She winked, and my body suffered an intense hot flash.
I inhaled a deep breath until I could feel the oxygen reach the bottom of my lungs. When I was ready, I tickled the keys to my own rendition of the intro, and hearing the echoes of the hammers and strings expelling the notes into Madison Square Garden sent goose bumps down my arms and legs. Then I exhaled the deep breath I just held in and breathed out into the harmonica as I banged away on the chords. While playing the harmonica part, I remembered that this very song was the reason I wanted to learn how to play the harmonica. Nothing seemed more badass to me than playing the instrument and a complicated piano part at the same time in a song that made everyone want to get on their feet and sing as loudly as they could. It took me at least a year to nail down the song as perfectly as a non-Billy Joel could get. Hours upon hours of playing this song on the piano to the point where my mom and grandparents begged me to play something different.
“I’d rather you take up the drums than play that song again,” Grandma said, a slight teasing in her voice, but she was ninety-nine percent serious.
So, that Christmas, I asked for my seventh instrument, a drum set, so I could learn my favorite song when I was sixteen: “My Generation” by The Who. By New Year’s, my grandma begged me to play “Piano Man” again because she was so sick of the drums.
Mom later told me that she and Grandma begged Gramps not to give me that drum set because they knew I’d put it to good use, and everyone would lose sleep over it. Even me because I would constantly be on the cushioned seat, banging away on the snare and the toms. But Gramps—being a stubborn, music-obsessed guy so desperate for me to stop finding trouble—ignored them and fed into my obsession of musical instruments.
It all paid off on that Madison Square Garden stage.
Reagan took control of the first verse, resting her elbow on the piano while looking at me with those wonderful eyes as if she was singing just to me. I sang the second verse, and we alternated back and forth but sang together in harmony during the chorus. I was so amazed by how my own playing sounded in the arena and how it was even more wonderful to hear the audience react the way they did to the beloved song. They sang every word in a unified roar, and the second time we got to the chorus, they were so loud that there was really no point in Reagan and me singing. She turned to them and used her microphone to conduct their singing.
Then when the time came, I broke out into an improvised piano solo that wouldn’t come close to what Billy Joel did every time he played the song, but it was the best I could do, given my piano skills. I practiced my own version of the solo for hours on end. I think that was why Mom and Grandma got sick of the song. Trial and error weren’t really pleasing to the ear. But all that practicing, again, paid off when the crowd grew louder after I ran my fingers up and down the piano.
Our cover of “Piano Man” generated an all-time peak of energy during the whole show. Usually, there was only one concert sonic boom per show: when Reagan first took the stage. But after our cover, for the first time ever in my life, I witnessed two concert sonic booms, and it was one of the coolest things I’d ever experienced.
I still heard Gramps whenever I played the piano or the Hummingbird. And I hoped that in his world, when I played, he heard me. When I walked off the stage in Madison Square Garden, a heavy weight hung in my chest but in a good way. Like a hug. And maybe that was a sign that both of my grandparents heard me, and I knew for a fact that if they did, they both sang along and were proud that their granddaughter was in the middle of it all.
Chapter Seven
“What are you doing?”
Reagan stepped out of her hotel bathroom with a short towel wrapped around her naked body. Even though we’d been sleeping together since New York City, still seeing her in nothing but a towel stopped me dead in my tracks. She made wringing out the excess moisture in her hair sexy.
“Writing,” I answered, tapping the pen against the journal.
She hopped on her spot in the bed and pulled my face closer to hers so she could kiss down the column of my neck. I tilted my head backward for a second as she sucked on a good spot, sending goose bumps down my whole body. I guess my answer to her question really excited her.
Yup, this had been my life for the past few weeks. Lots of cuddles. Lots of kisses. Lots of sex. It was a beautiful thing.
“A song?” She pulled her face away. “A new song? Can I take a look?”
“No.”
“Why?”
I laughed at my reply that contorted her face into a frown. “Because you’re successful, and I literally just wrote it. It’s probably still garbage right now.”
“Doubt it.” She held her palm out for the journal, and I slammed it closed so she couldn’t see it. Just because we were sleeping together didn’t grant her access to my sacred journal, especially since she had all the hit songs in the music industry, fresh from winning three Grammys, and had the biggest tour of the year. “Please let me read it. I promise to be nice.”
“No. It may or may not be about you.”
Her eyes rounded. “Well, now I have to read it.”
I groaned because I knew her insight would actually be beneficial, but my gut told me not to show her. This was practically my heart we were talking about.
And then I had an idea. My eyes widened thinking about it before I said it out loud.
“I have a crazy idea,” I said.
“Crazier than sneaking into a pool after hours?”
“Psh. Please. That’s nothing. This is way crazier.”
“What is it?”
“What are your thoughts on collaborating? On our album we’re recording—”
She grabbed a hold of my hands. “I would love to collaborate.”
“Really?”
“Can I tell you a secret?”
“Of course.”
“I’ve been wanting to write with you for the longest time. Ever since I heard the songs you wrote with the Radicals. And then that song you wrote with Isaac Ball really got to me. You know I’m putting my money on it that you’ll be nominated for a Grammy?”
