Chapter Twenty-Two

Chase was at the label’s preferred studio and his concentration was definitely shot. All he could think of was Ava and their time together. Even his band sensed he was off. But they only had the studio for four hours so they needed to get recording.

She’d permeated his soul. She’d seeped into every piece of him and snared him to the point that he couldn’t focus. The time he spent with her, and with her friends, it had reconnected him with his love for life. There was so much to explore, so much to experience. When had he gotten so jaded? Ava made him think of new possibilities.

The song was still formulating in his head and he had put some words down after dropping the girls off at the hotel. Now he just had to follow the tune, let it come out. But he needed help from his band. It felt important that the song be finished before his set on Saturday night. So the pressure was on. If he nailed it, then he might just sing it for her, depending how everything played out.

He had to slow down his thoughts because knowing he’d be seeing her tonight was having a physical effect on him. He shook his head and, regrettably, pushed Ava out of his mind.

“Chase, bro, you hung over? What’s the deal, dude?” Chip, his producer, said through the headphones.

“Yeah, buddy, what’s up with you today? You do smell of whiskey. You been visiting with Uncle Jack?” his drummer and long-time friend, Stone, asked him, then did a quick shuffle on his snare.

“Took some friends on the distillery tour this morning. I’m okay, just got a lot on my mind. I’ll shape up.” He wasn’t going to mention Ava yet. Chase was very private about his life, even with friends. It was just how he was, and the situation with Ava felt like it needed to be protected, nurtured, like a delicate seed. Picking up his guitar, he finger-strummed a riff that had been rattling around in his brain to warm up his fingers and to snap him out of his distracted state.

“Yo, man. What’s that?” Chip asked him.

“Just a little something I’ve been working on. Still in the beginning stages and doesn’t have any traction yet,” Chase replied, but continued to play it. He almost had it.

“Keep playing,” Chip told him, and gestured to the other band members. Their bass player, Tim, jumped in, finding the melody with the ease of years of practice. Stone picked up the groove and soon they were jamming to Chase’s chords and then, just like that, he saw the song.

He started over again, playing the music from the top, the sound deep and rich on his vintage Martin. As he played the notes he fell into that strange state of surrealism that happened when he wrote something he knew was good. The words found his mind and he saw them like a painting on a canvas. Chase forgot the band was there as he went deeper into the song.

This song for Ava came from his fingertips and his lips, as if he was touching and kissing her now, bringing her out through the strings of his guitar and the words from his heart.

He finished and placed his fingers flat over the guitar strings, the last vibrations muted. His eyes still closed, he slowly came back from the creative place that had drawn him in. The guys were quiet, but he heard the chairs creak as they shifted on them. He opened his eyes.

“So.” It wasn’t a question, it was simply a word, and he looked at each one of them. He could tell by their eyes and expressions that what he had just done was magical.

“Where did that one come from?” Tim stood up and hitched his bass from front to back.

“Dude. That’s a number-one hit if I’ve ever heard one,” Stone said as he twirled his sticks.

“Where does any song come from?” Chase said, and turned to the control window. “Were you recording?”

His producer nodded and leaned forward, opening the mic to the booth. “Got it all. Do you want to hear playback?”

Part of Chase wanted to hear it again immediately but this song was special and he was wary about sharing it too soon. “No. If you can burn it for me, I’ll take it. I know it still needs some work.”

“You know, I don’t think it needs any work,” Stone told him. “Why don’t we mess around with it a little bit?” The rest of the band was nodding in agreement as Stone continued, “Let’s play it back, then we’ll see where we can layer.”

Chase wrestled with his instinctive desire to keep the song private before acknowledging that maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea. The only potential drawback was that it would bring Ava full-blown into his world if anyone found out she had inspired the song. But, he admitted to himself, there was nothing about that he did not like. Nodding, he looked up at Chip.

“Okay then, we’ll do it. You do your producer magic as we’re settling in here. If we can make it work, I want to play it at my set on Saturday night.”

“You wanna introduce it at the Fest? Does Dozer know? Or did you want to see if we can slip into the Bluebird?”

“How about we just see how we make out today? I doubt we’ll be able to get into the Bluebird but, if I do take it somewhere before the Fest, I might go to Sugars instead.”

“Who are you kidding? You’ll get into the Bluebird, you just have to say the word, hotshot,” Stone said as he settled on his throne behind his kit, stomping his bass a few times.

“Anyway, let’s just see what we can do with this now.” Chase felt an urgency to get this song perfect. It would be his gift for Ava and, possibly, be enough to win her over, bet or no bet.