by Bryce Oakley
“It’s not like I want to ask her what her intentions are or anything that stupid. I just want to know what her plan is. Like with Meg. Why is she hooking up with Meg all of a sudden? Doesn’t it all seem a bit convenient? Like Meg hates her, then Collins just has to sleep with her for Meg to agree to let her be the director?” Domino was talking herself into a tizzy. “Which one of us will Collins try to make a move on next?”
Meg was unable to process the anger that was building in her chest in time to do anything other than to grab the orange juice on her breakfast tray and throw it right in Dom’s face. Was Dom really saying that Collins’ interest in Meg had to be motivated by something other than… Meg?
As soon as the drink went flying, everyone moved at once.
Billie jumped to grab Domino and keep her in place, which was unnecessary.
Domino must have been in shock, she barely even reacted to her sister practically sitting on her.
Zoey grabbed Meg’s hand and took the glass to move out of her reach, clearly afraid that would be the next item to go flying.
“Get. The fuck. Out,” Meg growled.
Zoey kept hold of Meg’s wrist as Billie led Domino out of the room.
“You do stick with a theme,” Zoey said to Meg with a surprised smile on her face. “You’re always chucking food items at us.”
After Zoey left and the room was quiet again, Meg was more upset and sad than angry. She had really wanted to talk to her best friends about this new relationship thing she was starting and excited about, not to mention the weird feeling she was getting about Collins and Micah.
After Dom’s insistence that Meg couldn’t possibly be good enough for Collins to have a genuine interest in her, there was just no way Meg could talk to them.
Knowing it would be a very awkward day, Meg grabbed her jacket and bag and headed downstairs to meet her rideshare. She had a sinking feeling that the day was completely shot and there was no way it could get any better.
She went over the day in her head on the drive. The cameras would be setting up today, so that conversation with Collins about doing candid interviews was going to have to happen sooner rather than later.
That afternoon was the radio interview to hype the private show happening the next day. It would be a strange day full of being around her bandmates that she was mad at and her secret-but-not-so-secret lover of approximately 12 hours that she wasn’t 100% sure she trusted, and Dom’s hurtful comments didn’t help.
When she arrived, Meg pointedly kept her head down and walked directly to her drum set. She wanted to practice the new solo she had been working on and thought that she should practice while listening to the chorus in her headphones, a spin off from Collins’ suggestion.
Plus, she just wanted to hit something. Repeatedly.
Playing music was the only thing that could actually clear Meg’s mind. She was always in her head, thinking or worrying or agonizing or planning or dreaming, but music took all that clutter away. She loved the complete freedom it afforded.
She had lost track of time, jamming out with her headphones on and shutting out the world around her.
She happened to look up and see Micah’s beautiful — yet unsettlingly lopsided — face staring at her, waving her hands to try to get Meg’s attention.
“Oh, hey Mike,” Meg said as she removed her headphones. “Uh, how are you... feeling?”
Don’t look at the lips. Don’t look at the lips.
“I’m fine, thanks for asking. It was just a little flu. All better now,” Micah said pointedly. “How are you doing? Are you all ready for the interview today?”
“Isn’t it just a rah-rah to hype the Red Rocks show?” Meg asked.
“Oh no, honey, the Red Rocks show doesn’t need any hype! This is a favor to the radio station and good publicity — it’s the private show that we’re hyping today,” Micah said. She had a strange ability to be condescending and yet still make Meg feel like the conversation had gone well.
“So, tell me about the drama with the original director,” Meg asked, hoping she could make that strange feeling go away.
“Oh Lord, Sanders is hidden away at a spa, but he’s claiming he’s in treatment for exhaustion. He’s fine. And Collins is a better fit, anyway. I’m glad you decided to give your approval, Meg,” Micah said with a raise of her coffee cup.
Something about the way she said it made Meg uneasy.
“The band gave our approval. I can’t take credit for that,” Meg said as nonchalantly as possible.
“You and I both know that you’re more important to the band than that,” Micah said, then looked quickly to her smart watch. “Ugh, why is the venue manager calling me again?” She turned and walked away, answering her phone with a curt word.
Meg watched Micah storm off, and sighed as she began readjusting the tightness of her floor tom. It had felt a little out of tune in her warm up earlier. She felt more than heard Collins approach her. She turned to see those bright green eyes, which made her automatically smile.
Collins looked nervous but excited. Similar to how Meg was feeling.
“Hey, how are you?” Collins asked, keeping an appropriate distance between them. “You seemed like you were in the zone.”
“Yeah, just feeling my feels for a second there. Better for the moment than eating my feelings, I guess?” Meg said with a quick shrug.
Collins brushed her fingertips gently over the back of Meg’s hand and smiled. “There are a million things going on, and most of them are going wrong, but I just wanted to say hello. And tell you that you look extremely attractive when you’re beating the shit out of a drum set.”
Meg laughed and let her shoulders relax a bit. “Any chance we can grab lunch together?” She asked.
“I doubt that very much, but if I can sneak away then I would absolutely love that,” she said. Her eyes twinkled mischievously.
