Encore (Stereo Hearts Book 2) (28 page)

Now she found herself meeting those curious eyes head-on, wondering whether or not
she
liked
them.

It was an amazing feeling. One she wanted more of. As she took the stool situated in the middle of the stage, adjusted the microphone to her level and slung her guitar strap over her shoulder, she knew she was one step closer.

And she’d be one step closer every Saturday night, in that bar, on that stage, under those curious eyes, until she was fully healed.

That hope drove her and sent her fingers gliding over the strings of the guitar, strumming the first note.

--

“You’ve been glaring across this bus at me all night,” Gus said later that night, from where he was leaned back on the tour bus couch across from Yoshi. It was the middle of the night, and the rest of the crew was asleep in their bunks. Yoshi and Gus, however, were both night owls. They’d lost track of how many times they’d watched the sun come up together, unable to fall asleep. That night was no different. “Why the evil eye?”

From where he leaned back on the couch’s throw pillows, an arm cradled behind his head, Yoshi squinted at him. “You know… it was my birthday yesterday…”

Gus smiled. “I’m your manager, Yoshi. Of course I knew it was your birthday.” Gus held his eyes and then shifted, squinting at him. “You told me you
hated
your birthday. You said you’d be happy to just let it blow by unacknowledged. So… I let it blow by.”

Yoshi’s held his gaze.

“You said you
hated
your birthday, Yosh.”

Yoshi looked away, re-focusing on the movie playing on the TV. “Forget it.”

“Shit, man. I’ll get you a cake when the bus parks in Beijing. We’ll have a party—”

“I said forget it.”

“If I’d have known you were being like the most unhinged passive-aggressive female alive, saying you
didn’t
want us to celebrate your birthday, when you really
did
—”

“Gus, I said forget it,” Yoshi barked, meeting his eyes with a hard glare.

Gus leaned forward on his knees, his mouth agape as he studied Yoshi. He took a deep breath. “As your manager, and your friend, if you won’t let me make up for ignoring your birthday, will you at least let me give you a gift without slicing my head off?”

Yoshi took a moment, pretending to be enamored by the TV. “Why not?”

“This gift will piss you off. It’s the kind of gift that you think you don’t want. The gift you need, but don’t know you need.”

“Will you just give me the damn gift?” Yoshi laughed softly.

Gus went into his pocket and took out his cell phone. After tapping away, he tossed the phone across the bus.

Yoshi caught it on his chest, pressing his chin into it as he picked up the phone and glared at the YouTube video Gus had pulled up on the screen. “What is this?”

“Press Play.”

Yoshi did, and the moment Aria’s face filled the screen, sitting in a stool in the middle of a smoky bar, he pushed himself in a sitting position with a gasp.

Gus spoke before he could complain. “The gift you need,” he reminded. “But you don’t know you need.”

Biting his tongue, swallowing away the profanities that had been on the edge of it, Yoshi brought his wounded eyes back to the screen. Drinking in the vision of the woman he’d convinced himself he hated proved that he never could. He could never hate her. That doll face. That smooth skin. Those eyes, neither of which she had hidden under that awful patch.

His skin tightened. The need to crawl into that screen, just to be in the same room as her, consumed him, then broke him when he realized it was a need that was impossible to fulfill.

“What’s up, guys? My name’s Aria, and this song is called ‘Who Knew.’”

At the sound of her sultry voice coming through the phone’s speakers, Yoshi wanted to stop the bus, stop the tour, stop his
life,
just so he could get on a plane and be next to her.

“She plays at a college bar in Soho called The Rum River. Every Saturday night,” Gus said. “The bar’s pretty good about uploading the videos. I didn’t tell you about it because I know it upsets you, but I’ve been following her for a while, and this song…” He nodded towards the phone. “This song isn’t the kind of song a woman writes for a man she abandoned. I’ve been telling you since day one that something was off about the way she left. Just disappearing without another word, period? It didn’t make sense…”

Gus stopped speaking in mid-sentence when Aria stroked the first strings of the song.

She purred the lyrics into the microphone, lyrics about a girl who’d put all her hope into one boy and his promises. A girl who’d been blindsided when those promises were broken. A girl struggling to pick up the pieces.

