Playing For Keeps (10 page)

“Riiiight, but you connected over your upbringings. And he did say he wants to move in a new direction, stylistically. There’s a real human behind all the hype…which is something I had to figure out, you know? My celeb crush was stupid--.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Well, it wasn’t real. Just like how your opinion of their music being worthless wasn’t real. I mean, maybe he did what he had to do in order to make it to a place where he could do what he
wants
to do. I think…sometimes…that people call other people sellouts because they’re jealous. Because they can’t make it, themselves. But if it’s a means to an end, who cares?”

“That makes sense. I don’t know if I was ever jealous like that…or maybe that
was
part of it. That, and being scared to make this leap.”

“All that doesn’t matter now. The question now is: what are we going to do? What are
you
going to do?”

“About Jimmy Keats?”

“Yeah, about Jimmy
Keats
. You crack me up, Court. I’m pretty sure you won’t use just his first name because you think his last name gives you distance.”

I thought about every time I’d said his name. His real name. The one even Bea didn’t call him by. Was it wrong not to tell her about it? Was I keeping a secret for Jimmy Keats, or was I keeping a secret from my best friend?

How much, really, did I like knowing that little tidbit about him when everyone else knew something else?

A lot.

“Maybe,” I admitted. “But so?”

Bea clucked her tongue. “So, it means you haven’t decided what you want to do about him. Because if you were sure it’s going to stay completely professional, you wouldn’t feel threatened by calling him Jimmy.”

“Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy,” I said, mockingly. But Bea was right. I had to force each syllable out to keep his name from sticking in my throat. And when I thought his real name? It was music in my mind.
Kevin
. It was his fault for being so gorgeous. For exuding wave upon wave of confidence. Of making me feel things I’d never felt before.

My head began to throb. I pressed my palm to it.

“Let’s figure out one thing at a time, okay? We need to get Ladies in Waiting together to discuss this. Then we need to call Duncan Prospect and give them our answer.”

7.

We met with Kaitlin. While it didn’t take long for everyone to agree we should call Duncan Prospect and see where this takes us, there was an air of cautious optimism when we disbanded again. I asked Bea to call for the appointment, because I still wasn’t sure what to do about the way Jimmy Keats made me feel.

I was definitely sure, though, that I wasn’t going to let him, or any man, get in the way of either my friendships or my band. Besides, Bea had always been our traditional mouthpiece. I wrote the songs and sang, Kaitlin held down the beat—the boss on stage—so Bea needed her own special role. I realized I’d taken that away from her a little bit when Jimmy Keats approached me, not her.

“Do you think we should go shopping before we get there or something?” Bea flopped on my bed, scattering my class notes. I pressed my hands over my ears to drown out her question because if I was going to keep up with my classes and this band, and still be a decent sorority sister and all that, I needed to work every possible moment. But my hands couldn’t keep out her excited laughter.

“Let’s go shopping!” she yelled in my direction.

I narrowed my eyes at her. She flipped her long, brown hair over her shoulder and smirked and in that moment, I saw the epitome of the sassy, super popstar.

“Bea, when do you actually study?”

She mock-growled at me and pulled her textbooks out of her backpack. I smiled smugly at her defeat and dug back into my studies. But, five minutes later, when I was completely engrossed in a series of charts, she snapped my text shut and yanked me out of the room.

We headed to the mall, whirling in and out of shops at the speed of light. We loaded our arms with clothes, hit the dressing rooms and sashayed in front of the mirrors.

“No on the blue, yes on the red,” Bea and Kaitlin agreed about my outfit choices.

“Nice side-boob, Kaits, honestly,” I told her as she modeled a mock-neck tank dress. “And that pencil skirt is everything on your ass,” I told Bea.

After the sun went down, we landed at a scoop shop and ordered milkshakes. Our shopping bags huddled around our legs like pets. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s talk about anything except classes and music.”

“And work,” Kaitlin added.

“We could just talk about how good this milkshake is,” Bea said, with her lips around the straw. “Oh my God, yum.”

“I want to quit life for a while and just drink milkshakes and sit under massive umbrellas and listen to--.”

“No music!” Bea said.

“Audiobooks!” I laughed. “I can’t remember the last thing I read for fun.”

“Me, neither,” Kaitlin and Bea said at the same time. We all dissolved into giggles. It was nice, sitting there with my best friends, soaking in a slow, easy evening. Would life ever be like this again?

“We should go to Mexico,” I said.

Bea slurped her shake. “Right now?”