“Lucky you, getting to have lunch with the coolest person in Denver,” Meg joked.
“Oh, I did hear that Pia was here,” Collins teased.
She really liked this Collins that she had been seeing. She felt like she was getting glimpses of the Collins that existed on the other side of the intimidating mask she always wore. Maybe it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that Collins liked Dad jokes?
“Get out of here, you dork,” Meg said as Collins walked away, still laughing to herself.
Feeling a bit like she was in high school again with nobody to sit with at lunch, Meg was relieved when Micah called a lunch meeting instead of letting the band do whatever they wanted.
The band, Collins, Micah, and a few new faces all sat around a large table with deli sandwiches piled in the middle. Only Collins sat next to her. Zoey sat across from her, but Domino made a point to sit at the far end of the table away from her.
Good, with food involved, Domino should be worried.
“We need to finalize our itinerary for the next few days, go over talking points for today, the plan for the next few days, and of course, get our shit together for the filming,” Micah said, started things off with a bang.
Meg sat with her head leaning on her closed fist, fiddling with her turkey sandwich and finding that the best use of her time was to pick each sprout off her plate and onto a napkin one at a time.
“Right, so the cars will leave at four o’clock today to get us all to the radio station for the interview. Again, we’re really hyping the radio station and the private show tomorrow night, with everything leading up to the big Red Rocks show on Saturday,” Micah said.
Meg glanced up from her sprouts situation.
She understood that there were important things to talk about, but it was just so hard for her to concentrate on anything at the moment. Her head was filled with memories of last night, causing the butterflies in her stomach to flutter wildly, but they stilled almost immediately when she thought about the way Dom was so sure that Meg wasn’t good enough to cause someone like Collins to catch feelings.
Meg blinked, as though coming out of a daze.
“Were you listening at all? Collins just asked you if you’re happy with the new drum solo or if you want to work on it more today?” Micah was red in the face, clearly aggravated with her.
She wanted to feel guilty, but it was hard to take Micah’s anger seriously when her red face just made the lopsided lips more distinct.
“Oh, yeah. Uh, sure, I could work on it more,” Meg stammered. She caught Collins’ eye and then immediately added, “I don’t need help or anything, I’m sure I could get it on my own.”
“I can make time to work on it with you after the radio interview today,” Collins said, her voice completely professional.
“I mean, if it’s okay…” Meg felt off her game.
“It’s fine,” Collins said with finality.
Micah moved on to the next topic.
Feeling a little embarrassed, Meg looked down at her plate. She saw Collins had been taking the sprouts that Meg was getting rid of by moving them onto her own sandwich. The realization made her feel even more embarrassed, but she couldn’t quite pinpoint why.
Micah introduced a man sitting at the table as Dennis Poole, the Director of Photography for the special.
“The cameras will be set up here in the production office, but we also plan to get some footage as y’all go about the next few days until Saturday. Collins has informed me that you guys ‘haven’t decided’ whether we’re going to be doing any sit down interviews,” Dennis said, using air quotes and giving off a general air of impatience. “So everything will kind of be in limbo until we have an answer there. It’s a bit unprofessional to leave things up in the air like this, ladies.”
Meg’s eyes shot to Domino’s, looking at her for the first time since their confrontation that morning. The look that passed between them had nothing to do with their fight and everything to do with the deep connection they had from being in a band for so long. Zoey and Billie shared similar glares of disapproval.
“Excuse me, but no way—” Billie started, speaking clearly without raising her voice.
Before Billie could go on, Collins stood up.
“Mr. Poole, we do not refer to our talent here as ‘ladies.’ I would urge you to remember that you work for them, not the other way around. The fact that you opened up here by trying to scold our team for taking their work seriously enough to take the time for considering a range of possibilities tells me that you’re not right for the DP and we’ll be working with Garrett instead. You can go now.” Collins said it all with such authority that Dennis seemed shocked and frozen to the spot.
“Someone go get Garrett,” Collins barked after a few moments of stunned silence.
Two people from the camera crew stood up at once. They led Dennis out of the room and closed the door.
After a beat, the silence was broken by Domino’s loud and boisterous laugh.
Dom held up her bottle of iced tea in a mock toast to Collins. “Nicely done. I would have preferred more swearing, but thank you just the same.”
Billie, Zoey, Micah, and Domino all started talking at once. Nobody liked being the target of Collins’ sharp tongue, but they didn’t seem to mind when she used it in their defense.
Meg couldn’t help but feel proud of Collins, and a little turned on if she was being honest. And she wasn’t too humble to give Dom just the slightest of smug smiles.
“Alright, alright,” Micah said, calling the meeting back to order. “Thanks for handling that, Collins. We’ll get with Garrett later and get everything ironed out. In the meantime, at least that’s a good segue — have we all had a chance to discuss the sit down interviews yet? Where are we at with that?”
Meg realized with a bit of a start that she hadn’t thought about it. The last few days seemed like a blur — how had she let that slip her mind?
