Hitting the Right Note

by Rhonda Bowen

  The problem was, he had no idea how.

  Chapter 42

  One more show and she would be back in Toronto.

  That was all JJ could think about as she tested her mikes and earpiece. After two concerts in Chicago, she was exhausted. Everyone was. But they had one more performance—the KISS 103.5 live event. They were the surprise artists in the lineup. So surprise that they had to do a chunk of their sound check onstage, behind a curtain, just ten minutes before their performance. JJ didn’t care though. The quicker they got through this, the quicker she could be on a plane home.

  “We want to thank everyone for coming out this afternoon,” JJ heard the host begin from the other side of the curtain. “Don’t you think we’ve had a great show so far?”

  The screams of the crowd showed their response in the affirmative.

  “Great! But the best is yet to come. We have a surprise guest for you this evening. You have seen them all over the news, heard their jams on every station, including KISS 103.5, and a few of you may have caught them in concert just last night at the Allstate Arena. Ladies and gentlemen, coming to you live, right here at the KISS 103.5 Summer Sizzle, help me welcome Deacon Hill and She-La!”

  Everything was still behind the curtain as JJ waited with Kya, Sabrina and Diana for Deacon’s cue.

  “ ‘I got everything you need to keep you satisfied.’ ”

  The curtains opened and Deacon’s voice came across the speakers in smooth a cappella as he sang the first line of “Satisfied,” the song that headlined the tour. The crowd’s screams went up a notch as he entered from the back of the venue, wading through the masses of people toward the stage. JJ barely heard Diana signal the timing on her drumsticks above the roar of the crowd, but they had played that song so many times over the past two and a half months that she really didn’t need to. Diana and Sabrina together on percussion and keyboards, with Kya and JJ slipping in on guitar moments later. The whole thing was so seamless they never even needed to look at each other. JJ was sure the music for “Satisfied” had been somehow imprinted into her fingers. She would be ninety-eight, with arthritis and Alzheimer’s, and still be able to play every note perfectly.

  Deacon was in his element, moving easily between songs, with She-La so familiar with his performance that they were able to follow him with backup vocals on every track. The four songs they played flew by quickly, and JJ had almost pulled the amp out of her guitar in preparation for their exit when Deacon went impromptu.

  “You all having a good time?” Deacon asked.

  The crowd screamed in response.

  “Chicago, are you having a good time?”

  The screams were louder.

  “Alright,” Deacon said, waving a hand to quiet them down. “I have a special treat for you. Something we’ve never done since the start of the tour. There is a young woman who has been with us from the start of this Satisfied tour. She has an amazing voice, amazing talent. One day, you are going to see this girl on your Top Forty countdown, and when you do, I want you to remember that you heard her here first.”

  Deacon turned around and winked at JJ. Her heart fell straight through her stomach to her feet.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, singing the song she composed, “I’m Yours,” introducing JJ Isaacs!”

  The crowd cheered, but JJ barely heard. She was too busy recovering from the shock of what Deacon had just done. She was going to kill him. Slowly, with something nice and dull. But before she could figure out how, he was pulling her from her spot behind him to the front of the stage.

  “Deacon, no, I can’t!” she hissed.

  “You don’t have a choice,” Deacon said with a grin. “Just play the lead on the guitar and sing it. I got you.”

  JJ stared out into the audience and a feeling of nausea swept over her. She couldn’t do this. Doing a duet with Deacon Hill was one thing. But she couldn’t sing a solo for these people. She had never sung on her own in front of a crowd like this before. She was going to throw up.

  A sound from behind caught her attention. She looked back and saw Deacon standing behind Sabrina’s keyboard, ready to go. He gave her a nod and began to play.

  JJ closed her eyes and let her hands fall to her guitar. Isn’t this what she wanted? Wasn’t her ultimate goal to be a solo artist? She might as well see if she could hack it. The first few notes on the guitar came in shaky, but she quickly found confidence in the melody. And when she opened her mouth to sing the song, she almost couldn’t believe what she heard coming back to her. Was that her? JJ Isaacs? When had she learned how to sing like that?

