I don’t even have time to process before Travis himself appears, stepping out of a dark-wooden door. He’s wearing black jeans, and a white shirt that is unbuttoned at the top and rolled at his elbows. He looks professional, and yet also like a rockstar. How he manages both, I don’t know, but fuck he’s perfect.
“Hey,” I say, my voice far huskier than I would like.
Why does he have this effect on me.
“Lucy, thanks, I’ll take it from here.” His assistant lingers, eyes shining. I grin, my cheeks already warm.
“Mischief,” he murmurs, eyes raking over me. “How are you doing?”
“Much better now,” I admit.
He takes my hand. “Come on, I’ve got so much to show you.”
Warmth floods me, and I am so happy with the fact that he has chosen to bring me here and show me what matters most to him.
We slip into the control room. The three girls peer at us through the glass, engineers tweak sliders and knobs. I watch in awe. How incredibly overwhelming and amazing it must be to stand in there, knowing your whole world just might change by the time you’re done.
“It’s cool, right?” Travis asks.
“Yeah,” I breathe.
He calls out to the singers. They file out, leaving only Rose. Travis goes in and stands next to her. She’s beautiful, with long black hair and perfect white skin. She looks like a doll, with her sparkling blue eyes. It’s clear that she is nervous, she seems lessinto it than the other singers and scared to let herself come right out of her shell.
“You want to be a singer?” Travis asks her.
She nods, swallowing.
“Are you nervous?”
She exhales. “I feel like I get drowned out by the others and so I make my voice small, because they’re just so good...”
“Can I tell you something?”
“Yes.”
“You outshine them. I say that not to bring them down, they are incredible, but you, Rose, are the star. I know it, you just have to let yourself go. So, we’re going to sing together, and you’re going to pretend nobody else is here and show me what you’ve really got.”
She flushes as he cues the music. He starts singing, light and compelling, and my heart does backflips. Rose joins him, her voice pure. It takes her a moment to let go, but when she does, her voice brings the whole room to a complete pause. She is incredible. Together, they blend perfectly. When they finish, everyone is silent.
“Wow,” I whisper.
Then everyone erupts into applause. Rose flushes and hugs Travis, and when he comes back, he is grinning. “See that, that’s why I do it.”
“She is incredible,” I breathe. “Oh, wow.”
After half an hour of getting her singing with the other girls, Travis steals me away and leads me to his office. We walk in, and I look around at the sleek black desk dominating the center of the room. Platinum records line the walls between framed vintage concert posters.
A worn leather jacket hangs on a stand in the corner, and a collection of guitar picks in a glass bowl catches the light from the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. Everythingspeaks of power and success, yet the small touches—a dog-eared paperback on the side table, a faded baseball cap on the coat rack—reveal glimpses of the boy I once knew.
“Ready for your surprise?” he asks, and I turn to face him.
“I don’t know, am I?”
He grins, closing the distance between us. His lips find mine, slow at first, then deep and insistent until my pulse throbs in my ears. I pull back, breathless.
“Now that that’s out of the way,” he murmurs, “the surprise.”
“Oh, that wasn’t it?”