“Spring break. Make a pact that we will.”

“Done,” Kaitlin said. “I love tequila.”

Bea shook her head. “Oof, tequila hates me. But I love you two, so I’m in.”

“Sunsets over the beach. Parties all night. I’m ready now.” I sat back in my chair and crossed my legs, bringing my milkshake closer, and watched the shoppers go by. It was something to look forward to, Mexico with these amazing ladies, and would help the next months fly by, no matter what happened.

With anything.

*

The car to our meeting with Duncan and Jimmy waited for us outside the sorority.

“Hey, I know you!” I grinned, passing the driver, who held the door open for us. The intern from our first meeting rolled his eyes, but stood patiently as we got in the limo.

When Bea had called Jimmy to tell him our news, he’d said we needed to get past the whole meeting at the office thing, so why didn’t we head up to his house? Bea had given me a questioning look, as though searching for information about his house, but I bit my tongue and shrugged.

We looked amazing, I knew, in our new outfits. The red, snakeskin-like fabric I’d picked out stretched over my thighs as I sat. I knew my figure looked sexy in the fitted dress. I wore a row of bangles up both arms. Bea slid in after me, her black halter dress slit high up the thigh. Kaitlin had opted for filmy pants and a glittering bra top under her see through, white blouse.

The intern closed the door behind us and took the driver’s spot. My phone buzzed at me, so I dug it out of my bag to find an email from Local Jackson, who I’d kept up to date with all the details of our band progress.
Knock ‘em dead
, he wrote. I hid a smile.

Forty-five minutes later, we started up a wide street into the Hollywood hills. We all stared out the windows as though expecting a celebrity to be walking their dog on the sidewalk, or something. Even me. When I realized what I was doing, I sat back in my seat and tried to cool my nerves.

It was going to be the first time I’d seen him since brunch. Since I drew the line.

We reached his turn-off and got past the guard’s station to find a line of cars parked in the driveway leading up to his front door.

“All Jimmy’s?” Bea said to me, quietly. She folded and unfolded her hands in her lap.

“I don’t know,” I said. But some of the cars were duplicates and I couldn’t imagine what Jimmy Keats would do with two of any car. I cleared my throat. “No matter what, we’re professionals so let’s act like it.”

Kaitlin played with her chin. “It’ll be an act, that’s for sure.”

“Hey, we’ve earned this,” Bea said, catching my spirit. “We deserve to be here. We are as good as any of them. Never forget that.”

A man in a dark gray suit opened the car door for us and as we were climbing out, I nodded. “Exactly.”

It was a good thing to say. As gray-suit man closed the car door behind us, I watched Bea and Kaitlin’s spines straighten. Their shoulders relax. Their hands clutch their bags a little more casually. The same thing was happening in my own body. I forgot to feel self-conscious about my makeup or my dress and instead focused on the way the butterflies in my stomach were settling into sleep.

We picked our way over the entry stones, careful to not catch our heels, and up the small flight of stairs to the front door. There, a woman, also in gray, opened the door just before we got there and welcomed us in a breathy voice.

“They’re waiting for you in the lounge. This way, please.”

We passed the impersonal entryway and were led to a staircase rounding to a lower floor. The steps opened out into a great room. Floor to ceiling windows offered a breathtaking view of the city from one side and the ocean from the other. Bea gave me a questioning look, as though asking if this all looked familiar. It did, even though I hadn’t been downstairs, but even so, I was taken back, for a moment, to the view I’d shared with Kevin on the top of UCLA. That was gorgeous, and there was something about having the breeze over my arms and Kevin to keep me warm. This was different. Muted and warm. Luxurious, rather than elemental.

“And the guests of honor have arrived.” Jimmy Keats raised a glass in the air, and the thirty or so people around him did the same. “Welcome.”

“Welcome,” the unfamiliar faces chanted. And…the familiar ones. Payton Smalls, who stared at us suspiciously under hooded eyes. Yeah, we were untested, but I promised myself that we would prove ourselves to him and anyone else who doubted our talent. And, for fuck’s sake: standing near the windows, Julia Wood, Jimmy’s ex-girlfriend. My throat clutched.

All three of us Ladies in Waiting halted for a moment. We didn’t know this was going to be a party. But then Bea’s words flickered in our minds—
we deserve to be herel
—and we came to life, smiles popping up to replace confusion. To replace the tightening in my chest at the sight of Jimmy. To force me to start breathing again, after I saw Julia Wood. I swallowed.