  But she soon forgot about that also and got lost in the song. Around the second verse she found the courage to open her eyes and look at the crowd. They weren’t idling about waiting for the next performance like she thought they would be. They were actually watching her, listening to her. Behind her she heard Diana come in, adding percussion. Then Kya slipped in with guitar backup. Guess they had heard the song enough times that they figured out how to accompany it. But the fact that they chose to do it for her humbled her completely.

  When it was all done, when she had sung the last note, the crowd screamed their appreciation. JJ couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe all that was for her.

  She grinned. “Thank you,” she mumbled before shrinking back into the band and retreating to the backstage area. She floated through the narrow space in a haze, barely hearing the “Congratulations” and “Nice work” that came her way. It was only when she was face-to-face with a grinning Deacon that the fog cleared.

  “Well, well, look who’s a solo artist!”

  JJ shoved him hard in the chest, causing him to stumble back into a temporary wall. Out of nowhere, Miles and Cyrus appeared.

  “Whoa, easy boys,” Deacon said, placing a restraining hand on each man before they could haul JJ into the air. “I got this.”

  “How could you do that to me?” JJ shouted. “You totally blindsided me out there!”

  “That was the point,” Deacon said. “If I had told you you were going to do the solo, would you have said yes?”

  “Of course not,” JJ snapped.

  “Exactly,” Deacon replied, straightening his sunglasses.

  “But I didn’t even get to rehearse!”

  “We rehearsed this yesterday, and the day before.”

  “But that was just impromptu, to see how it would sound,” JJ protested.

  Deacon chuckled. “JJ, I’m an international performer on a major US tour. I don’t have time to do impromptu for no reason. Don’t worry, you were great.”

  “I was not,” JJ said, folding her arms. “I felt terrified.”

  “But it also felt amazing, didn’t it,” Deacon said knowingly.

  JJ opened her mouth to argue but realized she couldn’t. It had been amazing—one of the best feelings she’d had in a long time. Now she knew why artists were willing to do anything to stay in the spotlight. That feeling of performing live? It was positively euphoric.

  “That’s what I thought,” Deacon said when she still hadn’t responded. He grinned and squeezed her shoulder. “It’s only the beginning.”

  Still speechless, JJ watched him head off down the passageway. It had been a crazy evening, and all she wanted to do was talk to the one person who always calmed her down. But he was the one person she couldn’t reach. As she sat in the back of the taxi on her way to the hotel, she dug through her bag for her cell phone. Her heart leaped in her chest when she saw the little envelope icon at the top left-hand corner of the screen. She dialed into her voice mail.

  “Hey, JJ, it’s me. Heard you had a great show this weekend and blew up on a solo tonight. This is just the beginning. Once the tour is over, we can get started recording tracks with you and She-La. You gotta get back to me with that contract first, though. I messengered a copy to your hotel, just in case something happened to the one I sent over a few weeks ago. Call me when you sign it. Peace.”

  JJ deleted Rayshawn’s mess
age without hesitation. She laid her head back against the console and sighed. So the message hadn’t been from Simon. That was disappointing. But after almost two weeks without contact, what did she expect? She knew he was avoiding her. But that didn’t stop her from missing him something terrible.

  With her stomach in knots, she dialed the numbers she knew by heart before pressing the green call button. She was painfully aware of the thump of her heartbeat and the knot in her throat. It rang four times, then she heard his voice.

  “Hi, you’ve reached Simon. I can’t talk now. Leave me a message, or better yet call me back later. Not a fan of voice mail.” Beep.

  “Simon, it’s me. Call me.”

  She didn’t need to say more. It had been the same message when she called two days earlier. She was still waiting for him to call her back.