Just when Yoshi was sure the song had hit its peak, an extra chord would fall in, or Aria would hit a high note, taking it to another level. The chorus boomed with the pain evident in her voice, lyrics illustrating a woman who’d had every inch of faith stolen from her. Faith she’d placed blindly in a man she’d been sure would never hurt her. Never abandon her. Never leave. A man she’d trusted so fully she never in a million years saw his betrayal coming.

The two words the song had been named for carried the chorus, illustrating her surrender.

Her release.

She’d given up.

“Stop the bus,” Yoshi croaked, only halfway through the song. When the bus driver didn’t hear him, continuing to trudge along the road, his voice rose. “Stop the bus!”

The bus’s brakes cried out as the driver immediately did what he was told.

Yoshi barreled out of the door when the driver swung it open, needing fresh air. Needing to empty his stomach. The cool air surrounded him and took him around the throat as he stumbled to the ground, bent over at the waist and heaving.

He tried to throw up, but nothing came.

Just a sick, empty feeling in his stomach as Aria sang the last words of the song, her voice filled with the emotion that weighed Yoshi down like a stone.

“
Who knew
…?”

20

“Bar’s filled to the
gills
. Going to be a lucrative night. Thanks, Aria.”

Aria cocked her blue eye at Harry, the bartender and manager of The Rum River, while lifting a shoulder. “Don’t thank me. You’ve got a lot of amazing artists playing here every night. I’m sure these people are here for them much more than me.”

“Enough with the modesty. We put up the video for ‘Who Knew’ a week ago and it already has half a million views. That’s more than every other performance video on our YouTube page
combined.
You have a gift, baby.” Harry set her favorite drink, a vodka cranberry, on the bar in front of her. “You should be proud of yourself. Hell, you should be pursuing it seriously. Shop ‘Who Knew’ around to all the big labels and see who bites.”

Aria took a huge swig of her drink and gave the bar a cursory glance. One look at the shoulder-to-shoulder patrons waiting for her to take the stage, she nearly choked on the liquid in her mouth.

“I don’t have it in me,” she said, stirring her drink. “Just knowing that some of these people
might
be here specifically for me is throwing me into a mini panic attack.”

“You should listen to him….” A new voice came in next to Aria just as Harry moved to the opposite end of the bar to serve another customer.

Aria turned to her right, where the voice had come from, and couldn’t help her immediate smile at the tall, caramel-colored black man next to her. His head was shaved completely bald, but it was balanced out nicely by a perfect goatee around his plush pink lips.

Aria felt her spine straightening and she blushed, looking back down at her drink. “Ah, Harry just loves me, that’s all. He’ll say anything to make me feel good about myself.”

“But I didn’t hear one single lie leave his mouth,” the man said, offering Aria his hand. “I’m Daniel.”

Aria shook his hand.

“I work for Motown Records.”

Aria’s eyes exploded in size.

He smiled in response to the shock on her face. “And, just as our friendly neighborhood bartender has informed you, I’m here for
you,
Aria, and no one else.”

Aria brought a finger to her chest, pointing to her heart. “For m-me…?”

“You.” He grinned, showing a perfect set of teeth. “I saw the video of you singing ‘Who Knew.’ Did you write it?”

She nodded rapidly. “I did. I’ve never been much of a songwriter. I mean, I’ve been surrounded by them my whole life, so I may have picked up a few tricks here or there, but I’ve never been quite their caliber.”

“I beg to differ. The song is incredible, and it deserves better than a tiny bar in Soho. It deserves to be heard by the world.”

“I like my tiny bar,” Aria mumbled, matching his laugh.

“Don’t get me wrong, I like it too. It never fails to surprise me with undiscovered gems like you.”

When the host took the stage and announced that Aria was up next, followed by loud applause, Daniel pushed her arm gently with the back of his hand.

“I’ll be watching.” He winked and then pushed away from the bar.

Aria watched him go until he’d disappeared into the thick crowd.

Then she finished the rest of her vodka cranberry in two swallows.

