Ten
The melody in my head was still there. It was getting stronger. It was sort of like having the same dream for a week straight. Except, of course, I was awake.
There was something about this persistent tune that felt different. Special. Like it had meaning in a way no other lyric ever had.
I messed around on the guitar for hours, trying to come up with more than just the few chords that replayed in my mind.
I ended up with more lyrics, though. Words that seemed to tumble out.
There’s a fine line between love and hate.
People turn their back on a dime.
Sometimes it seems like this is all a waste of time.
You don’t see me,
Only the mask I wear
No one bothers to look beneath it.
I’m not the man I am anymore, just someone they all want me to be.
Trapped.
Caught.
Ensnared by a web.
Nate walked in the room, and I made a frustrated sound, relaxing my fingers off the strings.
“Still working on that song?” Nate asked, dropping his bag in the middle of the floor.
“It’s more like a few chords and a melody. Can’t seem to put any music to the words.”
“You got words?”
I held out a sheet of paper lying on the bed beside me. He took it to read over the few lines that had found their way onto the paper. It was a weird thing, letting someone read something you wrote. It was like giving them access to part of your mind, part of your innermost workings. It made a person feel vulnerable.
Nate glanced up. I couldn’t really read his expression, and my stomach sort of dropped.
“This is what I was talking about. You should write your own stuff. It’s good.”
“You think it’s good?” I echoed, slightly surprised.
“Yeah.” He sat down beside me on the bed. “It’s about all this bullshit, right? Of how you became public enemy number one.”
“What the hell happened to me, man?” I said, setting the guitar between my legs.
“I wondered that a lot too over the years.” Nate tossed the paper down.
“It was just stupid shit, me blowing off steam… I’ve just been so pissed off.”
“I’m not talking about TP-ing the neighbor’s house. Although, dude, that shit was funny.”
We both snickered.
“His house could have been an ad for Charmin,” I told him.
“I’m not talking about the fights, the shit with the fans… You just stopped coming around, man. You were my best friend. My brother. Then one day you were famous and just… gone.”
I’d never really thought about it from Nate’s point of view. Or anyone’s, for that matter. I spiraled down into a place where everything was about me. Who I was. What I could do for other people. What other people wanted from me.
It wasn’t me anymore.
It was Ten.
“The first couple years went by in a giant blur. Becca and my team, they own me. They tell me where to go and what to do. Hell, they even pick out my clothes. I was basically property of the label, a huge money-maker. I know it looks all glamourous on the outside, like I’m riding high and living in my castle on the mountain, but this business…” My words trailed off, and I dared a glance at my cousin.
He nodded as if he wanted me to continue.
“It eats you alive. By the time I realized, by the time I missed what I’d been missing all that time, it was too late. Uncle Derek doesn’t even want people to know I’m his nephew. He wants a normal life without being hounded. If I had come here, it would have dragged you all into it.”
“You could have called. Texted. Sent a postcard from your glamourous travels,” Nate said. “I, personally, would have liked a selfie of you at the Eiffel Tower.”
I gave him a WTF look.
Nate laid his hand on his heart. “I could have taped it to my headboard and thought of you at night.”
I shoved him, and he cackled. Then he turned serious again. “Seriously, though. You could have called.”
“Yeah, I could have.”
“I missed you.” He admitted.
Looking around the familiar cramped room, I nodded. “I missed you, too.”
“Brothers gotta hug!” Nate exclaimed and then launched at me. With an, “Oomph,” he wrapped his arms around me.
Chuckling, I hugged him back. A feeling of homesickness punched me in the gut.
When he pulled back mere seconds later, he lifted the guitar into his lap. “So let’s work on this song.”
Surprise rippled through me. “You write songs?”
“You’re not the only musically inclined person in this family,” he commented. “You think I just have a guitar around here for shits and giggles?”
“Your dad is the music department head.” I pointed out.
“I’m a music major, jackass.”
I drew back. Wow. How the fuck did I not know that?
I was selfish.
A selfish bastard.
“I’m sorry,” I said, suddenly feeling I didn’t have the right to even be sitting here.
My uncle and my cousin offered me shelter, a place to hide from the press and the mess of my own making, and I didn’t deserve it. I hadn’t even said thank you.
“For what?”
“For being a complete dick.”
Nate laughed. “Better to be a dick than a vagina.”
