For the first time since I’d met him, Astin seemed genuinely interested in a girl. And long-term interested, not about-to-get-bored interested.
I was happy for him, having found someone he really liked, although I wondered how long it’d last when she was returning to England soon. Neither of them seemed like the type of person to want to do a long-distance relationship, but then, I wasn’t either, and I’d done it with Tate.
I sighed, thinking back to the many conversations I’d had with Astin and Len about Tate. They’d always insinuated she was good for me. Which just made me feel like even more of a fuckup.
As the week dragged on, I tried to avoid Astin and his excessively smiley face. I wasn’t used to it. And yeah, fine, I was jealous.
But Tate and I were talking, and we were texting regularly. Things almost felt normal between us.
A few days after Astin had met Hollie at the theater, I was getting ready to meet Ade when the front door opened. Astin walked in, a petite redhead by his side. He gave me a warning look. What did he think I’d do?
“You must be Hollie. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you,” I said, half-bowing. “Astin’s told me a lot about you.”
There was something different to her compared to the other girls. A subtle air of both confidence and anxiety. I could tell just from the way she was standing that she’d give Astin a run for his money. I got why he couldn’t get her out of his head.
He hadn’t stopped talking about her since they’d met and it was making me nauseous. Especially with how up in the air everything was with Tate. But I wanted to be happy for my friend, too. So I decided to play nice.
“Has he now?” Hollie raised an eyebrow.
I smirked. “Don’t worry. None of it was bad.” I took a swig from my hip flask, then returned it to my pocket. Astin glared at me, but I ignored him. I was too jealous to care. Call me petty. I was already half-drunk. “I’m heading out. I’d invite you both, but I’m assuming you came here because it’s quiet. Don’t worry—I’ll be back late.” I winked at Astin, grabbed a black blazer and trilby from the coat stand by the door, and headed out. The last thing I wanted was to hang around them being all cutesy and lovey dovey when Tate was still keeping me at arm’s length.
I was happy to have her back in my life again, and I deserved what I got. But PDAs had never been my thing, even when I was in a good mood.
“Sup my man,” said Ade, embracing me as I walked through the doors of a club. “How’ve you been?”
I didn’t know what’d happened to Ade after his arrest. He wasn’t one for talking much about what was going on with him; he seemed to prefer to deflect the attention on to other people.
“Got arrested. Got bailed out. Ran into the ex. You know.” I tried to sound nonchalant, but really I just needed someone to offload on. I wasn’t sure if he was the right person for that or not. Guess I was about to find out.
“What? Wow, man. No wonder you’ve been quiet.” He led me to the bar, where we ordered our drinks. Damn right I needed a drink after the few weeks I’d had. After the day I’d had.
Len’s face appeared in my head, his expression disappointed. I shook my head, trying to dissipate the image.
Fine, I didn’t need to justify my need for alcohol. I just needed a drink. Whatever.
*
I was recovering from my hangover the next afternoon when I heard people downstairs. Definitely two people. Was Hollie back again? Interesting.
I went downstairs to find Hollie sitting on the sofa, massaging her arms. A pain I remembered all too well from one of Astin’s so-called motivational exercise trips. It hadn’t left me motivated. It had left me in pain. Never again, thanks.
I narrowed my eyes at Hollie. “He took you climbing?”
“Yeah. What’s wrong with that?” Hollie crossed her arms.
“I’ll never understand that man’s definition of a date,” I said, going into the fridge and staring into it. What could I have for lunch?
“It was fun,” she said.
“You won’t be saying that tomorrow morning.”
“Have you been before?”
“Yeah. Never again.”
Unable to find anything interesting to eat, I settled for some fruit juice instead.
“It wasn’t that bad,” said Hollie, her tone turning defensive. Oops.
“No, but when you’re as unfit as me, the pain afterwards is.” I poured myself a drink, then leaned against the kitchen counter. “But hey, don’t let me put you off. Exercise isn’t really my thing.”
“Mine either,” she said, tucking a rogue strand of red hair behind her ear. “But that wasn’t what I expected.”
“He makes it look so easy, doesn’t he?” I sipped my drink. “Then again, it’s his job to. Say, where is he?”
“Not sure.”
I paused, tilting my head as I listened to the sounds coming from the rest of the apartment. Running water echoed through the pipes. “Running a bath. Cute.”
“It is?”
