Hold On To Me

by Taylor Holloway

  No pressure.

  My heart gave a little hiccup in my chest and it burned. My vision blurred and then narrowed to a tiny tunnel. My head pounded. Was this a panic attack? I’d never had one before, but this seemed like a panic attack. It felt horrible. It felt like I was dying.

  It was too much. It was all just too much all at once. My entire life had been transformed in the past two weeks, and I wasn’t sure if I was equal to it. My composure cracked, and I descended the steps of the stairs and headed for the bathroom before it could dissolve completely in front of a bar full of people.

  52

  Ryan

  If I hadn’t known Rosie and known how to interpret her subtle facial expressions, I would never have realized she was nervous. She was tough as nails. She really did hide it well.

  She also looked positively phenomenal. She was wearing a long, multicolored skirt that shimmered under the lights along with a black top that clung to every perfect curve. Her sleek, platinum hair had been pulled up back from her face, and her serene features were carefully made up and beyond beautiful. Rosie definitely looked like a rock star tonight.

  But when her face suddenly went still and then she took off toward the bathroom like a bat out of hell, I was out of my seat and following her without a backwards glance or a word to Rebecca. I caught up with Rosie in the narrow hallway.

  “Rosie, wait.”

  She froze, but she didn’t turn. I advanced on her in the hallway.

  “I can’t do this right now, Ryan.” Her voice was soft.

  “Which part?”

  “Any of it.” She hung her head.

  “Why not?” I asked. She was still facing away from me.

  “It’s too much.” She shook her head. “It’s just all too much, too fast.” Her voice cracked, and I grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her to face me. Her crimson-painted lower lip was trembling.

  “You can do this,” I told her, rocking her back and forth against my shoulder. “Don’t be scared.”

  “But I—” she began, and I cut her off.

  “If you can stand up to your dad, you can play this show.”

  “It’s not that,” she said, peeking up at me. “I mean, it’s partially that, but mostly it’s… I’m so sorry about last night.”

  “I’m sorry about last night,” I told her. “I didn’t mean to push you away.” Once begun, I was unable to stop the words from flowing out of me in a long, unbroken, run-on sentence. “I know you don’t like it when people tell you want to do, and I do respect your ability to make your own choices, and I wouldn’t want anyone to do that to me, and I know you’ve got a lot of reasons for feeling that way, with your parents and all, and I never meant to do that—”

  Rosie cut me off by kissing me. She jumped into my arms, knocking the wind out of me. I had her pinned against the wall in another heartbeat. We were making up and making out right there against the wall to the men’s room. Her red lipstick was probably all over my face and I really didn’t care.

  “Get a room!” Somebody yelled as he exited the bathroom and passed us on the way back to the bar’s main room. We pulled apart. Rosie was blushing furiously. Me? I was wondering where the rooms were at. Rosie’s torn expression drove those thoughts from my brain.

  “I’m sorry too,” Rosie said after a moment. Her eyes were still wide and scared. “I promise I’m not a crazy mean drunk. I’m sorry I said those things about Jen. I’m just… I’m sorry.”

  I shook my head at her. “It’s ok, Rosie. We both said things we shouldn’t have.”

  Rosie frowned. “I started it.” Then she sighed. “I finished it too.”

  I wasn’t going to argue. I just hugged her to my chest instead. “It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that we’re going to talk through our issues and not give up. I don’t want to give up, do you?”

  She shook her head, I could feel it against my shoulder. “No. I want you.” She held me tighter. “I want you a lot. Maybe too much.” Her expression became stern. “Who is that woman you’re sitting with?”

  I pulled back and looked at her. Rebecca? Seriously? She was fifty if she was a day.

  “She’s a colleague from a record label. She’s here to hear you sing.”

  Rosie’s cheeks turned red and she glanced away. Had she thought that me and Rebecca…? She clearly had. I shook my head.

  Was it too soon to tell her? Screw it. I decided to risk it. “Rosie, there’s nobody else but you in my life. I don’t want anyone else but you. I’m falling in love with you.”

  Her lips parted in surprise and then drew up into a mischievous little smile. She said nothing.

  My heart pounded, but I played it off with a little laugh. “Are you just going to leave me hanging?” Rosie laughed. Her self-assured attitude was back. That was a good sign. Right?

  She continued to giggle. “I just don’t want to ruin the surprise.”

  I was very confused. “What surprise?”

  Her green eyes flashed with an unfamiliar expression. “I wrote you a song.”

  53

  Ryan

  “She’s really amazing,” Rebecca said about halfway through Rosie’s first song. “You were right to get me out here tonight. I want her signed immediately. I don’t want anybody else to have her.” She was already watching Rosie with a possessive look in her eyes.

  I hid my smile. I’d known that all it would take was five minutes in a room with a record executive to get Rosie a record deal. She was officially the easiest client I’d ever signed—and not just because I was on both sides of the deal. Speaking of which…

  “If we’re really going to sign Rosie to our new label,” I said to Rebecca seriously, “I’m going to have to find her a new agent to represent her. I can’t play both sides of this anymore.”

