Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 117415 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117415 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Fast-forward to half the day later after we’re loaded into the venue, Dee and Naomi and the other crew members are roped into the solo section idea, and I’m met by a completely blindsided Ian. “What am I even doing here? You wanna tell me? Please?” he asks in the wings when I’m scratching out some lyrics last minute in my notebook. His voice is edged in both humor and blood-boiling agitation. He’s keeping it together impressively well, considering I did exactly what I said I wasn’t going to do: blindside him. “You’re writing solo stuff now? Added a solo section in the show?”
“I ran a new song by the others,” I tell him, “and they thought it works better as a solo number. More intimate.”
Ian tries to play it cool. He’s trying so, so hard to play it cool. “You don’t think I see what you’re doing here? Bringing back Old Chase one scheme at a time? Are you gonna start booking bars and restaurants again?”
“If the food’s good,” I say, then elbow him. “Just kiddin’. Have you heard the new song? Played it in the green room for Dee.”
He peels off his glasses and rubs his eyes. After half a second of looking like he wants to scream, he surrenders with a soft nod. “Yeah. I heard it. Beautiful … It’s beautiful. But Chase—”
“See? Even you can’t deny it. Best song I’ve written in years. And it happened just like—” Snap. “—that.”
He gives me a look. “Modest much?”
“It’s easier to brag about when it barely feels like I wrote it.” I slap a hand to his back. “Remember how I used to say that? Best songs, they feel like I don’t even write ‘em? They just … come right outta me. Like they’re …” I smile privately. “… drawn out of me by someone else entirely.”
“Like a muse?” Ian turns to me. “Is that what this is? You’ve got yourself a secret muse, Chase? Some guy in the wings?”
I smirk, don’t answer him, then wiggle my notebook. “You can call this ‘Old Chase’ or ‘small’, but I’m about to prove Old Chase can be just as big as New Chase. He’s still me. I’m still him. And together, big or small, we’ll make it to the top.” I give Ian a wink, another slap on the back, then return to writing away in my book. He steps back, studying me, looking afraid.
I pretend not to notice.
And when we’re out on that stage later, after “Love Burden” ends and everyone is screaming and whistling and throwing their wishes at us through their joyful eyes, Fiona, Raj, and Wily quietly depart the stage. The spotlight glows over me and my stool. “Got somethin’ a little special for you guys and gals tonight,” I say into the mic. “Just you, me, my Glorious … and a brand-new tune. This is called ‘In Your Ocean’ …”
I caress Glorious to my body, then wait, fingers hovering over the strings. A tiny shard of fear grows in my heart. The audience watches, waits, breath held.
Do I do this? Are they ready?
Am I?
Then my fingers drop, hitting the first F major 7 chord that shatters and mends the soul in one precious strum—and I sing.
I don’t know how else to describe how I’m feeling other than there’s a dozen more songs inside me ready to spill out. Can’t say if this music already exists in a spiritual form and is just waiting to be discovered, or if TJ really is inspiring all of this in me. I could sit on the bus and write twenty songs a night, for as full and on fire as my heart feels right now.
Dee says she swooned—and for once, I believe her. Rob calls it “totally somethin’ else”, and I see it in his eyes. Even Locke, the lead singer from Soul Biter, tells me it hit him in the gut.
With tomorrow off, we spend the night in another hotel, and somehow our whole crew nab up nearly a whole floor. Until well after midnight, most of the doors are left open, people wandering between rooms up and down the hall. The energy is unmistakably electric. There’s a sense in the air of conquering the impossible.
Or it could just be me projecting my own feelings of triumph on everything and everyone around me.
“Think you gave me a new hit,” I tell TJ on the phone, kicked back in a chair in my room, feet up on the bed, facing my opened door. The noise of everyone laughing and partying in neighboring rooms and out in the hall is audible. Didn’t want to close my door and shut it all out just yet, like I’m basking in today’s last ray of sunlight. “Wrote a song when I woke up this mornin’, first thing. Audience devoured it.”