Resonance, p.15
Resonance, page 15
“Too much pride.” Ryder edged off the seat to stand full height, forcing my gaze upward and resuming the unspoken chessboard dance. The long line of his throat stretched as he arched his back lazily, strong jaw peppered always with stubble. An old complaint of his I remembered, that he could never truly get a clean shave, that the hair sprouted back as soon as the razor left the skin. Women had loved it. I had, too. Inexplicably, I thought of Owen, how my rough fingertips had glided over his smooth jaw. How much that had turned me on.
When Ryder spoke again it was low, like he meant to concentrate the intensity of his words in that one tone he knew would hit me square in the chest. “See, I still struggle with that, too, because I want to sit here and spit flames back at you. That’s my gut instinct. Rub your face around in it a little, in how well I did after all that went down. What I made for myself. But that’s low-road shit, Dan. You taught me everything. Everything.” He paused a beat, seeming to reconsider while dangerous nostalgia flushed through my gut, softening the thoughts in my mind that had grown teeth. “Maybe not everything, but a lot. I’ll always be grateful for that. And this gig? I really want it. I really need you to do it with me. A month on the road tops, as many shows as we can get. Label’s on board to remaster and release a greatest hits album right before the tour. We say go and the wheels get set in motion.” He rested his hand on top of the desk and leveled his gaze on me. “I’m between tours, in need of a publicity boost, and your shops are in deep shit. Timing is ideal.”
There was the direct hit I’d been waiting for. I felt the heat in my gaze trying to come out the top of my head. Pride. It’d always been my weakness.
Ryder raked a hand through the honeycomb-brown strands tousled on top of his head. “Flight leaves tomorrow afternoon, but I can fly back anytime. And I would. I’ve got a place downtown now. Bought it after Iona and I split. We can practice any place you choose. Think about it. It could be good.”
It could be good. Same words he’d said to me all those years ago when I’d proposed our partnership. “So this is just some sort of ego thing? Proof you’re still hot shit with all the young bucks coming up now who don’t have to worry about blowing a kneecap or getting enough fiber in their diet, yet?”
“No sense in denying a shoe that fits.” Ryder chuckled. “Vanity. Greed. They get a bad rap. People forget they have their upsides, too.”
I’d admired that about him, his willingness to own the good and the bad, to lean into his Achilles’ heels.
“Think about it,” he repeated as I gestured toward the door. He could see himself out. “If I don’t hear from you before two tomorrow, I’ll consider it tabled for now.”
As Ryder strolled toward the door, he glanced around the office again, and the way his gaze raked the corners, the piles of papers on the desk, and the file cabinet, suggested he was looking for something specific. He paused in the doorway and turned back. I met his eyes and waited for him to get the hell out of there so I could breathe again without feeling like the damn cabinet next to him was sitting on my chest.
And finally, after another handful of seconds, he got the message and shut the door gently behind him.
I swiveled in my chair, twisting the stick on the blinds and watching as he walked out to his truck while I waited for my blood pressure to drop.
It took its damned time.
CHAPTER 17
“Package for you.” Owen rapped lightly on the cracked door, nudging it wider. I waved him in, and he glanced at the disarray of my desk before setting the box on the edge.
“Thanks.” I opened the folder in front of me again and starting flipping through the inventory sheets, searching for the place I’d left off. Stress pulled my shoulders tight. The back of my neck ached.
Owen lingered until I glanced up for the hovering. “Want me to open it?”
“Nah, I know what’s in there.”
A beat of silence passed. “So what’s in there?” Owen prodded the box gingerly.
“Nothing that’s alive. Quit poking at it.” In truth, I wasn’t sure exactly what was inside, but odds were good it was stock supplies. Some plastic sleeves or binders judging by the size.
Owen snorted. “Makes me think of that scene in Christmas Vacation where the grandma comes in with the cat? God, I howled when I saw that for the first time. And then the box starts jerking around, going wild all over the place. Oh man.” His laughter came so unbridled and loud in the quiet of the office that it seemed to bounce off the walls and smack me in the face.
