“If the food’s good,” I say, then elbow him. “Just kiddin’. Have you heard the new song? Played it in the green room for Dee.”
He peels off his glasses and rubs his eyes. After half a second of looking like he wants to scream, he surrenders with a soft nod. “Yeah. I heard it. Beautiful … It’s beautiful. But Chase—”
“See? Even you can’t deny it. Best song I’ve written in years. And it happened just like—”Snap. “—that.”
He gives me a look. “Modest much?”
“It’s easier to brag about when it barely feels like I wrote it.” I slap a hand to his back. “Remember how I used to say that? Best songs, they feel like I don’t even write ‘em? They just … come right outta me. Like they’re …” I smile privately. “… drawn out of me by someone else entirely.”
“Like a muse?” Ian turns to me. “Is that what this is? You’ve got yourself a secret muse, Chase? Some guy in the wings?”
I smirk, don’t answer him, then wiggle my notebook. “You can call this ‘Old Chase’ or ‘small’, but I’m about to prove Old Chase can be just as big as New Chase. He’s still me. I’m still him. And together, big or small, we’ll make it to the top.” I give Ian a wink, another slap on the back, then return to writing away in my book. He steps back, studying me, looking afraid.
I pretend not to notice.
And when we’re out on that stage later, after “Love Burden” ends and everyone is screaming and whistling and throwing their wishes at us through their joyful eyes, Fiona, Raj, and Wily quietly depart the stage. The spotlight glows over me and my stool. “Got somethin’ a little special for you guys and gals tonight,” I say into the mic. “Just you, me, my Glorious … and a brand-new tune. This is called ‘In Your Ocean’ …”
I caress Glorious to my body, then wait, fingers hovering over the strings. A tiny shard of fear grows in my heart. The audience watches, waits, breath held.
Do I do this? Are they ready?
Am I?
Then my fingers drop, hitting the first F major 7 chord that shatters and mends the soul in one precious strum—and I sing.
I don’t know how else to describe how I’m feeling other than there’s a dozen more songs inside me ready to spill out. Can’t say if this music already exists in a spiritual form and is just waiting to be discovered, or if TJ really is inspiring all of this in me. I could sit on the bus and write twenty songs a night, for as full and on fire as my heart feels right now.
Dee says she swooned—and for once, I believe her. Rob calls it “totally somethin’ else”, and I see it in his eyes. Even Locke, the lead singer from Soul Biter, tells me it hit him in the gut.
With tomorrow off, we spend the night in another hotel, and somehow our whole crew nab up nearly a whole floor. Until well after midnight, most of the doors are left open, people wandering between rooms up and down the hall. The energy is unmistakably electric. There’s a sense in the air of conquering the impossible.
Or it could just be me projecting my own feelings of triumph on everything and everyone around me.
“Think you gave me a new hit,” I tell TJ on the phone, kicked back in a chair in my room, feet up on the bed, facing my opened door. The noise of everyone laughing and partying in neighboring rooms and out in the hall is audible. Didn’t want to close my door and shut it all out just yet, like I’m basking in today’s last ray of sunlight. “Wrote a song when I woke up this mornin’, first thing. Audience devoured it.”
“Really? Will you play it for me tomorrow?”
“Hmm,maaaybe.” I chuckle. “Where are we meetin’ up?”
“I was thinking, um …” He lets out a tiny sigh, stopping.
He’s so cute when he’s indecisive. “Hey, listen, anywhere I can drive my ass to in a rental sounds perfect to me. You can suggest meetin’ up at a gas station and I’m there.”
“First off, no, and gross. Second, um …” He clears his throat. “I was thinking … since I know who you are now and all of that … maybe I should … finally show you whoIreally am.”
I lift an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“I haven’t lied. Not exactly. I just haven’t shared the full truth. You don’t really have the complete picture of who I am. Not from just your tiny experience of me behind the counter at an ice cream shop. I … more or less do that for fun. I never fully explained the, um … big family business I keep mentioning.”
I chuckle. “What is this business? Your family part of the mob or somethin’?” When he says nothing, I go silent, face flattening. “Uh, your family’s not part of the mob, are they?”
“No, no. It’s more … well … maybe it’s just better you see. Only if youwantto take a trip back to Spruce tomorrow. You’re an hour south tonight, I think you said, right?”
“Actually just half an hour from our new hotel …andif I make liberal use of my lead foot.”
“Don’t get in trouble!” he hisses at me.
“Too late. Apparently my ass is already in all sorts of trouble with you, Mr. Mob Boss’s Son.”