The Bet (16 page)

I feel a hand press on my shoulder with eerie gentleness. It’s Rowland.

“You were right, Brando. She’s going to be big.”

I try to speak, but all I can manage it a short, sharp sigh.

“Forget about our little disagreement,” he says, “I should have trusted you. You’ve worked wonders for Majestic Records tonight.”

I glare at him. “What are you talking about?”

Rowland looks at me, amused and patronizing – or trying to be.

“Lexi’s back in the fold. And now we’ve got another superstar to join her. You’ve just brought in two of the biggest acts this label’s seen in years. I’m thinking that’s at least deserving of a little compensation on my behalf. You can forget about being fired – I’m giving you your own label, under the company umbrella of course, and all the freedom to sign, blow cash, and do whatever you want with it. How does that sound?”

“Haley’s not a Majestic artist. She might not even be mine anymore.”

The words seem to slice me as I say them. I watch her on stage, singing with a passion that seems to infect the whole audience. The most talented person I know expressing herself, it used to fill me with pride seeing her do this – but that was before the fall.

“No?” Rowland says, in a way that makes me look back at him. This time there’s no mistake, the amused and patronizing look is real for once.

“She didn’t sign anything,” I say, an explanation that only seems to make Rowland smile even more. “Our agreement was verbal. Not on paper.”

He looks out at Haley again, who’s reaching the crescendo of the song, wailing melodically, the audience moving to her rhythm.

“Who paid for her studio time?” Rowland says, smugly. “Who paid her musicians to play with her, or Josh for producing her songs? You even used the Majestic account to fast-track her single onto services online. I’ve got my fingers all over Haley’s music. There’s more than enough for my lawyers to work with.”

I look at him incredulously, unable to believe what I’m hearing.

He chuckles and pats my shoulder. “Signing artists is the easy part, Brando. Tying them up, forcing them to depend on you, work in your structure – that’s what being a record label is all about. Haley’s perfectly within her rights to try and be independent, but she’ll have to pay back every penny I spent on her, and fight a long legal battle over what my fair share is. Of course, she won’t be making much music while she does that – court proceedings do tend to drag on and get
awfully
exhausting.”

Haley finishes the song and as the studio audience goes crazy I stand there, my body still feeling like it’s caked in concrete, while Rowland applauds enthusiastically along with the rest of the crowd. Haley leaves the stage on the other side, waving at the audience.

“It’s going to be a hell of a ride,” Rowland says, leaning in far too closely, “managing two incredible acts. But I know you’ll do me proud.”

He gives me one last smack on the back before walking away. I drop my head and remember to breathe.

Four minutes. That’s how long Haley’s song is. Four minutes that made me forget Lexi. Four minutes that made me see Haley was special. Four minutes that connected us.

Four minutes in which I lost it all.

18

Brando

“YOU DID THIS TO YOURSELF,” I say to the bare-chested, unshaven, scruffy-haired mess of a man looking back at me with pain in his eyes. “You tried to have it all, and you ended up with nothing.”

I raise my whiskey glass and he does the same.

“Here’s to being a complete asshole.”

I drain the glass and look at the sorry motherfucker. He’s good-looking, even though he needs a shave and a shower. A strong jawline and dark eyes, but he’s got the expression of someone watching his pet being put down. His eyes are lidded and blank, as if all he wants to do is creep back into bed, and his lips look like they’re incapable of saying anything nice. It breaks your heart just to look at him.

“Shit. You look as bad as I feel,” I growl, stepping away from the mirror with a grim smile.

I put my glass down on the counter and stop myself just before I fill it up again – who am I kidding? I’m beyond glasses. I take the whole bottle with me as I cross the messy room, stepping on dirty clothes and other junk as I make my way to the record shelf. The place looks like a bomb hit it, a bomb filled with men’s underwear, beer bottles, and empty pizza boxes.

“Time to bring out the big guns,” I mumble, as I angle my head to flick through the very last records on the shelf – the ones I hoped I’d never need again.

Johnny Cash, Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, Bruce Springsteen – the old, smoky voices of men who knew too much and still had the scars from learning it the hard way.

