Got them, her reply email read three minutes later.I want to share these with Bill and Yaron, and they’re going to want to talk about them. Tomorrow good for you?
Tomorrowsaid like that, with no given time, likely meant he’d be in video meetings all day. He winced, but his album was already behind schedule, so he didn’t have much room for complaint.Fine, he wrote back.
Then he pried himself off his piano bench to get some exercise, since he was going to be sedentary all day tomorrow.
HE TURNEDout to be right about the meetings.
“Stop fucking around with ‘Alice,’” Noella told him right away. “It’s done.”
Ari blinked. She’d never been so satisfied with one of his tracks that quickly. “Okay?”
Fortunately Noella had plenty of experience with artists and knew what he needed to hear. “Look, is it your typical blockbuster track? No. Is it going to be the emotional powerhouse behind the album? No. It’s introspective and kind of thinky, which, let’s face it, is your milieu. And I know I’m always harping on you to inject some emotion, but it’s also beautiful the way it is. Do you have a vocal artist in mind for it? With the caveat that Leonard Cohen is not an option.”
She reminded him of that every time he wrote a song that came off as weird and kind of fucked-up. “Bon Iver, maybe?” he hazarded, and she hummed, so she must not have thought it was the worst idea.
He had a grand total of twenty-three minutes between the first call with Noella and the subsequent call with her, Bill, and Yaron.
So of course his phone rang right in the middle of it.
“Hey,” Jax said, and Ari could hear the grin through the phone, even if it sounded like it might be fading away. “What’re you up to today? Got time for that rain check?”
Ari sighed. “I’ve been on conference calls all morning, and I have”—he checked the clock on the microwave, remembered the microwave was in the process of reheating his lunch, then looked at the oven instead—“eleven minutes before the next one.”
“Take that as a no,” Jax sighed.
“We could do dinner instead?” Ari suggested. “If you’re not okay with french toast after 6:00 p.m., we could go out somewhere.” Even though he’d rather have quick access to a bed.
“Breakfast foods are all-day foods, but I work at seven. Picked up an extra shift.” Well, crap. “What about tomorrow?”
“I’m free all day.”
“Not anymore.”
JAX SHUFFLEDout of his bedroom and stifled a yawn. Picking up extra shifts at the bar might be good for the bank account and his Finally Acquiring the PhD—a plan that he was basically approaching from the side because he wasn’t ready to face it head-on—but his body was not a fan and now insisted on afternoon naps. He passed out only an hour or two after his call with Ari.
At least Murph had been relieved when Jax approached him looking for more hours.
“To be honest, b’y, you’re pulling in enough business these days that we need more staff almost every night. I’d rather give more work to my people than start advertising for new folk.” He pulled his phone from his pocket to look up the schedule. “Did you want to work every night?”
Jax did. The sooner he scraped up the money, the sooner he could put the PhD and everything that came with it behind him.
In the meantime he had Hobbes to deal with. “Again?” he asked when Jax announced he was on his way to work.
So Jax was probably going to have to tell him the truth, sooner rather than later, because the way things were going, he wasn’t ever going toseehim unless he came to the bar.
He let himself mull it over in the back of his mind as he worked his shift, thinking of what to say. But when he got home just after midnight, the lights were still on and Hobbes was sitting in the living room, eating one of the rare cookies that hadn’t made its way to the doctors’ lounge at the hospital.
“Hey,” Jax said quietly as he closed the door behind him and locked it. “You’re still up.”
“I don’t know what I’ve ever done to make you think I turn into a pumpkin at midnight.” A glass of brandy sat on the table next to him, and a mug of tea steamed on the coffee table, obviously for Jax. “Come sit down for a sec?”
Hobbes was less than a decade older than he was, but sometimes his dad vibe was too much. But maybe that was just because Jax hadn’t ever had one. Either way, Jax dutifully climbed the stairs and took the seat opposite him on the couch. “What’s up?”
Wordlessly, Hobbes held up a crumpled piece of paper.
Ah. That. Jax vaguely remembered leaving that in the kitchen. “Oh.”
“Yes,oh,” Hobbes said, tone laced with any number of complex emotions—anger, humor, exasperation, grief. “Seems like someone’s been getting hate mail from his would-be alma mater. You want to tell me about that?”
