Ruben puts his arms around me and smiles.
“Can you imagine if we could be in Saturday,” I say, “but without Chorus controlling us so much?”
“You could finally write a song.”
“That’d be sweet.” I lift the loofah. “A song about loofahs would be cool, yeah?”
He slaps me in the chest. “If your first song is about loofahs and not about me, I swear to god.”
I grin. “I have a feeling it will be.”
After our shower, we get dressed and go down the hall, to the living room.
Mom’s sitting on the sofa, reading on her tablet. “I take it you’ve seen the news?” she says. “It’s all Twitter is talking about. And nice work hanging up on Veronica.”
“She told you?” I ask.
“She demanded I break your door down and make you call her back.” She grins. “I left her on read.”
Mom’s already made three coffees, one for each of us. She’s learned exactly how Ruben likes his—with just a tiny amount of creamer and one sweetener to cover up the bitter taste. I grab mine, which is straight black. Ruben said like your soul once, which made me giddy.
“What does the rest of the squad think?” I ask.
“They’re pretty excited. You boys have real power now.”
“And how about you?”
“I just wish those bastards at Chorus weren’t getting rewarded for this. Save Saturday has shirts now, by the way, with all the proceeds going to GLSEN. I bought three.”
Ruben’s face quirks. “That’s great. But hey, I’m going to grab my phone.” He runs his hand down my arm. “I’m not calling her back, I promise.”
“Okay.”
I give him a peck, and then he goes down the hall. I go and sit down across from Mom.
“So, things are going well?” she asks, her semi-smirk horrifyingly making it seem like she somehow knows what we did twice last night. And then again this morning.
“Yeah, he’s the best.”
“Oh, young love,” she says. “There’s nothing like it.”
There are fireworks in my brain.
Young love.
There’s a song there. I know it. I just need to get my notebook and write it. It all starts clicking into place, the melody coming out of nowhere. I think this is what I’ve been waiting for this whole time. It’ll actually be from me, the perfect blend of what I want to write about and what our audience will like. I pull out my phone and start writing.
Ruben appears from down the hall. Looking at him, it’s easy to know why this song came to me easily.
“You’re not going to believe this,” he says.
“What?”
“Geoff requested a call with us,” he says, and the excitement in his voice is unmissable. “He wants to, quote unquote, ‘work things out.’”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh. But there’s more. Monarch Management wants to meet with us. Apparently they know about our situation, but were so moved by our story they are interested in a meeting.”
Right. Spending time with Ruben must be rubbing off on me; I don’t buy that for a second. From his raised eyebrow, I get the impression he doesn’t, either. This isn’t for charity—they’ll take the loss now to make more money in the future. And apparently, with us charting like we’ve never done before, this is an attractive enough deal for them that they think it’ll pay off in the long run.
Even for us, with all our success … never in a million years did I expect a management team to take us on for free. For two albums.
But here is one, offering us a meeting.
If this works out … it could get us away from Chorus. For good.
And this time, we wouldn’t be naive sixteen year olds, signing a long-term contract with no grasp of what we were agreeing to.
We’d have our own lawyers. And we’d know exactly what we were signing. “Holy shit,” I say. “When do they want to meet us?”
“Geoff wants to talk this afternoon, Monarch want to meet the second we’re available.”
“That’s fast,” says Mom, who leans back on the sofa. “I say you tell Geoff where he can stick it and just meet Monarch. You guys decide what you do now, not him.”
I laugh. “What do you think?”
Ruben scratches his chin. “I think we should hear everyone out. Worst-case scenario and we don’t like what they suggest, we walk.”
“Agreed.”
“This calls for a celebration,” says Mom. “How do you two feel about waffles?”