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“Yeah. You look real ready to go,” I said sarcastically.
“I love this place.” He beamed.
“You mean, you love getting laid every night.”
“Don’t you?”
Blaire rolled her eyes. “You and Eve are really hitting it off, huh?”
“What? Eve? Oh no, we decided we would be better off as friends. I’ve been meeting with this girl Alejandra. She works at a local winery.”
“What? Really?” Blaire gasped. “Ale has a boyfriend.”
“Had a boyfriend,” Santi corrected. “They broke up. She’s my dream girl.”
“I can’t believe that happened,” she said. “I thought you really liked Eve.”
“I do.” He winked at her. “We had a good time. But that doesn’t mean it’s forever. Honestly, she hooked me up with Alejandra.”
Blaire glanced up at me in confusion as Santi headed for the studio. “Wow. Eve never told us.”
“She’s a new roommate though, right?”
“Yeah, she is. I don’t know her as well as Piper or Jennifer, obviously, but she seemed to be into him.”
“Eve seems like someone who can handle herself.”
“You’re right. But I’m totally asking her about it when I get home.”
The bell tinkled overhead, and Honey entered. “Hey, y’all. What did I miss?”
My eyebrows shot up my forehead at the transformed Honey. Her once-honey-blonde locks were now a deep, dark brown. Nearly as dark as Blaire’s pitch-black hair with the same fringe bangs. She’d always had kind of short hair, but she must have gotten extensions or something because it was nearly down to her back. It was a little disconcerting. She was practically a dead ringer for Blaire.
“Whoa, new look,” Blaire said, jumping to her feet.
She giggled and did a little wiggle. “You like?”
Blaire nodded, running her fingers through the extensions. “It’s so cute. Who did them?”
“A friend recommended this place downtown. I just wanted something completely different. You know, after my catastrophe with my last boyfriend.”
“It’s definitely different,” I muttered.
Blaire shot me a look that said, Be nice. I drew her into me again and kissed her hard on the lips.
“I’m going to get to work. Let me know if you need anything. Lunch?”
“Of course.”
“See you, Honey,” I said, waving at her as I left them behind.
“Bye, Campbell,” she said with a wistful tone to her voice.
I cringed and hurried back into the studio. Everyone was set up, getting ready to focus on “Tightrope” again. And I had the sound of Honey’s voice in my head. That was utterly discordant with the song I was about to sing about how falling in love was like walking a tightrope. You had to let trust take you out on it and push forward with confidence, or one wrong step, and everything could fall apart.
I suddenly had a bad feeling about Honey. Was she trying to look like Blaire because of me? She was a Cosmere fan. She’d been desperate to meet us that first night. Now, I was dating Blaire, and suddenly, she was trying to look like her. That didn’t sit right with me, but maybe it was just all the problems I’d had with fans in the past getting to my head. I didn’t know where to begin to tell Blaire without sounding irrational.
“Campbell, you ready?” Viv asked. “We’re all set.”
“Uh, yeah. Let’s do it.”
I closed my eyes and let the opening chords of “Tightrope” roll over me. It was finally coming together. Santi had suggested pulling Viv in on backup vocals for this one, so it had a female voice on the call and response. And it added this perfect blend that I’d never known I was missing. It was what we’d all been missing. And after spending the next couple hours hammering it all out, I felt like it was finally in a place to show people.
“That’s a wrap,” West called through the speakers. He shot me a thumbs-up.
He was right. That was the one.
“Fuck yes,” Santi roared. He jumped to his feet. “I have a crazy idea.”
Yorke sighed. “Surprise, surprise.”
Viv cackled. “You said it, Yorke.”
“Why don’t we come back?”
We all stared at him blankly.
“Come back?” I finally asked.
“Yeah. We’re all going to LA in a week to show the studio what we got and where the album is heading. They’re going to want to keep us in town and finish out the album. We don’t want to get in there and record all six finished songs before we have the rest of them finished. It’d ruin our whole roll.”
He was right. If we didn’t do the entire album in one stretch, we would lose so much momentum. Things were done in an order, and we weren’t ready to get in there and record officially yet. There were still kinks to figure out. Not to mention, a few more songs.
“So, why don’t we go home, do all our meetings, show how kick-ass we are, and then have them send us back here?”
A pin could have dropped as everyone assessed his words.
