Catch Me

by Claire Contreras

The rest of the day is similar to the previous week: I listen to endless demos, bang my head against the desk three times—purposely, and pray that I will stumble upon one artist that will blow my mind. I’ve come to the conclusion that work is only fun when it’s not mandatory. I guess in a sense it’s kind of like cooking. Everybody loves to cook until they actually have to cook every day. I don’t know how to cook and I’ve never had to do it, but I would imagine it’s as tedious as what I’m doing.

  My phone rings around one o’clock when I’m just about to doze off, and I jump from my seat and pick it up.

  “Hello?” I answer on the second ring, feeling anxious even though I know it’s probably Hendrix.

  “Hey,” Hendrix says. “You wanna go down with me to the studio? The guys are going to get lunch. I know you’re hungry.”

  “Sure.”

  I hang up and stretch my arms over my head just as Hendrix is barging into my office.

  “You could knock,” I say.

  “Sure, next time. Let’s go. I only have thirty minutes to spare and I need to make sure Shea is actually working down there.”

  “When is the CD due?” I ask.

  Hendrix raises his eyebrows. “Two months.”

  My mouth drops just as the elevator chime sounds. “What!” I try to process what that means. Two months to complete an entire album is insane, and I know for a fact Shea hasn’t even started recording anything. “He’s going on tour in like a week.”

  “Yeah. Why do you think he brought in Wilde?” Hendrix asks, pushing down the button to the forty-fourth.

  I shrug. “I dunno. I’ve never heard of him before.”

  Hendrix frowns and turns to me as the doors open back up and we step out. “You’ve never heard of him? You? How can you never have heard of him?”

  I roll my eyes. “If you’re trying to make me feel like I’ve been living under a rock, you’re succeeding. Who has he worked with?”

  He chuckles and stands outside of studio ten looking in. “Everyone, Bee. You won’t see his name on CDs though … he goes by the name Shadow.” Hendrix tilts his head to look at me.

  My mouth forms an “O” when realization sinks in. Of course I’ve heard of Shadow. He seems to be the go-to producer right now. My sister-in-law has gone on and on about what a genius he is. She obviously failed to mention how freaking hot he is.

  “Sarah loves him,” I comment.

  He nods. “She does. Everyone does. He’s the crème de la crème.”

  I watch Shea’s head bobbing slowly inside the recording booth and Nick sitting in front of the soundboards with his back facing us. His hands move over the board, touching the knobs, turning here, tweaking there, and my mind wanders to places I wish wouldn’t be in the realm of my imagination.

  “I guess the name suits him if he doesn’t wanna be seen, right?” I muse quietly.

  “Guess so. Or maybe he plays on it since he lives under his father’s shadow,” Hendrix states as he opens the door, shutting out any further questions I may have about Nick.

  “Good?” Hendrix asks Shea as he steps out of the booth.

  “Yeah,” Shea says, taking a swig of his water bottle. “We’ll get it done.”

  I walk toward Shea and stand in front of him, tugging his arm to step away from Nick and Hendrix.

  “He says you have to have this done in two months,” I say, concerned. I really wish they wouldn’t put this kind of pressure on artists. It kills me that they do.

  “I know,” Shea says, his green eyes dim. He falls back to the couch behind him and pulls me down with him, holding me to his chest. “I can do it.”

  “I can see if we can get an extension,” I suggest quietly, hoping Hendrix doesn’t hear me, even though I doubt he can since he’s speaking to Nick.

  “Nah, BK, I’m good. Just tired. Let’s go to sleep together like old times,” he murmurs as his eyes flutter shut.

  I take a deep breath and adjust myself so that my weight doesn’t crush him.

  “He’s gonna take a nap?” Hendrix asks, amused.

  I shrug with my free shoulder. “He’s exhausted, Hen. Leave him alone,” I plead.

  Hendrix shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter to me, it’s lunch time anyway. I’ll be right back.” He walks out of the studio and heads toward the elevators, leaving me sitting on the couch with Shea’s arm draped around me and Nick sitting a couple of feet away by the soundboard. He still has his headphones on and I assume he’s going over whatever they recorded today. I disentangle myself from Shea and walk over to where Nick is sitting, sinking into the seat beside him.