“Okay, you win. That’s the craziest idea.”
“I’m serious, Blair! That song is amazing. You know how often I hear it on the radio?”
It had to have been the greatest compliment of my career. “Well, geez, you should have told me that you wanted to collaborate.”
“I was waiting for the right time!”
“Naked under the towel really is the perfect time.”
“So, you wanna write a song?”
“A thousand times yes.”
“Now, does that mean I can see this journal of yours?”
“You only get to look at the page I show you. But just, like, be nice when you read it, okay? I literally whipped it up so it’s not all finished—”
She sat upright in her spot and snatched the leather notebook off my lap. I sank farther into the bed, wanting to bury my face underneath the duvet as she whipped opened the notebook to the last page of song lyrics. Since the spine had worn in its place, it easily fell open to the page I recently worked on.
She read it silently, and all I could do was watch her eyebrows slowly scale her forehead after she read each line.
Then, with a click of her pen, she hovered the tip over a word, and then eyed me. “Can I make a light suggestion?” she asked.
“Um, go for it.”
Without scratching out my word, she wrote in tiny handwriting her suggestion and did this a few times throughout the eight verses.
“Okay, so I know there are tons of verses, but it was just brainstorming, and obviously, I’ll delete some,” I said.
She smirked and then kissed my cheek. “I love how insecure you’re being. For literally no reason because this song is sexy as hell.”
“Is it?”
She nodded. “I think this should be the song we collab on. If you’re down.”
I was stunned. Reagan Moore branded herself as th
is PG—once in a blue moon PG-13 with a mention of “damn” in her songs—pop singer who would occasionally have a hit song here and there about lust but disguised enough to make the teenagers think that she was singing about just wanting to kiss someone. Now, she was verbally signing herself up for a song that was clearly about sex.
I kind of loved it, and man, would her older fans love it too.
“Now, let me read the rest,” she said as she turned back a few pages.
I slammed my hand over hers. “Don’t. I said you get one page.”
She laughed. “Blair, I’m sure they’re all great. You write songs for all the big names. You have nothing to hide.”
“Those are lyrics about their life. These are lyrics about mine. I don’t even share the whole journal with Miles. He gets one page too.”
“How about this,” she suggested while closing the book over the hotel pen. “I’ll forget about the journal for now only if we have sex, you know, for research, and then play around with this tomorrow on our way to Boston?”
“I’m all for being studious.”
She simpered and then jumped on top of me. I quickly loosened the towel around her and got rid of it like the nuisance it was.
* * *
Boston was the last American stop of the summer. Then Reagan was off to tour Europe for the next month with a British boy band, the Radicals. I cowrote their first album with them three years back. They were huge across the pond, so I had no idea how two big names would combine over there, but those fans were in for a real treat.
Reagan’s camp was already thinking ahead for the next world tour, and the goal was a stadium summer tour. So, to test out a stadium show, our tour stopped in Foxborough to perform at Gillette Stadium with a whopping one hundred and ten thousand people packed into the home of the New England Patriots.
We were all nervous. Stomachaches paining us all day. I had to take a Xanax the night before because I was already on edge. And then in our green room at the stadium, Reagan made a surprise appearance, giving us this terrified expression and asking for a shot of tequila.
Yes, Reagan Moore asked us for a shot before a show.
We’d already taken our two shots, but for a show that was ten times the size of what we were used to on this tour, a third shot was justified, especially when Reagan asked for one.
“You do realize you’re going to kill it out there, right?” I said when I handed her a shot glass of Patrón.
“I mean, it’s probably no different from the other shows,” she said and then looked down at her shot. “Okay, let’s cheers.” The three of us huddled in a circle, holding the shots out together. “To our first sold-out stadium show,” Reagan said.
“With a hundred and ten thousand people,” Miles reminded us.
“At least there will be fireworks,” I added.
We clinked, pounded back the shots, and I made sure I enjoyed the sight that was Reagan Moore tossing back that tequila as if it was no big deal, as if this wasn’t her first rodeo. I was dying to see her pound back shots of tequila like that more often. It was hot, not going to lie.
All throughout the stadium, over a hundred thousand lights sparkled from the lit-up bracelets each person got upon entering the stadium. It looked as if all the stars in the universe sat in the seats, twinkling in blues, purples, and greens. It was easy to forget how many people were actually in front of us each show. When the lights went out, they became one massive entity. But when you stuck a glowing bracelet on them, you actually saw every individual person in that speck of color. They engulfed us. The whole time we performed, the goose bumps wouldn’t go away because the fans were so loud and filled with energy, I couldn’t stop smiling.
They were even louder when Reagan called us back on so we could perform our cover together. For Gillette Stadium, we decided to do “Dream On” by Aerosmith. Reagan and I had the harmonies down, my Fender wailing out the electric vibrations, Miles getting lost in the clashing of the cymbals, and for an added effect—because we had to take advantage of being outside—the flamethrowers ejected bursts of giant orange flames when the climax came around, jolting out every time Miles pounded on the bass drum and cymbals. The crowd was ecstatic. They gave us the loudest and strongest concert sonic booms of our lives. Hearing over one hundred thousand people roaring for us, it totally redefined the concert sonic boom. That was a sound I could keep listening to on repeat for hours and never get tired of it.
