by Hannah Ford
Jake shook his head. “Let me explain a few things to you…”
“No, I’m done listening to you. For the last five days I’ve waited for you to get over this mood you’ve been in, waited for the amazing trip that you promised me, to finally start to happen. But then I realized, it’s not going to happen. You’re just going to sit around in your boxers and eat pizza and drink beer and watch shitty old movies.”
“The Godfather is not some shitty old movie—it’s a classic of modern cinema, and if you’d given it half a chance…”
“Jake, just stop,” she said, wearily.
He seemed to finally catch himself, running a hand through his unkempt hair and looking down, noticing the pizza stains on his t-shirt. “Shit,” he said, sounding suddenly tired and lost.
“What’s going on with you, Jake?” she asked, her voice softening. “What was that phone call about, the one you took the night we first got here? Ever since then, you’ve been different.”
Jake couldn’t meet her gaze. “My label—they dropped me, but they’re also suing me for breach of contract. It’s a fifteen million dollar law suit and they’re going to win.”
“Maybe there’s something you can do—“
“There’s nothing to do. I’ve committed career suicide, Raven. I’m finished.” He finally made eye contact with her, and she could see the pain there in all of its rawness.
“You said this was what you wanted.”
“I know what I said,” he replied.
“So you’ve changed your mind? You wish you’d gone on tour?”
“No, I don’t,” he answered, looking around the room. “But that life was the only way I knew how to live, it turns out. I guess maybe I don’t actually remember how to be any other way anymore. I’m broken.” He met her eyes again, daring her to say differently.
“You’re not broken,” she told him. “You just need to start searching for the new way, the new path.”
“I don’t even know where to start.”
She nodded toward the guitar on the bed. “Maybe you should start there.”
“What—play my old acoustic guitar by the fire? I don’t think that’s going to solve anything for me.”
She walked over to the bed and picked the guitar up again. “You told me that you pursued music because it was your dream—and then you let the label convince you to become a type of artist that wasn’t true to yourself.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, since you committed career suicide, you have nothing to lose now. You can make whatever kind of music you want, Jake. Nobody’s going to stop you.”
She handed Jake the guitar and this time, as he took it, he seemed to consider it thoughtfully. “I guess you have a point,” he sighed. “But I don’t know if I can change back to what I was.”
“It’s not about changing back to what you were,” she told him. “It’s about finding out who you’re going to become.”
* * *
Raven couldn’t believe how much had changed since yesterday morning’s big blow out.
Jake had taken her suggestion very much to heart, and he’d spent the rest of the day and night digging up copies of some of the old songs he’d been working on in the beginning of his career.
And then he’d practiced those songs, hour after hour.
Raven had sat transfixed, as Jake had sang and played a kind of music she’d never realized he was capable of or interested in playing.
At just after midnight, he’d asked her what she thought of his new material.
“I love it,” she’d told him, and it was true.
Jake had immediately gotten in touch with some musicians and a producer that he knew in the area, and they’d come to the house to help him record some demos.
Now, Raven was sitting on the black leather couch, watching as Jake and his fellow musicians set up to play his new material for the first time. In the control booth, the producer and his assistant were poised to begin recording.
She felt nervous for Jake, because he’d confided to her that playing this new stuff was much more nerve wracking for him then his popular material. It was much more personal—his lyrics were obviously more autobiographical and raw, and the songs themselves were vulnerable and emotional.
You can do this, she thought, willing Jake to hear her mental prayer for him. You have the heart and soul to make this transformation, Jake. I know you can do it.
Jake was standing at the microphone, the acoustic slung over his shoulder, strumming a few chords while the bass player tuned and the keyboardist ran his fingers over the keys.
Meanwhile, the drummer, in his separate walled-off room, rolled his drumsticks aggressively across the snare drum and pounded the bass drum a few times.
“We ready?” the producer asked into the intercom. He was young, brash, with a thick curly head of hair and a big beard that somehow made him look younger instead of older. His name was Hector Power, and apparently he was a big shot producer amongst some of the new, trendy young artists.
“Ready,” Jake said, nodding.
“Okay, then—let’s make some magic.”
Jake took a deep breath, as Raven leaned forward, her hands entwined, almost like she was praying, her chin resting on her knuckles as she willed him to feel the confidence that he deserved to have in his own songs.
He started to play, and the band kicked in aggressively behind him. As he sang, he looked uncomfortable, almost ill at ease in his skin—which she’d never seen before.
His acoustic guitar was overwhelmed by the other instruments, and his voice sounded somehow small, too.
Hector, whom everyone called “Hec,” was shaking his head, and he interrupted them about halfway through the song. “Jake, let’s start from the top, brother. We need more intensity, man. Let’s try and kick the energy up a notch.”
Jake nodded, but Raven could tell that he was losing confidence fast. His eyes were shifty, his body language was slumping. They started the song again, and then Hec interrupted them again, asking for more energy.
They ran through the song another five or six times, with Hec cajoling, asking for different sounds, different feels. Finally, Hec turned to his assistant in frustration. “This aint working,” he sighed.
