Synergy

by Georgia Payne

  Jason thought for a moment. His story? Rich celebrity on a break from working in the studio? Maybe not. Hold on. She didn’t know who he was. She had no idea. The thoughts swirled around in his slightly tipsy head. This didn’t usually happen to him. Most people knew his story without even asking. He suddenly felt giddy, excited.

  “Just here on business.” He managed to answer.

  The woman nodded. “You got a name?”

  “Jason” he answered.

  Once again, she nodded. She still didn’t know.

  After taking a sip of her drink through a straw, she extended her hand toward him.

  “I’m Dee” she said, and with that he took her hand and shook it politely.

  “Can I buy you a drink?” he asked, and she laughed softly.

  “Paul says I’m not allowed.”

  Paul, who he now realised was the bartender, popped his head up from under the bar.

  “No you’re not!” he yelled back.

  Around an hour passed in the club and more people started to leave one by one. Halfway through Jason and Dee’s conversation, Tom announced to Jason that he was leaving, alone, Jason observed, which he was happy to see. He said goodbye and tried to ignore the gestures Tom was giving behind Dee’s back. Their conversation wasn’t totally smooth, it was mostly Dee asking a lot of questions which Jason didn’t particularly want to answer such as “So what’s your job?” to which he answered he worked in the music industry - not a lie. When he thought he would ask her the same question, he realised awkwardly that she worked in a strip club, she was a stripper. What did you ask about that? Is it a good line of work? Is this your only job? Is it like, to help you pay for college? He wasn’t sure how to approach that subject at all. Luckily, the amount of alcohol they’d both consumed helped them on their way to find some form of conversation. He found out she had a brother and a sister, and that she grew up in Detroit. He told her he grew up in Tennessee and he had stepbrothers. Dee told him she had a son, a two-year-old, and that she wasn’t with the father anymore.

  When they ran out of alcohol, she asked him if he smoked, and pulled a blunt from the inside of her purse. He nodded. Truth be told he didn’t do it on the regular, or even that much at all anymore, but he did when he was younger. For social situations he’d partake, and he knew he damn sure didn’t want to say no to her. As she lit it up, the pair of them passed it back and forth until it was finished.

  As the night was heading to a close, the staff asked them to clear out, adding unless Dee was offering to help clean. Dee had given a ‘hell no’ and complained that she didn’t want the night to end. It was then that Jason said something he had never said before, something he didn’t even plan to say.

  “I have champagne at my hotel”

  Did I really just say that? He thought, but her reply surprised him.

  “Then let’s go” she winked, as she stood up and took his hand. He knew then he had to have her.

  Chapter 5 – Hangover

  Dee

  Dee awoke to a dry sensation in her mouth and a throbbing in her head. She laid with her eyes closed for a moment and when she first tried to open them, they felt stuck shut. Prying them open, light shone into her pupils causing her to squint uncomfortably and groan slightly. The light sent a shooting pain through her head that she knew only too well on mornings like these. As her eyes slowly adjusted to the light, she looked at the white ceiling above her, then to the chandelier in the middle of it. It took her a second to process, but she then realised she didn’t have a chandelier in her room. She scoffed at the thought.

  Frowning, she sat up slowly and propped her back on the headboard of the bed. She looked at the foreign room that for sure was not her own bedroom. A flat screen TV was mounted on the wall in front of her, and a dressing table was to one side. It was then that it dawned on her she was naked beneath the bed covers. She took a deep breath and looked beside her eyes taking in a sleeping man. His hair was tousled on the pillow, and his face was buried deep inside it. Jason. She let out a breath of air as she remembered last night’s events. She couldn’t believe she’d gone home with some white businessman type. Rich white businessman, by the looks of the room. This wasn’t a typical hotel room, this cost money, she could tell that. Last night began to flood her head. She remembered talking to him in the club; she remembered how bright his blue eyes shone in the light, and how nice his smile was. His lips, and how good they felt on hers, then down her neck, collarbone, breasts, stomach...

  “Shit” she muttered under her breath, as she clutched the bed sheet around her chest and scanned the room for any sign of her clothes. A few items of clothing were flung on top of a chair by his side of the bed and she could only assume they were hers. It now meant she had to walk across the room naked to retrieve them, which she did as quickly as she could, hoping he wouldn’t wake up. Even though Dee knew he’d seen it all last night, it was somehow different the next morning, a lack of alcohol being one of the reasons. Not that she had anything to be ashamed of. She was actually proud of the way she looked; she had never been insecure about her body. She couldn’t be while making her money in stripping.

  She rifled through the clothes on the chair one by one, finding each item belonging to her and throwing it on as quickly as she could. Midway through getting dressed, she felt a throbbing in her right hand, and glanced down at it. She saw an angry bruise peering through the skin and remembered the guy who’d grabbed her ass and the events that followed. She winced as she continued getting dressed, and hoped the bald guy’s friend was sporting a bruise just as nice on his face. When she was fully clothed, she found her purse lying on the floor by the bed, and she hastily picked it up and searched through it. Feeling like something was missing, she then realised there was no phone in there, and had flashbacks of shattering it against the wall the night before.

