by L. Philips
I laugh, although it sounds mortifyingly like a giggle, and feel myself flush. I look down at my hands. Then I find myself wondering if it impressed Harry or Xavier. “So,” I say, searching for something else to say because I don’t want those thoughts to linger, “what are you making?”
“Answer this first. Anything you can’t have or don’t like?”
“I’m slightly allergic to eggplant. All it does is make my throat itchy and my lips get swollen, but it’s a great excuse because who the hell likes eggplant? But other than that, I don’t really dislike anything.”
“Even mushrooms?”
“I actually really like mushrooms,” I say. “Any way too. On pizza. Deep-fried. Stuffed. Sautéed.”
“Good. They’re going in butter and wine,” Cameron says, and does just that, emptying a carton of sliced mushrooms into the pan of butter. “And as for the wine, since we’re having mahimahi, I thought I’d go with a Viognier. Ever had one?”
“I don’t know what that is. I swear you just sneezed.”
Cameron chuckles, then reaches behind himself, removing a bottle of wine from one of the several large paper bags on the counter. “Don’t worry. I don’t know anything about wine either, but I’ve been around my father enough to know how to sound fancy. This one, however, I know a bit. I had entirely too much of it in France last year on vacation. Lots of flavor, mostly fruit and some flowers.”
“Sounds girly.”
Cameron shakes his head once and removes a corkscrew from a drawer. “Not at all. It might taste smooth, but it won’t go easy on you. It’s sneaky.”
“And it goes well with fish?”
“Yes, but really, I’d drink this with potato chips and Red Vines. It’s so good, who cares?”
He pours healthy doses for us into two simple yet elegant wineglasses, and raises his in the air. I follow suit. “To your music,” he says.
“To your words,” I return.
“To us,” he finishes, and we clink. I sip, and the liquid that dances over my tongue must be what heaven tastes like.
“It’s going to be good, isn’t it?” he asks, and I’m not sure whether he means the weekend, the music, or us. Maybe he means it all. And I’m in total agreement with that, so I smile and meet his gaze.
“Cameron, it’s going to be great.”
Chapter Eighteen
Cameron
We’ve finished off the meal with not even a crumb left over, and half the bottle of Viognier. Nate insists on cleaning up the kitchen, so I sit on the couch with my glass of wine and stare out at the surf while he works. The sun has already started to set, and the sky is beginning to take on the bright orange and pink hues that I know from experience will turn into the perfect Malibu sunset.
“So nothing leaves this room, but I feel like you should know . . . I offered the Jacket Zippers a deal the night we met. That’s why I was there. It’s all part of my father’s introduction to the business.”
Nate slides our plates into the correct spots in the dishwasher. “I figured, after I realized who you were and all. They accepted, I’m assuming?”
“After a bit of a fight,” I say, smiling about it into my wine. “They didn’t really believe that Paradise would be a good fit for them.”
Nate’s next words are cautious and well picked. “But it will be, right?”
“Absolutely. I’m looking into bringing back some old-school rock producers for it. I’ll make sure their sound doesn’t lose its edge.” I grin, a plan forming. “Maybe I should be present behind the controls too. It wouldn’t hurt to learn about sound engineering, right? It’s just something a Pierce should know. And I can keep an eye on things that way.”
“Smart. Devious. Foolproof.” Nate nods, thinking through my plan. “I like your style.”
I chuckle. Deeply satisfied—with the view, with the company, with my full stomach, with the plans I’m making—I drink deep from my glass and sigh. A moment of contentment passes with only the sounds of Nate cleaning up dinner and the waves down on the beach. Then I hear him say, quietly:
“Cameron, about us recording your demo . . .” He comes out from behind the counter and stands next to the couch. I turn to him and he fidgets under my gaze and I don’t know why, but I find it incredibly endearing.
“Yes?”
“I know it’s a good thing to have a famous producer and a team of sound techs or whatever, but I was hoping—”
“Hoping that it could just be us?”
