The judge cleared his throat, “Are we ready to begin?”
I bit my lip, elbowed Blake in the ribs, and tried to keep from laughing when I took the soiled sheet. The entire band was having similar trouble keeping a straight face as they took in both beds and the carpet between them. Joe had actually attempted to clean it but our hideousness spoke for itself.
I spotted an ass print of red on the edge of the bed and pressed my lips together before giggling out my promise, “I do.”
Blake followed my line of vision, dragged a hand down his face, and actually did a better job keeping the glee out of his tone. After we kissed, the judge nodded respectfully, and followed Joe out the door. The rest of us doubled over with laughter before I threw my ‘bouquet’ at Blake.
He tackled me onto the bed while the other members scattered, yelling, “Hey! Whoa! Just… holy shit… wait a fucking minute!”
Help in the Studio
by Emma Bishop
Daniel walked into the studio quietly, waving his security card at the door. As he made his way down the hallway he could hear music, growing somewhat louder as he approached the control room. Someone was playing piano in the live room slowly-almost musingly.
Daniel grinned to himself, thinking he was fairly certain he knew who would be playing like that at such an odd hour when the studio complex would be deserted. The sound was like someone sorting through thoughts, and as Dan stepped into the control room, he heard a soft voice muttering, picked up by a live mic that was transmitting the playing as well.
He looked through the huge window and saw the woman he expected; even at a distance, with her head bent over the piano, he could recognize her. “Well, fuck,” she said, her hands shifting on the keys of the piano. She made a face, sighing and staring at the instrument as if it was to blame for all of the problems in the world. Dan laughed, finding and pressing the intercom button.
“Having trouble?” he asked the woman. She looked up, startled and slightly annoyed before she recognized his voice. He saw the flash of genuine pleasure on her features, the sudden gleam of a brilliant smile.
“Dan!” she called out from the live room, leaping up from the bench and running across the room. She bolted through the open door and Dan braced himself as she caromed into him, almost knocking him over. “You’re here! You’re here! Wait.” She stepped back, looking puzzled. “What time is it?”
Dan laughed again. “It’s seven in the morning, Juliet. Tell me you weren’t up all night again.”
Juliet grinned sheepishly. “I did sleep some,” she said, gesturing to a couch in the corner.
Dan noticed that there was indeed a pillow and a blanket there-both of them thrown aside as if in a hurry. Juliet threw herself onto the couch, grabbing the pillow and wrapping her arms around it.
Dan took her in for a moment; her long, dark hair was swept back into a messy bun, and her feet were bare, peeking out from the bottom of a well-worn pair of jeans. She was wearing a pale pink tank top that clung to her curves with a loose cardigan over it in dark brown. Dan could tell she was exhausted, but somehow she was still beautiful to his eyes.
When she had hugged him, he had breathed in the scent of her perfume-she favored old fashioned floral scents, particularly roses, and for years he hadn’t been able to smell anything with roses in it without thinking of this woman.
“You have a house, you know,” he commented, pulling up a rolling chair and sitting a few feet away from her. Juliet giggled and tossed the pillow aside, stretching long and luxuriantly; Dan couldn’t help the instinctive way his gaze flicked down when her movement made the tank top ride up slightly, revealing a flash of tanned skin and parts of the tattoos she had decorated her hips with.
“Well, I was working late and I was too tired to drive, so I thought I’d take a nap and then go home. And then I woke up with an idea for how to fix a problem on a song. And then I tried working on another song…” she shrugged. Dan could understand the impulse perfectly, and in spite of himself, he smiled.
He had flown out to help her on the album she was currently working on; returning a favor she had done him and his brothers a year before. He worried about her when she worked on a new project; Juliet was exactly the type of person who would become so engrossed that she would forget to eat for hours at a time, would sleep only enough to get her to the next day of work.
The two of them had met as peers, years before. Juliet had been coming up just as his brothers’ band had been fading into relative obscurity and the indie scene. He remembered that from the very beginning he had been impressed with her talent and the fact that her brain was constantly working; when he and his brothers had started working on developing their own proprietary label to keep releasing music, she had been several steps ahead of them.
Even as Juliet had been gaining popularity as a singer-songwriter, she had refused to work with the conventional recording label system, instead settling for nothing less than a distribution deal on her own terms. “I figure, if they want the money I can make them that much, they’ll do it my way,” she had said when he had asked her about the odd decision.
Dan had been seventeen when they met, and Juliet no more than fifteen or sixteen; yet somehow Dan had often entertained the idea that she was much more mature and worldly than him. His attraction to her had crept up on him-certainly he hadn’t noticed her finer qualities when they had first met.
He had admired her music and respected her sense, but he hadn’t really given much thought to her looks. In the years since their initial meeting at a music festival they were both playing, Juliet had changed and grown.
Where she had been slightly awkward, with features that were slightly too adult-looking for her teenaged face, she was now a confident woman whose high cheekbones and big, dark eyes were in perfect balance with the rest of her face. And then, of course, Dan had noticed that as she had gone through puberty her curves had intensified; the woman in front of him had the kind of hourglass figure that women went through surgeries to acquire.
If Dan had to put an exact moment to when he had become attracted to Juliet, it would have been sometime around when she had turned eighteen. She had finished school early and spent months in France, working on material for her second album.
Dan envied the way that she had managed to balance a normal school life with a career in the music industry. He and his brothers had invited her to come out to their rural home and visit for a few days, and she had happily accepted. Dan had met her at the airport, and she had appeared in the crowd, jet-lagged and in the most comfortable clothes she owned-and suddenly beautiful.
She had greeted him with real, genuine enthusiasm, her eyes flashing and her smile as bright as he had ever seen it. Dan remembered that her hair had been in two braids that day, hanging down from either side of her head and extending down to her full bust. When she had hugged him, he'd had to fight the urge to crush her body against his and breathe her in.
Dan was pulled back to the present by Juliet speaking. “You want some coffee?” she asked, standing up. For a moment, she was slightly wobbly on her feet, and Dan instinctively reached out to steady her. She giggled, smoothing her hair back from her face and yawning.
“I’ll have some coffee and then we can talk about this project, and then we’re driving you to your own house and you’re going to sleep.”
Juliet pouted, putting her hands on her hips and trying to stare him down. Dan laughed and stood, giving her a gentle shove toward the door.
“You’re exhausted, admit it.”
Juliet sighed, ruining the effect with a grin. “Okay, fine, I admit it.”
Dan drove the two of them to Juliet’s house after they had gone over the details of what she wanted help with on the album. For the most part, she wanted help with the percussion arrangements; Dan had been pleased and flattered when Juliet had mentioned that she had tried working with several studio musicians, but none of them had quite the knack for her peculiar time signatures and sound that Dan did.