I cross my arms and settle further into my chair, trying my best not to let any of these thoughts trickle from my head to my face. Viv was so nervous and excited for today. The last thing I want is to compound her nerves or dampen her enthusiasm with my reservations. She already knows I think he’s a bad career move. The fact that he’s a bad neighbor is irrelevant. Their pact has been formed, the future set. Contracts have been signed, deals made. Raining on her parade now accomplishes nothing except making me as selfish and petty as I’m accusing him of being. No, my job is to mitigate the coming disaster as much as possible and buffer the effects on my boss and friend.
Still…
“Hey, sweetheart. How about you get a life?”
Yep, that’s what Viv’s new bandmate said to me the first time I politely asked him to remember there was someone living below him trying to sleep at two in the morning. Also, that girl (me) had a job, which clearly he didn’t. He didn’t like that comment. Now, I know why.
But nothing got better after that. If anything it’s gotten worse over the last few weeks with music thumping at all hours, sometimes so loud I can make out the song. Pretty sure it was Genevieve’s hit “Boy Crazy” yesterday, which made me positive he was messing with me. No way that tattooed, cynical ex-rocker is a legit Genevieve Fox fan. I finally reported him to the landlord last week, although nothing must have come of it since the music has been louder than ever over the past few days. Should have known I had a disgraced musician living above me.
I manage to position myself behind him, so we don’t have to make eye-contact during the rehearsal. If those dark eyes aren’t cutting into me all the time, maybe I can ignore him and focus on my work. I bury myself in my laptop, counting the seconds until the rehearsal ends and I can regroup.
How do you handle the fact that two people you hate are in the same body?
The thing is, his songs… are good. Really good. And Viv singing them is amazing. For a brief moment, the shroud of hatred slips when the two of them lock in together. I even pull an earplug out for a better listen. I didn’t know he could sing, but his backing vocal twisting around Viv’s lead is something special. If that’s the sound he’s envisioning, they have some incredible magic coming their way once they iron out the kinks and grow their sapling into a forest.
They’re really starting to find their groove when Julian abruptly rips off his guitar and shoves it onto the stand less than an hour into rehearsal.
“Okay, let’s take five,” he mumbles, everyone staring at him in disbelief. He glares at his phone for a second before pushing it back in his pocket.
“Really? I’m good for more before we break,” Viv says. The others clearly agree and look on uncomfortably, not sure which lead they’re supposed to follow: lead singer or lead guitarist and official bandleader.
Julian shakes his head, already moving toward the door. “I know. You sound great, but I need a minute.” He disappears from the room before anyone can object.
Viv’s shoulders drop, and a protective fire burns in my gut at his rudeness. Not that I expected anything different from the guy.
“You’re killin’ it,” Wyatt Maxwell, the drummer, says to Viv as he stands and stretches. He’s also an original Eastern Crush member, but for some reason I don’t hate him as much. Maybe it’s his easy smile and the flop of wavy hair that makes him look like a teenager. Or maybe it’s the fact that it wasn’t his idea to start this band and drag my friend to the dark side.
My boss sips from her water bottle, but I can read the forced nature of her return smile. She already questioned whether she’d be good enough to front a rock band. My stomach drops when she ducks around the mic and starts toward me with a defeated look.
“Does it sound okay?” she asks quietly, searching my eyes.
“You sound amazing, Viv. Please know that,” I respond without hesitation. She does, too. She ruled the world as a pop singer, but she was born to belt out rock angst. Her soul opens up when she lets go in front of a band in a way it never did when she was singing chart toppers to stadium crowds on her own. It’s one of the reasons her manager, her boyfriend Oliver, and I encouraged her to make this drastic jump from the top into oblivion. We just want her to be happy, and even in this short rehearsal, I could see life in her music that was never present in the years I’ve watched her perform.
Until Julian crushed it.
My fist clenches around my laptop.
“Maybe he needed a bathroom break,” she says, casting a look back at the door he just rushed through.
“Maybe,” I mutter. Or maybe he’s just an asshole.
“He seems distracted. I hope everything’s okay. He was so enthusiastic at our initial meeting. I wish you’d been able to attend, Had. If you’d seen the excitement on his face at the prospect of playing again, you’d get why Sam and I knew this was the path for me. I don’t know what’s changed but… maybe it’s me? Maybe he’s not happy with what I’m doing with his songs?”
“Hey,” I say, squeezing her arm. “He’s taking a bathroom break. I’m sure that’s it. You sound fantastic.”
She tugs on her sleeves as she tosses another nervous look at the door. Gosh, I just want to slap some sense into that guy. If he doesn’t understand and appreciate what he’s got in Viv Hastings, he’s as much of an idiot as he is a jerk.
Unfortunately, another fact I’ve learned from growing up in the gilded world of the Hollywood elite is that talent attaches to assholes as much as non-assholes. And like it or not, Julian Campbell is freaking talented. There’s no denying it. Along with his model looks and unflappable ambition, he’d be worth a second glance if he were any other guy, but that’s not the view I got. Especially when he returns a few minutes later with an even more sour expression on his annoyingly symmetrical face. Those brown eyes smolder with an open flame as he scratches at the dark scruff on his chin.
Distracted, Viv called him. Yeah, that’s about right.
“Okay, sorry about that,” he mumbles into the mic. “You good to start—” He flinches and whips his phone from his pocket. Glancing down, he releases another curse. Heard plenty of those in our short acquaintance.
He shoves a hand through his short dark hair, messing it up into jagged points that somehow make him even hotter. For the record, in my experience, asshole-ness and hotness do tend to correlate, unlike talent. So yeah, I knew from the first moment he opened his apartment door with those thick lashes, that haughty smirk, and the tight undershirt barely hiding a chiseled body, he was going to be trouble.
I watch his grip tighten on his phone, the muscles in his forearm constricting in the same way I’ve seen him grip a door frame. There’s no smirk on his face this time, though. No, there’s no amusement at all as he pounds back a response before shoving the phone in his jeans and grabbing his guitar.
“Let’s work on the chorus of ‘Unforgiven,’” he growls out. The other bandmembers exchange looks, and there’s plenty of throat-clearing and instrument fondling in the awkward seconds that follow.
Viv circles her hand around the mic in an unconscious adjustment that adjusts nothing. My eyes laser in on Julian who seems to be doing everything he can to be a crappy bandleader. If this is how he thinks he’s going to build a cohesive group poised to fight their way back from the ashes, he’s in for a rude awakening. He’s what ruins careers, not builds them.