  “How many tracks did you record today?” I ask, nodding at the recording booth.

  “One so far. We’re aiming for two,” Nick says, not looking at me. I don’t know why it bothers me so much that he hasn’t looked at me since I walked in the room. It really shouldn’t bother me since he did a whole lot of looking earlier.

  “How many do you think you can record in a week?” I ask, swiveling my chair side to side and hitting his thighs with my knees. “Sorry.”

  Nick takes off the headphones and places them on the board, turning his seat to face me. “I’m not sure. It depends on him, really. We’ve been working on them—we just need to get them recorded. We should be fine by the end of the month. He has a lot of hits on here.”

  I smile, feeling a sense of pride in knowing I had something to do with Shea’s success. Leaning forward, I run the tips of my finger over the knobs, careful not to move any of them. I can feel Nick looking at me and see his body move forward from the corner of my eye. His hands soon appear beside mine on the knobs and he slides one of the buttons down.

  “You can touch now. You won’t mess anything up. Put these on if you want,” he suggests, sliding his earphones to me.

  I pick them up and look at them for a moment. They’re big, and I know they’re comfortable and the sound is amazing because I have a similar pair of Beats of my own. Nick’s are bigger, though, and they’re more cushioned than the standard ones we have in our studios here in Harmon. I get a thrill placing them over my head, as if I’m uncovering another tiny little puzzle to who Nick Wilde is. I tilt my head to look at him and find his eyes searching my face. He looks from my hair to my eyes to my covered ears and finally back to my eyes and smiles. It’s not the panty dropping smile I’m used to getting from him, it’s a boyish-boy next door-I can’t believe the hottest girl in high school is talking to me-kind of smile. And I fucking love it.

  When I smile back, he leans into the microphone in front of him and clicks a button.

  “Why don’t you wear a ring?” His whisper is loud in my ears and I’m so surprised by it that I turn my head to look around the room, eyes wide. I see him chuckle, but don’t hear it, so I assume anything he says into the microphone is only heard by me.

  I frown, not understanding his question, but I’m scared to ask because I don’t know how loud I’ll sound. I don’t want to wake up Shea.

  Nick clicks the button again and runs the tips of his pointer down my hand slowly, making my breath hitch as he slides it up and down my ring finger.

  “A ring, why don’t you wear one?” he repeats, his eyes losing their playfulness the longer he looks into mine.

  I open my mouth and close it, suddenly understanding why he would think that I would be married. I move my hands from under his and take the earphones off, untangling the cord from my hair.

  “I’m not married,” I respond, still trying to rid myself of the earphones.

  He leans in and holds them, helping me take it out of my hair. “I thought you were … I heard somebody call you Mrs. Harmon this morning. And then yesterday in the street …”

  I smile at the memory. “So what? You actively pursue married women?”

  Nick presses his lips together to contain a smile. “Only the really beautiful ones that I can’t stop thinking about.”

  I shake my head, still smiling. “How’s Stephanie?”

  Boom. O
kay, so that’s probably not exactly what I should’ve said, but damn him if he thinks he’s going to use me the same way guys apparently want to use me. I’m so sick of being second to everybody.

  Then he does something I don’t expect: he erupts in laughter. His laugh is low and husky and has the most beautiful ring to it that I’ve ever heard. And the way his aqua eyes light up and he dips his head and throws it back, showing his straight white teeth makes me smile, despite the fact that he’s laughing at something I don’t understand.

  “Damn. You’re good,” he says when he comes down from his laughing high.

  I shake my head and exhale, looking back at Shea who’s still lying on the couch looking like a rag doll.

  “Maybe I should wake him up,” I suggest, placing both hands on either side of my chair to stand. Nick covers the hand closest to his, stopping me. His face is serious; his light brown eyebrows drawn together when I look at him.

  “You never answered me about Hendrix.”

  “You never answered me about Stephanie.”

