Just For You: A lesbian romance (Play Me a Song Book 3)

by Kale, Jessica

  “I’m late on the last two installments, but yeah, I’m trying to keep it together.” A part of her wondered if she should be telling her any of this at all. Gabriella peered over her shoulder again. In the distance, she spotted a guy with a camera.

  “Fuck,” she said, ducking her head down. She curled up in a fetal position on the couch. Alicia got up and closed the drapes.

  “Chill,” she said. “It’s just a guy taking pictures of his kid at the park.”

  “Oh,” Gabriella said, getting up and brushing the hair out of her eyes. “Well, that was embarrassing.” There was a pause. “Sorry if I’m all over the place. It’s just that I haven’t been able to go out lately without the paparazzi following me everywhere.”

  “I’m surprised you even managed to make it all the way over here without being followed,” Alicia said, pulling her robe together and sitting back down.

  “I took all the necessary measures.”

  “Such as?”

  “I rented an unmarked car and showed up at your doorstep at six AM.”

  Alicia tried to suppress a smile. Her eyes hovered everywhere around Gabriella, but she never looked directly at her. Her shoulders were slumped and her eyes cast down in a mournful gaze. “I’ll be sure to tell my dad you passed by.”

  “So,” Gabriella started. “I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m here.”

  Alicia nodded. “I’d be lying if I said I’m not.”

  Gabriella fidgeted in her place. She clasped her hands together and leaned forward, her eyes raised to Alicia’s. “My dad is dying.”

  “What?” Alicia sat up in full attention, blinking repeatedly as Gabriella’s face seemed to fall away from the light. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Gabriella replied. “When I got back from the tour I found a voicemail from Haley telling me to come back home. She said he’s dying, Alicia.”

  “Did you call her back?”

  Gabriella nodded. “No answer, and no call back, either.”

  Alicia was in complete shock. Her first thought was to get up and hug Gabriella, but it didn’t take a genius to reject that thought as soon as it came to her. One of the most difficult things in the world, she thought, was to make someone feel better without touching them. “Oh, God,” she breathed. “So what are you gonna do?”

  Gabriella pursed her lips and looked away. “That’s why I’m here. I wanted to know what you thought,” she said, rather begrudgingly.

  “What did you think I was going to say? “Don’t go back there”?” Alicia said, tilting her head to the side. Gabriella resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

  “It’s just … I don’t know. I haven’t seen my dad in years,” she said. “You know that.”

  Yes, I know that. It’s not like when we broke up I erased all memory of you. “Yeah,” Alicia said, her lips barely moving. “Gabriella, you and I both know you should go back there.” She paused for a moment, clearing her throat. “God only knows how much I regret not seeing my mom before she…you know.”

  Gabriella nodded and raised her eyes back to Alicia’s. Suddenly she was taken back to a time when Alicia truly needed her. Right now wasn’t one of those times. She seemed to be doing just fine without her; there was something in her eyes that felt dead, or worse, indifferent. At that point she just wanted to get up and leave. “I’m going to go,” she said. “I just wanted to hear someone confirm what I already thought I should do.”

  Someone?

  “Of course.” Alicia didn’t know why she was being so cold. Gabriella eyed her expectantly, as if waiting for her to snap out of it. Her whole body felt numb, like she had lost all feeling in her limbs. She couldn’t stand Gabriella’s stares; she floated around in her peripheral vision like a ghost. Finally when Alicia heard a sniff, she looked right back at her.

  “What if he hates me?” Gabriella asked, her eyes swelling up with tears. Alicia got up and sat next to her. “I haven’t talked to him in such a long time. Even his face feels like a distant memory. I don’t know what he looks like now.”

  “It’s not too late,” Alicia said, shaking her head from side to side. “I thought it was too late to reconnect with my dad, and look at us now.”

  “But my dad’s dying,” Gabriella said, her voice trembling. “Who knows if he’s going to want to talk to me or even be around me in the little time he has left!”

  “Gabriella, you don’t know for sure what’s wrong with him. Don’t jump to conclusions.”