“I remember it vaguely.” A wan smile threatened to break through my surly attitude. I’d been trying to decompress, logically weigh the pros and cons of doing the album and tour against my stubborn reticence and reluctance to get involved with Ryder again. Even if only on a business level.
“What’s the worst Christmas present you ever got?”
“Owen.”
“C’mon, answer the question.” His eyes lit with humor, the vivid green tones taking on a softer warmth. How could I resist?
I sighed. “A pair of socks, maybe?” I considered for a moment, seeing the ugly things in my mind’s eye, remembering the horror of knowing I was going to have to wear them. “My aunt made them. It was back in the days of the puff paint craze. Me and my brother got a whole outfit, but the socks were the worst. These tube things with neon tennis balls, basketballs, footballs, and hearts painted on the side. She was so damn excited about them. Damned if my mama didn’t make me wear them.”
“Yeah, but you were a kid. Probably no one cared back then.”
“I was fourteen. Believe me, I felt it. Aiden had it easier. He was four, so it was cute on him.” Owen probably would’ve liked them.
He snickered as I pushed back from the desk. “What’s your brother like?
I fished around for the letter opener in a desk drawer. “A goddamn mess, that’s what.” Owen’s silence begged for details, but I wasn’t in a sharing mood on that particular subject. There were plenty of other fires begging for my attention at the moment. “Putting down roots, a steady paying job, a bank account, they’re not his style.”
“Oh,” Owen said softly, and as I headed toward him and the box with the letter opener in hand, he braced his forearms in front of him like he was warding off a stabbing attempt. “I was just playing around,” he joked, “I won’t go easily. I’ll fight you to the end.”
“Don’t I know it,” I muttered, and ducked my head before I gave myself away.
Leaning against the file cabinet next to him, I pointed the butt end of the letter opener at him. “I know what you’re doing.” I wiggled the handle. “Go ahead, open it.”
“What am I doing?” He gave me a coy smile as he took the opener and slotted through the tape over the top of the box, slicing it free.
“Fishing, wanting to know what Ryder wanted. Works better if your bait is a little less obvious.”
“Not if we’re talking actual fishing. Otherwise they wouldn’t make Day-Glo orange lures.”
I pondered Owen for a minute, wondering if he knew how close he’d hit the mark, because there was something about him that was sure as shit neon to me. Lately, he lingered behind most of my thoughts, a bright eclipse-like glow framing the day-to-day tasks that ran on an endless loop.
He kept his eyes on the tape, carving down the sides. “Yeah, I’m nosy, but that was actually second on the list. I figured you might need a distraction for a minute.” He peeled a bit of tape free with the corner of his nail.
“And you were the one elected to provide it?”
“I elected myself. Because I’m distracting.”
I chuckled because I couldn’t disagree, and when he looked up at me, the grin he gave me reached his eyes.
“You have a nice laugh, you know that? People always go for the soft targets. Eyes or ass. Hands. Vein porn.”
“Vein porn?” I arched a brow.
“It’s…” Owen fanned the air, then poked one of the ropy veins that mapped the backs of my hand like tributaries. “Vein porn. But yeah, a nice laugh is awesome, because some folks sound like braying donkeys and you don’t want to be rude because, shit, it’s laughing. How can you judge laughter, the purest expression of joy? Some laughs are better than others, though. You’ve got infectious giggles, or the kind of ringing laughter that lights you up. And then there’s the kind that’s like warm honey drizzled over a biscuit. Dark and velvety and smooth. On the opposite end with the donkey braying, there’s glass-shatteringly shrill, or high-pitched cackles that sound like alarms.” He shrugged. “You get the point.”
“So I smell like shoe polish—”
“Boot polish,” he corrected. “Yes, technically they’re the same thing, but boot polish sounds more like you.”
“And I laugh like…”
“A murder of crows.”
“I thought you said it was nice.” I scowled. “There’s nothing nice about crows. They leave feathers all over the yard and drop heaps of shit on windshields.”
