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“The release isn’t for four months,” he pointed out. The timbre of his voice rose, as if he was disappointed.
“My work will be done much sooner.” I pictured myself working day and night on the graphics just to speed up the normally glacial process. The sooner I finished, the sooner I could let Callan scratch the itch he’d kindled in me. A pulse throbbed between my thighs, but I resisted the urge to fidget.
His brows knit into a straight line. “I’m not sure I can wait. I’ve always been a ‘find what you want and go for it’ kind of guy.”
“And I like that about you,” I comment with a grin. “But I’ve always subscribed to the ‘waiting makes the reward much sweeter’ theory.”
He squinched his eyes shut and bobbed his head, as if in time to some inaudible piece of music, drumming his fingers on my hand in a syncopated rhythm. His shoulders moved in time with his tapping.
“What—”
He held up his other hand to stop my words but didn’t open his eyes. A smile slowly curled his lips, carving the laugh lines around his eyes a little deeper.
I remained still, wondering if I was seeing the birth of a new song.
Finally, his eyes popped open. “Do you have paper and pencil with you?” I shook my head. Without moving his gaze from my face, he shouted, “Joel! I need paper and something to write with.” He shut his eyes again, not waiting to see if Joel heard him or responded.
The tap-tap-tapping of Callan’s fingers on my hand intensified the throb in an entirely different part of my body. I squirmed in my chair a bit, which caused Callan to press his knee against mine, I guess to keep me quiet while he did whatever he was doing in his head.
I glanced to the bar in time to see Joel fling aside his bar towel and spin to the counter behind him. He moved quickly and snatched an order pad and pen from one of the serving trays. He ducked under the entry hatch and then hurried our way.
He dropped the pad on the table, nudged it toward me and laid the pen on top. “He’s creatin’,” he whispered to me.
“Ah,” I whispered back. “I wondered.”
Joel nodded and walked away.
The tapping continued a while longer. I held my silence, respecting the creative process. The smile lingered on Callan’s lips while his head continued to bounce to a tune only he could hear.
“Hot damn!” His shout startled me so much I rocked back in my chair.
He lunged forward and grabbed the pad and pen and started to pull it toward him. He must have rethought that because suddenly his mouth was back on mine, tongue plunging in, fingers threaded through my hair.
He ended the kiss as abruptly as it started, smiled at me, and then started writing frantically.
I tried to read what he was scrawling on the paper, but it was upside down, and reading that way wasn’t really my strong suit. I settled for watching him grip the pen in his sexy fingers, gnawing his lip until I wanted to touch my tongue to it to soothe the sting he had to be feeling.
He reached the bottom of one page, ripped it from the pad and tossed it face-down onto the table. He attacked the next sheet of paper, filling it just as quickly.
Shaking his head he muttered, “You’re my good luck charm, Red. My muse.” He spared a glance at me, then redirected his focus to the words he continued to scratch out.
Joel brought refills for our drinks, deposited them on the table, gave me a shrug and then walked away. That was when I realized at some point, Joel must have turned off the jukebox, because the playback had ended and other than low chatter from the sprinkling of other patrons in the bar, there was just silence.
Callan wrote furiously for a bit, scratching out stuff and editing as he went. It was thrilling to watch. I understood how a muse worked. When he spoke to you, you fucking listened because chances were exceptional that he wouldn’t repeat himself. I knew Callan was letting his muse guide his hand and his thoughts. And once you came out on the other end of that process, if you’d listened carefully, you had something you could be proud of. Something maybe the rest of the world would fall in love with.
In college, I’d studied the creative process of the people who’d worked on some of the most successful advertising campaigns in history. And almost every single creative team attested to the value of listening to your gut. The Coca-Cola commercials where people sang on a mountain top. The Wendy’s advertising campaign with the grumpy old woman hollering, “Where’s the beef?” The “Can you hear me now?” campaign that was so successful the question became part of the American vernacular.
With an audible sigh, Callan tossed his pen on the table, then ripped the final sheet of paper from the pad. He stacked all the pages he’d scrawled on neatly together, tapping them on the table to square them off. When he looked at me, his eyes glittered in the interior of the dim bar. He grinned at me, revealing his straight white teeth between full lips and his neatly trimmed beard.
I tipped my head to one side. “Did I just witness the birth of a number one hit?
His grin widened and he stroked his fingertips along my collarbone. “Darlin’, you just inspired a number one on the Top 100 chart. I hope Carrie is open to accepting a last minute addition to the playlist. I’d like to add this to the new release.”
“That’s exciting.”
“If she can’t get me into a production booth, I’ll record it at my home studio.” His fingers slid past my earlobe and into my hair. “I want you to come watch. Can you make time?”
One thing I knew about the creative process was that being invited to witness it was something reserved for special people. The transformation of something from idea to art was intensely personal. It could be painful to wrench the words or pictures from your brain and commit them to paper. Being invited to witness the birth of something like that was a scary privilege.