  “How can I not, Alicia? I don’t think I can look him in the eye after what I did!”

  “What did you do?” Alicia asked, narrowing her eyes at the blonde. “I mean, you used to tell me to follow my dreams all the time. I don’t suppose you were just saying that, were you?”

  “I wasn’t just saying that,” Gabriella said, running a hand through her hair. “It’s not even like I didn’t want to see him ever again, it’s just that deep down I was hoping we would reunite under different circumstances.”

  “And by that, you mean you wanted him to reach out to you, right?”

  “Well.” Gabriella bit her lip and looked away. Alicia knew her like the back of her hand.

  “See, that’s not the way it works,” Alicia said.

  “It worked for you.”

  Alicia let out a sigh. It was hard sitting this close to Gabriella and not being able to play with her hair or wrap her arms around her, or look her directly in the eye without sending out a thousand mixed signals. “It’s going to be alright. He’s just going to be glad he saw you.”

  “And what about Haley and my mom? What will they think? God, I haven’t see Haley since she was in middle school.” Gabriella’s voice was shaking; Alicia could tell she was close to tears again. Suddenly she felt her phone vibrate in her pocket.

  “Sorry, I have to take this,” she said. A look appeared in Gabriella’s eyes, one Alicia knew well; one she had often gotten from Gabriella when she had to do something from work during an important conversation. “Hello? Bobby, hey. What’s up?”

  “Don’t worry about it, I’ll just let myself out.” Gabriella got up and threw her bag over her shoulder.

  “No, wait,” Alicia said, running to her. “Where are you going? Bobby, hold on.”

  “That’s okay, I’ll probably take the train there next morning. I’ll call you when I get there.” Without saying another word, Gabriella turned the knob on the door and walked out into the yard. Alicia clenched her eyes and stomped her foot against the floor.

  “Dammit. Bobby, I’ll have to call you back.” She hung up and tossed her phone on the couch. Those were probably the most confusing thirty minutes of her life. “I fucked up,” she said to herself. In her defense, Gabriella wasn’t very clear as to why she was here. Did she want to reconcile? Or did she just want a shoulder to cry on? In any case, it was confusing the hell out of Alicia. Once she was sure that Gabriella was gone, she went back upstairs, threw her robe off and stepped into the shower.

  The water floated around her shoulders like glossy curtains, massaging her neck muscles. Alicia’s toes flinched against the ceramic floor; her mind was in shreds. She turned the dial a little bit more, releasing thousands of steamy hot drops, darkening her hair and trickling down her back. Her eyes closed over and over, each time showing her images of Gabriella sitting across from her like photographs.

  CHAPTER 6

  “So by the looks of it, Logan should be landing in Budapest on the nineteenth, right?” Jeremy asked, raising his eyebrows at a suited man sitting next to him.

  “Yes,” the suited man said, nodding confidently. “I have a question. What are you planning on doing with Sandy? I understand she’s working on her studio album?” His eyes darted from Alicia, to Jeremy, and then to Alicia again. They lingered there for a moment before they reverted back to a set of documents spread out in front of him.

  Alicia was scrolling through her phone. She had archived her chat conver
sation with Gabriella a long time ago, but ever since she paid her that visit, Alicia couldn’t stop going through their old exchanges. Pictures from vacations, pictures of their food, pictures from Gabriella’s old tours. Alicia found herself scrolling down indefinitely, as if searching for a memory to cling to. Finally, she stopped at a picture of Gabriella with her hair tied up in a fat bun. A fine layer of foundation gave her skin a soft glow, and her eyebrows were a bit thicker than what she was used to. Behind her was a Hollywood mirror, a pool of yellow light lapping around its bulbs and forming somewhat of a halo around her head. Alicia smiled weakly. Gabriella had sent her this before her first show in Rome. It was hard having to stumble upon that in the middle of a work meeting. But she had brought it upon herself. She continued to scroll.

