Conquest (23 page)

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

Jesse grinned at the sight of Kenny’s silver Honda Civic swinging into the parking garage ahead of him, across the street from the Phoenix Studios. Using the pass Greg gave him that allowed him access to the private garage, he pulled into a space next to Kenny, grabbed his sheet music and a stack of apartment listings off the passenger seat, and climbed out of the black Enzo Ferrari.

“Holy shit!” Kenny said, bending down to peer inside the Ferrari. “I was looking at this thing when I pulled in. I hoped it was a chick driving so I could work a little of my magic.”

“You don’t want to try working your magic on me?” Kenny stood up straight and scowled at him. “Funny.”

Jesse watched Kenny walk toward the exit of the parking garage. He hadn’t seen him since Evan had spent the night at their apartment, and thought by lying low it’d give Kenny time to adjust, but he acted even more pissed. During the past week, Jesse called him a few times and invited him over to practice some music, but Kenny said he wasn’t feeling well. Now he realized Kenny had been avoiding him.

Jesse marched after him, snatched him by the upper arm, dragged him around and back toward the Enzo.
Kenny tugged against Jesse’s hold. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Get in the car,” Jesse demanded, hitting the remote to disarm the alarm.

“We’re gonna be late!”
“So what if we are? They can’t do shit until we walk in.”

Jesse opened the passenger side door of the car. With a heavy sigh, Kenny climbed in. Jesse walked around to the driver’s side, got in, and faced him.

Kenny gazed at the interior of the Ferrari. “This is so freakin’ cool.”
Jesse huffed out an impatient breath. “Right now, the only two members of Conquest are preparing to walk into a recording studio and they can’t even be around each other without there being tension. I think getting that cleared up is a little more important than how cool this car is.”
Kenny slumped down in the black leather seat, his eyes on the floor.

Jesse took in the distraught expression darkening Kenny’s face. He mentally chastised himself for his impatience and spoke in a gentler voice. “Kenny, you and I have been due to sit down and talk about some things for a while now. And I’ll admit, I’ve been avoiding it just as much as you because I haven’t wanted to upset you, but we can’t avoid it anymore.

“You’ve never cared what a person looked like, where they came from, how much money they had, you’ve always looked past those things to see what their personality was. You never even got mad when someone picked on you in school, well, except for that one kid who pushed you down in fifth grade and broke your Game Boy. I still don’t know how I got stuck with detention and you didn’t.”

Kenny chuckled softly. “Because before I could get up, you had thrown him on the ground and were making him eat dirt until he apologized to me.”

Jesse laid his head on the headrest, smiling from the memory. He rolled his head to the side and looked at Kenny. He didn’t want to break the little bit of comfort they had gathered, but he also didn’t want to have only brief moments of camaraderie with Kenny, he wanted every minute to be so. “I guess what I’m getting at is you’ve always accepted everybody for who they are, so I don’t understand why it’s so difficult for you to do that with me.”

“It’s not that I don’t accept you,” Kenny mumbled. “But it is. You’ve known I’m gay since we were seventeen, but the first time I bring a guy home, you freak out on me.”

Kenny spun in the car seat, anger flooding his face and voice. “And you think because of that I don’t accept you? Did you ever stop to think maybe it was
the guy
you brought home who freaked me out?”

Jesse shook his head, confused. “Ev? Why would he freak you out?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because he’s one of the biggest recording artists in the last twenty years. Maybe because he always used to put on a show that he was into girls, then I get to witness him hanging all over you. Maybe because you never bothered sharing that half of your life with me, acting like I couldn’t understand because I’m straight, and the first time you decide to let me in on it, you’re shoving rock star Evan Arden in my face and telling me you spent the weekend at his mansion!” His voice quieted. “Or maybe because since you met him, you’ve been acting like no one else exists.”

Kenny’s sharp words stabbed into Jesse’s chest with as much physical pain as a dagger. Jesse looked away from him. All this time he thought he was doing good by Kenny and their friendship by shielding him from his sexuality, he never thought he was actually damaging it.

“I’m sorry,” Jesse said. His words sounded feeble to his own ears, he knew they sounded even weaker to Kenny’s.
His voice dripping sarcasm, Kenny said, “Oh, well, that makes up for it. Thanks.”