“Exactly.”
“Me too. And I think it should be, or the closest thing we can get to it. We’ll need someone pushing the big red button on the other side of the glass, but only one person,” I say, and I can see his whole body relax with relief. “Actually, I brought my equipment. It might be possible to do a lot of it here. It’s a demo. It doesn’t have to have perfect sound quality. It’s the songwriting Father will listen to. And the skill, both vocals and guitar.”
“And those will have to be perfect.”
“As close as we can get,” I say, because there’s no use lying or sugarcoating it. My father is the third in a line of Pierce men who have expected miracles from the musicians they employ. And with each generation, they’ve demanded more from their artists: more talent, more presence, and, of course, more perfection. If we hand my father a demo that’s subpar on any level, I can just forget about making this into a career.”
“Well, we’d better get going if we’re going to come up with perfection in one weekend.”
I grin up at him. “Meet me out on the deck with your guitar. I’ll grab the wine.”
Nate
When I push through the glass French doors and out onto the deck, Cameron is a silhouette against a fluorescent sunset. He’s impressive, backlit like this. Clearly strong, fit, athletic looking, even wrapped in a loose cardigan. I’m wearing mine too, and I’m thankful I brought it. As warm as the day was, without the glaring sun, the constant ocean breeze spreads a chill over my skin.
Then I hear it, soft and almost indiscernible over the crashing surf: Cameron’s singing. Warming up. He starts his scales low, deep in his chest where his voice is like thunder, then glides over that warm middle where he could give any R&B singer a run for their money. Then his voice trips slightly, hitting a break where it flips into the falsetto sound that is somehow both strong and fragile, and impossibly light and flexible.
“I think that’s my favorite part of your voice,” I say, and he jumps, the wine in his glass sloshing out over his hand.
He raises his fingers to his mouth and licks them clean. “My falsetto? We could utilize it more.”
“I think we should. Although your middle notes are really soulful. Then it’s like you slip into this bottom range that you shouldn’t even have. . . .”
“Yeah, my choir teacher said I was a tenor with a bonus baritone on the bottom.” He grins and drinks deeply from his glass.
“Choir, huh? Were you the star soloist?”
He laughs loudly, humorlessly. “Nah. I didn’t want to be. Truth be told, I did a lot of hiding in the back row.”
“Why?”
“Everyone else was so much better. A lot of them had been taking voice lessons for years. Or were the stars of the musicals. That sort of thing.”
“And it never occurred to you that you have a really amazing instrument in your throat? Or, at the very least, that you of all people had the kind of family legacy that makes lessons and starring roles kind of . . . moot?”
“No, Nate. I mean, I wouldn’t want to get anywhere just on my name, anyway,” he says, then adds, “and no, it didn’t really occur to me that I had anything special. One of my classmates is already getting roles in Broadway shows. She was just incredible.”
Although I have nothing but respect for his refusal to use his family name to get recognition, the rest leaves me ut
terly astonished. I lean my guitar up against the glass doors behind me and move close to him, move into his space. He seems surprised at the sudden closeness, but doesn’t move away. He looks at me, on tenterhooks.
“I don’t get it, Cameron,” I say to him, loudly, so that the waves can’t drown me out.
“Get what?”
“You. You’re a complete paradox.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “I’m not following.”
I snort. “You are amazingly confident in so many ways. You know you’re smart. You know you’re capable. You know you’re attractive.” Cameron shakes his head and tries to say something, but I cut him off. “You are and you know it. I’m not saying you’re arrogant, just that you know these things about yourself and rightly so. You can close a deal with a band that thinks a big record label is musical suicide. You can walk the red carpet next to Grammy winners like it’s an everyday occurrence. You could go to an Ivy League. And you look like a damn Disney prince. Seriously, even Vic thought birds and mice must help you dress every morning.”
At that, Cameron lets loose with a nervous, embarrassed laugh.