  The men’s chatter dissolved in the background. “So, a couple of days ago, Alicia came up with a really good idea for Sandy,” Jeremy said, averting his gaze to the producer. Her eyes were cast downwards; she didn’t even look up. “So, um. We were thinking Sandy should do a live show, totally unplugged, uncensored.”

  “Aha, and why doesn’t Alicia tell us more about that?” the man asked, flashing her a smirk.

  “Sorry, Andrew,” she said, putting her phone aside. She raised her eyes to him and laced her fingers together. She could feel Jeremy’s eyes on her. “Um.” She tried to rearrange her face into something she hoped was nonchalant and casual looking. “Sandy is a raw talent. I was thinking we should put that talent to use and have her perform unplugged in New York?”

  “I think that’s a great idea,” the man said, scribbling down some notes and gesturing for Alicia to go on.

  “Only thing is that she’s terrified. She’s a fresh face, after all.”

  “Oh, so you’d like to wait a little until she’s ready?” Andrew asked.

  “I suppose so.” Suddenly Alicia’s phone lit up. Her eyes jumped straight to it, but when she realized it was just an iCloud notification, she flipped it on its face. A part of her was hoping Gabriella would call, but it didn’t seem like it would happen. “The thing is, I feel like she’s ready, but she doesn’t think so.”

  “She is a fresh face,” Andrew said, nodding. “But maybe that’s what’s going to jumpstart her career.”

  “She’s already releasing an album, though,” Jeremy said, narrowing his eyes at Alicia. “She’s getting more and more popular, her videos are getting millions of views on YouTube.”

  “Yeah, which is exactly why we should use that to book her a show in New York this year,” Alicia said. Andrew nodded and averted his gaze to the door.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” he said. A couple of men in black suits walked into the meeting room. One of them wore a cloak over his suit. A flash of red silk peeped beneath the collar as he approached. Alicia locked her gaze dead ahead. “Simon, Dave, you remember Jeremy.” The men shook hands, pulled out a couple of chairs and sat down. “This is Alicia.”

  “Hello, Alicia,” one of the men said. Alicia couldn’t quite tell which name belonged to whom.

  “Simon and Dave are going to go over the financials with us,” Andrew said, his eyes fixated on Jeremy’s. Suddenly Alicia felt detached, like she was watching herself from somewhere far away. She felt like she was floating in the corner of the room, absolutely flustered as to why Gabriella wasn’t sitting at that table. Utterly confused as to why the real Alicia was hooked to her phone; since when did she not pay attention at meetings?

  “Alright, what are we looking at?” one of the men asked, his fingertips floating over the documents spread out over the table. “Well, it looks like Harper Records is staying afloat. It’s doing great, actually. Only problem is, Alicia, you’re behind on your last two bank installments?”

  “Yeah, that’s part of the problem. I think we need more money to come in,” she said, her hands clasped in her lap.

  “I don’t think an unplugged show is what we need right now,” the other man said, stroking his scraggy graying beard which clung to his face in clumps like moss on dry rock. “Or, let me reword it. An unplugged show featuring Sandy isn’t what we need.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What I mean is that Sandy isn’t big on the charts right now unlike, say, Logan?”

  “So you want Logan to do the unplugged show?”

  “I think it would be more appropriate, yes. Besides, we need to focus more on extending the tour to more venues. That way, we can increase our income from ticket sales.”

  From the corner of her eye Alicia could see Jeremy nodding. She nodded, too, but nothing was getting through to her. She was breathing, but the air wasn’t going in, like her lungs were surrounded by metal bands. Next came in the rising panic, the dizzy feeling and the need to get low to the ground.

  “Alicia, any thoughts?”

  “I think that’s a great idea.”

  The men exchanged brief glances before Andrew leaned in across the table, his eyes locked on Jeremy’s. “We were thinking we should expand the tour to here,” he said.

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Jeremy said. “We could take other places like New York, or LA-”

  “Or Vegas.”

  “I like the sound of that.”

  “Alicia, what do you think?”

  “I think I need to use the bathroom.” She quickly got up and headed for the door, but then she realized she had left her phone on the table. She went back to get it, but in the midst of her panic she realized the entire room was staring at her. “Sorry, guys.”