With the fire illuminating the stadium, I scanned the enormous crowd, seeing specks of people all around me, above me, extending out in front of me. I couldn’t believe this was happening. Miles and I went from performing in our high school talent show to smoky bars filled with people not even listening to us to our little shows of two thousand people and now to performing alongside Reagan Moore, flamethrowers projecting balls of fire up in the air to one hundred and ten thousand people in a sold-out American football stadium.
It had to be the coolest night of my life.
* * *
To enjoy the end of the summer and to record the new song the two of us wrote, Reagan invited both Miles and me down to her summer home in Gaslight Shores, South Carolina, a resort town right on the Atlantic Ocean. I might not have been an expert when it came to celebrities, but I was aware of Reagan Moore’s Labor Day parties, which were thrown at this very summer house. The gossip media loved to cover her four-day-long rager with her closest celebrity friends, and I was all ready to witness it and pound back more tequila shots like in Foxborough.
Before her ten other A-list friends filled up the mansion for the last weekend of summer, it was just the three of us in her monstrous oceanfront house with its own saltwater pool as long as the outdoor patio; about an acre of freshly cut, bright green grass as her backyard; and to add to the pristine scene, she had a studio in her house. Her very own recording studio. You know, every musician’s dream.
And it was unbelievable.
In the control room, she had a vocal booth, two Mac computers, audio interfaces, studio microphones in the vocal booth, MIDI controllers, and synthesizers, and a massive digital workstation that you would find at an actual recording studio took up most of the length of the wall. She had the works. Miles and I had to stop ourselves from crying about how beautiful her studio was at least seven times.
“This is where I wrote and produced my third album,” she said as the two of us practically drooled all over the workstation, cupping our hands to view the dark vocal booth through the glass door.
She was twenty-three and wrote and produced her third album all by herself. The third album that had a sold-out world tour that we got to open the American leg for. Now she wanted to produce a song she cowrote with me. The song wasn’t even made yet, and I knew with Reagan’s talent and name, it’d be a hit.
We recorded the whole song from start to finish in those two days before all her celebrity friends joined us. Our song, “Patience, Love,” sounded amazing, and the best part, we each had our moment to shine. Reagan and I cowrote the lyrics, all three of us added some of our own flair to the melody, I played all the instruments on the track—with the exception of the drums because Miles was way better than me—and even though we each had a say in the producing, Reagan and Miles took the lead on polishing the song. Layered vocals that flitted between our alto voices in the verse and our falsettos in the chorus. Pulsating beats from the bass I played and Miles’s bass drum brightened by warm synths that added another sound of subtle flirting.
I couldn’t wait to play it to the label when we got back to LA.
After those two work days, Miles flew back to LA to send his sister off to her first day of high school at our alma mater. I told him he was going to miss a hell of a weekend of drinking and beach, but I guess he was being a good brother to his one and only sibling. It was up to me to handle a whole weekend with Reagan and all of her gorgeous friends I’d recognized from all over the internet and award shows. They arrived at the mansion with their designer sui
tcases, glasses perched on the top of their heads, and beauty after beauty filling up the four walls of the house. From models to actresses to heiresses to singers, Reagan’s crew touched every industry in Hollywood, and they wasted no time throwing on their bathing suits, grabbing a margarita from the kitchen, and sprinting outside to the backyard where the pool was warmed up and ready for them to jump in with a backdrop of rentable inflatable slides and a bounce house in the grass.
A part of me worried that this Labor Day weekend in Gaslight Shores would mean that Reagan and I had to pretend that nothing happened or was happening between us. That she would spend more time with the friends she didn’t see on a regular basis than me, but that wasn’t the case at all. I felt as if the only time Reagan left my side was when we went to the bathroom. We always sat by each other in the group—she even sat on my lap a couple of times, not giving a care in the world about the glances and suspicious smirks her friends subtly made. She was extra handsy with me when we did the inflatable slide races, tackling me to the floor of the slide, completely hidden behind inflatable walls. She crawled on top of me, and in our little secluded world, we made out for a few minutes until the slide started moving from her friends staggering up the stairs.
Honestly, it felt like she was my girlfriend, and I was shocked that it didn’t scare me as much as I thought it would. It was…exciting. It drew me closer to her every moment we shared.
The second night, by popular demand, I whipped up a homemade dessert for everyone since Reagan kept begging me to do so. Nothing too extravagant, though, since I actually wanted to be a part of the party. A simple strawberry cheesecake to impress the party, and I made another batch of mango margaritas that we’d all been drinking like smoothies throughout the day.
While making the cheesecake, I noticed her friends circled around her in the pool, occasionally tossing glances at the large kitchen windows overlooking the pool and backyard. I only assumed they were grilling her with questions about me. I didn’t mind, though. Imagining and hoping that she told them that she actually had feelings for me added more warmth to my already sunburned skin.
Hammers, Strings, and Beautiful Things Page 12