I chuckled, taking my hip flask from my pocket and pouring some vodka into my glass of orange juice to help with my hangover. “We don’t have girls around here very often.” I pocketed my hip flask and spun the glass to mix up the liquids.
“Meaning what?” Hollie twitched her nose.
I sipped my drink. “You tell me.”
She didn’t get a chance to. Astin came down the stairs. Noticing me, he said, “Hey. Aren’t you meant to be at the studio?”
I checked the clock on the wall. “Oops. So I am.” I put my drink onto the counter. “There’s some stuff in my room if you’re interested,” I added before grabbing my coat and heading out. I always liked to offer. It might just elevate their time together, if you know what I mean.
It wasn’t like I was meeting with anyone important anyway. It was just some new singer the label wanted me to write for. I had a half-finished song for him already. It wouldn’t take much to fill in the gaps if he was half-interested in what we were doing.
*
To my dismay, there was no new artist in the studio when I got there. Instead, Larry was waiting for me. Was it too late to turn around and go home?
I supposed it was his money that’d booked the studio out for me, so he wanted to keep an eye on his investment. Talk about how not to motivate me.
Especially with the determined look on his face. What was he determined to do? Get me to write something? Ugh. I wasn’t a child who needed handholding.
“How’s the new album coming along?” Larry asked.
I glared at my manager. He and my record label had let me have a break to focus on directing videos instead, but that work had dried up. So now, the pressure was back on to work on my second album. I’d only been working on it five years, give or take another year or two.
“Don’t give me that look. You’re under contract and you haven’t produced anything in almost a year. If you were still directing they wouldn’t mind so much. You haven’t even produced a song lately.”
I tugged at the collar of my polo neck T-shirt. Was it getting hot in the studio?
“I want to help you, Jack, but you’re making it really hard.”
“It’s not intentional. I just don’t know what to write about.”
“If you don’t have stuff to write about, nobody does.”
That was mean and uncalled for. It wasn’t like I didn’t have anything to write about. I just didn’t want to write. I’d tried. I’d written occasional songs, but I’d been made to give most of them to other artists. They went too far against what the label wanted me to create.
At least someone else singing my songs meant I got to write and produce without the attention and promotion and press that came with it. And I still got royalties, but it wasn’t the same.
“Look, I can only buy you so much more time,” said Larry. “I get pressured just as much as you do.”
“I’m sorry. It’s not intentional. The pressure—”
“Do you think you’re the only person who’s ever suffered from the sophomore slump?” He scoffed. “Please. I don’t know an artist who hasn’t been there. But you have to put that shit out of your mind or you’ll never get anything done.”
*
If Larry’s warning had meant to keep me motivated, it didn’t work. I drank more, slept more, and avoided his phone calls even more.
His words played through my head over and over and over again. I didn’t want to listen to him, but it was hard not to. I tinkered with different melodies and lyrics over the following days, but nothing interesting or productive really came out of it.
Despite what Larry had insisted, I felt like I had nothing interesting to say. Anything I came up with didn’t match the genre of my previous album, and I knew that would go against what the record label wanted for me. And their finances.
I was tied to a contract and I needed to produce another dance album, even if I wasn’t feeling it. The more I tried to create something, the more I started to realize I’d fallen out of love with the very genre that’d gotten me into music in the first place.
“Do you think it’s burnout again?” Tate asked, after I’d played back a half-finished song to her. Moxie lay on her lap, asleep.
Tate leaned back in her chair, watching a fly as it walked across the ceiling of her apartment.
“No. This is different. I just don’t want to do it. It’s like every time I try, a little piece of me dies inside.”
Tate frowned. “Are you sure they won’t let you change genre?”
“Last time I tried, they gave it to someone else.”
“At least they didn’t scrap it,” she said.
“Yeah, but hearing someone else sing a song you wrote about something really personal isn’t always fun,” I said.
Tate’s back stiffened. That had been a stupid thing to say. Tate had been given a song Trinity had written about something deeply personal to sing, and it had ruined their friendship. We didn’t know what the song was about, just that Trinity had never forgiven her.
“Sorry.”
“It’s OK. It’s not like I had a choice at the time.”
Just like I didn’t in that moment.
“Could you do a mashup?” she suggested.
“What do you mean?”
“Part dance, part other genres. Then you’re not going against label or audience expectations, but you’re keeping it fulfilling for yourself. I mean, female artists reinvent themselves all the time. They start off in one genre, then segue into another, then another. There’s no reason you can’t do something similar.”
I grinned. “I think you might be on to something.”