Page 1 of Rock Strong

Chapter 1

Abby

When Dr. Bronsky handed me my Master of Music diploma from Juilliard in December and said, “You and that cello are going places, Miss Chan,” I was pretty sure he didn’t mean the North American leg of a rock band’s world tour. Needless to say, it’s not what I pictured myself doing either. By now, I was hoping to be playing for the New York Philharmonic, making my way to Principal Cello and shining like the diamond of the string section, as I’d imagined it my entire twenty-three years up until this point.

However, a cellist cannot live on bread alone.

So when good friend, fellow string performer, and violinist Rosemary Bourré told me that Point Break, the rock band on the cover of the most recent Rolling Stone (four guys covered in tattoos and piercings—how original), was looking for an on-tour cellist to replace the one who’d dropped out last week, I forced myself to hear her out. Rose had already auditioned for their string section months ago and had gotten the part.

Join me, Abby! she said. It’ll be fun! she said.

According to Rose, all I’d have to do was play backup to their two love ballads, sleep on a bus from April through July, and collect my paycheck. At summer’s end, I’d return to NYC and hopefully have enough money to pay off some school loans and put down money for my first apartment on the Upper West Side. I could audition for the Philharmonic, make my mother proud, marry a famous conductor, and live the rest of my life in perfect harmony.

Hey, a girl could dream.

So when I’d told her that I hadn’t even had to audition—the manager hired me over the phone based on Dr. Bronsky’s recommendation—Rosemary had squealed, bounced, and hugged me tighter than an E string. I am so crazy for doing this, I’d thought, and Samuel, my boyfriend of four years, agreed, warning me if I took the job, he couldn’t guarantee he’d be there for me when I got back.

Is that right? So be it, I’d thought. In fact, I’d taken the opportunity to do what Samuel had been hedging doing: I’d broken up with him.

Part of me knew I had to do it, if only to see what the world had to offer outside of Samuel Bautista. Part of me was relieved that taking the job had forced an end to a relationship I knew hadn’t been working for quite some time. And part of me, well…part of me just needed eighteen thousand dollars.

So here Rosemary and I were, a week after they signed me on and two days after arriving in LA for the first time, ready to see what the world of rock ’n’ roll had in store for us. After a couple of informal rehearsals sans band, the string section seemed ready. Now, I was about to jump my next hurdle—getting through Point Break’s Feel the Burn kickoff party—a real rock star soirée as far from Brooklyn as one might possibly imagine at the posh Southern California home of their manager, Robbie Levine. Never would I be accused of being a party girl back in Brooklyn. In fact, the most partying I’d ever done was the night after my Strings final exam at Samuel’s parents’ house where Rosemary, Jaromir, Kim Lee, and I all sat around the Bautistas’ living room, laughing, drinking wine, and talking about how we were going to make it big one day.

We’d meant playing for any of the world’s most prestigious orchestras, not following around a screaming front man and his guitar-plucking toadies as they reveled in alcoholic excess and female companionship.

So this house…this was another league altogether, and to be honest, it was scaring the crap out of me. Next to me, however, Rosemary was all fluttery eyes. “Wow, Abby. Did you ever imagine this would be our first real gig?” She beamed, beer bottle in hand, glancing around the partyscape.

We’d been working since we graduated, of course, but that had entailed the occasional wedding. Nothing like this. “I imagined it a little less…LA.” I mean, we were in LA, so that didn’t quite make sense, but even this was beyond where my imagination had gone. I clung to my wine glass like it might keep me afloat in the sea of money and fluff.

“Abby, we’re in Beverly Hills. Beverly frickin’ Hills.”

“Don’t say frickin’, Rosemary. It’s so…”

“Rock star?”

“Exactly.”

She giggled. Giggling suited the tall, blond, skinny French coquette thing she had going on. Next to her graceful swan self, I felt like a mallard duck.

“Rehearsal went really well this afternoon, don’t you think?” she asked.

“Sure. If you consider the actual band members not participating a success,” I said.

She smirked. “I think it was meant for everyone else. Strings, lighting, sound crew…”

“What kind of musicians don’t need to rehearse?” I scoffed quietly.

She leaned into my ear. “The kind whose songs are all four beats to the measure. So I think the rehearsal was only for us new people.”

“Ah, yes. Please don’t remind me.” I couldn’t have felt more out of place.

In one corner of the mansion’s palatial gardens was a group of Greek goddesses dressed in white and gold bikinis all fawning over a man in red pants and a black T-shirt. The girls must have coordinated their hairstyles before coming, since they all had either streaked curls or severe ponytails pulled up tight, making their eyebrows arch up high. On another part of the patio, sectional sofas abounded with more tanned, glossy-legged women all gathered around a man in black pants and open shirt, knees apart, each of his arms laced around a fine Coppertoned set of shoulders. Wow, LA women took their beauty seriously, but that shouldn’t have been a surprise. Seeing it front and center somehow drove the point home, however—and made me wonder if I should have skipped the wine, given I was probably one of the only women at this party whose thighs actually touched.

The music blaring from the speakers thumped and pounded. An honest-to-goodness DJ spun real records, pressing headphones to her ears, and dancing to her own mellifluous offerings, all while sporting a tight turquoise minidress.

“How many people do you think are here?” Rosemary scanned the crowd.

I did a quick calculation of the patio and pool deck and estimated another fifty or so inside the house, more in the rooms upstairs, I was sure. “A hundred fifty, at least.”

---