--

The alcohol worked wonders. By the time Aria was taking her seat on the stool in the middle of the stage, the eyes on her—eyes that had tripled in number in less than a week—didn’t leave her on the verge of emptying her stomach. She met those eyes head-on, cradling her guitar on her lap. Even as she locked eyes with Daniel, tucked into the far corner of the bar, her fingers didn’t give the nervous tick they used to. Her heartbeat didn’t pick up to levels that threatened to affect her voice negatively. She leaned in to the microphone and managed a genuine smile to the crowd.

“How’s everybody doing tonight?” A loud “whoooo”
from the crowd made her giggle. “That’s good. Sounds like everyone’s having a good time. This song has gotten me a lot of attention over the past few days, and it really means a lot, because it’s one very close to my heart. It’s called ‘Who Knew.’”

Scattered cheers came in from the crowd, but most of them remained silent in anticipation.

Aria let her eyes flutter closed as she played the opening note on the guitar and melted into the first verse. The lyrics entered her body, her soul, and took over, just like they had the first moment she’d taken a pen to the paper and written them down. As she made her way into the chorus, she let her eyes open just in time to see many lips from the crowd mouthing her words back to her. They didn’t sing along out loud, however, allowing her voice to take center stage.

As she moved into the second verse, she was no longer in a bar, no longer stewing under hundreds of unfamiliar eyes, no longer being observed by one of the biggest labels in the country. No, she was lost in the lyrics, the music, the guitar coming alive under her fingers, and she was home.

It wasn’t until she was on her way into the chorus for the second time that she realized a voice had joined her. Her eyes flew back open, expecting to see a male patron of the bar singing along a little too loudly, but then realized the voice was too poignant to be coming from the crowd. Too sharp. Too clear.

Then, the first scream came from the crowd. It wasn’t the kind of scream she’d earned, however; it was a scream of both shock and exuberance. Another cry joined in, a cry of familiarity. Soon, the entire bar exploded. Drink-bearing hands flew up in the air, and every eye in the audience seemed to be bugging out of the patron’s heads. Fingers pointed to the stage, behind her.

Knowing the explosion had nothing to do with her, Aria snapped her head to the back of the stage where the roaring crowd pointed, and she stopped playing. Stopped singing. Stopped breathing.

But Yoshi carried on, his eyes locked to hers from the rear of the stage as he purred her lyrics into the microphone in his hand. He made his way towards her slowly, with his hand over his heart. If he was aware of the crowd that was losing their minds over his unexpected appearance, he didn’t show it; he couldn’t tear his eyes from her.

Aria didn’t even realize the guitar had slipped out of her hand until it went clattering to the floor.

Yoshi watched it fall, but he didn’t stop singing.

And when Aria felt bile rising to her throat, she leapt out of her seat and raced down into the crowd.

That time, Yoshi did stop singing, just long enough to shout her name into the microphone.

But Aria didn’t stop. Pushing through the thick crowd of confused faces and harsh objections to her interruption, she wasn’t able to see straight again until she’d bounded out the door of the bar and stepped into the cool night air.

Then she was running as fast as she could, clearing blocks and turning corners with the speed of an Olympic sprinter. She was sure her legs had cleared at least half the island of Manhattan until she felt a pair of hands taking her from behind. When she pivoted on her heels and met eyes with Yoshi, and saw the sign of the sushi restaurant she loved glowing behind him, she realized she’d only made it a few blocks.

“I can’t have shit, can I?” She pulled her arms out of his hold. “I can’t have shit, Yoshi. You got what you wanted, didn’t you? You’re an international superstar. A sensation! Why aren’t you happy yet? Why aren’t you satisfied yet? How dare you show up here like this? Without a word? Without so much as a phone call? How dare you accost me onstage like that after all this time? Do you have some kind of sixth fucking sense? Like you could smell that I was finally getting over you, and you decided to come throw a wrench in all of it?”

Yoshi’s wide hazel eyes followed her as she paced back and forth, his eyebrows pulling. “Oh…” He licked his teeth. “That’s gold coming from you, Aria. That’s
gold.
You ignore my texts, my phone calls, and all my letters, and then you write that—” he pointed in the direction of the bar “—that
fucking
song? Like I’ve been the bad guy all this time? Like you’re the one who got deserted? Like I’m in the wrong?”

Aria stopped pacing and met his eyes, frowning deeply. Her chest heaved. “
What?
” she spat.