“So I don’t understand how you can be so unsure of the best fucking thing you have going for you.”
That quiets him, stills him completely. His face goes slack with shock.
“I have no idea why you don’t see it. I have a feeling if I knew, I’d probably have to track a few people down and punch them in the face.” I take a deep breath, willing myself to calm down. “But seriously, Cameron, how is it that you are so completely unconfident in your voice? It’s one of the best voices I’ve heard in years, and not just because of the tone of it, which somehow manages to sound rough and polished all at once. It’s that you can do any damn thing you want with it. Jazz? Sure, easy. Rock? Absolutely, no sweat. Folk and country and surf music and R&B and pop? Child’s play. So I don’t get how you can’t see it, and since I don’t have that talent at all, well, I can’t help but be both jealous and a little pissed off that you do, but you don’t even seem to know it.”
Cameron blinks, stunned at my honesty. I reach out, rest my hand on his arm. It’s kind of an apology, kind of an attempt to comfort and smooth any feathers I might have ruffled.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be hard on you. I just don’t understand it. If I had that voice, I’d have taken over the world by now.”
“I feel the same about you and how you play guitar,” Cameron says. He looks out over the water, then back down at his fingers, which have twisted in a knot. “You asked if I was a soloist in my high school choir. Well, I was once. My whole family flew to New Hampshire to see me perform. It was a song from a Sondheim show. ‘Finishing the Hat.’ Know it?”
I nod. “It’s from Sunday in the Park with George. My grandma took me to see it on Broadway when I was younger.”
Cameron smiles sadly, then looks back at his fingers. “Everyone said I did well. Tess. Mom. Both of my grandmothers. But I heard my father talking to some other parents he knew later. I don’t know, people he knew from the business, I guess. He didn’t know I was close by. He said something like he was grateful I had Paradise to fall back on, since I obviously wasn’t meant to perform.”
“Oh, Cameron,” I say, my heart breaking for him. If it’s possible to hate his father more than I already did, I certainly do now. He’s never said as much; in fact, sometimes he seems openly disdainful of his father, but I can tell from the way he talks about the business, from the way he is so focused on this demo, that his father’s opinion is perhaps the only opinion that matters to him. I want to ask him more about it, to ask if he’s ever sung for his father again, to ask if he knows how wrong his father was, but I don’t. I ask, instead, what perhaps is the most important question for him, for the two of us, for our partnership. “How can I make you see how great your voice is? How do we get rid of the fear?”
Cameron worries his bottom lip between his teeth, but he turns to me, his eyes bright and hopeful. “I think it helps that you’re saying ‘we’ when you talk about it. It’s nice to know you’ve got my back. And I think if my father likes this demo, a lot of the fear will go away.”
“Okay, what else? What can we do right now?”
“I don’t think there’s anything we can do right now, Nate,” Cameron says, and I can’t stand the sadness in his tone.
I close my eyes and think. An idea comes to me almost instantly. “What’s your favorite thing to sing?” I ask him.
He shrugs. “I guess old stuff. Soul. Otis Redding. Sam Cooke. Stuff like that.”
“Yes, but, like, what song specifically?” I prod. “What could you sing first thing in the morning and land it? Without a warm-up or a drink of water?”
Cameron hesitates, but I can tell from his face, the knowing and eager look in his eyes, he has an answer to this question. Maybe several answers.
“Come on. Tell me.”
His smile blossoms. “You know Jeff Buckley?”
“Please do not tell me that first thing in the morning without a warm-up you sing ‘Hallelujah’ perfectly,” I say in response. “That’s unfair.”
He laughs. “Oh god no. Never. I don’t think I’d even attempt that song after a few hours of singing and no one around to hear me. But there’s a song he sings, kind of bluesy, not really a lot of range to it. It’s, um . . . it’s kind of sexy, though.”
I raise a brow. “Go on.”
“It’s called ‘I Want Someone Badly.’”
