Page 5 of Ring My Bell

“Get the fuck off my stage,” I growled. “I don’t play Taylor fucking Swift.”

“You play shit.” She pronounced the last word very carefully, wanting to make sure I fully understood her distaste for my musical selection. “No one likes your sad boy emo crap!”

I bared my teeth in a smile and ran my fingers up the keys before slamming into a crescendo. “Off!”

“Fuck you!” she wailed. “I’m getting married!”

“Good luck to the poor bastard,” I muttered, purposefully turning away as her friends hauled her back to their corner booth, where a fresh row of neon-colored shots waited.

“Dude. Un. Cool.”

I grunted, slipping into the triplets from that damn Coldplay song on every commercial for everything that month. I swear I even heard it shilling frozen pizza one night.

Billy poked me between my shoulder blades and leaned over the side of the piano. Ostensibly, he was grabbing my empty glass (water, thank you very much—I hadn’t sunk that far into the pity pool yet) but really to whisper, “Dom isn’t gonna let this slide much longer, man. This was supposed to be the open mic slot. Your turn was over two hours ago.”

“Not my fault no one else wants to play,” I muttered, easing into something bouncier, with a bit of swing to it.

“You took over the spot and turned it into the Mathis Reisner Sad Sack Piano Show,” Billy grumbled. “Dom is making noise about shifting things around again, getting some fresh blood or some bullshit.”

I winced. That damn phrase started this ridiculous spiral, plunging me from upcoming popstar to weird dude playing other people’s shit in a gaudy bar in the ‘burbs of San Francisco.

Raymond said he needed fresh blood for his new label. He meant younger, prettier, more malleable, and apparently better in bed.

But he still needed my songs to make it work. Now, when I turned on the radio, I heard some mononymous pop tart—Iggy, for fuck’s sake! Like some sort of fish disease!—destroying my love song.

Riny My Bell. The song I’d written for Raymond. So maybe it was okay Iggy the twit was ruining it, turning it into some bouncy dance tune rather than the swing-infused ballad I’d written.

Raymond didn’t deserve that song. Not after screwing me over.

Screwing so many of us over, rather.

The first few weeks after it all fell apart, a cozy little boys’ club, who-was-who near-miss stars, came out of the woodwork. We commiserated about how shit Raymond had treated us, how he’d fucked us over royal. But after that first run of camaraderie, the others drifted back to their nooks in the music scene. A few landed on their feet, getting much smaller gigs with indie labels or moving on to other careers, their backup plan or their original path before pursuing a wild-eyed dream. None of them were thrilled with how things played out, but none of them had lost as much as me, I felt.

I’d always been kind of a dick. Maybe that was my ego talking, but I’d had no backup plan. No previous career. No ‘if this doesn’t work out’ dream. Raymond helped me burn down my previous bridges and salted the earth to boot. And once I stopped being a cute little pop tart (seriously, I was adorable for a while there), he tossed me to one side. I don’t do alt rock and indie tunes for sad suburban parents, he’d said.

For months after, I’d been in a daze. Even when the initial angry shock wore off, I was sure there’d been some mistake. He was going to call and ask why I wasn’t showing up at some gig or demand I come in immediately because he had a new song for me…

Not gonna lie, I was pretty pathetic.

Even more so when I had to move out of my shoebox apartment, bunking with my cousin Denise. Who then promptly kicked me out once I put my foot down about appearing on some reality show. Something about almost-famous people trying to get noticed in Hollywood. (I don’t remember the name, but isn’t that pretty much what every one of those shows is about?)

I was pathetically grateful when Dom, the owner of the piano bar, offered me a place to stay and a very part-time gig playing a few nights per week. If it wasn’t for his extremely cut-rate rent, I’d have been on the streets. I had already lost most of my possessions, save for the handful tucked away in a cheap storage unit outside of the city. Maintaining it took my first paycheck of the month entirely.

The only thing I was missing, really missing, from my old life was my piano. It hadn’t been fancy by any stretch of the imagination, but it had been mine. I’d brought it with me to LA. I’d paid out the nose to have it tuned. I babied that old piece of junk. But when Raymond cut me loose, he kept it.

Stole it.

Some days I wasn’t sure which I wanted more: to expose him for what he’d done, what he was still doing, or get my baby back.

“Mathis.” Dom himself knocked on the door, not even waiting until I replied to open it.

I groaned, throwing my head back in annoyance. “I know, I went over my time and cut into open mic night again. Billy told me.”

He snorted softly. “I think you were well aware before you were reprimanded,” he remarked dryly. “No, you got company though, man. Some twink with a faux-fur coat and ankle-breaker heels is out there saying he’s supposed to talk to you.” Leaning against the door, Dom raised a brow. “I didn’t think you were into guys. Or girls. Or anyone, for that matter. I’ve never seen you so much as bat an eye at someone trying to flirt with you here.”

I rolled my eyes, then closed them. “I don’t date anymore. No money, no time, nowhere to take them…”

“Hey, the apartment’s not so bad!”

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