by Hazel Jacobs
“Depends on the helper,” he says.
Then he looks her up and down in a way that’s both painfully and deliciously obvious. It reminds her of the day they met. The way he’d looked at her like a deer in headlights, taking in her figure and her hair, before gulping and quickly averting his gaze. Returning to the hostile, petulant boy who’d insulted her when he’d thought that she was going to be a man and a bore.
“I’m sure you’ve got no shortage of ‘helpers,’” she says. She doesn’t want to mention the woman she’d heard on the phone. “The question isn’t what they can do for you, but what you can do for them.”
His lips quirk up and he looks her steadily in the eyes. “I’ve got a few ideas.”
“So do I,” she replies, giving him the same long up and down treatment that he’d given her. When she thinks that he’s about to speak again, she says, “For instance, maybe we could write a song for your fans.”
He blinks at the sudden, abrupt change in direction. Sersha wishes that she could maintain the flirting a bit longer, but she never knows how far is too far. It’s always been that way, she’ll get flirty with a guy without really knowing whether she wants him or not, and end up giving him the wrong impression. Or she’ll be too timid and leave him thinking that she’s not interested at all. It’s better to play hard to get, she thinks. Give a man just enough so that he knows that she’s interested, but pull back so he has to work for it. That way she knows that he’s interested.
There’s a little voice in her head which tells her that getting involved with Tommy would be a terrible career move. But musicians have affairs with their songwriters all the time. Her own mother can attest to that.
Besides, it’s just a little flirting. It doesn’t have to mean anything.
Tommy purses his lips again, but it’s thoughtful. He seems to have gotten over her sudden U-turn. “The fans,” he says. “Yeah, we should write a song for them.”
“Great!” Sersha cracks her knuckles and cackles when Tommy winces. “That’s the first hurdle taken care of.”
Only hundreds to go, she finishes silently in her head.
Sersha’s hands tremble a little when Tommy lifts his bass onto his lap.
“It’s a work in progress,” she says quickly. The rest of the band turns to look at her. “Just… you know… so you’re aware.”
Slate grins at her. In a week, Black Lilith will play at the Dorothy Croft Trust for Young Musicians Gala. Tommy wants them to play the song that he and Sersha wrote together. A part of her hopes that this is his way of showing his approval of her, and the song they wrote together huddled in the corner of Starbucks, but she’s no idiot.
This is a test. Tommy wants to show Black Lilith the song now, so that they can decide whether or not to keep her.
So they’re all crammed into the studio, in a different room than the one they’d been in the first time she sat in on their practice. This one smells faintly of marijuana and body odor. Sersha has been in worse studios, but the general scruffiness of this place makes her homesick for her mam’s pristine workspace. She decides that she’ll have to Skype Mam when she gets home.
Sersha wonders if the men of Black Lilith and Mikayla can smell her nervous sweats over the rest of the smells in the room. She can’t remember when she’s ever been so nervous showing a client her work, she’s always felt a kind of loose attachment to the work she did as a freelancer. It’s not her work, really. The songs she wrote for clients aren’t published under her name, she can’t claim them, and so they’ve never felt like hers. They belong to the client. But this song, the one she’d hacked away at with Tommy, feels like it belongs to her—her and Tommy, together. It will have her name on it if the band likes it.
Mikayla has her tablet on her lap and an encouraging smile on her face. Logan is sitting next to Tommy with a copy of the lyrics and some sheet music that Tommy had knocked together.
“We’re not going to judge too hard,” Dash says. He’s wearing an over-sized Black Widow jersey and a large grin. Though when he’d entered the room and seen her, he’d quickly covered his crotch. “Don’t worry… we always pull punches with the new kid.”
“We’ve been told that we scare people off,” Logan adds.
“Really?” says Sersha.
“Yeah, I can’t imagine why.”
Sersha has read enough of their interviews and seen enough of their YouTube videos to have a little idea.
Tommy runs his fingers over the fretboard of the bass. Sersha had watched those fingers run over the page in Starbucks with the kind of interest she usually reserves for chocolate fountains. They’d passed his notebook back and forth, writing and scribbling, falling into occasionally in-depth arguments about whether ‘selfie’ is a verb or a noun, and pointing out which rhymes were a stretch. Sersha had put together the skeleton of the lyrics, while Tommy had fleshed it out.
She’s proud of the song, actually. It took everything she had not to whip out her laptop to start bashing out the music track to the song. Tommy had told her that a chord chart was all they would need to play the song for the band. Black Lilith would work out the music together if they liked the lyrics.
“You ready, Logan?” Tommy asks, plucking out the first few chords and looking at Logan from under his eyelashes.
Logan nods. Mikayla reaches over and squeezes Sersha’s hand. Sersha takes what little comfort she can, though she knows that Mikayla is not the one who will decide whether the song is okay. The band is.
Clearing his throat, Logan mutters, “Count me in.”
Tommy plays the first few chords again, counts down from three, and then Logan launches into the lyrics that Sersha and Tommy had written together.
I found my way home the night before last,
thinking back on you, standing in the crowd, shouting out to me.
Holding me up above the waves
so I can breathe and sing and laugh.