His assistant, a skinny guy that looked even younger, was named Rory. He shrugged. “I dunno,” he said. “I think there’s something here—“
“No,” Hec said, impatiently. “We need to move on.” He leaned forward and hit the intercom again, speaking into his microphone. “Yo, Jake. Let’s try the next song, see what we got. Okay?”
Jake nodded once more.
But as they began running through Jake’s other material, Hec became increasingly impatient, shaking his head and muttering to himself.
Raven was getting upset too. She knew that the songs weren’t sounding very good, but she also knew that when he’d played them for her the previous night, she’d been amazed and moved by how incredible he’d sounded.
Finally, they decided to take a break.
Hector started rolling a joint, as Jake and the rest of the musicians came into the control room. Jake sat down in one of the chairs across from Raven, while the others sat on the couch or stood around. They were drinking beer, joking around lightly, but Jake was tense and hadn’t cracked a smile.
“What do you think, Hec?” Jake asked.
Hec licked the rolling paper, sniffed, raised his eyebrows. “Honestly?”
“Yeah, honestly.”
“I think the new stuff is garbage, man.” He continued rolling the joint. “I mean, it’s not grooving, it’s not alive—it’s just…” he shrugged. “It’s not hot.”
Raven clenched her jaw. She wanted to say something, but knew it wouldn’t look good to step on anybody’s toes.
Jake nodded, sighing, as if he’d been expecting this result. “I guess it was worth a try.”
“Look, bro, you need to come out hard, come out swinging—the new tunes are soft.”
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Raven glanced at Hec’s assistant, Rory, and saw that he also looked annoyed at what Hec was saying.
“What do you think, Rory?” she said.
Hec shot her an annoyed glance. “Rory aint paid to think. He’s my water boy, he just does my grunt work while he learns the ropes.”
The others laughed, except for the keyboardist, which Raven took note of.
“I’d still be curious to hear his opinion,” she said.
Rory fidgeted nervously before answering. “Well…I mean…I really liked what I heard. It just needed to be stripped down more, I think.”
“See what I mean?” Hec laughed, as he lit his joint. “That’s dead wrong. Dead wrong.”
“How so?” Raven pushed.
“Because,” Hec said, as he inhaled sharply, holding the marijuana smoke in his lungs before finally blowing a cloud out explosively from his lips. “Nowadays, the trend is towards more production, harder beats, more instrumentation—not less. The stripped down sound isn’t happening. Electronic music is the biggest music around right now—the hottest shit—and that stuff is the opposite of stripped down.”
Jake folded his arms. “So, you think I should scrap the new songs?”
“Look, man, it’s your call,” Hec told him, passing the joint to the bassist. “All I can tell you is that I don’t think this new stuff will bail you out of the hole you dug for yourself.”
Jake’s gaze hardened and Hec seemed to realize the blunder he’d just made.
“You think I’m trying to bail myself out?” Jake asked him.
“That came out weird. I’m just saying—“
“What are you saying?” Raven asked him.
Hec turned to her. “Look, I don’t even know who you are.”
“My name’s Raven.”
“Yeah? And what do you know about making music? Do you even play an instrument?”
“No.”
He rolled his eyes. “But let me guess. You’re a model, so that means you’re Albert fucking Einstein, Mozart and Jimmy Iovine all rolled into one.”
“I’m not a model, but I’m flattered you think I could be,” she smiled.
Jake stood up, his shoulders flexing. “Hec, you better get the fuck out of here before I see if I can put your head through this glass window. My bet is that I can, but we can always find out for sure.”
Hec stood up, his eyes wide, making him look like a sixteen year old boy as he backed out of the room. “Come on guys. He’s as nuts as they say he is!”
The rest of the group began filing out after him.
“Wait,” Raven said, touching the keyboardist on the arm. “Could you hang out for a second?”
He nodded, completely mellow, as if he saw this kind of thing every day, and sat back down again.
Rory was also leaving, but Raven stopped him, too. “Will you get in trouble if you stay here with us?”
The young guy considered it. “I don’t really give a shit,” he said, grinning. “Hec is a total asshole.”
“Good,” Raven laughed.
After Jake saw the others out of the house, he came back to the control room.
Raven stood up. “I think that guy Hector was an idiot,” she said. “I think he’s completely wrong about your songs. He doesn’t understand what you’re trying to do.”
Jake sighed. “Listen, it’s so amazing that you believe in me. But I just don’t think I can do this right now. My head’s just not in the right place.”
“Rory,” Raven said. “Tell us your honest opinion. Do you think Jake has good material here or not?”
“It’s good,” Rory told them. “It could be great. I don’t know, but I think we should try and figure it out.”
The keyboardist smiled. “This is some far out shit,” he laughed.
Raven looked at Jake again. “The songs you played for me last night—just you and your guitar—they didn’t sound anything like what was happening with that entire band in here today. It doesn’t need to have all those bells and whistles, Jake. It just needs you.”