Jimmy Keats held his arm out to Bea and she smoothly slid her hand to rest on the crook of his elbow. Her face lit up. In a corner near an impressive bar set-up, Duncan Prospect caught my eye and gave me a gruff grin. He raised his glass and sipped at his beer.

I broke off from my bandmates and made my way over to him.

“We didn’t mean to surprise you,” he said. “There were just a few people who caught wind of Jimmy’s…project…and had to see it for themselves.”

I wondered if he project referred strictly to Ladies in Waiting, or if he was also talking about those photos from Lalique.

“That’s going to be a thing, isn’t it?” I said. “We’re
Jimmy’s project
.”

He nodded at the bar. “Grab a drink, Courtney, and let it go. It’s a start. And it’s not the worst start in the world. Be patient and you’ll stand on your own legs soon enough.”

I appreciated Duncan’s words. They were simple, honest, and to the point. As the bartender poured me a martini, I tumbled them over and over in my head. Be patient. He was right. Even when it seemed to people on the outside that an act had skyrocketed to fame overnight, the reality probably was that they’d put years into it. Even Ladies in Waiting had hundreds of shows played at dark, dank, boozy bars and clubs under our belt. This felt like it was coming fast and hard, but it had taken us years of work to get to this point.

As my fingers curled around my martini glass stem, I felt a breath on my shoulder.

“Liquid courage?” Jimmy Keats spoke so quietly I almost missed his comment before it floated away toward the view out the windows.

“I was just chatting to Duncan,” I replied, looking for the manager. But he’d escaped while my back was turned.

“I kept introducing your band to my friends, but there were only two. I felt like such an idiot saying your name when you weren’t there.”

A bubble of laughter escaped, but I cut it off with a snip. My eyes went to Julia Wood, backlit by the sexy city lights, looking polished in a way I could only ever hope to look. A dark monster in my belly reared its ugly head. “You? Feel like an idiot?”

He flashed his wide smile and the air went out of me. All the sexy, smoldering eyes, all the deep, languid voice, all the hot, hard body and his smile was what really caught me. It brought him out of fantasy and back to reality. He was human. With a laugh, with a grin.

“At my core, I’m just a small town boy from the South.”

“So how do you handle this, day in and day out?”

He held a hand out to me. “By escaping regularly.”

That smile of his faded to be replaced by a seriousness that flowed to his deep eyes. He ensnared me in his gaze and without a second thought, I placed my hand in his.

*

I could feel eyes on the back of me as Jimmy led me up the stairs, but I ignored them. I knew what I was doing. Music stuff. Furthering our band. Talking ideas. And, at first, that’s what it was. Jimmy took me to a room on the main floor and closed the door. Instruments and sheet music covered every surface, including the top of the grand piano near the windows.

“This is where I create,” he said.

“How much of your group’s music do you write?”

“Some. Not too much. No top ten hits.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing.” I laughed at the face he pulled. It was fun teasing him. But then he got serious again.

“I told someone about you.”

“Who?” I asked. I wasn’t ready to dodge paparazzi.

“My grammy.” He laughed. “She keeps up on all my celeb gossip. It’s embarrassing sometimes. But she wanted to know who you were. So I told her about New Orleans, about Local Jackson, about how amazing you are.”

He stood near the doorway, one hand in the pocket of his blue suit, the other smoothing down his thin tie, watching me touch a clarinet, then a trumpet, as he talked. Checking out his instruments gave me time to process that he told his family about me. That he’d just called me
amazing
. When I saw the bass guitar on its stand, I headed in that direction and picked it up.

“I like the way you do that. Taking what you think is yours. Putting the strap over you like it belongs. A fluid, natural movement.” He crossed to room, grabbing a folder on the way over to me. “Take a look. This is your first single.”

I bristled at that. Ladies in Waiting had our own songs. He saw the way my body tightened and my mouth closed in a fine line, but he didn’t take anything back. I reached for the folder and opened it, prepared to rail against what I saw there. But it wasn’t horrible. In fact, it was one of my songs, rearranged. My eyes quickly read down the page, taking in the chord changes, the slight adjustment to the words. My name in the top right corner with his just beneath. I swallowed.

“Where did you get this?” I asked.

“Your recording.”

“You put this together from the recording?”

“I couldn’t have done it any other way.”

I stared at Jimmy wonderingly. It wasn’t impossible to write sheet music from a recording. It’s not even particularly hard. But when had he found the time?

“I feel better that you know how to write music.”