The Unsinkable Greta James(59)

They’d met in L.A., where Greta was opening for a bigger band at the Wiltern. Her EP had been out for a few months by then, and she was in the middle of recording the album. Cleo had paired her with a producer back in New York, a sixty-something white guy with hairy ears who had produced three platinum rock albums in the last decade. But on every track, his feedback was the same: “A little less.”

Greta didn’t quite know it then, but what she needed was someone who would ask her for more.

Luke was at the show that night with a couple of musician friends. When they came backstage to meet her afterward, he was the only one not wearing a porkpie hat. Later, once the other two had left and Luke somehow remained, perched on the arm of the ratty sofa in the greenroom, she asked if they’d forgotten their monocles.

He laughed, a surprisingly big sound. “They’re singers. What do you expect?”

“I’m a singer,” she said, arching an eyebrow, still unsure whether or not she was flirting with him. He was wearing all black that night—T-shirt, jeans, and boots—and had one of those haircuts you only ever really see on actors, the kind that seem to defy gravity.

“You sing,” he said matter-of-factly. “But you’re not a singer. At least not primarily.”

She gave him an even look. “I can’t decide if I should be offended by that.”

“You shouldn’t,” he said. “You have an interesting voice. It works. But at the end of the day, you’re mainly a guitarist. And a damn good one.”

If he’d told her she was smart or cool or pretty, if he’d said he liked her eyes or her hair or her outfit, she might’ve been pleased. But no other compliment could’ve worked as well as that one did. Nothing could ever mean half as much.

A damn good one.

She carried those words around with her for months.

Afterward, they went for burgers at a nearby diner, then drinks at a dive bar around the corner, then back to her hotel, ostensibly for the bottle of champagne the concierge had left for Greta. But a few hours later, they were still in bed—the bottle still unopened—when Luke asked if he could hear the third song from her set again. “That’ll be the single, right?” he asked as he traced her collarbone. “?‘Told You So’? I think I figured out the problem with it.”

She frowned at him. “Who said there’s a problem?”

“You’re pulling your punches,” he said, undeterred. “It’s not meant to be a ballad. It’s not even meant to be a power ballad. It’s an anthem. You wrote a big song, an angry song, and now you’re too afraid to play it that way. Which is a shame because it’s a great fucking track. Or at least it could be if you’d stop worrying what people might think and just play the hell out of it.”

If anyone else had said this to her, she might’ve kicked them out of bed. But there was something mesmerizing about his certainty. Already, she understood that he was right. That maybe she’d even known this. She’d just needed to hear someone else say it. And so, with only a sheet wrapped loosely around her, she climbed out of bed and stooped to unlatch her guitar case.

“You look like a badass Statue of Liberty,” Luke said with a lazy grin as he propped himself up on one tattooed arm to watch.

“The Statue of Liberty is a badass,” Greta said, and then—although the room was mostly dark—she closed her eyes and began to play. At first, she had trouble finding the right tempo. She stopped and started twice, but on the third try, the music and lyrics began to match up again. There was something cathartic about playing such a familiar song at such an unfamiliar pace, something in the quickness that gave it a whole new intensity, an electricity that matched the feeling behind it.

Midway through, she opened her eyes and her heart picked up speed, a drumbeat all its own. She didn’t know if it was the song or the way Luke was watching her, with a look that fell somewhere between arrogance and awe, a look that said of course he’d been right, of course he’d known it would be better this way. But he hadn’t imagined it could be quite like this.

Now the waiter returns with two beers, and Greta takes a long sip from one of them. He’d asked if she was ready for Gov Ball, and she isn’t sure how to answer that. To anyone else, she’d lie and say yes. To Luke she says, “I honestly don’t know.”

To his credit, he doesn’t promise she’ll be fine, as so many others would. They haven’t spoken in months, but still he knows her.

“It’s not like you haven’t done this before,” he says. “It’s not like you don’t know how.”

“Yeah, but it’s been a minute.”

“I noticed that,” he says, his voice softer now. “You okay?”

Greta tips her head back to the blue Alaskan sky. For a second, she feels like laughing. Is she okay? Right then, it seems an impossible question.

Luke clears his throat. “Have you at least been playing on your own?”

“A little.”

“Well, you should be. I mean it. You need to go out there this weekend and light that place up.”

She tries to think of a response to this, but her heart is too loud in her ears. She realizes then that this isn’t a pep talk. He’s not just being nice.

He’s trying to save her.

He’s trying to tell her she needs saving.