“Dude. No,” I said, a smile pulling at my lips. But then I turned serious again. “Seriously, though. I’ve been self-absorbed. Thanks for not forgetting about me.” The way I forgot about you.
“We’re family,” he said simply, then turned back to the instrument.
The sounds of the exact tune I’d been messing around with filled the air. “So that’s what you got,” he said, glancing over at me.
I nodded, not bothering to conceal my surprise. He was good, and he picked that up after hearing it only twice.
“So what if we add something like this?” He went on and started adding to the song.
No.
He made it a song.
Passion for music and the energy I hadn’t buzzed with in a long time came flooding back as if a great dam had burst.
For the first time in a long time, I felt music and I were the same.
We were still playing around when my cell phone rang a while later. Glancing at the screen, I saw Becca’s name and answered.
“The groundwork for your comeback is aligning,” she said without any kind of greeting.
“I’m good, thanks. How are you doing, Becca?” I responded.
“I’m busy,” she said, tart. “I take it from the silence on the media front, you’re doing what I told you and staying out of sight.”
“Don’t I always do what you tell me?”
She made a rude sound. “If you did, I wouldn’t be working double time for a comeback you wouldn’t have needed.”
I leaned back on the bed. “You like the game.”
“I’m sending your plane back for you day after tomorrow. I want you back in the studio the end of this week.”
“What?” My voice rose with surprise, and my body reacted by sitting up straight.
“Your exile is coming to an end. You can remain out of sight here in LA while getting a new album together.”
I glanced over at Nate while she was telling me this. The guitar was still in his lap, and he was looking down at the sheet with my words on it, making a few notes about the chords.
“We have a lot of good press to put together, appearances, a new music video, where to debut it all… and of course, a press conference where you will have to promise—”
“I’m not ready,” I said, cutting her off.
Her words stuttered. A beat of silence rang into my ear. “What do you mean you aren’t ready?”
“I’m not ready to come back to LA. I like being here, away from everything,” I explained. “And I’m working on a song—”
“A song!” Becca exclaimed. “We have people to do that for you. LA is where you’re needed.”
“I need more time,” I said, just as stubborn as her.
“What’s this really about, Ten?”
“I just told you. I like being where the press isn’t hounding me.”
“No,” she answered definitively and made a sound to back it up. “I know you. There’s more to it than that. What’s happened?”
I resented the fact that she thought she knew me so well. How could she? Especially when, lately, it felt as if I didn’t even know me that well.
“No, there isn’t,” I said, firm.
“Is there a girl?” she asked suddenly.
What the fuck? Was she a mind reader?
“Why would you think there was a girl?” I asked.
Nate widened his eyes and grinned.
I gave him the finger.
“Because you’re twenty-one years old. Your hormones control your life.”
“I’m pretty sure you control my life,” I snapped. I mean, seriously. What the fuck business was this of hers? She was my manager, not my mother.
She was on my payroll, but she acted like she was the boss.
It never bothered you before, a voice in the back of my mind whispered.
Well, it sure as fuck bothers me now.
“I’m just looking out for you. You know you’re my favorite client.”
“I’m your most profitable client.” I clarified. Even when I was considered persona non grata in the entertainment world, I still made more money than most.
“What’s her name?” She cut to the chase.
“I told you—”
“Cut the crap, Ten. The only reason you wouldn’t want to hightail it back to sunny LA and out of that primitive New York town is because you’re getting laid. Now what’s her name?”
“I’m hanging up now. I’ll come back to LA when I’m ready.”
“You want a couple extra days, fine. Take them. But let me remind you of your career. A career that literally teeters on the cliff of ruin right now. I’m the only reason you haven’t fallen off that cliff, Ten. Cozying up to some nobody girl who has stars in her eyes because she’s in bed with a pop icon is a bad idea. The second you’re back on that plane, she will be at every tabloid’s doorstep, selling whatever story she can for a payday. It won’t hurt her. But you. You, it could destroy.”
Her words didn’t scare me.
They did the opposite of what she likely intended.
That anger that lived so firmly inside me rose up.
“She’s not like that,” I growled, a dangerous new tone in my voice. Almost as though I were daring Becca to even hint that Violet was anything other than what I knew her to be.
I felt a ripple of unspoken surprise on the other end of the silent line, and then I disconnected the call.