Now, that does sound sexy.
I don’t know Buckley as well as I should, and I’m aware that’s a huge gaping hole in my musical knowledge. I know the big ones, “Hallelujah” and “Grace” and stuff, but I haven’t let myself dig any deeper. He was clearly a talented man. His playing was out-of-this-world amazing, and his voice was on another plane of existence entirely. Not even Cameron or the other “greats” I love, like Matt Bellamy or Eva Cassidy or even Adam Lambert, can really touch Buckley’s vocals, partly because of the depth of emotion he packed in every note, but partly because of that otherworldly voice. But I can’t listen to him. His life story is too much like Dad’s. Another great talent, gone too soon.
But I don’t say any of this to Cameron.
“I don’t know that one well,” I tell him. “But here’s what we’re going to do. I want you to set up your equipment. I’m going to look up a video of this song and the chords. Then we’re going to record you singing it, and we’re going to play it back to you, over and over, every time you don’t feel confident, and it’s going to be like some awesome type of brainwashing. I’m gonna play you this song until you believe you’re amazing.”
Cameron looks both embarrassed and pleased with that plan, so he nods, and we’re both off on our separate missions. About twenty minutes later, he’s almost set up and I’ve played the song enough times that I don’t have to hesitate with any of the transitions. He sits down in the chair next to mine and puts his laptop on the patio table, making himself busy opening up software and fine-tuning settings.
“Ever recorded like this before?”
I glance nervously at the microphone that looms close to where my right hand will strum, then at his, which is positioned in front of his face.
“A few times,” I answer. “My last teacher said the best way to learn was to record yourself and listen to it back.”
“True, and good. Don’t change anything, just play normally. The mics will do their jobs. They’re mine, not the company’s, but I knew what to look for so . . . they’re decent.”
As if I had any doubt that they were.
“Will it pick up the surf?” I ask.
Cameron smiles, taps a button on his keyboard with impatience, and nods. “It will give us atmosphere. I can take it out later if we want. Okay, are you ready?”
“I guess,” I say, not at all sure about that answer. “You?”
“As I’ll ever be. Let’s go.”
He pushes another button, gives me a thumbs-up, and I start to play, reading the chords off the phone I’ve propped up in front of me. Cameron waits until I’ve played through the chord progression twice to start singing, and when he does, I almost drop my guitar.
This. This is what I’ve been waiting for from him. The second note of his phrase is long, powerful, absolutely aching. He puts that soulful edge in it, holds that one syllable out torturously, before finally letting it drop down into the rest of the phrase. And it’s loud. Full voice, full-bodied. Not the soft, whispery singing he was doing the other night, although he softens it up when it’s called for. No, this is balls-to-the-wall, dialed-up-to-eleven singing, with the kind of emotional power behind it to deliver a complete knockout. And the words. Well. I hadn’t really paid much attention to those in my short rehearsal time. I was too worried about playing it right. I’d assumed it was about sex. Wrong. It’s about unrequited love, which makes it better and somehow infinitely hotter.
On the last verse, Cameron plays with the melody a bit. Improvises, taking some of the phrases up and into that amazing falsetto of his. When he finishes, I play out the progression to a stop, and Cameron hits another button on his laptop, ending the recording. For a moment, we stare at each other, silent.
Finally, Cameron speaks. “Well?”
“Well?” I echo back. “Where do I even start?”
Cameron’s face, dimly lit by the bluish remainder of the sunset, falls in disappointment. “Should we do it again or forget it?”
“Cameron, that was a near perfect recording. There’s no doing it again. Although I have to say it’s almost terrifying to think that you could do it better. If you think there’s room for improvement after that, you are at a level of perfectionism that is paralyzing, my friend.”
Relieved, Cameron slumps back in his chair. “No, I just couldn’t tell if you liked it.”
“If we didn’t need original material, I’d put it on the demo.” An idea hits me. “Maybe the first album?”