Both sat quiet. Jesse stared down at the Ferrari logo on the steering wheel, Kenny out the passenger side window. Tension hung in the car like a miasma. Jesse had heard silence could be deafening, but never really understood what it meant until that moment.

Kenny took a quick breath and held it, as if trying to decide on his words. “Will you answer one thing completely honestly for me?”

Jesse looked toward him. “I always answer you honestly.” “Did you sleep with him to get our contract?”

“No! I already told you that! You say I haven’t confided in you about what I do with other guys, but here you sit accusing me of being a whore when I’ve laid everything out in the open for you about my relationship with Evan!”

“I’m not accusing you of being a whore! But I had to know.”

 

“You knew when I told you last week,” Jesse snarled between clenched teeth.

 

Silenced filled the Ferrari once again.

 

His gaze focused out the passenger side window, Kenny said softly, “You really like him, don’t you?”

“I’m in love with him.”
Kenny jerked his head toward him. “You just met him!”

“I can’t help it. It’s the way I feel, and he feels the same way. There’s something very special between us. I don’t know how to explain it, or if words even exist to begin to. I just know when I think about him, when I look at him, touch him, kiss him, hear him laugh, the feelings I get go so far down inside me that I know they have to be reaching my soul because I can’t see the end of them.”

Kenny stared at him for another moment, then slowly glanced away.

Jesse nudged Kenny with his elbow. “Not to mention how great the sex is. I thought I could be wild, but he’s unbelievable!”

Kenny laughed under his breath and shoved Jesse on his shoulder. “Idiot.”

“But hey, if you’re so curious about my sex life, I’m more than willing to start bragging, and
damn
, do I have a lot to brag about. You already know about the first one, that Aaron guy on the beach, there’s no point in reliving that, and I can skip over everything else and go straight to bragging about Ev, because all the stuff in between really isn’t very entertaining. It’s just been a lot of making out, groping, a blowjob here and there—”

“Alright! Can you at least ease me into hearing stories about my best friend doing things with guys I’m only used to seeing chicks do?”

A mischief filled smirk claimed Jesse’s countenance. “But I can do things a girl can’t, unless they have artificial aid, that is.”
Kenny sighed in exasperation and looked down at his watch. “It’s ten after nine. We better get in there.”
Jesse caught Kenny’s forearm to halt him from reaching for the door handle. “We’re cool now, right?”

A smile warmed Kenny’s face. “Yeah, we’re cool.” Jesse leaned across the center console and puckered his lips. “Make up kiss?”

 

Kenny slammed him on the chest with the heel of his hand. “Dumbass!”

“Ow,” Jesse whimpered, rubbing his chest as he climbed out of the car. He fell into stride beside Kenny and handed him the apartment listings. “Here, take those. The other day I told Ev that I was worried about you living in our apartment all alone, so he called his real estate agent and had her look up some apartments here on the North Side.”

Kenny flipped through the listings as they crossed the street. “Did he bother telling her I’m not a multi-millionaire rock star like him? I can’t afford any of these places. I can’t even afford the shit-hole if I have to live there by myself.”

“You’ll be able to once our advance money comes in. I’ve already calculated a solid estimate of what it’ll cost to record and promote the album, and how much we can safely take for ourselves to live off, including setting aside two equal amounts for our new band members. These places are well within reach, and I figured since rent is due next week on the shit-hole, I’ll lend you the money to pay the first month’s rent at one of these places and you can pay me back whenever.”

“You were working this out the whole time you were gone,” Kenny said quietly.
Jesse smiled, the look on Kenny’s face and the tone in his voice telling him how happy Kenny was that while he had been with Evan he hadn’t stopped thinking about him. He opened one of the double glass doors to the studio and stepped into the lobby.

They showed their driver’s licenses to the security guard, and a blonde receptionist told them to wait while she informed Greg they were there. They stood in the lobby carpeted in dark maroon with small blue heraldic crests patterned on it. A large tapestry of a gold and red phoenix with flames for feathers and its beak opened wide in call hung on the wall to their left. A wooden plaque above it inscribed in Old English letters read,

Phoenix Records Always Soaring

 

Jesse turned when he saw Greg walking down the hall directly across from the doors.

“Good morning, guys,” Greg said. “I hope you took advantage of resting up this past week, because we’ll be busting butts from here on out.”

