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I smiled just a little, despite myself. “You got that just fromLow?”
“Yep. And that’s how I know you gotta know more about Bowie than I do. No one’sonlylistened toLow.”
I nodded, repressing the goofy smile. “Astute.”
“I’ve seen you around with a guitar. You play?”
How had Sylvester Hart noticed me – and why? I was as nondescript as they came. “Yeah. Do you?”
“Yeah. I try. Hey, do you wanna play together sometime?”
I shrugged as if hot guys asked me to play guitar with them all the time. “I don’t know. You any good?”
“Er. I feel like there’s a wrong answer to this. Actually, I feel like they’re all wrong answers. If I say yes you’re gonna say I’m arrogant. If I say no, you’ll say you won’t play with me if I’m shit.”
“You passed the test. Go on, though. Be honest.”
“Yeah, I’m alright.”
“Me too. Fine. We can play together.”
Blinking away the distant memory,I reread the email that I’d received from Sylvester earlier that day. He’d followed it up with a text, a voicemail, and bizarrely, an attempted fax – which had failed, since obviously I didn’t have a fax machine.
My resentment and fear had faded since the encounter with Sylvester at my regular bar. I’d been able to put my hurt back away into its box, compartmentalize it neatly away, and force myself to view his offer with rationality.
His offer had been curt but polite. No demanding I ruin my career for him – thesecondtime he would have ruined a career of mine for no reason other than his own selfishness. Instead, he’d sent me a fairly decent proposal. To writehismemoirs.
What harm could it do? He was offering a ton of cash. At this rate, I’d not just be able to get an orchestra to play my dad’s compositions – I’d be able to fly in the best musicians from across the globe. The Brock brothers were seriously rich. They were also seriously dangerous, but since when did I have a sturdy concept of danger?
I emailed back a quick and curt response, my fingers flying across the keyboard almost as if I wanted to send the message before I could have second thoughts. Maybe I did want to find out what he’d been up to since we’d parted ways. Just a little.
Send.
Well, it was done. I guessed there was still a chance to back out before the contract was signed, but I knew I wouldn’t.
I was feeling a bit jittery, nervous. It should be expected since I’d just encountered a ghost from my past. I did what I always did when I needed to calm down – went into the little music corner of my office, sat on the chair, and picked up my acoustic guitar.
As soon as my fingers strummed across the strings I felt my whole body breathe easier, peace shimmering over me from my hands’ point of contact with the instrument and out across my whole body.
I played the opening chords of my oldest song – or at least, the one that had been good enough to have stood the test of time. Most of the songs from my debut album, the one I’d been hoping to release to coincide with the tour, made me cringe to hear or play now. I was a teenager, with teenage feelings and teenage thoughts.
But this one, a slow and gentle song about night shifts, imagining my father at his lonely job, was still a favorite of mine today. Playing it made me feel close to my dad, too, who was too far away to visit frequently enough, and lived too remotely for me to ever consider living there. Although I was, by all accounts, an introvert, even I knew I needed human contact to stay sane.
This was the same guitar I’d had since I was a kid. As I sang the last line of the song, my gaze was drawn to the scratched-up patch of wood where Sylvester had stuck his band sticker when we’d excitedly found out about the tour, and where later, I’d attacked the thing in an attempt to get it off.
Instead, I’d accidentally engraved his logo into my guitar forever. But it was a gift from my father, and I could never get rid of the thing. Whenever I played, then, the specter of my past – and of Sylvester – would always loom over me.
Twenty years ago...
I’d spotted him and screamed his name across the entire span of the school’s corridors. “Sylvester. Sylvester! Is this true? You’re not only dumping me, you’re dumping me from the tour?”
He stopped and turned around, a concerned frown furrowing its way across his brown. “Luna... I don’t like the word ‘dumping’.”
I reached him with such fury that he took a lazy step back. “That’s your objection?”
He sighed, almost as if he were bored. “Yes, it’s true. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you myself, if that would have helped. I didn’t think you’d like hearing it from me.”
“I don’t like hearing it fromanyone. You said it yourself, you were bringing me on the tour on my own merit, not ‘cause I’m your girlfriend. Now you dump me, the next day I’m dropped?”
