Curtis rubs his temples like he has a headache brewing. Jane and Ralph have the kind of silent communication that comes with being together as long as they’ve been, and then Jane heads outside, presumably to speak to Sher, but possibly just to get some distance from Freddie. It’s becoming increasinglyclear that tensions aren’t high only between the Dempsey siblings. Everyone seems to be having trouble handling Freddie today.
To be fair to Freddie, I have been standing here half an hour and have yet to say a word about signing them.
“Man, it was so cool meeting Chris last night,” Freddie says next, and for the first time today, his ego seems to slip away.
I hook one foot on the bottom rung of my barstool. “Yeah, he’s a good guy.”
“You’re lucky, growing up around so many of the greats,” Ralph says.
This gives me pause. “I wouldn’t necessarily put it that way.”
Freddie snorts a laugh. “Uh, okay. I get you’re biased, or whatever. But Atlas Shaw is objectively one of the greatest musicians of our time. He left behind such a legacy.”
All I can manage is a nod. While Freddie waxes poetic about my deadbeat dad, I nod and think about being nine years old and listening to his albums under my covers, headphones on so my mom wouldn’t hear, memorizing every lyric and looking for some sign that any of it was about me.
At some point I stopped expecting anything from him. Stopped waiting around on my birthdays in the vain hope Atlas would show up—hell, that he’d send a fuckingtext. I told myself I was done, I didn’t care. I wanted that to be true, but the reality is I never stopped seeking his approval. I didn’t grow out of it when I graduated from Berklee, or when I started interning at Exeter, or when I signed my first artist. It wasn’t enough when someone on my roster won a Grammy, or when I got promoted.
I gave up on my dad, but I didn’t really, because I only transferred that shit onto Billy. I thought I wanted his professional approval, when really I wanted fatherly approval. He’s been a good mentor to me, but I’m not an inexperienced kid anymore. I don’t need him to fill that role.
It’s only now that I’m listening to Freddie fanboy over Atlas, and praise me for how plugged in I am in the industry, that I can admit the truth. I’ve let Billy be my guidepost for too long. I thought I was being objective about Billy, told myself I could separate his good ideas from the bad ones, and that showing my loyalty was more important than agreeing with every little thing he said. I told myself it was enough to acknowledge when he was being inappropriate, without actually having todoanything about it. But Eleanor was right. I’ve let too much slide.
I was going after Dempsey the wrong way, for the wrong reasons. I like Dempsey’s music, I really do. But that’s not why I’m here. I’m here because Billy told me to be. I’m here, and Eleanor’s not.
The beer sours in my stomach. I set my glass down with a shaky hand. Push it across the sticky bar for good measure.
“I’ve actually got to head out,” I say.
The surprise is evident on Freddie’s face. “For real? Thought you’d head back to the venue with us.”
“Yeah. I’d love to,” I lie. “But something’s come up.”
It’s a weak excuse. Transparent as hell. I don’t care.
The smell of spilled beer and brewing mash is making me sick. I have to get out of here.
“Tonight,” I tell them, already edging closer to the exit.“We can go over everything at the after-party. Can’t wait. You guys are going to kill it. It’s going to be a great night.”
It’s almost an out-of-body experience. Like watching that security video—it feels like some other version of me is the one backing out of the room like a weirdo, blowing potentially the biggest career opportunity I’ve ever had. I’m in control, and yet I can’t believe I’m acting this way, even as I’mactivelydoing it.
Outside, there’s no sign of Sheridan or Jane. I start walking without any clear idea of where I am, or which direction I should be heading in, and after a few blocks I finally make myself stop and check a map. I’m a mile and a half from the Strip. The whole walk back, my dad’s voice plays in my head—the grizzled voice I’ve heard in interviews but seldom in real life—telling me that I’m a fuckup, that he’s surprised I even managed to get promoted once since I clearly can’t do my fucking job, that if it weren’t for him I would’ve been fired by now.
I hear Billy telling me pussy isn’t worth tanking a deal over.
Suddenly, I’m livid. At Billy, for speaking the way he did about Eleanor this morning, and at myself for not telling him to shut the fuck up. I’m angry that I’ve wasted so much time and energy trying to be a person my dad might like and respect even though he never wanted to know me. That I’ve based my opinions and important life decisions on what these men would do, despite knowing deep down that I don’t want to be anything like either of them.
And why the fuck didn’t Billy ever mention being friends with Griffin Hastings? It’s a random piece of information,and not really any of my business, so I get why he wouldn’t tell me out of the blue. But I keep thinking about how the only times Griffin’s name has come up in conversation is when it related to Eleanor. When I signed Maya. And when Billy sent me to sign Dempsey.
Billy is a lot of things, not all of them great, but he’s not vindictive. Yeah, he’s grumbled about the lack of loyalty in this industry. And yes, he’s mentioned Eleanor in a less-than-favorable light, before. But he and Eleanor have never personally had problems. As far as I know, they’ve never even crossed paths. It makes no sense that sending me here would have anything to do with Eleanor, or Griffin. He would never use me that way.
Loyalty. That’s what Billy prizes above everything else. And I have his.
I ignore the painful blisters my six-dollar boat shoes have given me. Pieces of the past day and a half skip around like a scratched record in my head.
The moment I walked into that restaurant and saw Eleanor sitting with Freddie and the guys, I remember thinking,Fuck me. Partly because, you know, it was less than ideal for the person I was competing with to be one of the best A&R managers I know, never mind that she had a personal vendetta against me. But also because she looked so fucking flawless in the low amber light that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to form coherent sentences around her, let alone make a decent pitch.
Finally getting to kiss her again outside the shoe store felt like the kind of moment people more talented than me write songs about. And it might be the last kiss I ever get from her.
The thought settles at the front of my mind with a certaintythat suggests it’s nothing new, but something my subconscious has known for a while now:
