Just For Now, page 4
When I look back at Beckett, he’s schooled his expression, whatever I might have seen—or that I thought I might have seen—long gone. He clears his throat and shuffles some papers in front of him. “It’s late. We’ve gotten the preliminary details lined out. I know you’ll need time to think about ways to get things back on track.”
I click my pen a few times, my brain immediately going back to the intertwined problems of lagging ticket sales, poor album and single sales, and lack of radio play. The label isn’t pushing the radio stations to play his music, which is affecting sales of everything else. But they’re saying they won’t lean on the stations until his sales come up. It’s circular logic, and it’s almost impossible to break out of that kind of a swirl. We need something creative to circumvent the whole thing. Get his music in front of fans.
“Do you have a video of one of your shows?” I ask, wanting more material to work with. And not just to drool over. Though that might happen too, just sayin’. “That might help me come up with some ideas.”
Beckett blinks, but it’s Kelsey who answers. “No. Not a good one, anyway. I’m sure you could find something on YouTube, but we try to get the unauthorized recordings taken down. We want everything funneled through our official channels.”
I nod. “Makes sense.” I guess I’ll have to wait till his next show. I move some papers around until I find the one with the tour dates. His next show is a week away. Which is annoyingly far away and also really soon. Anything I want to implement before then, I need to get started on immediately. But when another yawn forces its way out of my mouth, I close my notebook and sit back in my chair, rubbing my eyes.
“I think you’re right about stopping for the night, though.” And then it hits me that I have nowhere to stay. “Um, about that, actually.”
“I booked you a room at the Nebula Hotel,” Kelsey informs me. “Whenever you’re ready, I’ll call the driver to take you.” At least she’s good at her job, unlike the tour managers they’ve been stuck with. And while I tend to double- and triple-check everyone else’s work as well as my own, I realize I’m not the norm. I just can’t handle being part of a tour that’s going off the rails. I worked on one like that with my mom one summer in high school, and it was the worst experience. There’s no way I’ll ever let a tour I’m on get that bad if I can help it. Unfortunately, it seems like Beckett’s tour is already there and even worse than that one. I definitely have my work cut out for me.
“Thank you, Kelsey.” I don’t even bother to hide the exhaustion in my voice. “Go ahead and call him. Otherwise I might just curl up on the floor under the table.”
Beckett chuckles, the first real laugh I’ve heard out of him all night, and it’s warm and turns me to goo on the inside in a way I don’t want to acknowledge. “I don’t think that’d be very comfortable.”
I shrug, giving him a crooked smile. “Eh. I’ve slept in worse places. But I’d definitely prefer a hotel room bed over the kitchen floor.”
His smile is warm and friendly, and his eyes only dip for a second, but it’s enough to confirm my earlier suspicions. He’s checking me out.
Chapter Six
Beckett
Blaire’s already starting to turn things around, and my next show is still a few days away. I can’t believe how fast she’s jumped in and started making changes. Faster than any of my other tour managers, that’s for damn sure. With the way she’s hit the ground running, my faith in her so far seems to be paying off. I still have my fingers crossed that it’ll make a difference once we’re back on the road, though it’s probably too early for it to make a difference with this first show. Still, a guy can hope.
Her first order of business is to involve me more in my social media, which has me grumbling, but in what I’ve already learned is typical Blaire fashion, she doesn’t give a shit.
“Look,” she says to me, one hand propped on her hip, the evening sunlight streaming through the window making her skin appear as golden as her hair. She’s fucking gorgeous. Younger than me by more than a decade, if I had to guess, which is nothing new in my line of work. Young hot chicks throw themselves at me all the time. But Blaire’s not throwing herself at me. That tone of voice means business, so I force myself to ignore her bombshell looks and focus on her words.
“I know you don’t like doing this”—I snort at that understatement, but refrain from commenting when she flattens her lips and narrows her eyes—“but you want to connect with your fans. If they feel connected to you, then they’ll want to buy your stuff. Tickets. Songs. Merch. All of it. Video is the quickest and easiest way to do that. We’ll do a live video and post it on all your channels.”
She raises the phone in her hand, holding it in front of her face, and my shoulders immediately tighten up. I hate this shit. I hate people wanting the inside view of my life. I’ve worked hard to keep the modicum of privacy I have. Getting hounded by paparazzi is bad enough. Now I’m supposed to bare my soul on social media?
“Just relax,” she encourages. “Be yourself. Smile. Tell people you’re excited to see them soon at your concerts and to prove it, you’re giving away tickets, a hotel stay, and a backstage pass to your show next week.”
“What if no one wants to win tickets?” I ask in a petulant tone. She’s probably right, but I still don’t want to do this.
She lowers the phone and gives me a don’t be a moron look. I’m fluent in that look. Malea gave me that look all the time. But for some reason from Blaire it doesn’t sting so much. Maybe because it’s accompanied by the words, “Please. You’re Beckett Stone. I know you have more self confidence than that. Quit being a pussy and make the damn video.”
I don’t bother holding back my laughter when she calls me a pussy. “I wouldn’t expect you to use insults like that. What about girl power? Why are you insulting your own parts?”
“You would be so lucky as to be compared to my lady garden. You’re stalling worse than Danny’s kid at bedtime. Now shut up so I can count you in.”
I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing, and even so a snigger escapes. I don’t really know the Cataclysm guys that well, but I recall their lead guitar player is named Danny and that he has a kid. I don’t know if her bitching at me like that was intended to make me loosen up and relax, but it’s had that effect anyway.
“Five, four, three.” She holds up her fingers for two and one and then points to me, indicating I should talk. I stretch my lips into my most charming smile and begin with the loose script that Blaire and I have been hashing out for the last hour.
When it’s over and she lowers the phone again, I collapse back on my couch, my hands over my head and my eyes closed. “That was awful. Please never make me do it again.”
She pokes me in the belly and scoffs. I twitch in response but don’t open my eyes. “Why are you such a weenie about making videos? My guys do it all the time. And they don’t even need me to hold the phone and coach them through it. They just make them. Backstage at shows. During sound check. Little glimpses behind the scenes draws in the fans and keeps them engaged. You want your fans to forgive their canceled and rescheduled shows? You gotta give ‘em something.” She pokes me again, this time in the chest. I open my eyes, taking in the way the sun makes her blonde hair look like a halo. But she’s no sweet, innocent angel. No, sir. This girl is all fire and sass, a ball buster if ever I met one.
Her sapphire blue eyes meet mine, direct and serious. “You’ve gotta give them you.”
“I thought you were my tour manager, not my social media director,” I grumble, looking away and sitting up. I’m being an asshole right now, and I know it. But it’s deflection. Distancing. I have a rule that I don’t bang my employees, and if she keeps looking at me like that with her halo of golden hair and blue, blue eyes that I want to drown in … and those lips. Those fucking lips. Gah, I need to not think about her lips and fucking at the same time. And that’s just what’s above the neck.
The deflection is necessary, the asshole distancing is necessary, or I’ll end up breaking one of my own personal rules, and I don’t have many—always use my own condoms, and do my best to keep my fans happy being the other two—so breaking one is a big fucking deal to me.
She doesn’t seem to notice my assholeness—or she’s not bothered at least. With a shrug, she sits on the other end of the couch. “You said you wanted out-of-the-box ideas to get things moving. This is what I’ve got for you. Don’t like it? Fire me and find someone else. Otherwise, do what I tell you and quit bitching about it.”
That has me turning to face her, eyebrows raised. “I’m sorry, what was that?” No one’s talked to me like that since … not since my mom, actually. That woman didn’t take any shit from anyone either. She raised me on her own. My dad left before I was old enough to remember him. She worked hard to put a roof over our heads and food on the table, and when I fell in love with music, she pulled extra shifts and overtime so she could pay for instruments and lessons. Because I wasn’t just content with one instrument. No, I needed piano and guitar and then I played clarinet for a while in my middle school band.
My mom was the best. Her unfailing belief in me pushed me to work hard and go after my dream. She never discouraged me, even when she wouldn’t let me slack off in school in favor of my music. Because of her, I made it. I became a legend. And now … I’ve become a pale shadow of what I once was. What she was so happy to see me as. And some part of me feels like I’m letting her down by failing now.
She’d probably give me the same kind of tough love I’m getting from Blaire, tell me to quit whining and do the work and I’d be okay. My heart twinges with the now-familiar ache that she’s not here to give me hell. The ache has dulled with time, but it never goes away.
My attention refocuses on Blaire when she gives me a feral smile, all teeth. No, halo aside, no one would mistake this chick for an angel, that’s for damn sure. Her voice is sugary sweet when she responds. “Did I stutter?”
My laugh this time isn’t just a snigger. And I don’t hold back the guffaw that rolls out of me. I fall back on the couch again, just cracking up at this girl putting me in my place when she was probably in diapers when I had my first hit single.
When my laughter subsides, but with a smile—a genuine one, not the manufactured one I pasted on for the video—still on my face, I turn my head to face her. “How old are you?”
Her brows wrinkle together. “Twenty-four. Why? How old are you?”
I sit up again, maintaining eye contact as I perch on the edge of the couch again, my arms braced on my knees. “Forty. And I was just curious.” Maybe she wasn’t in diapers anymore, but she wasn’t long out of them, considering I had my first hit at nineteen.
And suddenly all my years seem to hit me, piling on like a stack of bricks. And I’m tired. Tired of the grind. Of the bullshit. Of having to do all this social media crap. Not because I’m a Luddite. But because they all want a piece of me. This is just one more place where I have to give it to them.
Blaire’s right, though. I know it. I need to keep my fans happy. And they need to feel that sense of connection. They get that at shows. I work hard at it on stage. It’s one of the things I’m known for—my ability to draw a crowd in, make an arena feel like an intimate stage venue. But I can’t do that if they won’t come to my shows. And if making some stupid videos and giving away tickets and hotel rooms and backstage passes—yet another piece of me—is what it takes to get asses in seats, then I’ll make all the stupid videos that Blaire demands.
“How often do I have to do this?” I gesture at her phone.
She narrows her eyes at me. “At least once a week. More if you can swing it. You can do them yourself, though. Or have Kelsey help. It doesn’t have to be anything major. Take some time to record a video and talk to your fans. Tell them what you’re up to. Give them a glimpse into your day. Like when you’re on your way from the hotel to an interview at a radio show early in the morning. Or on your way to the sound check. At the sound check. Backstage before or after a show. The roadies tearing down the stage and packing up to go to the next place. Your dressing room. Your hotel room.”
My eyebrows raise at those last two.
She shakes her head. “Not to show any identifying information, of course. You don’t need the crazies trying to find you. But show them that you’re a person. Tell them that you’re tired because you’ve been up since four in the morning and haven’t had time for a nap because your schedule’s been packed with interviews and meet and greets and workouts with your trainer. That the first thing you ate that day was a smoothie that the doctor who travels with you handed to your assistant because it was almost noon and you’d already put in a full eight hours. Those kinds of things.”
“You want me to peel back the curtain and show them the seedy underbelly of being a rock star? You don’t want me to show them all the shimmer and shine?” My voice betrays my surprise. Usually my social media team only wants smiles and upbeat posts. But Blaire’s basically telling me to be myself.
She shrugs. “I mean, you can if you want to. Show them some of that too. The awesome parts. The high you get from performing. But people connect more with the grit. The raw parts.”
I grunt, tearing my gaze from her, wanting to defend myself from the way her words worm their way inside me. She’s right. I know it. But I’ve always been private. That’s why I wouldn’t even consider Malea’s reality show ideas. Being followed around by cameras all day long … I shudder involuntarily at the thought.
While the videos that Blaire’s suggesting aren’t anywhere on the same level, and I would control what and how much I show, it’s still giving up another sliver of my life. My privacy. My off-stage time.
Her hand on my leg startles me out of my thoughts and brings my attention back to her. Her fingers are slim and smooth, and her hand is warm through my jeans. “You don’t have to record your entire life,” she says softly like she can read my mind. “I know it feels intrusive, but it’s really just an extension of your on-stage persona. I was making a bunch of suggestions. You don’t have to do all of them.”
I give her a tiny smile. “Thanks. Yeah. I’ll think about it.”
She squeezes my thigh and lets go, and my leg feels irrationally cold from the loss of her warmth.
Yeah, I definitely need to keep my distance from this girl if I want to retain any amount of my sanity.
The fact that she’s the best thing to happen to my tour since it started will make keeping my distance hard, though.
And it’s not the only thing that’ll be hard.
Chapter Seven
Blaire
The thrill and excitement of touring with Beckett Stone wears off faster than I would have expected.
And by that I mean the first show killed all my excitement about this gig.
It’s …
Astonishing. And not in a good way.
First off, touring with Beckett lacks the sense of camaraderie and chosen family that I’ve gotten used to with Cataclysm. They were the first band that I worked for directly. I applied for the job after a dismal and directionless year of community college, using my parents’ connections in the industry to land the job, much to my aunt and uncle’s dismay. I’d lived with my mom’s sister and her family off and on starting when I was five, when my mom decided she was tired of parenting and ready to get back to her real life as a musician. She and my dad had married when she got pregnant with me, but he’d bailed soon after I was born, leaving my mom and me on our own for long stretches of time while he was attached to one tour after another. So I got dumped with my eccentric but stable aunt and uncle—Shakespearean scholars—and their two kids.
During the summers when I was older—and sometimes during the school year when I could wheedle one of them into it—I traveled with one of my parents on their tours, usually my mom. Dad never did have much time for me. It was crazy and busy, but gave me a taste of the life, and I loved it. The energy, the constant movement, the thrill of new places, new people, new concerts. I loved music, and getting to see my idols perform all summer long made me the envy of all my friends.
But since my aunt and uncle were more parents to me than my biological ones, I did a year of community college to appease them. As professors, they always emphasized the importance of higher education. But the whole experience was shockingly boring, even more than high school. Despite my promise to get a degree, there was no way I could take another year of that soul-sucking boredom.
My mom told me about the opening with the up-and-coming band, Cataclysm, in one of our infrequent conversations. I’d expressed my despair at having to go to any more classes, and she thought I might be interested in the gig. She said she’d heard their demo when they got booked as the opening act for the band she was attached to for a few months. I applied, tossed around my mom and dad’s names and that I’d practically grown up on tour, and was hired on the spot. Finding someone who knows what touring is like and also how not to be crazy around the talent is like hitting the jackpot.
Second, for all of my childhood fangirling over Beckett Stone, I’ve been busy with my boys and haven’t heard any of his new music. It’s … bland. It sounds just like all the other pop rock hits playing on the radio. None of the edge and grit that I’ve always associated with Beckett Stone’s sound. It’s like he’s trying to pander to a younger crowd. And like all pandering, it’s missing the mark completely and alienating his long-time fans too.