  Rebecca nodded. “Agreed. You can’t have anything to do with her production whatsoever, either. It wouldn’t be in anyone’s best interests.” She smirked. “Sorry, but she’s going to be mine all mine.”

  She was right. Rationally, I knew she was right, since obviously a record label makes money of its artists, but it still bothered me. I wanted to help Rosie. I told myself I would find other ways to do that. I still knew plenty of people…

  “Do you know any good agents?” I asked, rifling through my mental Rolodex.

  Rebecca laughed. She was staring over my shoulder. “Sure.” She pointed across the room and I turned to where Calvin Ross had just entered. “There’s one right there.”

  Well shit. I guess I should have answered his calls.

  No wonder Rosie was so overwhelmed earlier. I had no idea she invited him to her show tonight. He wasn’t even supposed to be in town for another week.

  But he was definitely here. I couldn’t have mistaken him for anyone else.

  Calvin Ross didn’t fit in at the Lone Star Lounge. To say he stuck out—a sixty-year-old man in a suit, vest, and tie—was not an understatement. He was squarely out of place, and as the only other man in the room wearing a tie, I felt like I should know. I couldn’t have missed him if I tried. Up on the little stage with the light in her eyes, Rosie wouldn’t have been able to see him, but I did. As Rebecca and I talked terms in low voices, I watched him carefully out of the corner of my eye.

  At first, he seemed bemused. There were no seats left in the room, so he ended up standing at the bar, watching his daughter hypnotize a room full of people and sipping a beer like he didn’t much care. Slowly, however, he visibly got wise to what he was seeing.

  With every song, Rosie pulled her audience along with her into a private, spectacular new world. It was a place where she controlled everything—every emotion, every sound, and every word. Her audience was more than happy to follow her there.

  I’d met a lot of charismatic performers in my time. Some of the best. And Rosie wasn’t nearly as polished or as comfortable up on stage as some of them. But she had something all her own, an easy, approachable innocence and charm that simultaneously drew
her audience and kept them riveted to her. It was impossible to look away.

  Her father wasn’t immune. Although he attempted to ignore his daughter’s performance at first, glancing repeatedly at his watch, then at his phone, then at the newspaper he fished out from his briefcase, he kept looking back up at her. I could only imagine what was going on his mind, and not very well.

  Was he wondering what psychological complex compelled her to get up on stage and bare her soul for the entertainment of strangers? Was he honestly thinking that she would be better off going to law school and following in his footsteps? I couldn’t wrap my brain around him feeling anything but wonder in the face of her talent.

  She certainly hadn’t received her talent at music from him. Calvin Ross rather famously thought very little of the entertainment industry. Whether it was a calculated act or a genuine quirk, he resisted any discussion or praise of his clients’ talents. To him, movie stars were commodities that were bought at sold on the open market. He controlled the chess pieces to benefit them and himself, but he didn’t value them as artists. He didn’t go to their movies. He didn’t even watch movies. For someone with half of Hollywood in his pocket, his approach was unique, to say the least.

  So, knowing what Calvin Ross thought of his clients, it was not all that much of a surprise to me that his own daughter didn’t manage to win him over with her music. He was talent-blind. Even in his own daughter. Even when the child he’d given life to was so obviously talented, he remained indifferent to her performance. Maybe especially because of that.

  What he couldn’t remain indifferent to, however, was the reaction of the crowd around him. Slowly, and seemingly reluctantly, he tuned in to the fact that everyone around him was entranced by what was going on up on the stage. I watched the change in his attitude as he came to realize it.

  He blinked around himself, watching in shock and confusion as the men and women in the bar clap and cheer when every song ended. Rosie had planned her set list well. It built up with emotional intensity as it progressed, and her audience followed right along, becoming more excited, more entranced. Calvin Ross stared around himself in apparent disbelief. If I had to guess, he was utterly baffled and somewhat irritated. Which at least was fitting, because that was exactly how I felt about him.

  54

  Rosie

  From up on stage, it was impossible to see much once the spot lights turned on. They were shining right in my eyes. I could only imagine Ryan watching me as I played. It was ok though, it was almost better that way.

  I’d never written a song for anybody but myself before. It was an intimate thing, just to write it in the seclusion of my own room. It was even more intimate to get up on stage and sing it in front of a crowd of strangers. Accordingly, I put it at the end of my set.

  Per Ryan’s suggestion and Victoria’s approval, I started with a cover. It was an old favorite of mine, Teardrop by Massive Attack. Yes, I may have first heard it because it was the riff was the theme song of the show House, M.D., but that didn’t matter. It was a fantastic song: moody, sexy, and energizing. Based on the surprising amount of applause it had garnered the night before at Victoria’s party, I expected it to go over well at the Lone Star Lounge. It did.

  There’s nothing remotely like the sound of applause. I’m not sure most people realize it when they go see a live performance, but for the person up on the stage, the sound of clapping and cheering is rocket fuel. With it, I could go on forever, straight up into the atmosphere and into the stars. Without it, I feel like I’d crash and burn.

