My phone pings.
BRADEN:Did you get the song?
GRIFFIN:I did.
BRADEN:What do you think?
GRIFFIN:Objectively, it’s great. For me personally … not the biggest fan.
BRADEN:Well, put on your big boy panties and figure out how to work with it. Charles wants to record the demo next Saturday.
GRIFFIN:I thought my studio day was Friday.
BRADEN:This Friday you’ve got the Coastal Hearts benefit, remember?
GRIFFIN:Oh right :/
BRADEN:Don’t pout. It’s positive press. You could use some of that, you know.
GRIFFIN:Sure.
BRADEN:CH is very excited to have you, and you can sing whatever you want. Just pick one of your more inspirational songs. Maybe “Dark Before Dawn”?
GRIFFIN:Okay.
BRADEN:But make sure you familiarize yourself with your part of “Lip Sync” and try to have a good attitude about it. This will be great for your career, I promise.
Heard that one before.
I set my phone face down on the desk and rub my beard, sighing.
Sometimes I feel like a dog doing tricks. I follow commands—sit, stay, roll over—and then I get a pat on the head and a treat, but no one takes me seriously. I’m lucky they let me write my own stuff most of the time, but it still has to be within their parameters. This whole thing with Harmony has weirdly been a major creative outlet for me, but I wonder what more I could do if I didn’t always have to tie everything back to God and country,mention something rural, or incorporate a dobro—and if I didn’t have to sing like I came straight out of the Bible Belt.
Anyway.
The words on the digital sheet music taunt me. “We’re so close and before I can blink, it’s a whole different kind of lip sync. I just act—I don’t think—your lips on mine like the missing link.” It reminds me of the way things played out with Harmony in the flamingo habitat.
Fuck, I’ve got to get that out of my head.
But it’s hard to forget the coy version of her smile—which I had never seen until I met her in person—or how articulately she summarized everything wrong withThe Multiverse of Madness, or the spark in her eyes when she talked about her visit to the ruins in Palenque, or the little noises she made when I touched her right where she wanted me to …
Blood starts flowing south and I have to tamp down those thoughts before I regret it.
She’s a menace, I tell myself, who uses men’s honest mistakes to advance her career.
Whatever good thing we seemed to have—mentally, spiritually, physically— between us when we first met, it doesn’t matter. She chose to be angry. And she’s the one who picked a fight about it.
Like a mantra, I mentally recite her meanest lyrics to keep me grounded.
A “riff” in a song that’s been playing too long …
So you’ve got a few inches on me. That doesn’t mean that you’re a stand-up guy.
Everything about you is nothing but fiction. Rub me that way and you’ll only get friction.
Somehow, I think this is turning me on even more.
In a huff, I snatch my guitar and head for my in-home studio so I can focus on my latest assignment.
