I press my cheek onto Brando’s chest, my sweat-soaked hair settling against his skin. Limp muscles melting into his tough, reliable frame. The last thing I remember before I pass out is his arm coming up to wrap around my shoulders, holding me tightly to him.
I wake up in the middle of the night. The faintest glimmer of yellow in the sky tells me it’s still a while before sunrise. I stretch out across the bed, eyes still closed, trying to see where Brando is.
He’s not there. I open my eyes quickly, throwing off grogginess instantly. I look across the bed, and sit upright when I realize the fear is true. He’s not there.
I snatch up the thin bedsheet around me and look around. Between the bed and the rest of the loft there’s a partition, and around its corner I see brief flashes of light. My mouth goes dry and I start to feel the coldness of the hour. I slide out of bed as slowly, and as quietly, as I can, then tiptoe up to the partition.
“Brando?” I say, in sleepy confusion, when I see him sitting at the couch, intently bent over the laptop in front of him. I step closer and it becomes clear why he doesn’t answer: he’s wearing headphones. I walk up behind the couch and look at the screen.
It’s the footage we filmed.
Suddenly, Brando somehow notices me and turns around. He flips off the headphones and tosses them aside.
“I didn’t know you were up.”
“Likewise,” I respond. “What are you doing?”
“Come and see for yourself,” he says, shuffling up on the couch to make space.
I walk around and settle in beside him, hugging myself against his bicep as he presses play.
It’s the music video.
And it’s great.
As the scenes play out on the screen, I laugh at the recorded memory of our day together, gasp at how good we both look, find myself wordless at how well it goes with the music.
“It’s amazing!” I say, laughing at just how surprised I am. “I had no idea you could do something like this.”
Brando shrugs modestly. “I can’t. I just watched a few online guides, and figured the rest out as I went along. It was mostly just cutting and splicing, anyway.”
I look at Brando, astonishment all over my face. “You were up all night doing this?”
“I was never much of a sleeper anyway.”
I kiss him long and slow, before turning back to the video.
“It’s so good. I don’t know how you did it.”
This time it’s Brando who looks at me with a deepness in his eyes.
“I just tried to make the world see you the way I do.”
Chapter 15
Brando
When I first started working in the music industry, the big labels were gatekeepers, standing at the gates of fame and fortune like saints passing down judgments. With a simple blessing they could induct you into the long, complicated process of pressing records, distribution, promotional campaigns, and corporate gigs. Or not.
Those days are long gone. As soon as the internet came along the gates shattered, and every wannabe, hack, and debutante rushed through. All of them scrabbling and fighting to stand out. But in order to make the jump from being another face in the crowd, another small-time also-ran, to being a really big star, you need to work every second of every day, push twice as hard as the next guy. You need to hustle – and it just so happens that I’m a natural.
For the next few days I go into overdrive. The first song I leaked, the acoustic track that was the first thing Haley recorded, got people’s ears immediately, and now the second one, a thrusting, dynamic, catchy song with a hook any bestselling artist would kill for, is the main event. The radio stations love it, and I send it to my connections in New York who embrace it just as eagerly, a double-pronged attack of airplay that spreads like wildfire from both coasts.
I bring in a talented photographer who owes me a favor (possibly for services rendered in the bedroom) to take some good shots of Haley, and bring in a couple of eager-to-please college kids to build her a new website and hook her into every music discovery, streaming, and social media service around. I post the music video in the morning and by lunchtime its views are in the six figure range, seven by dinner time. The ball is rolling, and all I have to do is maintain it.
I’m so busy that I barely have enough time to appreciate just how well it’s going. The only downside is that I’ve barely spoken to Haley herself in three days. Unless sending each other pictures of ourselves in the shower counts, but even there I’m starting to neglect my duties.
I have a meeting with a producer who wants to use her song in the closing credits of a teen drama that just wrapped filming, and when I get back to my car I pound the wheel and roar with fired-up enthusiasm. I’m gonna do this. And it’s going to be the greatest thing I’ve ever done.
Then Jax calls.
“Let me guess, you’re on your way,” he says.
It takes a full three seconds before I realize. “Oh shit! I’m sorry, dude.”
Jax laughs. “It’s cool. I only surf with you to scare off sharks anyway.”
“No, it’s not cool. I’m sorry, bro. I forgot you were back from Paris, and I’ve just been really busy.”
“Hey, forget it. There’s always Thursday.”
I mentally go over the rigorous schedule of promotions and networking I’ve got ahead of me for the next few days, as well as the time I need to carve out to see Haley again soon. “Yeah…I don’t know.”
“Still busy?”
I put the call onto the Porsche’s speakerphone and check the calendar on my phone.
“I don’t know. I have to see someone in the morning, and then I’ve got to make some calls. Shit.”
“I didn’t think you were that popular. Unless…Haley?”
“Yeah,” I say with a sigh. Even hearing her name makes me feel a little better.
Jax’s laugh is so easy and mild I can barely tell where the waves begin and his voice ends.
“You’re in deep with her. Shit. I knew it before you figured it out yourself.”
I laugh. He’s right.
“She’s something special, dude. I don’t know what it is, and that’s the weird thing about it. I always know what it is with women. She’s breaking big, and we’re doing this thing together. I don’t know… This is the first time in a long time everything feels like it’s falling into place.”
I hear nothing but the crashing waves over the phone.
“Bro?” I say, after waiting a few seconds. “You there?”
“Yeah. I’m here,” Jax says, his voice downturned and low.
“What?”
“Brando. Buddy…”
“Say it, dude.”
I hear him take a deep breath. “I don’t wanna sound like the Grim Reaper here. You’re overdue a good thing. Way overdue a girl who can keep you in check. But…she’s your act, you’re obviously really into her, she’s about to make it big… Doesn’t this feel familiar to you?”
I know what he’s talking about. Normally we don’t talk about my past with Lexi, the deal, the devastation – it’s off-limits and he knows it. It’s our code. I met Jax after the break-up, told him all about it one night when we decided to get drunk by ourselves rather than go home and bang chicks. I made him swear the next morning, when we woke up on the bar, never to mention what I told him ever again. I didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to go over it again. I wanted to be a new man, someone different. A man without that in his past. Jax acted like he couldn’t remember me telling him, did the only thing a decent friend would do. Until now.