Submit (Songs of Submission #3)(14)

As if reading my mind, Holden said, “If you play, we’re a go.”

I did play. I generally didn’t have to bother because of Gabby, but I played piano just fine. My phone blooped.

—It’s not a mixup it’s a f**king set-up Jerry never got an engineer and he’s been talking about the f**king weather do you have an engineer there?—

I glanced at Deshaun, who was tapping away at his phone. I didn’t know what to do. If I played, she’d never forgive me, and if I didn’t, I was a back-bending little sheep who walked out with nothing. A nobody. A disappointment.

“We have time for a few takes,” I said, turning off my phone and stepping into the sound room.

CHAPTER 8

The sun was dipping below the skyline when I got back in the car and turned on my phone. There was no use pretending I didn’t see Gabby’s messages, and there was no use listening to them. I just called her.

“Mooooooniiiiiicaaaaaa…..” She was drunk. The white noise whipped like wind cut with the sound of music and laughter.

“Gabby, where are you?”

“I’m with Lord Theodore at the Santa Monica Pier. We’re on the Ferris wheel.”

“Are you okay?”

“You do the scratch cut?”

I rubbed the bottom of the steering wheel and stared at the building as if it could exonerate me, but the big green cube did nothing besides look squat and hip. “Yeah.”

“We were set up, you know. I was. He don’t want me, so they made it so you did the cut without me. You know that, right?”

She seemed okay with it, but she was wasted and on a Ferris wheel, so I couldn’t take her forgiveness for granted. “Don’t assume it was malicious, Gab.”

“Oh f**k, when did you become such a…whassa word? When you believe the best in people? Like you never lived in LA your whole life.”

“Is Theo drunk too?”

I heard the phone muffle and Gabby say, “Hey, baby, you drunk?” Then her voice got clear again. “He says he’s a little bit o’ this and a little bit o’ that.”

“Great. Do you want me to come and get you?”

“Go f**k yourself, Monica.”

The line went dead.

CHAPTER 9

My car was the only one in the driveway, but the house lights were on. I got out and went inside.

“How did it go?” Darren was in my kitchen, wiping the counter. He had a key. He might as well have moved in. Fucker. I hated him and everything. He looked up at me when I didn’t answer. “What happened?”

I had no words. I slipped my arms around his waist and held him tightly. He smelled nice.

He leaned his cheek against my head and stroked my back. “Is it the rich guy?”

“Yes and no.”

“Where’s Gabby?”

I let my hands drop and banged my forehead against his chest. “WDE set us up. It could have been a mistake, but it wasn’t. I can feel it. We ended up in different studios, and she’s with Theo right now, self-medicating.”

“At least she’s not alone. Theo’s a f**kup, but he won’t let her kill herself.” He put his hands on my shoulders and pushed me away, looking into my face. “Did you do the scratch cut?”

“Yes.”

“Oh thank God, Mon.”

“I feel like I ditched her.”

He shook his head. “They’d never reschedule, but if the cut’s good, they’ll send it out, and then you have a leg to stand on.”

I dropped my bag on the floor and plopped onto a kitchen chair. “Well, we won’t have to worry about that. It was the single worst performance of my life.”

“Come on.”

“Really.”

“Because of my sister?”

I leaned on the table, lacing my fingers in my hair. “No.”

“Do you want some tea?”

“Yes, please.” I stood. “I’ll make it. You don’t even live here.”

He pushed me back into the chair. “I can boil water.” He pulled the teabags down. “I’m sure it wasn’t that bad, Mon. Think about it. Are you just fighting the fraud men?”

The fraud men were the creatures that lived inside every artist’s brain, rearing their ugly heads any time something good happened and telling them that they were useless, talentless hacks who had only gotten lucky. “No, I really blew it. Couldn’t hold a note. I was… distracted.”

“By?” He plopped the teapot on the stove and turned to me, leaning on the counter with his arms crossed.

Could I tell him? And if I didn’t who would I tell? I took a deep breath and got ready for the red heat to rise in my face. “Jonathan’s a little kinky.”

Darren raised an eyebrow. “Oh, dear.”

“Please don’t embarrass me.”

He yanked a chair out from the table, sat, and put his elbows on the table. “Kinky billionaire meets hot waitress. It’s a cliché of a cliché. I love it. Does he make you spank him?”

The prickly heat finally hit my cheeks. “It’s the other way around.”

“No.”

I nodded while scratching a nonexistent piece of crud from the tabletop. “I mean, we haven’t got that far yet, but basically, that’s the nature of us in bed. He tells me to do stuff, and I do it. And he’s rough. Really rough. He wants a more, I guess, intense version of what’s been happening, and I’m freaked out.”