I pick a record and bring it over to the player, taking my time as I put it on the platter. With slow anticipation, I lift the needle with my finger and drop it carefully on the groove. The comforting crackles and pops sound out from the speakers all over my apartment, and I swing the bottle to my lips as I stumble back over to the sofa and drop my heavy body onto it.

With the drink dulling my senses, I let the song take me out of myself. Guitars and drums swirling and beating like my bad thoughts, that sympathetic voice like an old friend…

Then the record scratches to a stop.

I open my eyes and look toward the player.

It’s Jax. He raises his hands out wide, looks at me incredulously, and says, “What the fuck, dude?”

“Ugh,” is all I can manage as I pull myself into an upright sitting position on the couch. I don’t need to ask how Jax got in; I gave him a spare key a long time ago – I sometimes have a habit of losing my own set in the apartments of particularly passionate women.

He steps through the room purposefully, scanning the wreckage of my apartment like he’s looking for something. With his crisp, tailored blue shirt and tight-fitting jeans he should look ridiculous in this pig-sty of an apartment, but he has a habit of making his surroundings look like they don’t fit him, rather than the other way around.

“So you had your heart broken, huh?”

“How do you know that?” I say, struggling to follow his movements as he paces around.

Jax shoots me a look. “’Cause this place looks like a crime scene – and you look like the corpse. Don’t need a detective.”

“I’m alright,” I insist.

“
Alright?
Dude. I haven’t seen you in nearly a month. I’ve called you—” he pauses to grab my phone from the coffee table, and yanks my finger onto it in order to unlock it, “twenty-four times,” he says, flicking through the call list on my phone. “And you ignored every single one. That’s kind of impressive, in a weird way. Looks like your boss called a bunch of times…your massage therapist…your yoga instructor…?”

I manage a little smile as I bring the bottle to my lips, but Jax snatches it away just as it reaches them.

“Hey!” I say, finding my hand suddenly empty.

“You even
eating
anything?” Jax says as he brings the bottle with him on his march to the kitchen.

“What are you, now? My mother?”

“Just a friend,” he says as he opens and closes cabinets looking for food. “If I was your mother I’d be hosing you down in the shower and spraying this place with Lysol.”

“We can just order a pizza,” I groan, as I drop back onto the sofa.

“I’ll take you to the salad place down the road. My shout,” he says, walking back to stand in front of me. “You seriously look like you could use a bucket of kale or some shit.”

“That sounds good,” I mumble sarcastically. “
Or,
we could just order a pizza.”

“Bro!” Jax shouts, gesturing around him. “You need to get out of this place. You’re a couple of video games and a superhero poster away from regressing into a reclusive teenager.”

I look up at him feebly. “I used to like video games.”

“So did I,” he says, “but even then, I never looked as bad as you do right now.”

He slows down for a second, staring at me with more pity than I’ve ever seen him use before – and this is a guy who stops to feed stray dogs. He steps in front of the coffee table and sits down on it, straight in front of me. Finally, he nods.

“So what happened with Haley?” he asks. “No bullshit this time.”

I push a hand back through my hair – the most grooming I’ve done in a week. As much as I hate to admit any of this, it’s time to come clean.

“That night, the one where you and I bumped into Lexi, that scumbag Davis made a bet with me. If I made a hit with Haley in one month, he’d give me Lexi back.”

Jax cocks an eyebrow. “And you won.”

“I won.”

He nods slowly, finally understanding. “But you don’t want Lexi anymore. Do you.”

I sigh— this is way too much to think about on just two quarts of whiskey.

“I don’t know what I feel for Lexi anymore. But I do know that I had pretty much given up on having anything with her ever again. Losing Haley, though…” I shake my head.

“So here’s the part I don’t get,” Jax says. “How did you lose Haley? I thought things were going great.”

I stare at him, using his compassion as a point to fix on, so that I don’t get angry, or depressed, or frustrated, or any of the other negative things that thinking about it makes me feel.

“She found out about the bet.”

Jax takes a moment, then rubs his temples like he’s suddenly got a killer headache as bad as the one I have.

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” I say. “
Oh.
”

“She thought you were faking all along. Well, damn.”