“Your point?” Owen canted his head and grinned shamelessly. “All right, nah, maybe that’s not how you laugh, but I think I’m just gonna leave it a mystery for now.”
He opened the flaps on the box, wrinkled his nose, and my eyes were drawn from the fading curve of his smile to the box as he peered inside. “Well, this is disappointing.”
I considered the packages of sheet protectors and price stickers ambivalently. “You were expecting a pot of gold?”
“Something a little more exciting, yeah. A severed finger, some sex toys, the start of a grand mystery.”
“God help us if our mystery starts off with a severed finger and a butt plug.”
Owen clucked his tongue at me as I pulled the sheet protectors and stickers out and set them on top of the cabinet.
“Now get out of here so I can finish these time sheets, since I assume you want to be paid for all your hard labor and sleuthing skills.” I wrapped some air quotes around the “hard labor” and “sleuthing skills.”
He extended the letter opener back to me, but when I reached to take it, he didn’t let it go, exerting enough pressure that I lifted my eyes to his.
“Did it work?”
It took me second to join the intent of his question to the context, because I’d gotten sidetracked for a moment in the lock of our gazes; he was some kind of lure for certain. I gave him a small smile. “Yeah, for the most part.”
“Good.” He turned to go as I unsealed the box flaps to break it down for recycling.
“He wants to do a reunion tour.”
“What?” Owen whirled around, wide-eyed. “Holy shit, Dan, that would be amazing.” Grinding to a halt, he bit his lip. “Shit, you don’t want to do it, though, probably. I totally get that, too. But god, it’d be wildly successful, especially for…” He stalled out as if he was afraid to voice the hard truth.
“I’ll probably have to do it. Business-wise, it makes no goddamn sense to turn down. In fact, that’s the stupid, prideful option. And it’s just a month. It’d be a Hail Mary that might pay out for a long while, especially with a remastered album.” The original email I’d gotten hadn’t mentioned that aspect.
“So when would this kick off?”
“Dunno, because I didn’t tell him I was gonna do it yet.”
Owen squinted at me.
“I figured he could wonder for a minute or two, and I still need to think through it a little more.” I had no doubt Ru could oversee the shops while I was gone, but there were other logistics involved. And other factors involved that had nothing to do with logistics.
Owen’s gaze went thoughtful. “Well, it really will be awesome. And if it would help the shop… that’ll be good.” He trailed off and flashed me a brief smile. “Yeah.” That last word sounded oddly finite.
Owen was back again later as the sun abandoned the sky. I’d wasted a few hours lost in thought, retracing the events in my life that’d led me to a squeaky-ass desk chair in a building full of other people’s music careers.
I’d finally managed to finish payroll and tax paperwork as he stuck his head in a little after seven.
“You hanging around here for a while?”
“Yeah, gonna finish this up. You set the alarm already?” I’d not been paying attention and didn’t remember hearing the beeps.
“No, I figured if you were staying…”
“Do it when you walk out.” Nashville had grown enormously since I’d opened Grim’s, and the area had undergone several revitalization efforts, but this part of town could still be sketchy at night.
“I had an idea for the next podcast. Wanna hear it, or are you in the zone?”
“Let’s hear it.” Ru and Owen knew far more about what they were doing on the technical side than I did. The only thing I looked forward to about the podcasts was… I stopped myself before the aha moment could unfurl fully.
Owen dropped into the chair in front of my desk that Ryder had occupied mere hours before and kicked his feet up on the surface.
I reached out and shoved them off. “You raised in a barn?”
“Worse.” He smiled sweetly, though I thought I detected a little flush to his cheeks as he straightened in the seat and tucked one leg under. “Now, what if next time we picked some new local artists. Like the guys busking downtown. I’ve been paying attention to them lately.”
“Yeah, been down there yourself?” I knew the answer; on several other occasions when I’d taken the downtown route in, I’d spotted Owen playing on various corners of lower Broadway.
“Yeah, some.” And when he didn’t offer any more than that, I figured I’d leave it alone.