Jesse shook Greg’s hand. “We’re ready. I’m sorry we’re late.”

“Don’t worry about it. Your prospective band members are here, but I’ll give you a quick tour before I introduce you.” Greg turned, leading the way back down the hall. He stopped and pointed to a small booth on their right. “This is the vocal booth with its own control room. This is where we can listen to you solo, Jesse, and make sure that we’re optimizing your voice to its fullest potential.”

Jesse looked in the room where a large microphone hung down from the ceiling.
Greg continued his march up the hall. “We have three fullsized live rooms with individual control rooms. We were pretty creative when we named them. They’re Studios A, B, and C. We just passed Studio A, it was on the left. We also have a drum room deeper in the studio.” He turned into a control room on the right. “And this is Studio B.”
The large control room had a thick glass window above the control desk that overlooked the live room. Jesse stared at all the equipment and recorders, his head spinning at the sight of the control desk. He couldn’t even begin to count all the knobs and switches for adjusting volume, pitch, bass, tempo. Huge speakers were set in the wall above the window and on the sidewalls.
“How can anyone know what all this stuff does?” he asked.
“That’s where he comes in,” Greg said, turning around.

A man in his early thirties with dark brown eyes and wavy black hair bound in a ponytail stood in the doorway of the control room. He had a white coffee mug in his right hand with a yellow smiley face on it, but the smiley face had one eye closed, its tongue sticking out, and a little yellow hand flipping the bird.

“This is Jeremy Kane,” Greg said. “He’s an amazing sound engineer and will be one of a few people who will work with you on this album to make it flawless, but for now, he’s your main guy. He’ll help you get just the right sound you want.”

Jeremy shifted his coffee mug to his left hand and held his right out to Jesse. “I’m really looking forward to working with you, Jesse. I’ve listened to your demo a few times and your voice is freakin’ unbelievable, dude. We’re going to have a blast recording this.”

“Thanks. I’m really looking forward to it, too. This is Kenny Cooper, he plays guitar.”
Jeremy took Kenny’s hand. “You don’t need introductions. You got mad skills on a six string.”

“Thanks, man,” Kenny said.

Greg headed toward the door. “Well, I guess we should introduce you to your possible new bandmates. They’re down in the chill-out room.”

“The what?” Jesse asked.

“The chill-out room. Some studios call it the green room, we call it the chill-out room. It’s an area where you can escape the music, because let’s face it, there will be moments when you need to step back from it.”

Jesse and Kenny followed Greg down the hall and stepped in to what seemed like a mini apartment. There were two light tan couches in the room, one against a wall opposite the door, another across from it with an oval wooden coffee table in between. Four plush red chairs sat near the arms of the couches, two at each end. To the right of the door was another sitting area with a TV, and to the left, a small kitchen.

Jesse briefly glanced around the room, but his attention was more on the people sitting on the couches. One he already knew, Tim. He didn’t bother acknowledging him and looked away to the man and woman sitting on the couch by the wall. He met the deep green eyes of the woman first, who he guessed to be in her early twenties. She wore a pair of khaki Capri pants and a tight powder blue baby-doll T-shirt that hugged her curves and showed off her well toned biceps. Her dark red hair was pulled up in a long braid.

Jesse shifted his gaze to the young guy sitting on the couch beside her. He didn’t figure the guy could be over twenty-four, but he also didn’t look like a potential member of a rock band with how he wore his straight pale blond hair pulled back in a smooth, neat ponytail that ended at the top of his shoulders. The guy’s clothes were immaculate; black dress pants perfectly pressed, a white shirt with a high button collar, and a black jacket without so much as a hint of lint. He moved his eyes from the guy’s light blue ones when Greg spoke up.

“Well, introductions first. Guys, this is Trish O’Connell. She’s been a studio drummer with Phoenix for nearly two years and is extremely skilled on the skins. I think you’ll be very impressed when you hear her play.” Greg motioned to the blond guy. “And this is Julian Forrester. He’s a Julliard trained classical pianist who’s guested with several orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, but now he’s looking to break into something a little more lively, and we were the fortunate ones who learned of him before anyone else snatched him up.” He gestured to Jesse and Kenny. “Trish, Julian, this is Jesse Alexander, vocalist, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. And this is Kenny Cooper, lead guitar and co-songwriter.”