Ellery looked away, at the band on stage.She covered her face with her palms and sighed.“I—it’s not…okay.It’s a lot.I feel like they’re not good enough.Like no one will like them and I will have put myself out there on stage only to be ridiculed by people who don’t get it.”
“But your songs are fantastic.”
“Says you.”She picked up her glass of club soda with lime and drank half of it.“But you’re special.You’re Dante.”
The duet on stage finished their song, and something about the conversation and the dull rumble of applause and the warm buzz of alcohol in his blood gave him courage.He traced the knuckles of Ellery’s hand with his fingertips, memorizing her contours.
“Ellery, when you’re ready, the rest of the world wants to hear what you have to say.The way you sing and who you are is unique.It has value.Don’t get drawn into the centrifuge of self- doubt.”
Ellery’s hand twitched beneath his touch and her sharp inhale sounded like a snare drum.
He couldn’t look away, not now.His gaze locked with hers.Her brown eyes, dark and rich like mahogany, looked through him.A single tendril of hair had fallen in her face, catching on the curve of her lower lip.Summoning courage he hadn’t realized he possessed, he used his thumb to brush the hair away, letting the sensitive pad linger for a moment on her mouth.Her skin was soft and slightly sticky from the rosebud lip balm she used.If he smelled his hand, would he smell her on himself?
But before he could contemplate any more than that, Ellery shifted in the bench of their booth.She closed the distance between them, cupped his face in her guitar-calloused hands, and pressed her lips to his.
Sensation soared within him, like her kiss woke his soul and set it free.He massaged her mouth with his, letting his hands drop to the arc of her neck, pulling her closer.Nothing had ever felt like this, like he had mastered a challenging guitar solo and won the lottery all at once.
“Is this okay?”she asked, her voice whisper-soft against his skin.“I’m sorry—”
“Don’t apologize.”He cupped her chin in his palms, changing the angle and deepening the kiss.“Yes, it’s perfect.”
She was so fierce, and yet there was something tentative about her.He loved it.He tilted his hand and slanted his mouth to hers, tasting her from a new angle.Yes.This was what it should always feel like.This was what it always should be.This was—
“Everyone, please welcome to the stage our next performers, Ellery Vaughn and Dante Baker!”
Ellery pulled away from him then, but there was a soft, happy smile on her face.Now that he knew what kissing her was like, he wondered if he would ever be satisfied with anything else.Perform?Now?He could climb Mount Everest without oxygen, and he’d call to her from the summit.
“Come on.”Despite his current fog, he watched her stand and hold out her hand to him.He took it, unseeing.Wherever she went, he would follow.“Let’s get up there.”
The next few minutes passed in a blur of hormone-fueled brilliance.There was a piano on stage, so he played that instead of his bass, harmonizing with her as they sang a mashup of “Shelter Me” and “Shelter from the Storm.”Her voice was smoky and haunting, seeping into his blood and ricocheting around his system.Dimly, as he really couldn’t see much of anything beyond his gorgeous, petite friend, he registered that people in the audience held cell phones aloft, recording them.He didn’t care.Not in the least.
For five minutes, he had Ellery.He had the sound, the music, and it was the greatest five minutes of his life.
And then they met Logan Groff.
* * *
“Logan Groff, Dreammaker”(unpublished draft),LA Now
…There aremany things people say about Ivy League-educated, former surf pro Logan Groff.A particular segment of Los Angeles hopefuls, the ones who get blowouts in Larchmont and lunch in Pucci wrap dresses, hang on his arm at concerts and premieres.They should know better.His bachelor status is almost as famous as his clients.
“They say I’m strict,” Groff says, sitting behind his antique behemoth of a desk.His office is on Wilshire, and though many such buildings had to shut their doors during the pandemic, Groff insisted on going to work each day, even as he let his employees work from home.He is not one content to Zoom in his pajamas.“Strict gets the job done.I’m not here to make friends.I’m not here to deal with their feelings.There are therapists for that.I’m here to make supernovas.”
That a supernova is a naturally occurring phenomenon does not seem to bother Groff, and to his credit, his clients have routinely gone platinum.So what is it about his tactics that lead so many to fame?
“I have a defined recipe for success.If I shared it, it wouldn’t be successful anymore.”Groff winks, his sun-bleached brown hair never moving an inch from its gelled perch atop his head.
He refuses to compromise or explain his famously restrictive nonfraternization policy in his bands.Those who resent it call it the “No-ko,” short for “No Yoko.”Personally, this writer has always felt a little bad for Yoko Ono.She was a product of the patriarchal suppression of true feminist voices.
Whatever the apparent negatives, it is common knowledge in the music world that if Logan Groff’s attention falls on you, you’d be the fool of the century to turn him down or refuse to bend to his rules.They don’t call him The Dreammaker for nothing…
CHAPTER11
Now—Ellery
Logan’s getting pissy.Hell, he passed pissy thirty seconds into Selene and Lorraine’s killer version of “Shallow” and has now entered thunderous, rampaging, mega-lizard territory.
And Ellery doesn’t care.Did she ever?