Without you, we’re charlatans
painting pictures with words in our basements,
singing on street corners,
and beating pots and pans in a kitchen somewhere.
Instead, we went and worked in entertainment,
we owe you more than we can say,
so thanks a lot!
Never hit the ground, you catch me, and you carry me around.
It's all because of you, you, you.
Taking selfies, hugging, dancing, laughing,
this story starts at the climax, and we’re so glad.
Without you, we’re charlatans
painting pictures with words in our basements,
singing on street corners,
and beating pots and pans in a kitchen somewhere.
Instead, we went and worked in entertainment,
we owe you more than we can say,
so thanks a lot!
You could never in your wildest dreams,
know how hard we fought to be everything you want.
Because you’re worth it, you deserve it.
Can’t imagine where we’d be without you all.
Silence reigns after Logan finishes. Sersha threads her fingers together so that she isn’t tempted to fiddle with the edge of her shirt. She wishes that she hadn’t worn a bright yellow shirt because now she feels like a beacon, drawing all eyes to her.
I look like fucking Big Bird, she thinks.
Finally, she draws the courage necessary to look at each of the Black Lilith band members. When she does, she sees Slate nodding thoughtfully, Dash tapping on his knee and staring at the ceiling, thinking hard, and Mikayla smiling at Sersha with the sort of encouraging look that Sersha can feel all the way to the tiny hairs raising on the back of her neck.
Sersha nods to Mikayla and turns to look at Tommy and Logan. Tommy is looking at Logan, his lips in a slightly dipped down line, waiting for Logan to pass judgment. Logan seems to be thinking.
“I think it needs a good beat,” Logan says finally.
“I�
��m not sure about the key,” Dash adds. “It should be in major? It’s an upbeat song, or it should be.”
“We should be able to put it in the ‘Get Hyped’ mix,” says Slate.
Tommy nods along with their suggestions. He takes the music back from Logan and makes a note on the sheet, passing it back to Logan. “How’s that?”
Logan reads the sheet and nods. “Yeah, that’s doable.”
He hums the first bars of the song. His voice is higher and gives the music a more cheerful tone than it had before. Dash reaches around to the acoustic guitar behind him and starts strumming the chords.
When she can’t take it anymore, Sersha leans over and whispers into Mikayla’s ear, “So… do they like it?”
Mikayla grins, baring her perfectly white teeth. “They like it,” she whispers back.
Sersha leans back in her chair. She’s still trembling a bit, but she can feel her lips stretching into a stupid grin.
They like it.
It’s not rubbish.
She watches the band jam together, trying to work out the music that they want to accompany the words she and Tommy wrote together. They’re not talking about the words—
they seem to have accepted the words as they were delivered—they’re more interested in putting music behind them, in showcasing them, in making them easier to hear for the listener.
Sersha wonders if this is how they always work.
Then she starts to sweat again. Are they just keeping their notes for the song to themselves until she’s out of the room? Do they actually like the lyrics, or do they just like them because Logan’s smoky voice makes them sound so good? Most of the artists she and her mother worked with would often come back to her with ideas to change the lyrics, and she’d always been on board with the changes. Were they just happy with the lyrics because Tommy had worked on them with her?
Sersha feels Mikayla reach over and pat her hand. She glances over and sees Mikayla smiling wryly.
“You’re over-thinking it,” she says.
“Sorry,” Sersha replies.
“Don’t say sorry. It’s really good.”
“You think so?”
She nods. Sersha believes her. Mikayla has no reason to lie and she also probably only knows music in terms of what she likes and doesn’t like. She might not have picked up on the little imperfections that are currently eating away at Sersha’s very soul.
Sersha and Mikayla watch the men play with their instruments. Well, Tommy and Dash have their instruments. Slate is kicking the ground and clapping his hands, while Logan nods along and makes notes on the music that Tommy had given him.
Tommy makes eye contact with her. Sersha holds her breath. When he nods shortly and offers her a small smile, she feels all of the pent-up nervous energy bleed out of her. The unspent adrenaline makes her blood bubble and her head light. That one smile encourages her more than any kind words from Mikayla or any apparent enthusiasm from the band.
But just in case…
“So… you guys like it?” she asks, speaking over the music.
Silence.
Both Tommy and Dash stop their strumming. Black Lilith turn as one and look at her, in her fucking Big Bird shirt, and every one of them has a smile on their lips.
“Of course,” Slate says. He reaches over and pats her on the knee. “Pretty words, young Padawan.”
Dash pipes up, “Seriously dude, nice lyrics.” He nudges Tommy. “Not so scary to share the pen, is it?”
Tommy rolls his eyes, but he nods. Sersha wishes that she had a camera so that she could watch that over and over again.
“This will go over well at the gala,” Logan says, smacking the sheet music with the back of his hand. “Assuming Slate can pull his head out of his ass long enough to carry a pop beat.”
Sersha swallows a yelp when Slate launches himself off of his stool and tackles Logan around the waist, bringing them both crashing to the carpet.
