“Ignore them. Cara’s mostly ready. Just got to grab her blanket,” I said and hurried over to hand the crying baby over. She took her and started rocking her. Cara didn’t let up, for which I was grateful. The screaming caused both men to back away and lose interest.
While I was in the baby’s room grabbing her naptime blanket the crying slowly stopped. My brain was so happy to be able to think again. When I returned I looked suspiciously at the trio. Elena was smiling, while my brother and ex-boyfriend looked simultaneously guilty and pleased with themselves. I squinted my eyes at them and shook my head.
“Well, alright. We’ll see you tonight,” I told her and grabbed the diaper bag to hand her. She put Cara in her car seat and then started out.
“Hey, let me help you,” Ronny offered and I blinked. He never wanted to be around Cara if he didn’t have to be. He saw my reaction and his cheeks went pink.
“That’d be great!” Elena said.
“Nah, let me do it,” Cash interrupted. I mouthed a thank you as he pushed past the drooling men and grabbed the car seat. “Let’s go.” Quickly, him and the nanny left the apartment.
As soon as the pair were gone, I spun around to look at my friends. I pointed a finger at both of them.
“Don’t you dare. Tate will kill you. I’m serious,” I added when Dallas started laughing. “Finding a good nanny was not easy. There are plenty of groupies you can fuck, don’t take this one.”
Both men rolled their eyes and mumbled low, incoherent agreements. I didn’t have too much time to overthink it because Cash returned a moment later and we had our lunch. Tate came home just as we were opening our sandwiches. He grabbed his and plopped down next to me to eat. It felt like an elephant in the room, the men meeting Elena. But no one said anything.
We went straight to rehearsal right afterwards and we had no more hiccups the rest of the week.
On Friday we got out all our recording equipment and got to work on a demo of the song. Cash wanted to post it to the same place Tierney had placed the original right then and there, but Dallas argued that we needed to wait until a video was made.
That next day Dallas came over with a small three-man recording group to shoot. I was rather impressed and told him so. He waved off my praise.
“These guys are great. They shot some videos for Hip Friction. Tierney is going to flip her shit when we post this.”
The music video trio consisted of the camera guy, director, and an assistant. I noticed though that their job titles seemed numerous, which made sense considering. The assistant approached me and asked to see my closet.
He went through it, asking questions about this dress or that pair of shoes. Eventually he picked up a white piece of fabric and raised it up.
“What’s this?” he asked. I stood up from where I was hunched over picking up stockings to look.
“Oh, that’s the dress I wore when I got married. It’s nothing fancy.”
“It’s perfect. Does he still have his outfit?”
I scrunched up my face trying to think.
“Probably. The closet is a mess, I know, but I’ll try to find it.”
“Good, I’m going to see about the rest of the band,” the guy grinned, his eyes lighting up with unspoken ideas. I grabbed my dress and started searching for Tate’s wedding garb. When he moved in, I had to shove aside a lot to give him room for his own clothes. I never bothered to go through it afterwards and organize things. It was a disaster now. Finally, I found his pants and shirt. I grabbed my own dress and the stuff I wore with it that day and left the closet.
When I returned to the rehearsal room, I found Cash and Ronny gone. Tate and Dallas were in the corner nodding and talking to the costume guy. I went over and Tate told me that Dally needed to borrow a suit.
“He’s the only one with a similar enough frame to fit my clothes. Ronny and Cash had to go home to grab something.”
“That’s an hour for them to come back,” I protested. They shrugged me off.
“It’s fine. While they’re gone, we’re going to start getting everything set up. By the time they get back we’ll be ready to start filming.”
He was right. They came back, dressed in the suits from the Heaven on Earth gig. Tate and I were in our wedding clothes for the third time, and Dallas had borrowed a suit from Tate.
We went late into the evening filming the video. To me, it didn’t appear anything spectacular, just us performing. We had some shots of me on the couch alone trying to look sexy, and then some with Tate doing the same. When it came to the part of the song that Tierney had stolen from us, Tate and I made out on the couch. Dallas, Ronny, and Cash all left the room for that.
When the crew finally called it a wrap, we were relieved for it to be over and we could rest. They assured us they’d do their movie magic and it would be something so good we’d be able to hear Tierney scream from across town.
The shoot had gone on so late we had to ask Elena to keep Cara later than usual. She seemed bothered by it, which was odd considering she never minded before. We had warned her this would happen regularly, and she had accepted it when she took the position. I mentioned this to Tate when she dropped Cara off and was a little snippy with her goodbye.
“Maybe we should do something to thank her,” he frowned. “Tomorrow maybe we’ll stop by with something nice for her for all the work she does with Cara. Maybe one of those chocolate fruit basket things.”