Yoshi pounded his fisted hand against his heart. “I just cancelled the last leg of my tour, took a financial hit that is going to set me back
months,
just to fly out here because you had to write that fucking song!” When she didn’t answer, his voice rose. “And you have the balls to stand there and berate me?
Blame
me?”

Neither of them was aware of the passersby on the sidewalk slowing to a stop to see what all the fuss was about. Thankfully, none of them seemed to recognize Yoshi right away—probably because his previously blond tips had been died back to black—so the onlookers eventually left the scene. Just another couple arguing on a New York City sidewalk. Aria knew it was only a matter of time before someone
did
recognize him, and that they would soon be making a spectacle of themselves. But she couldn’t control herself.

“Of course I wrote the song, Yoshi. I’ve written a lot of songs. It’s how I cope with the fucked-up way I’ve been treated. It’s what I’ve been feeling, what’s been killing me, what’s been eating me alive from the moment you abandoned me.”

“
I
abandoned
you
?” he roared, stepping closer to her, his eyes going manic. “What the
fuck
are you talking about, Aria? I’ve been fighting for you. I’ve been making myself sick for you.”

Tears filled Aria’s eyes as she searched his. “Is this the person you’ve become? Not just a puppet to the industry, to Simon Brady, but a liar too?” When he could only sputter as a response, her voice rose. “I called you when I left Los Angeles. I called a million times. I texted a million times. For an entire month, I called. I wanted to work it out. I tried.”

“You think I didn’t have my phone glued to my side every second of every day? You think I haven’t stared at my phone obsessively since the night I came home to that empty house in LA? I almost lost my chance at the Super Bowl so I could run home and finish duking it out with you, but you’d already packed all your shit and left without another word. I called you every day, every
minute
,
every
second
,
for months.
Months
! And you never picked up. I left you voice mails
crying—
hysterically crying, Aria—when I found out my father didn’t want to see me. I needed you so badly that I wept for you. Begged for you. The torture of being stuck on a tour I couldn’t afford to buy my way out of nearly killed me… and you have the audacity to stand here and call me a puppet? Call me a liar?” His eyes gleamed with his emotion, matching the moisture building in her own.

Aria held her hands out. They shook. “Yoshi?” She tried to lower her voice. “I did not get a single voice mail, I did not get a single phone call, I did not get one single letter. From the moment I landed in New York, I have not heard a single word from you. Not one.”

“I wrote you a letter every day.”

“And, somehow, I didn’t get a single one of these phantom letters—”

“Aria. I sent the letters. I had Carmen…” The moment the name left Yoshi’s mouth, he tripped over his words. He straightened, his eyes dancing back and forth. And then he jammed them shut.

The tears in Aria’s face dried. Her eyes followed him as he began to pace, mumbling to himself, his fingers stuck in his hair. Then he suddenly stopped pacing, looking at the sky, and cursed at the top of his lungs.

Passersby on the sidewalk crossed the street to avoid him.

Yoshi moved back to Aria, reaching for her.

She stepped away, cringing.

“Aria. I think Carmen…” He stared off into space, cringing, as if he could hardly conceptualize the thoughts in his head. “I think Carmen did something to stop you and me from getting to each other.”

Aria crossed her arms over her chest. “Is that the story you’re going with now? Gotta tell you, it needs work.”

Yoshi’s eyes moved like a scanner, thinking. “It was Carmen,” he finally said, a realization washing over him that made every muscle in his body relax. Then, he laughed.

Aria watched his face light up, hating the way it warmed her soul in an instant.

That time, when Yoshi took her arms, she didn’t pull back.

“Aria, I love you. Please sit down with me somewhere so we can talk about this. Please hear me out.”

Aria cut her eyes at him. “I’ll never give you another chance to hurt me, Yosh.”

“I’m just asking for a drink. One drink.” He shook her, his eyes filled with a hope that hadn’t been there before, not even when he’d joined her onstage. “
Please.”

--

After finding a quiet booth in the back of a cigar lounge across the street, Yoshi found himself leaning across the small wood table, silently asking for Aria’s lowered eyes. Outside the private lounge, paparazzi had spotted him and were snapping pictures through the glass outside.