  Chapter 43

  She was still waiting for his call when she got to the hotel. So much so that the driver had to tell her twice that she had arrived at her destination. She handed him a couple bills, not sure if she had given too much or too little and overall too distracted to care. She ignored Rayshawn’s package at the front desk. She took the stairs up to her fourth-floor room. She opened the door and slipped out of her shoes. But she didn’t cry until she was lying in the middle of the bed. How could she have so much joy and so much misery all at once? Her body buzzed from being onstage, singing solo. But her heart broke from having no one to celebrate with.

  She didn’t know how long she lay with her wet face in the pillow before she finally heard her phone ring. She picked up.

  “Hey, girl! Saw your solo performance tonight! It’s already up on the KISS 103.5 website as one of the clips from the show. You were amazing!”

  JJ didn’t want to hear anything more about a solo. She didn’t want to talk anymore about a solo. She just wanted to fall asleep with the hope that the ache in her heart would be avoidable for the next few hours. She felt like she had lost her best friend, and she couldn’t deal. But for Cymmone she would muster a polite thank-you before she ended the call.

  JJ yanked some tissues from the box by the bedside and blew her nose. “Thanks,” she mumbled.

  “Oh God, girl, what’s wrong?” Cymmone exclaimed.

  JJ thought about how much it would take to explain everything to Cymmone and she started crying again.

  “Oh no, I see this is an emergency. What hotel are you staying in?” Cymmone asked.

  Through her sobs, JJ managed to communicate the name of the hotel and her room number. She thought she heard Cymmone say she would be right over, but that didn’t make sense, so when the line went dead, she just put her face back into her pillow.

  She was still in the same position when someone knocked on the door. With her tears subsided to whimpers, she clutched her pillow and stumbled over to the door. She pulled it open when a glance through the peephole confirmed Cymmone to be on the other side.

  “Sweet Jesus,” Cymmone murmured, her eyes widening. “How long have you been crying?”

  JJ shrugged before looking down at Cymmone’s hands. “You brought your baby? What are you doing here, Cymmone?”

  Cymmone swept into the hotel room, baby carrier in one hand, Louis Vuitton purse in the other.

  “I’ve been in town for meetings all weekend. Talking with a label about doing a contemporary Christian thing,” Cymmone said, setting the carrier down on the carpeted floor in the living area.

  JJ saw that the adorable baby wrapped inside was sleeping. For a moment her negative mood slipped.

  “Ooh, she’s so gorgeous,” she cooed with a raspy voice. “What a sweetheart.”

  “I know,” Cymmone said with a smile as she took off her light coat, revealing pajamas. “You know the best part? She’s a much better sleeper than Xavier was. This kid will sleep through a storm. That’s why I wasn’t worried about bringing her with me on this trip, or over here tonight. You know I was already in bed, girl?”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” JJ said, her face crumpling. “If I knew you were planning to come over . . .”

  “From the way you sounded on the phone, you didn’t know a darn thing,” Cymmone said, plopping down on the couch. “And I need to know all about that. But first you’re going to wash that makeup off and get in the shower. No bath. Shower. Showers make everything less terrible.”

  “Cymmone—”

  “Did I just give you instructions?” Cymmone said, switching to her mommy voice. “You better get moving, ma’am.”

  JJ rolled her eyes but went to do as she was told. Cymmone was right. After the shower she felt a lot better. When she returned to the living room, she found chicken wings with dip, potato wedges, and root beer spread out across the living room coffee table. Cymmone was simultaneously scrolling through the pay-per-view listings and talking to the hotel staff about alternate options.

  “Cymmone! Who’s eating all this food?” JJ asked, even as she grabbed a chicken wing from the tray. She took a bite. “Mmmm, honey garlic.”

  Cymmone grinned at the look of indulgence on JJ’s face before covering the mouthpiece with her hand. “Been a long time since you had those, right?”

  “M-hmm,” JJ mumbled as she slipped onto the couch beside Cymmone and reached for another.

  “Yeah, I know,” Cymmone said. “I so do not miss those crazy performer diets. No one should have to live like that.”