  What time was it now? She had no idea if it was morning or afternoon, with no phone and no watch to tell her the time, and she sure as hell didn’t know where she was. From the looks of the place, she could wager a guess it was far from home. She had already established she had no phone, and so no way of calling a cab or a friend to come get her, even if she had any idea where to tell them to drive to. Depending on what time it was, she was probably also in some shit with her mom as she wouldn’t have shown up to take Tushaun to school, which means her mom had probably been late for work. Fuck. She needed to think. She could only hope she got home before her mom sent out a search party for her.

  She took another look at the sleeping heap in the bed, and felt glad that he was still asleep; she couldn’t be assed with the small talk that would probably come from his mouth. He was probably gonna regret going home with a stripper anyway, so she didn’t want to have to deal with his guilt complex. Checking her wallet for money she saw she had a huge wad of one’s bulging out the side as well as some fives, tens, and twenties; maybe the odd fifty was in there too. As she flicked through, she thought something was different about some of them so took a harder look. The fuck? There were some hundred dollar bills in amongst them! As the sleeping body in the bed turned over, she whipped her head up and watched him to make sure he wasn’t waking up. When she heard him go quiet again, she hastily stuffed the bills back into her wallet and realised it was probably the rich business guy who threw them her way.

  ‘And now you fucked the dude, you practically a hooker’ a voice in her head said.

  Thoughts of last night began to make their way to the surface. The way he picked her up and wrapped her legs around his waist, the way he pressed her into the wall and kissed her neck...

  Shaking off the thoughts, she grabbed her coat from the nearby coat stand and buttoned it up tightly before moving to the front door, and opening the lock as quietly as she could. Once she was on the other side of the door, and she had shut it over, she knew there was no going back.

  ‘Come on Dee, figure how to get the fuck outta here’, she told herself.

  Jason
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br />   Jason woke to a banging on the hotel room door. At first he had no idea what it was, and chose to ignore it as best he could. At one point, he even put the goose feather pillow over his head to shut out the noise. It wasn’t until he smelled a woman’s perfume radiating from said pillow that his mind woke up, and he opened his eyes. As he laid with the pillow closing off his view from the rest of the world, head first on the bed, he let his brain catch up with where he was and what he did last night. Who he did last night. He felt himself blush slightly remembering the line he used in the club, but smirked when he remembered how it worked. He smiled remembering how drop dead beautiful this girl was. Dee. How beautiful Dee was.

  “Jason!”

  The voice at the door made him spring up from under the pillow, and he looked to the other side of the bed, where he saw an empty space instead of the woman he was expecting. He didn’t have long to be disappointed, as the voice at the door shouted his name again, and this time his brain registered that it was Tom. Jason hopped out the bed and felt a breeze as he remembered he was naked. Scanning the room, he found his boxer shorts in a heap at the end of the bed. He stepped into them quickly and opened the door. As the door swung open, Tom’s closed fist was in mid-air, as if he was getting ready to knock at the door again. Tom paused for a second before putting his hand down and stepping past Jason into the room.

  “Man I’ve been knocking for a half hour!” Tom exclaimed, scanning the room.

  “Sorry, I guess I was tired.”

  “Hungover more like.” Tom grinned, moving to the en-suite bathroom and glancing round the door.

  “What’re you looking for?” Jason asked, slumping on the chair by the bed.

  “Just seeing if your lady friend was still here.” Tom said, looking at Jason and smirking, waiting for his reaction.

  “How do you know about that?”

  “Nothing gets past me, J – I got connections”

  “So the concierge told you?”

  “Well, you start dry humping someone in the elevator people are gonna talk.” Tom laughed.

  “You’re making that up.”

  “Am I though?” Tom teased.

  Jason rolled his eyes, and rubbed his hands over his face, feeling the headache setting in.

  “Anyway, you’re late for the studio so go get yourself looking human and I’ll call the car.” Tom said as he pulled out his phone and began texting casually.

  “What time is it?” Jason asked as he got up and shuffled to the en-suite.

  “Eleven”

  “Shit.”

  Jason planned to get a quick shower and head out as quick as he could, knowing he was already an hour late for his studio session. He wanted to let all thoughts of last night evaporate, especially as he had more important things to concentrate on, but he couldn’t get certain images out of his head. He couldn’t help but think about her thick lips, the way her body looked in her lacy black underwear, and the sounds she made when she climaxed...

  He shook his head as if he was physically shaking the thoughts away. ‘Now? Really? ‘

  He thought about how the space in the bed was empty when he woke up, and wondered how long ago she’d left. He wondered if she’d snuck out really quietly on purpose. Maybe she was ashamed of it, and wanted to forget it ever happened. He found it hard to believe though. He didn’t believe he could have had such an amazing time if she didn’t too. He didn’t even mean just the sex. Granted, it was pretty spectacular, but he had a good time just talking to her too. They may have been drunk, but he knew there was a little spark there to begin with. They may not have had a huge heart to heart, but he had felt like there was more to her than met the eye. She was so drop dead beautiful and sexy too, but she had this feisty attitude. He could imagine she was a woman who could handle herself, who was proud of being independent, and he liked that. In his industry and line of work, it was typical to meet a few thirsty girls. Those gold-digger types who loved men to buy things for them; who would try to find a man to provide for them and not bother working for it. He knew if she was that type of woman, she would still be in the bed next to him when he woke up. She hadn’t even known who he was last night. There were girls taking photos of him from outside of the restaurant from a distance, and she spent a considerable amount of time with him chatting, not having a clue who he was. He liked that.