  “Are you okay, Alicia?” Andrew asked, staring her up and down. “You seem a little bit distracted.” His lips curved to a wry grin, as if he could see straight through her.

  “I’m alright,” she said, storming out the door. She clutched her phone in her hand, as if holding onto it for dear life. Gabriella still hadn’t called her. Alicia typed her name in her contacts, but when it came down to it, she still didn’t have the guts to call her. She thought about texting her, but that would’ve made her look too indifferent. There she was, panicking over a phone call while a bunch of men gathered around a table deciding the fate of her company for her. If anything, Alicia was disappointed in herself. And yet, she continued to scroll. She must’ve checked Gabriella’s profile on every social media website out there; not a single update. I gotta get back in there.

  “Look who decided to show up!” Andrew said, leaning back in his chair. He still had that same look in his eyes, one that expected her to crumble.

  “Alicia, please have a seat,” Jeremy said. “We’re deciding on the venues.”

  “To be honest, I think we should take on a different approach to this,” Dave said, tapping his pen against his notebook. “I think we should invest more in advertisements.”

  “Yeah, I thought about that,” Alicia said. There was silence.

  “What about digital media?” Simon asked, leaning back in his chair. “I think that’s important, too.”

  “We can even boost our posts on platforms like Facebook and Instagram,” Alicia said. But every word she said was followed by silence. She felt herself melt away in the background, like her contributions were nothing but white noise. She knew that by now she had lost them. Her phone lit up, and her eyes bounced right to it.

  “You guys, think big!” Dave said, his eyes wide. “Harper Records is an established record company, we can do so much more than social media marketing! Think TV, think radio!”

  There was a collective nod all around. Alicia could’ve sworn she had caught a glimpse of Gabriella’s name flashing across her screen. But she was wrong. “You know what else we could do?” Jeremy said, snapping back to Alicia. “We could look into the new demos coming in.” He cocked his head towards her, as if giving her the floor to speak.

  “Yeah, I’ve received a lot of demos so far,” she said, nodding.

  “And?” Andrew asked, narrowing his eyes at her.

  “I’ve only had time to look through som
e of them. So far, I haven’t stumbled upon anything extraordinary. They all sound the same,” she lied.

  Jeremy opened his mouth to speak but no voice came out. He knew Alicia’s mind was somewhere else, somewhere far away from that round table and that meeting room. Somewhere far away from the studio.

  “I think we need more time to sort through them,” he said. His stomach shifted uneasily and his hand was pinching into his skin. He released his hands but couldn’t figure out what to do with them, so he clasped and unclasped them constantly.

  “Well,” Andrew said, his eyes darting back and forth frantically. “Whatever the situation is here … I think hiring new artists should be one of our top priorities. Dave, are you getting this?” The man was furiously scribbling down some notes; he didn’t even pause to nod.

  “Andrew,” Alicia breathed. “D’you mind sending me a copy of your suggestions? That way we can compile a list of names to call in for auditions.”

  “Sure.”

  Alicia nodded and leaned back in her chair. When she realized she was slouching, she straightened herself. Suddenly she felt like a teenager again, trying not to slump in her seat in front of the grownups. “Alright, well.”

  “I think we should set up another meeting next week,” Andrew said, looking at Alicia and smiling. He looked like the wolf from the cartoons she had grown up watching. “When everyone is … awake.” He got up and shook Jeremy’s hand. The men exchanged sly glances before Andrew turned to Alicia, who walked him to the door. Simon and Dave followed with their briefcases, staring her up and down as she led the way outside.

  “Bobby, my assistant, will call you to set up another meeting soon.”

  Andrew peered at her grimly. Behind black rimmed glasses were eyes of gray. If they had been blue, they must’ve somehow leached out. Even his skin was the color of dirty snow. “Sure thing,” he sneered.

  Alicia held her breath while the men stepped out into the yard. Finally. She turned around and slumped down on one of the beanbags.

  “Alicia?”