“Have you ever done any violent art before?”
“No! It’s been a fun challenge doing something different, rather than the usual job that’s in my wheelhouse.”
I was nodding along with her the whole time. “For sure. I feel the same way writing music. Cherry Midnight has a certain musical style, obviously, but every now and then I change things up and try something new. It feels great to flex different creative muscles.”
“Yeah! Exactly!” She flipped to another page, and her elbow brushed against my thigh. “Here’s another scene I sketched. Artemis has just killed someone in self-defense.”
I stared in awe at the sketch. The woman held a long sword at her side, thin like a katana. Blood ran down the blade and dripped onto the ground next to a dead body.
And a flash of inspiration struck me.
“Hold on a second. Don’t move.” I scrambled out of the bunk and practically ran to the front of the bus where my sheet music was.
“It’s distracting when you stomp up and down the aisle like that,” Cash complained, but I ignored him while carrying my music and guitar back to Roxie.
“What’s up?” she asked.
I sat on the edge of the bed—therealbed—and began plucking notes on my guitar. Roxie swung her legs out of the bunk andsat quietly, watching me with those big, innocent eyes of hers. It was almost distracting having her totally focused on me and only two feet away, but my inspiration was strong enough for me to ignore it.
“Blade of blood…” I muttered while writing down lyrics. “No. Blood-soaked blade, dark of night. Yeah, much better. Let me see the sketch again?”
She moved over to sit next to me, then held it up with both hands. She said nothing, for which I was grateful. I was concentrating hard before this idea disappeared like mist. Creativity could be fleeting. It was fragile.
As an artist, she probably understood that more than most people.
“Okay, I’ve got something,” I said with a sigh. “Thanks. The art inspired me for a moment.”
“Play it for me!” she insisted.
“It’s… incomplete,” I replied. “And it’s just the chorus. I don’t know what’s going to come before or after.”
“Then play just that. Come on. You thought of it while looking atmyartwork, so I get to hear it first. Those are the rules!”
“Rules?”
“The rules I just made up.Come on!”
I never shared my music before it was done. Not with anyone outside of the band, and even then it was usually just Violet. But Roxie made me want to be more vulnerable with my art, and she was practically bouncing up and down on the edge of the bunk. And in that moment, I knew I couldn’t say no to her.
Not on this, and not on anythingelseshe might ask me.
I felt a strange sense of stage fright as I plugged my guitar into one of our travel-sized amps. Why was I so nervous to playfor one woman, when I routinely performed in front of tens of thousands of fans?
But I closed my eyes and moved my guitar pick over the strings, filling the tour bus with noise. That noise slowly transformed into music, slow and melodious. Then I began singing. Not very loud, but enough that the gorgeous woman next to me could hear and understand the lyrics.
It wasn’t a perfect performance, not least because the fragment of a song was only a few minutes old. But it felt right in my fingers, and sounded close to something special in my ears.
“Now imagine a heavy drum beat here,” I said when the chorus was over. “I’m gonna ask Milo to really wail on his drums for this part, then it’ll launch into the second verse.”
I played a few more notes, then stopped. That’s all I had.
Roxie was entranced, and clapped happily when I finished. “I love it!”
“You’re just saying that because your artwork was the inspiration.”
“No! It’s really good!” she insisted. “Especially if you have, like, a repetitive bassline. Like the one from your closing song.”
“Cardiac lovestruck?”
