“Well, the optics aren’t good.”
“Yes, I’m aware that having a different style and personality for work than I do in everyday life is going to make me look like a liar. And to be fair, I chose a not-very-cowboy thing to wear to the release party—maybe because I not-so-secretly want to start rebranding myself. I also introduced myself as Griffin, so that’s on me, but, I just hate when people in my social life call me Riff.”
“And you wantedherto be a part of your social life.”
“I definitely wouldn’t complain if she were.”
“Typical.” Braden scratches the back of his head and frowns. “We have to be careful. You saw what she did to Luke Onstenk. Half her fourth album was about him.”
“Didn’t they date for awhilethough?”
“Two months.”
I grimace.
“Let’s hope this is the last of it,” Braden adds, “and that it’ll blow over soon. Maybe we can weather the storm.”
“Hang on,” I tell him, mentally going over all of Harmony’s former love interests—the ones I know of, at least.
If I had to guess, I’d say there were nine or ten. Some of those were brief attachments that I remember my sister going on about when Harmony first got famous. One guy was part of a boy band, the others were TV show actors. Later on there was Kelton Roth, a solo artist known for talk-singing a lot of his lyrics in a slam-poetry type way. Then there was Luke Onstenk, an established action-movie star who is eight years older than Harmony (the subject of “Closing In”). Then it was a producer, a Major League Baseball player, and I believe a couple more musicians. I mix up some of those British dudes, but I think the most recent one was the bass player for Eight Minutes Late (a.k.a. EML).
“Have any of her musician exes ever written songs back to her?” I ask.
Braden strokes his chin. “A few of them have tried. Kelton Roth did ‘All Over You,’ which has potential lyrical ties to Harmony’s ’Say the Word,’ obviously about him. Dylan Wentz clapped back at ‘Nice Try’ with ‘Thanks, I Woke Up Like This’—or so people claim. Also, EML had one line in ‘Girls Will Talk’ that alludes to Harmony’s relationship with Josh Villefort—the bassist—but I don’t think the whole song is about her. None of those got much attention though. Frankly, they weren’t very good songs, and their subjects weren’t clear.”
I chew my lip for a sec. “What ifIwrite a song about her?”
“You want to write a country song about Harmony Sonora?” He laughs. “The label will never let you do that. Harmony’s way more established than you and she makes them lots of money; they won’t do anything that might hurt her.”
“So we won’t reveal that it’s about her,” I say.
“You think you can make the message subtle enough to get past the label execs, but obvious enough to Harmony and both your fanbases to put her in her place?”
“I know I can.”
“She’ll just write another song in response to yours. What will you do then?”
“Then I’ll write another song too.”
“Please tell me you’re kidding,” Braden says. “What is this—high school?”
“Adult life is just high school with more money. The dynamics never go away.”
Braden shakes his head in disbelief. “So you’re going to try to take down, effectively, one of the most popular girls in school?”
The thought that Harmony would call me out in music gets worse the longer I think about it. From afar, I always gave her the benefit of the doubt, no matter what the tabloids said. I appreciated her work regardless of the way the subject matter sometimes had people complaining. The number of times I’velistened to one of her new releases and whispered “damn” to the wit in her phrasing … I’ve lost count. But one wrong move and now I’m in her crosshairs?
“Look,” I tell Braden, “I wanted to believe she wasn’t the melodramatic diva everyone made her out to be—but now that I’m her target, it hits different. Some of her critics may have a point. And she’s not going to stop unless she gets a taste of her own medicine.”
Braden sighs. “I don’t know, Griffin. I guess I can run the idea by Charles—to fast track your first single with the label. They’ll want to see a return on investment sooner rather than later, I’m sure. But that means it’ll need to be damn good. You know that, right? It has to be fit to go on your first Glambam album, and it has to be hit material.”
I nod. “I understand. I promise you won’t be disappointed.”
A Guy Like You Should Wear a Warning
HARMONY
THREEMOREWEEKSLATER
