* * *
I ADJUSTED MY LEVI’S SHORTALLS over my black tank top, squinting at the address on a beautiful redbrick brownstone, which sat on a sleepy street in Brooklyn Heights. Bex lived on an idyllic street where strollers occupied the sidewalk, and you could hear birds chirping instead of taxis honking. Shelly sat on Bex’s floral stoop with her nose buried in her phone, her chunky jewelry rattling with the banging of her acrylics. I tugged my windblown curls into a tight topknot, wiping the summer sweat off my forehead before I made my presence known.
“Hi,” I said.
Shelly stopped typing and stood up, patting me on the shoulder.
“This is cute. It’s refreshing to have a client who can pull off toddler-wear in her midthirties.”
I adjusted the strap on my overalls, wondering if she was being serious or sarcastic.
“Listen. Do not commit to anything, no matter what he says, got it? Wait for my lead, if I ask for your opinion, give it honestly. Otherwise, let me do the big talking.” I nodded as Shelly rang the buzzer.
A moment later, Fin Bex opened the door, hugging us both and ushering us into his partially gutted three-story brownstone. He gave us a quick tour of the first floor, which felt like a melding of the Old World with a colorful edge: original dark-wood Victorian wall panels and matching coffered ceilings from 1910, surrounded by modern light fixtures and bold furniture choices. My jaw dropped as I stepped past a built-in bookcase in the sitting room, which was home to the grandest record collection I’d ever seen outside of an indie record shop.
Bex led us to the garden-level dining table off the dreamy kitchen, where Lila, his sound engineer, stood up to greet Shelly and me. Bex made us our respective cups of black tea, and then sat down across from me. He folded his jittery arms across the table and sat still for a handful of seconds, staring at me with wide hazel eyes.
“So, you’re probably wondering why I asked you here. Look, Maggie, I’ve heard all your demos for the movie. And this stays between us, but I think you do each demo better than Raini—and that’s not an insult to Raini—who is fucking outstanding—it’s simply a compliment to you—you are more than fucking outstanding. I’m blown away, and you can ask Lila, it takes a lot to knock me off my feet,” Bex said.
“His standards are obnoxious, honestly,” Lila said. She rolled her eyes with a smile, stuffing a tiny scone past her magenta lips.
“Your work ethic, how quickly you turned around these songs, how you sang them, how working in a studio with you was like wildfire: you’re a dream. So, I want to produce your EP, with Lila here as the sound engineer.”
My eyes widened.
“Are…are you serious?” I asked.
Shelly whipped her head at me with pointed eyes, as if telling me to keep my enthusiasm to myself.
“Why should she go with you, instead of waiting to go with one of the big guys after the movie comes out, get a studio record deal, and then pull you on as producer?” Shelly asked.
“Shells, c’mon. They’ll make her promises, let that one single run wild, and the second it stalls on the charts, they’ll pull her deal. You know how the big guys operate. Plus, she doesn’t need them. She’s going to have a platform to launch her—she’s going to have the movie. Geffen will find her, Columbia, Sony, they’ll come. But I think we should make them beg, make them put their money where their mouth is, and I can help her do that. And after the EP, we’ll produce your big studio album with a shiny label behind its release.”
Shelly could hardly hold her poker face. I could see her lip twitching upward as Bex tilted his head at her. These two clearly had circled around each other for years.
“What’s your plan for Maggie Vine?” Shelly asked.
“We record four tracks in my home studio, and we release her first single after the movie wraps and before it premiers, just as the promotion for the movie starts. On the Other Side is a two-month shoot, and I think post will be a couple months, and then, we can time it just right. She’ll have that end credit song already, which will get people clicking to see who this woman is, to see the kind of artist she is, and what the rest of her EP will look like. And I think we hold off on releasing the rest of the EP until after the movie premiers.”
Shelly grinned and looked at me.
“What do you think?”
I smiled too widely.
“I think…fuck yes.”
Giddy heat blanketed my cheeks, and I clenched my mouth shut to keep from squealing.
“Look at you, a thirty-five-year-old overnight sensation,” Shelly said.
Knocking on the back of my mind was the real truth: I should have been a thirty-year-old overnight sensation.
40
THIRTY-FIVE
RAINI TUCKED HER LONG, WAVY hair behind her ears and stared at me with wide brown eyes, waiting for my opinion.
“He said, ‘You remind me of my mom,’ and then stuck his tongue down your throat?” I winced.
“So it’s bad?” she asked.
“I mean, it’s weird, but maybe that’s just because I have complicated mom feelings.”
I leaned forward under the window canopy in Asher’s meditation area, grabbing my coffee from the table in between Raini and me. Over the last few weeks, I had become close with Raini, the lead actress in the film—the young woman who would bring Yael to life. She was a former child star who was born with fire in her belly and a good head on her shoulders. Her childhood could have been a cautionary tale, but instead, it was a road map for young realized ambition. She was a bit like me—me if I had made it like three decades prior.
“He’s just…” Raini’s eyes found the blue sky, with a giddy smile plastered on her cheeks.
“I know that look,” I said, shaking my head. “That right there is the best and worst feeling in the world: love and uncertainty.”
“You’re so lucky. You have love without any of the confusing parts.”
“How do you know that?” I laughed, tickled by the way she spoke so surely about situations she’d only taken a peek at.
“I see the way Asher looks at you, and the way you look at him. It’s like…” She studied her open palms, carefully finding the words.
Okay, maybe she wasn’t so much like me. I’ll tell you who Raini was like: Raini Parish was like Asher Reyes.
“It’s like watching two people just exhale,” she added.
I felt my chest warm with the truth. Asher and I had exhaled around each other for the last few weeks. In so many ways, it felt like we’d picked up where our teenage selves ended. But neither of us had outright said “I love you,” or asked the other to define the situation. That being said, we were bathed in bliss—and something about feeling this secure left me perfectly happy in the undefined gray area.
“Well, not every man has been like Asher,” I said, smiling and marveling at the fact that Asher brought me fireworks without question marks. “If possible, try and find someone who lights you on fire without leading you down a dark, torturous smoky maze of unrequited love for twelve years.”
“Twelve years?” she asked, eyes wide.
“Oh girl, I have a master’s—no—I have a PhD in pining,” I said.