  He exhales. “Are you always this stubborn?”

  “Are you?” I counter with a raised eyebrow.

  He chuckles and shakes his head. “Stephanie … she’s … I don’t know. We’re not really in a relationship.”

  I roll my eyes and groan, wondering if that’s how Shea used to describe me to the girls he used to screw along the way.

  “Fair enough. Hendrix is my brother. The beautiful little girl is my niece.”

  Nick looks visibly shocked by this information, but says nothing more. I yank my hand from under his and stand, walking over to Shea.

  “What about Shea? What is he?” Nick asks, his question stopping me from walking further.

  I look over my shoulder and smile. “He’s my best friend.”

  Nick’s eyebrows rise as if he wasn’t expecting that answer and I can see the disbelief written all over his face. I wish I could take Whiteout and go to town on it, but I would hate to erase any of his gorgeous features.

  “Shea,” I whisper, shaking him. “You have to wake up so you can eat something.”

  Shea mumbles and groans something about not getting enough sleep.

  “Just let him sleep,” Nick suggests. “I’ll just keep setting up as many songs as I can to record on.”

  He shrugs as if it’s no big deal for him to do this, and maybe it’s not, but to me it is a huge deal that he would act so nice about it. Most of the “big time producers” that I’ve met are eye-roll worthy. They’re all so nice in interviews and so humble in front of cameras, but you get them in a studio and they’re all about work no play, as they should be. Anybody else would have gone all diva over Shea taking a nap during his recording time and Nick hasn’t.

  “What’s your deal?” I ask, walking back to sit beside Nick. “Why are you so nice?”

  The side of his lip turns up. “You think I’m nice?”

  I shrug. “Well, yeah.”

  His eyebrows raise as he shakes his head. “You really haven’t heard much about me, have you?”

  “You haven’t heard much about me either,” I reply.

  “True … so let’s remedy that. Tell me more,” he says, shifting in his seat and crossing his ankle over his leg.

  I laugh. “There’s not much to tell. I just meant because you didn’t know I was Hendrix’s sister.”

  Nick nods. “What else are you?”

  I shrug. “Chris and Roxana Harmon’s daughter,” I mutter, exhaling loudly and turning my head to look away. I hate having people know who my parents are. I wish it were something I could be proud of. I guess it should be since they both work hard and are so successful at what they do, but I can’t bring myself to be happy for any of it. Most of the time when people find out whose daughter I am, they leach on to me to better their own agenda.

  “I didn’t ask who your family is, Brooklyn. I asked you who you are. I don’t give a fuck about who your parents are.”

  I look back at him, stunned. Not because he doesn’t care about who my parents are but because it gives me nostalgia about the last person who said that to me.

  “I have to go,” I say, standing quickly.

  “You okay?” Nick asks, visibly confused.

  “Yeah,” I whisper. “I just remembered something I have to do.”

  I walk out before tears pool in my eyes.

  It was a hot summer day and I was lying out by the pool of my parents’ Beverly Hills house waiting for my cousin Nina to wake up. Nina was staying with us for the summer, which I loved because nobody was ever home. My brother was seventeen at the time and wanted nothing to do with hanging out with thirteen-year-olds. I couldn’t blame him. I knew how annoying we could be sometimes. My mother had just fired the longest nanny I’d had, Mildred, saying that she was trying to seduce my father. Mildred was fifty-five years old and my mother was delusional. I had a feeling that the real reason she let her go was because she heard me refer to her as my mother one night. To me that was what Mildred was, though. She was more of a mother to me than my own. She had been ever since she started looking after me when I was six years old. Roxana, on the other hand, gave birth to me. But giving birth doesn’t make you a mother, much less a good one.

  When Nina woke up, she found me by the pool, dozing off as I let the rays hit my back.

  “What are we going to do today?” she asked. “Mall?”

  “Okay,” I replied sleepily.

  I told my driver, Todd, that we needed to go to the mall to shop for a party we were attending that night. One of the kids in school was having a birthday party and invited me. It was the first evening birthday party I would attend, so I was extra excited about it. After shopping we went back home and tried everything on. My mother barged into my room while I was pulling on a purple tube top.