He swallowed, his eyes seeming to get moist. But then Jake cleared his throat. “Okay,” he said. “This is how it’s going to be. Rory will produce and engineer these tracks, and Phil’s going to accompany me on some additional instrumentation. Phil, you can play most of those instruments, right?”
Phil chuckled. “I can do it all, man.”
“Good. Raven, you sit right next to Rory. I want you to listen, because I’m going to let you have the final say on how this stuff sounds and what we need to do. I’m going to depend on you to be my ears in there, okay?”
Raven’s heart leapt, but she just nodded calmly. “Of course.”
“Let’s get to work, then,” Rory said, clapping his hands.
And they did.
* * *
It was nighttime, but finally they’d finished for the day and Rory and Phil, the keyboardist, had left.
Raven was tired but happy, because she felt like the session had gone incredibly well once Hec and the other idiots had been jettisoned. Of course, it occurred to her that she’d never actually even seen a studio session before, so how did she know what was good and what was bad?
Maybe it was like Hec said, and she was just some wannabe producer chic who had screwed Jake up yet again.
Jake went upstairs to have a quick shower and came down wearing just his swim trunks. He looked hot—there was no other way to put it, and once again, Raven lost her breath for a moment.
I can’t believe Jake Novak is standing here, in front of me, half-naked.
“You feel like going for a night swim?” Jake asked.
Raven glanced over to the pool. “Right now?”
“Not here—the beach. We can walk for a bit, maybe take a dip…”
She felt something stirring excitedly in her belly. “Yeah, sure. That sounds nice.”
“Good. Go get your little bikini on, I’ll wait here impatiently.”
She giggled, shaking her head, and as she ran by he spanked her ass, and she shrieked, but kept running up the stairs. She was happy, giddy really, as she changed quickly into her bikini, marveling at just how much skin was visible in this outfit.
I might as well be wearing dental floss.
But she liked that, too. She wanted to be wearing next to nothing, just like he was. Everything inside was ready to burst, since she hadn’t been close to Jake in nearly a week’s time.
Raven ran back downstairs and found Jake waiting by the back entrance with a bottle of wine in his hand. He looked absolutely dashing, as if the day’s session had given him new life.
They walked out through the back entrance and then made their way down to the private beach, which was totally dark at this time of night. The moon and stars were bright overhead, casting light onto the water, making it glimmer in the darkness.
“It’s so perfect out here,” Raven said, shivering not from cold, but from Jake’s nearness as they walked by the water’s edge. She could feel cool, wet sand between her toes, and then the warm water lapping at her feet.
Jake took a deep breath and then exhaled. “This feels fucking amazing!” he shouted, whooping and spinning in a circle with his arms outstretched. “Damn, I feel like I’ve been reborn.”
Raven laughed, as Jake handed her the wine bottle. “Did you drink this whole thing already?”
“No, I hardly even had a sip. I’m drunk on life, and drunk on you,” he told her.
Raven took a long swig from the bottle. “I’m glad you’re happy.”
“Happy’s not the word for what I am right now,” he said.
They continued walking, looking out at the bright lights along the outskirts of the beach, where the strip was, and all the tourists. Distantly, she could even hear faint music playing from miles away.
“Jake, I think you’re doing something beautiful with your songs,” she said. “It’s courageous of you, and I just admire you so much.”
Jake stopped and grabbed her around
the waist with both hands. His touch electrified her instantly.
“The beautiful thing here is you,” he said softly.
“I love you so much,” she told him.
“Not only do I love you,” he said, “but I need you. I need you because when I see you, I want to be something more than what I am. I want to be better. I want to make you happy, Raven.”
“You do make me happy.”
“Come on, last one in…you know how it goes,” Jake said, suddenly darting into the water. The moonlight glinted off his bare skin as he dove under the waves and reemerged again, further off now.
Raven set the bottle of wine down, laughing, and went in after him.
The water was fantastic, a little bit cool at the very first, but then quickly it felt almost like she was in the bath. She licked the salt from her lips as Jake swam over to her, grabbing her around the waist and picking her up so that she wrapped her legs around his lower torso, hooking her feet just above the ankles.
She was practically floating, while the upper half of her body was mostly out of the water, pressed against Jake’s chest, while his hands held her back for support.
He leaned in and kissed her, gently at first, and then more deeply.
Smaller waves washed over their bodies as the moonlight glistened across the top of the water, illuminating everything, especially Jake.
She opened her eyes and felt that she’d somehow awoken into another dream, another vision of paradise, of perfection.
It was timeless. It was pure love.
After a short time, Jake set her down and pulled her by the hand, walking back to the shore, and then lay Raven down on the beach.
The sand was cool, almost cold, against her back. She shivered, but then Jake was climbing on top of her, his warm body like an oven, heating her up again.
His hands ever so slowly peeled off her bikini top, and then his tongue was flicking her nipples, his mouth sucking them until she cried out, but her voice was drowned out by the waves that crashed nearby.
It was so dark and private, she knew nobody could see them in this place, with the moon now even hid behind some clouds.
She could hardly see Jake herself, it had gotten so dark outside.