d burned everything that had been written in it already. The last thing I needed was for him to find more songs I’d secretly written about Jake. I was sure he already thought I was pathetic enough as it was.
Grabbing a pen from my desk, I handed them both to Colton.
“Do you write lyrics or melodies first?” he asked, opening the book to a blank page.
“It all depends. Whichever comes first,” I replied with a shrug. Like I said, I had a writing process that was entirely my own. It was nearly impossible to explain it to anyone else.
“Well, it’s easier for me to write a melody first. It’s just how I work,” he explained. “Once I have that down, the words usually come on their own.”
“Okay,” I agreed with a shrug. Picking up my guitar, I began to strum the chords for a few moments. From across the room, he did the same, our melodies so out of sync they got lost in one another.
We continued to goof off for a while until another idea hit me.
“Why don’t we begin it like this?” I asked.
Colton stopped playing as I played a few notes for him. I repeated them so he could hear them again.
He nodded. “Yeah, let’s go with that. I like that.” His fingers moved over his own guitar strings as he taught himself the melody. Then, he added a few notes of his own. He glanced up at me. “What do you think?”
“Sounds good,” I agreed.
And so we fell into a pattern; he would come up with a few notes and then I would add a few of my own.
Surprisingly, working with him so far wasn’t too bad. The melody came effortlessly and I was pretty sure Jimmy would be happy with what we had done with it so far. It was pretty upbeat and with the right lyrics, I was positive it would be one of those catchy songs you just can’t seem to get enough of.
After we had the melody completed, Colton glanced up at the time on the wall. “We just spent two and a half hours working on this.”
“Wow.” Time apparently flew when you were having… fun. Wow, I’d just admitted to myself that I’d had fun with Colton King—and it was the type of fun two people had when they were both fully clothed. Who would’ve thought that could ever happen?
We both put our guitars back in their cases and then stepped out into the hallway. As we headed for the front door, Skylar was just stepping out of the bathroom. Her hair was wet and she had a towel wrapped around her body.
“Oh, em, gee,” she squealed when Colton came to a stop a few feet away from her. “You’re Colton King!”
“It’s nice to meet you.” He bit his bottom lip, obviously trying to suppress a laugh. Then, his eyes darted over at me as he added, “Viola didn’t mention she had a roommate.”
“Well, I do,” I replied with a shrug. I knew I was probably overreacting, but his comment sort of annoyed me. He made it sound like he knew everything there was to know about me, when really that wasn’t the case at all. He didn’t know the first thing about me.
“Yes, she does and her roommate thinks you’re amazing,” Skylar blurted. “I love all of your songs—especially ‘Fly Away With Me’.”
“Thanks. I’m glad you like it.” He smiled at her. “I really need to get going, though. It was nice meeting you.”
“Not as nice as it was to meet you,” Skylar cooed, batting her eyelashes at him flirtatiously, before she headed into her bedroom.
I narrowed my eyes at her back in annoyance. Did she not realize she was flirting—or whatever it was she was doing—with the guy I’d slept with? She couldn’t go there with him if she wanted us to stay BFF’s. It was just basic Girl Code to never go after a guy your best friend was involved with first.
At least, I assumed that rule applied to one night stands, too. I’d never really been in a situation like this, partly because I didn’t have many girlfriends but also because I’d never had a one night stand. All I knew was if Skylar was the one who’d had the one night st
and first, I wouldn’t have gone there.
At the same time, I knew I couldn’t really blame her for the way she’d reacted too much. It was nearly impossible to be in the same room as Colton without wanting to drop your panties. He was just that hot. It was a fact.
“Are you free to write again at the same time tomorrow?” Colton asked, glancing over in my direction.
“Yeah, sure,” I agreed with a shrug. I figured we would take a day off in between sessions, but I was already starting to adjust to the routine of seeing him every day. Plus, the sooner we got this over with, the sooner we would be done with each other for good, I reminded myself again.
“Okay, cool. I’ll see you then.” He took a few steps toward the front door. I stared at his back until he slipped out into the hallway, closing the door behind him.
Skylar came out of her room a moment later wearing a pair of terry cloth shorts and a tank top. As she headed into the kitchen, she said, “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“How did it go?” she asked, as though the question should’ve been an obvious one.
I thought about it for a moment. Arguing with the asshole aside, we’d actually come up with a really cool melody. That had to count for something.
“It went good… surprisingly good, actually.”
Chapter 10
For dinner that night, Skylar and I went to Ricardo’s Pizza, which had always been one of our favorite afterschool hangouts. We ordered a “pig pie,” which had to have been the greasiest, most fattening pizza ever. It was covered in way too much cheese, bacon, sausage, and pepperoni.
Screw what my trainer, Manny, thought or what those girls at Ambrosia’s had said about me being chunky. With all of the stress in my life lately, I was pretty sure I deserved a couple of slices. I’d worry about burning off the thousands of calories later.
We chose the same booth we’d always sat at in high school. I immediately glanced at the wall where, years ago, Skylar and I had written: VP & SK were here.