The other two band members don’t seem to care. Tommy moves over to another stool so that the swearing men rolling around on the floor don’t hit him. Dash starts tuning his guitar while Mikayla sighs and pulls out her phone, checking her emails while her boyfriend tries to wrap his thighs around Slate and hold him down to get him into a headlock.
“So this is normal, then?” she asks.
Mikayla hums. “You’ve got to be on your guard around these boys. They’re usually about three seconds away from a wrestling match at any given time.”
“All of them?” Sersha can’t imagine Tommy randomly tackling someone. He seems too calm.
But Mikayla nods, sending Tommy a look that tells Sersha that the manager knows all of the band’s secrets. Tommy sniffs as though he’s dismissing an accusation as he slides into the stool next to her.
He leans around to speak to Sersha, “Good lyrics,” he says.
Sersha has to smother her goofy smile. “We wrote it together,” she reminds him.
“Yeah,” he says.
But there’s something unsaid in his voice that makes her look at him more carefully. The turned-down, sad look to his lips makes Sersha frown, settling the happy feeling down in her chest and putting a softer edge to it.
Is he sad because of her?
But she’d gotten the impression that his lips looked like that all the time. She glances over at Mikayla, but she doesn’t seem to be concerned about Tommy’s sadness. So either Mikayla doesn’t notice or she’s used to it. Or she knows why he’s sad. Sersha thinks it’s probably the last one.
“I think it turned out well,” Sersha says, deliberately making herself chipper, trying to share some of her bubbles with the bass player.
“I think so, too,” Tommy replies. He smiles, the ghost of his sadness hanging over him like a cloud. “Very well. I think Logan’s right, it’ll go down great at the gala.”
There still feels as though there’s something he isn’t saying.
Logan gets caught with his hand behind his back. Slate is straddling his back and mashing his face into the carpet.
“Say ‘Slate’s the greatest!’” he shouts. There’s a huge grin on his face like there’s nothing he enjoys more than beating on his band mates.
“Never!”
“Mikayla… make him say it.”
“I’m not a part of this.”
“Sersha… make him say it!”
Sersha takes a moment to realize that she’s supposed to respond. “Um… Logan, tell Slate he’s the greatest?”
Logan grumbles something. Slate shoves him in the shoulder and says, “Louder… I want to hear it on Mars!”
“Slate is the greatest,” Logan says begrudgingly.
Slate shoves himself off Logan’s back and throws his hands up in triumph, narrowly missing the cymbals on the drum kit, crowing like he’s just won the world cup.
“I. Am. The. Greatest!” he says, walking around the room and high-fiving Dash, Tommy, and Mikayla.
Sersha holds her hand up for a high-five, but Slate takes her hand and turns it over so that he can kiss the top. Sersha raises her eyebrow, but he just grins at her over the top of her knuckles.
“Thank you for your support, beautiful,” he says.
Sersha isn’t entirely sure if he’s flirting with her. As far as she’s seen, flirting seems to be Slate’s default setting. At least, whenever the interviewers he and the rest of the band talk to are women.
“Anytime,” she says sarcastically because that seems like a good, neutral response.
He winks at her and heads back to his chair. Logan, whose hair is an absolute mess, is back in his own stool with his chest heaving from the fight, and the crumpled sheet music back in his hands. His cheeks are red, and he looks like he’s trying really, really hard to look like he isn’t still breathing hard.
“So, yeah, pop beat?” he asks.
Dash and Slate nod in agreement.
When Sersha looks over at Tommy, she realizes that he’s looking back at her. His expression is unreadab
le as he stares not at her face, but at the hand on her lap that Slate had kissed.
She holds it out to him, across Mikayla’s lap. “Care to check for bite marks?” she asks.
Mikayla snorts. Tommy’s lip quirks up at the side as he takes Sersha’s hand and rolls it over in his own. She jumps a little when she realizes how cold his hands are. She hasn’t felt cold hands like those since she shook hands with the guard at the Giant’s Causeway at the height of winter. She stifles a shiver as she allows Tommy to inspect her hand, his soft smile remaining on his lips as his blue eyes scan her skin.
When he looks back at her, she has to stifle a shiver for an entirely different reason.
“Perfect,” he says.
The band invites Sersha out to an Irish pub to celebrate her song’s success. Sersha would rather have a hernia repaired than go to some American rip-off of one of her country’s beautiful pubs, but she almost says yes anyway. Anything to keep their acceptance going.
Thankfully, Tommy gives her a shrewd look and turns to his bandmates, “Sersha knows what Irish food tastes like. We should take her somewhere American.”
Which is how they came to be crammed in a booth at the McDonalds down the street from the studio. It smells of old chips and children, and the booth they’re in is slightly sticky from years of neglectful cleaners. Mikayla is grumbling about oil and fat content, while Dash is eyeing off the Happy Meals as though he’s trying to decide which toy he wants. Slate buys all of them ice-cream before anyone even decides what they want to eat.
“Ice-cream is good for you,” he says, handing Sersha her cone.
“Even before dinner?”
“Especially before dinner,” he replies.
She’s squeezed up against Tommy’s size, pressed so intimately that she can feel his body move when he breathes. His hair flops over his eyes as he licks his cone, and Sersha finds herself watching that tongue with more than a passing interest.