  Once he was finished washing, he stepped out of the shower with a towel draped around his waist and opened the en-suite door, letting the steam circulate out of the room. Tom was sitting on the chair next to the bed wrapped up in his phone. As Jason entered the room, Tom looked up.

  “So?”

  “So?” Jason repeated to his friend as he opened the chest of drawers and picked out some clothes to wear for the day.

  “Who was she?”

  With his back turned away from Tom, Jason smiled as he thought about her.

  “Dee.” he finally answered.

  “Am I supposed to know her?”

  “Oh no, I guess you’d left by then...” Jason muttered, as he stepped into a pair of boxer shorts.

  “Was it that girl you were with at the bar when I left?”

  “Yeah, that’s her.”

  “Niiiiice.” Tom said, elongating the word so it sounded a little seedy.

  Chapter 6 – A Day in the Life

  Jason

  It had been almost a month since Jason had stepped foot in Club X and gone home with Dee. There was something about her that still had him intrigued and he wished he could be a normal guy with time on his hands so he could find her and maybe ask her out, but he accepted his fate that normal things weren’t supposed to happen to him right now. Besides, he couldn’t be getting emotional about a girl he had seen only once, so he continued working on his album. Luckily for him, he found that meeting Dee had made his work easier; he always wrote every track that went onto his CDs – it was just something he took seriously - so meeting a girl had only given him more ideas to work with, more material to write about.

  He’d spent pretty much every day since in the studio working with some of the top producers of the last few years, Timbaland and Swizz Beatz among them. He loved hearing his words really come to life once they had mixed his lyrics with music, and he could spend hours just listening to it back, trying to think of ways to perfect it, to make it better and better. Granted, he was a self-confessed perfectionist to the extreme, so sometimes he had to be dragged out of there by Tom, even if it was just to grab some food. He had always been that way, even in his teen years. He thought if he hadn’t been, maybe he would never have become so successful. He believed everything you got in life came down to hard work, and he wasn’t about to mess it up at his peak.

  Over the last week, Jason had been working even harder than usual, finalising every detail of the album ahead of its release date. He was excited to finally get it finished, and excited for people to hear his material. He had a small amount of time during which he could go back home for a week or so, before he would head back to Detroit for the listening party and the stack of events that followed; interviews, radio, photo shoots, promo...He really did have his work cut out. He didn’t dread it though, he looked forward to it. He knew upon his arrival home his parents would get at him for not getting enough sleep and point out the bags under his eyes - this was the usual protocol. It was usually followed by them feeding him on homemade cobbler and cheese steak until he felt fifty pounds heavier.

  Though he enjoyed work, Jason was looking forward to going home for the week. Memphis, Tennessee, the place he was born and raised. He loved the small town he came from and he loved his family more than words could describe. Though his parents divorced when he was a child, they remained friends, and would often get together for the sake of their son. Both his parents had remarried and his father even had two sons of his own with his second wife, Jason’s stepbrothers. His mother’s parents, his grandparents, Norma and Bill were a huge part of his life too. They lived only a few doors away from h
is mother so they always spent time with him at his mother’s house whenever he came home. His Nan was the one who would make her famous cobbler for him and she would always save some for him to take with him wherever he went next. Though they were old, they were still active and full of life, and he loved getting to spend time with them.

  From the outside looking in, he had a privileged life, but it hadn’t always been that way. His mother had spent every moment working when he was a child to provide for him, and when he told her he wanted to be a singer, she had used every dime she had to save up for him to attend singing lessons, despite struggling to pay their mortgage. Being an only son to his mother, she had always been protective of him, and she probably gave him a little more than she should have too, but he loved her for it. He had never become a spoiled kid though, because he was taught the value of money, and he was taught to appreciate what he had. When he finally made it in the music business and had money of his own, his mother helped him to spend the money on sensible things, rather than fritter it away frivolously. She’d helped him to buy a house and a car, and when he made even more money, he bought her a house and a car, plus a holiday home. He made sure his parents were well looked after, because he knew he probably wouldn’t be where he was today without them.

  It was a quick flight home from Detroit to Memphis, a couple of hours at most. He was due to board his private jet at 2pm the next day with Tom, who was also from Memphis, living only a few blocks from him. He was excited at the prospect of going home, though he was a tiny bit disappointed to be leaving his work behind. He’d also become pretty fond of the bed at his hotel, but he knew he’d be back in just over a week, and he’d probably stay in the same room. As the album had been finished already, he had no reason to go into the studio for the last day in Detroit. In fact, for once in his life, he had nothing to do today at all, except relax and wait for the plane ride tomorrow. So far, he had eaten his morning breakfast brought by room service and showered, and he now found himself sitting on his bed with his guitar, strumming away aimlessly.