“We haven’t discussed it as a group yet, so this seems as good a time as any,” Meg said.
“I still feel the same way. The special is about the music, so the only interaction you guys should have with the camera is when you’re behind your instruments. We can get lots of shots of you rehearsing and we’ll include the radio interview. But between the show tomorrow and the concert on Saturday, we’ll have plenty of footage of you all doing what you came here to do — play music,” Collins said clearly and at just the right volume. How did she always sound so confident? How could she say things that sounded like a compromise, but also made her seem like an authority on the issue? Meg hated that quality at the moment.
“I also still feel the same. We’re giving our fans the chance to see how we make the music. It’s not just one big music video,” Meg said. She had the feeling that she came across more emotional than Collins had.
“I understand that, Meg. I’m not saying it should be purely a music video, but in essence that is what we’ve set out to do here. Show them how you make the music by playing the music,” Collins said with more force.
“That doesn’t make any sense. We’re releasing a live album of the concert, sure. But the special is about the band and how we work. Totally different,” Meg said, holding her ground. “They’re two separate products.” Her heart beat fast and she could feel her face getting flushed.
“Not different at all. Show them how you work by working, okay?” Collins had Meg pinned in one of her intense stares and her green eyes flashed.
Meg could feel the passion but for the moment wished she could push it away.
“You said you would listen. This is not listening,” Meg said, and she could embarrassingly hear her voice getting higher in pitch but seemed unable to stop it.
“I am listening, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to just go along with everything you say,” Collins said, as she remained infuriatingly calm.
“This doesn’t seem very productive right now, so let’s table this discussion for later on,” Micah cut in before Meg could respond. “Do we all need a break?”
“Yes,” Meg snapped. Feeling flustered and irritated that she couldn’t finish the argument, Meg left the room to cool down without hearing if they were on break or not.
She walked outside to take a nice angry power walk around the block. She wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or more pissed that no one followed her.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Collins
Collins stared at the closed door Meg had just stormed through.
As everyone else left the conference room, Collins stayed behind and rested her head in her hands and closed her tired eyes. Working with Meg was going to be so much more difficult than she had hoped.
She needed them to be able to keep a very compartmentalized relationship. Couldn’t Meg understand that she would never be able to go with an idea just because she liked the person who suggested it? No, Meg was definitely being selfish.
Collins couldn’t see Meg trying to use their relationship in some untoward way, but it still didn’t sit right that she didn’t trust Collins’ vision.
“That was a lot,” Micah said from Collins’ left.
“Sure was,” Collins said without opening her eyes.
“I thought you said you got Meg’s buy-in. Did you not listen when I told you that Meg was the glue? Did you not listen to a single fucking word I said? This is messy and I don’t like messy. Meg is the one they’ll rally around and you need to treat her with the importance she deserves,” Micah continued, going off on a tirade that Collins felt was entirely unnecessary.
Collins sat up straight and opened her eyes, pinning Micah with a glare. She slammed her hands down onto the table hard to punctuate her point. She heard a clutter to her right but couldn’t focus on anything other than putting Micah in her place.
“Believe me, Micah, I understand perfectly well how important Meg is to The Shrikes. Maybe even better than you do. Don’t presume to tell me that I’m not valuing Meg just because we don’t see eye-to-eye on every single issue,” Collins said
in a calm and measured tone, trying to contain her anger.
Micah looked Collins up and down with a measured look.
“Alright. Just don’t forget what I said. She’s important. I trust you’ll fix this?” Micah asked.
“I’ll do my best to fix it,” Collins said, walking out of the room.
Collins knew that she and Meg needed to come to some sort of an understanding. She knew that they would probably both need to compromise at least a little bit in order to move forward.
She tried to remind herself that it was a good thing that Meg was so passionate about her work. It didn’t make it any less annoying, but it did help to keep that in mind.
After about an hour of returning phone calls and emails in order to avoid Meg so she could cool off, Colins figured enough time had passed for her to try to set things right.
As expected, she found Meg sitting at her drum set. Headphones on, her drumsticks flying through the air in a flurry of angry movements.
Collins smiled to herself as she thought Meg must be playing her feelings.
She walked into Meg’s line of sight and waited for her to notice and acknowledge her.
“Hey,” Meg said as she took off her headphones.
“Hey,” said Collins, nervously putting her hands in her pockets and rocking back on her heels.
“Want to take a walk with me? So we can talk a little?” Collins felt a little silly but thought it best to get away from the prying eyes around in order to work through the disagreement.
Meg nodded, grabbing her sunglasses.
Once outside, they walked about half a block in silence before either said anything.
“We need to figure out what we want to do, and I want to make sure that I’m listening to you and your ideas,” Collins said, and the words felt strange on her tongue. She had never bent over backwards for an artist before, but Meg was different.
“You do?” Meg looked hard at Collins’ face, like she was trying to see if there was something hidden there.
“I really do. You agreed to back me as long as I agreed to hear you out. And I aim to do that,” Collins said, trying her best to look as sincere as she felt.