  JJ would have responded, but she was too busy licking the honey-garlic sauce off her fingers. Her stomach had not been this happy for a while. She was glad Cymmone was in town. She was even happier when a knock on the door provided her with something she hadn’t seen since she left Toronto and which she hadn’t eaten for much longer.

  “Poutine!”

  JJ nearly hugged the red-vested woman who rolled the room-service tray into the room, and when she popped a cheese- and gravy-covered French fry into her mouth, it felt like home.

  “My room service bill is going to be a mint,” JJ said as she happily selected another French fry.

  Cymmone waved her hand as she hung up the phone. “The label will cover it.” She folded her legs up under her as she turned to JJ. “So our movie will be ready in a few,” she said as she stole one of JJ’s French fries. “In the meantime, you want to tell me why your eyes look like they’ve been stung by bees?”

  JJ sighed. “Simon.”

  Cymmone raised her eyebrows. “Ooh, it’s a guy!”

  “Not just any guy,” JJ said. She reached for her cell phone and scrolled through until she found a picture. She handed Cymmone the phone. “This guy.”

  “Hello, mama!” Cymmone said with a grin. “He is definitely a man worth crying over. What happened?”

  JJ explained everything from the beginning, starting with how they first met several years earlier, to seeing him in the hospital again earlier that year, to him coming to see her on tour, to their week together in Toronto on her break. By the time she was done, she was crying again.

  “We can’t get past this thing with the new contract,” JJ said, sniffling. “He thinks it’s a bad idea.”

  “So he doesn’t want you pursuing this career?” Cymmone asked, surprised. “That doesn’t sound like the man you described.”

  “No, that’s not it,” JJ said. “He thinks I can sing anywhere. He just doesn’t want me signing again with my manager. He doesn’t like the guy, thinks he’s manipulating me. And in a way, he’s right. I know Rayshawn hasn’t been the most honest with me—”

  “Whoa, Rayshawn who?” Cymmone asked, stopping JJ with a hand on her arm. “Rayshawn Forbes?”

  “Yeah,” JJ said with a nod. “You know him?”

  Cymmone snorted. “I’ve heard of him. And trust me, your boyfriend’s giving you good advice to stay away from him.”

  JJ’s eyes widened. “What have you heard?”

  Cymmone grimaced. “Let’s just say he’s very good at his job but very bad at keeping clients. A lot of his formers have become stars, so if that’s what you wa
nt, I guess that’s the way to go. But he’s done a lot of shady stuff. Plus he has a reputation of sleeping with his clients—” When Cymmone caught the look on JJ’s face, she stopped short. “Oh, JJ . . .”

  The guilt from her moment of weakness with Rayshawn came back like a flood. Just thinking about it now made JJ cringe. How could she have thought she felt anything serious for him? Those days felt like so long ago now.

  JJ shook her head. “It’s okay. It was just one time . . . a slip. I would appreciate if . . .”

  Cymmone did a zipping motion across her mouth. “My lips are sealed.”

  JJ sighed and pulled a foot up into the chair, propping her chin against her knee. “I feel like I’ve made a mess of everything, Cymmone,” JJ began. “I keep feeling like I’m losing myself in this business. But every time I try to get my footing, I end up falling further.”

  “I know that feeling,” Cymmone said. “Trust me, I was there. The thing is, hon, you have to know what your boundaries are.”

  “What do you mean?” JJ asked.

  “You have to know where you draw the line. What you will do and you won’t do,” Cymmone explained. “How many days out of the year are you willing to be away from home? What can your agent sign for you and what do you have to give first approval for? Who will you share the stage with and who won’t you? What is a deal breaker for you? Nudity? Swearing? Misogyny? What could your label, your agent, your tour manager ask you for and you would say no? What would make you leave your label?”

  JJ ran a hand through her hair. “I don’t know. I never thought of that. I’m not a solo artist so . . .”

  Cymmone shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. See, that’s what happens to a lot of people. They never think about it until they are asked to do it, and if you don’t know your answer until you are asked, then it is a lot easier for you to be persuaded to do things that you thought you would never do. That’s what happened to me.”