  As I played through my set list, each song garnered more and more cheering and applause. Even the corny things I’d practiced saying between songs, the little jokes and anecdotes to buy me time to recover, the ones that were meant to sound spontaneous but were actually carefully choreographed and scripted, were well received. It was tough to see against the light blaring straight into my eyes, but it almost sounded like the crowd was growing.

  I played through my planned set, and then through a second set that was just as long. It was getting late. My voice was getting tired. I had to play Ryan’s song soon. By the time I was playing the theme from Cheer’s because Ward reminded me just the slightest bit of Sam Malone, I knew I needed to wrap things up. The crowd seemed to love the music, but I was just about fresh out of songs. Soon it would be ‘Row Row Row Your Boat’, ‘Happy Birthday’, and ‘Rudolph the red nose Reindeer’. I only knew so many songs.

  It was time to be brave. Time to bite the bullet.

  Go on, I goaded myself. It’s just your soul you’re putting on display. How hard could it be?

  “This is a new song,” I told the crowd. “I actually just finished writing the words the afternoon. You’re the first people to ever hear it. It’s called ‘Little Song.’” I smiled, and hoped I looked about a thousand times more confident than I felt at that moment. “I hope you like it.”

  I said a mean thing, and I’m sorry.

  I did a dumb thing, I was wrong.

  But I’ll be better, don’t worry.

  I wrote you this little song.

  I can do better, though god knows I’m quick-tempered.

  I can be better, though I always jump into the fight.

  But I’ll be better, don’t worry.

  I’ll prove it to you if you stay for the night.

  I wrote you this little song to say that I’m sorry.

  I wrote you this little song to say please, please, please.

  Please don’t say that we’re over. I don’t think I could take it.

  I’ll do better next time. I’ll beg down on my knees.

  I wrote you this little song because I knew I was wrong.

  I wrote you this little song because I knew all along.

  I wrote you this little song since it’s all I can do.

  I wrote you this little song because I think I love you.

  When the last chords reverberated into nothingness, the silence in the room was complete. It was eerily quiet. Horror movie quiet. Pin drop quiet. I squinted into the spotlight—was anyone still there? It seemed like the whole room took a breath. Then, the reaction was beyond anything I could have imagined.

  55

  Ryan

  I’d been holding my breath for just about the entire three-and-a-half-minute long song. The first breath I took as the crowd erupted in applause burned down my lungs as my diaphragm remembered it had a job to do and set about oxygenating my blood again. Rosie had literally taken my breath away from me.

  I’d hoped that she felt the same way I did, that this was all more than a fling to her, but I never could have imagined that she’d express her feelings like this. She wrote that song, and prepared to sing it, before she knew if we’d work out. Last night and during the day today when I was stuffing my face with carbohydrates and wrestling over calling her, she was composing a piece of art that bared her soul. She really was the bravest person I knew.

  Rebecca excused herself from the table, saying something about wanting to talk to Calvin Ross, but I barely registered her exit. I was staring at Rosie, unable to look away. But so was everybody else in the room.

  It took a good three or four minutes for the applause to die down enough for her to take her final bow. Rosie’s set—the set she’d had to double on the fly—was finally over. I could see from her face that she was ready to be off the stage.

  Rosie stepped down from the stage only to be immediately mobbed by people that had formerly been strangers and were now fans. As always, her face was composed and pleasant as she greeted them, but I could see she was shocked that people wanted to meet her, talk to her, touch her. She was going to need to get used to that. She was going to need to get very, very used to that. Soon, it would be her whole life.

  But I certainly wasn’t used to it, and I definitely didn’t appreciate so many men getting so close to her. I didn’t care if they were merely fans, they were way to close to my Rosie. Sharing her with them was not an option. My shock
faded just in time to be replaced with a flood of jealousy. Rosie’s eyes met mine across the crowd and I saw a flash of concern. I made for the steps to the stage and wrapped a protective arm around Rosie.

  “We need to get you out of here,” I whispered in her ear.

  Rosie nodded and sagged against my side. Now that I was up closer, I could see that she was overwhelmed by all the attention. She’d done the impossible tonight, and I was incredibly proud of her. But now, it was time to get her the hell out of this room and somewhere she could rest.

  For the first time in ever, I was relieved to see Victoria. She cut an imposing figure through the crowd. Even late, her fans were excited to see her. Victoria, Ian, and the other members of the band now named ‘Kilonova’ (which I also hated, for the record), arrived just in time to disperse the crowd around Rosie and provide the distraction I needed. I nodded at Ian who saluted me with one of his drumsticks as he passed me on the stairs. Then, I was pulling Rosie out onto the Lone Star Lounge’s patio, where it was quieter, and we could actually talk.

  “How do you feel?” I asked her.

  She was actually vibrating with excitement. A few strands of hair had escaped her high bun, and they were quivering around her face. Her eyes were huge. “Like I just ran a marathon and could go run another one.”