“I don’t blame her,” I say, looking up at the ceiling. “To top it all off, Rowland – my boss – has us all by the balls. Davis gave us Lexi. Then Rowland threatened me and Haley with his lawyers and forced Haley to sign a deal – with my help. And now I’m supposed to manage both of them.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah.
Ouch.
You know, it took a really long time, a lot of days like this, and a whole load of women, before I could even stop dreaming about Lexi. And Haley…I…I don’t know. But this time it’s even worse. I’m so fucking stupid!
”
I ball my hand up into a fist and slam it on the sofa.

“Jesus, buddy! Calm down. It’s not over. Not yet, anyway.”

“Shit. Sorry,” I say, putting my hands on my face and leaning over to calm myself down. “What the fuck am I supposed to do, dude?”

“Here’s what you do,” Jax says, leaning forward and putting his hands on my shoulders. “
Don’t think
. Remember when you told me that? Well do it. Just go take a shower, put some clothes on, and come get something to eat. One step at a time. Get yourself off the couch, and then just follow your instincts. Keep on moving. Don’t stop to wonder.”

I let out a sigh.

“That sounds like good advice. But it’s the same damn reasoning that got me into this mess in the first place.”

“Sure it is.” Jax just grins. “And it’s the only thing that’ll get you out of it.”

19

Haley

EVER SINCE I WAS A KID, I’ve written down my dreams when I woke up. From the recurring one about a white horse, to the strange ones about flying through an auditorium. Even the anxiety dreams where I feel like I’m falling, and the nightmares about Freddy Krueger. I’d wake up and write them all. Maybe it was some way of trying to make my dreams come true, maybe it was an attempt to cling to the fantasy and weirdness in my otherwise typical life. At the very least, it gave me a lot of stuff to work from with song lyrics. I’ve done it almost every morning for over ten years.

But not anymore.

I’d like to say it’s because my life this past month has been pretty much a dream come true – which it has – but it’s not. I’d like to say it was because it takes me at least five minutes every morning to remember and realize where I am, in a beautiful new apartment I’m sharing with Jenna – but it’s not that either.

It’s because I keep dreaming about
him.

The more I try to suppress it, and the more I try to fill my head with junk so that I don’t have to think about him, the more vivid and explicit the dreams become. It’s gotten to the point where I can almost smell him, taste him. The dreams are different, but the feeling’s always the same. The guilt mixing with ecstasy, the bitterness mixing with sweetness. But in them I can’t help myself. I can’t pull away. It’s only when I wake up, my thighs rubbing together, my hearth thumping, that I feel real enough and strong enough to remember what he did to me. The bet. Then I get angry.

This morning is no different. I wake up and realize my hand is between my thighs, the other against my neck where he was kissing me. I pull them away in annoyance and jump out of bed. I can hear the sound of the juicer outside my room, and Jenna’s voice. After pulling on a pair of sweatpants I push open the door, eager for the distraction of company.

“She’s alive!” says Josh, breezily.

My record producer is sitting on a stool at the counter while Jenna buzzes around the kitchen. Since we moved in together, using the proceeds of my advance and the money from the play she finally got paid for, Jenna’s been making sure she’s getting her money’s worth from the apartment’s furnishings and appliances. The juicer, the coffee machine, the bread maker, it doesn’t matter: if it does something, she’s been using it as much as she can.

“Morning, Haley!” she says as she pours out a big smoothie for herself, the toaster popping in the background. “Coffee?”

“Absolutely. Hey, Josh.”

“You’re up late,” he says, as I rub the gunk out of my eyes.

“We were up all night watching horror movies on the TV,” Jenna says, excitedly, nodding for Josh to turn around and look at it. “It’s
fifty-five
inches!”

“And you know how we ladies love our inches,” I grumble drily, not caring that I’m tossing out inappropriate innuendo to my producer. I know Josh can handle it, though. He’s seen worse from me by now. They both have.

“Oh, Haley,” Jenna mock-scolds me. I’ve been in a foul mood ever since things went south with Brando, but she (and Josh) (and my music) have been my rock this whole time. With their help, I’ve even managed to have a few happy moments.