  “Oh, Brooklyn, how many cookies have you had this week?” she asked.

  My excited face instantly fell. “I haven’t had any,” I lied. I’d only had two—how could she tell?

  “Sure,” she scoffed. “If you keep that up, I’ll be able to pinch your fat.”

  I looked in the full-length mirror in front of me, horrified. I’d heard the way my mother spoke about muffin tops and “cellulite covered thighs.” I’d heard the disapproval in her voice whenever she saw a friend of hers for the first time after a long time and she’d gained weight. “Wanda,” she’d say, “you look so … fat.” Just like that. The filter over my mother’s mouth wasn’t broken. She was just a bitch. That was something I’d learned from an early age.

  “Yeah,” I muttered quietly, wishing I didn’t have to constantly diet to earn her approval, not that I would have it even if I looked like a skeleton.

  “Where are you two going tonight, anyway?” my mother asked airily.

  “Donovan’s party,” I replied.

  “Donovan … Matthews?” she asked, seeming more interested.

  “Yes.”

  My mother nodded, a smile spreading over her face that made me wonder what she was thinking. Of course she never said, she just turned around, her perfectly wavy, frizz-less hair bouncing as she did, and walked out. My mother walked with a grace one could only hope to perfect in one lifetime. She’d been in countless fashion shows and modeled for numerous designers. She was still, even at her age, one of the most sought out models. She had long dark hair like mine, honey brown eyes like my brother’s, and a lean figure that made her look taller than she was. She had legs for days, my father loved to say. I always wished I did. The only thing I had for days was my ass, and I hoped to grow into it as I kept developing because it was calling a lot of unwanted attention from much older men.

  When we got to Donovan’s party that night, Nina went off to flirt with the first cute guy she spotted. I walked around talking to the girls from my class, ignoring the way they began to whisper to each other as soon as I walked away. A couple of them asked me if my brother was coming over, which I hated. I hated that the girls in my grade and the grade
above mine had such big crushes on him. And I hated that the guys in my class all called my mom a MILF. It didn’t disgust me more than it bothered me. I just hated that they paid attention to her but didn’t even give me a second glance.

  Sighing, I stepped outside and wandered off to sit by the pool, grabbing a soda on my way there.

  “You here alone?” Ryan, a tall lanky kid in my class asked.

  “With my cousin Nina,” I replied.

  “Oh. Nina. Yeah,” he said with a laugh.

  “What?” I asked confused.

  He shook his head. His hair was strawberry blond, matching the strawberry freckles that bathed his cheeks. He had nice green eyes, big ones that always looked like they were in awe of one thing or another.

  “She was trying to hit on me,” he explained as he sunk down to the grass beside me.

  “Ohhhh,” I said, laughing. “Sorry about that.”

  He shrugged. “No biggie.”

  We sat there in comfortable silence, listening to the music pouring out of the speakers and the loud squeals of laughter emitted from the girls that were dancing and jumping around. I never understood the whole shriek when I see my friend even though I just saw her yesterday in school, so I just sat there rolling my eyes most of the night.

  “Can I ask you for a favor?” Ryan said after a while.

  I closed my eyes and lay down beside him on the grass. I didn’t want to be rude because he was always so nice to me, but I felt like screaming, “Why? Why do people always want something from me?”

  “Sure,” I replied instead.

  “Will you be my pretend girlfriend?” he asked.

  My eyes popped open and I turned to him. “Pretend girlfriend?” I asked, completely shocked by what he was asking. “Why pretend?” I was annoyed and a little hurt. I didn’t want a boyfriend. I didn’t even like Ryan in that way, but why did it have to be a pretend thing? “Is it because of my parents? You want to pretend you’re my boyfriend so people can say ‘Oh, look how cool Ryan is. He’s Brooklyn’s boyfriend. He gets to go to her house and see her mom all the time.’” I imitated with a goofy voice even though my blood was boiling. I sat up quickly, too pissed off to sit there any longer.