“So what, bring them here and do a show?” Thus far, we’d mostly covered new album releases or revisited old hits. “We don’t have the equipment to do a live show on a podcast.”
“No, but maybe just an interview and we could play some of their songs if they have them available to download.”
I mulled that. “All right, sure. That’s not bad. You gonna be in charge of rounding them up?”
“Umm… sure? I mean, I don’t exactly scream clout.” Owen glanced down at himself demonstratively. His hair flopped over one side of his face; the collar of his Megadeth tee was stretched out and hung loose. Another thrift store find, I imagined. One kneecap poked out of a hole in his jeans. There was a smaller hole the size of a dime on one side of his Chucks.
“Think that’s gonna matter to anyone busking on a corner? It’s publicity. If you’re worried about it, put on a suit and slick your hair back or something.” My lips twitched toward a smile. I couldn’t even imagine Owen in a suit, but I was sure he’d worn one at some point. Probably looked nice in it, too.
“Are you imagining me with my hair slicked back?”
“Do they even make a gel strong enough to tame that haystack?” Owen grinned and shook his head. “Actually, it was the suit that was throwing me off.”
“I could say the same.”
“Well, we’re not talking about me.” I hated suits. They were the modern equivalent of a straightjacket in my opinion. Fancy trappings that you had to be cautious of spills or dirt or, shit, pollen in a spring breeze. One more thing I didn’t miss about my old career. Events that required suits.
“I wore a suit to prom. Ugh.” Owen pulled a dramatically mortified face. “It was horrifying. Prom, not me. I looked pretty good. Someone set off smoke bombs in the bathrooms, though, and ruined the whole thing. We all ended up outside the concert hall, shuffling around until someone decided it’d be a great idea to go to IHOP instead. It wasn’t. Their griddle was broken. And then I wore a suit to a friend’s wedding, once to a job interview, like two weeks before I applied to Grim’s Gatlinburg. That was a laugh.”
“What were you applying for?”
“Administrative assistant at Dollywood. I can type pretty fast, but I got nervous during the interview and bombed it. So I ended up here.”
“Where admin assistant dreams go to die.”
“I’m just building myself up right now,” he quipped.
“Stepping stone for greater things. I see. Remember us little folk when you finally arrive.”
He scoffed, then peeked up at me from beneath lowered lashes. “You know, you’re pretty good at flirting.”
Discombobulated, I grunted out, “I’m not flirting. I’m bantering with you.”
He made a face, squinting with one eye. “I don’t know, Dan, I think you’re still imagining me in a suit with my hair slicked back.”
“You know what I’m imagining? The quiet…” I paused to correct myself. “Quietish employee who used to just do his chores and take care of the shop, then disappeared when it was time to go, picked his check up, got awkward as hell in front of certain customers, and once smacked himself in the face in the presence of Porter & Graves.”
“It was just Les there that time.” Owen covered his face with one hand. “God, I would’ve been completely humiliated if Evan had been there, too. He intimidates the hell out of me. Les is at least like… a relatable music god.”
“I used to intimidate the hell out of you. You’re easily won over.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because you used to be all, yessir this, yessir that. Come to think of it, maybe we should get back to that. I liked that version. No backtalk.” The papers I’d gathered up made a crisp smacking sound as I neatened them atop the desk and set them aside. Christ, I needed him out of my office. Too many visions involving my desk and tests of his flexibility. “Don’t forget the alarm behind you.”
Owen smiled as he slid from the chair and stood, hovering in front of the desk. He ran his fingertips lightly over the edge. Oh yeah, we were moving into treacherous territory now. “Yessir.”
I lifted my eyes to meet his, and the air went still in my chest. His gaze wasn’t suggestive, not outright, but within it shimmered a challenge like heat rising from asphalt. Something that might have been entirely an illusion. It played on the darker, more carnal parts of me, stirred the blacker, possessive desires buried deep in my hindbrain where civility and rules had no quarter. Owen blinked away after a moment and the world rushed back into focus.
