Page 20 of Another Postcard

Me: A girl’s got to keep some mystery about her.

Levi: Bullshit. I want to know everything about you. Now, I told you my sleeping attire, you tell me yours.

Me: I suppose it depends on who is in bed with me.

Levi: Since I’m the star of your dreams, I’m going to have to make the assumption that you sleep bare assed naked.

Me: What if I told you I wear a unicorn onesie to bed?

Levi: Still hot. I’ll love peeling it off of you to get to the prize underneath.

Me: Put that dirty mind to sleep, Levi. I’m going to bed.

I returned my phone to the nightstand, and after some tossing and turning, finally fell asleep.He’d been right, the jerk. I’d spent every night since our last kiss dreaming about what would have happened after his kiss if we hadn’t stopped.

11

Levi

Iliftedmy head from studying my music and watched Brooklynn for a few minutes. She was also bent over staff paper, adding and scratching out whole parts of the song she was working on. After we were finished writing “Sanity,” I’d been desperately trying to find an excuse to keep spending time alone together. She’d saved me the trouble when she came to me with another song idea. She wanted my help writing it. I’d jumped at the chance, not really caring if the song was any good. I should have known better. It was amazing. We were almost wrapped on recording “Sanity,” so we’d spent most of our extra time working on it.

The song highlighted both her and Sasha, with me singing a complementing, but much smaller part than people would be used to. I was excited about shaking things up. Brooklynn would be at the piano and Sasha would be playing her violin, but the female vocal parts were each strong, neither one overpowering the other. It was the first time Sasha had agreed to sing in the spotlight, rather than just singing backup harmonies from behind her instruments. We’d been trying to get her to take a bigger part for years, but she’d remained adamantly against it. I don’t know what Brooklynn said to convince her, but whatever it was, it worked.

“Hey,” I said softly.

Her head jerked up, her expression startled, like she’d forgotten she wasn’t alone. “Hey,” she responded with a sheepish smile. “I forgot you were here.”

“I figured.”

She laughed and her chocolate eyes strayed to my lips, filling with hunger. I fucking loved it when she devoured me with her eyes like that. But, I needed to focus on something else.

I cleared my throat and tried to be nonchalant. “Now that we’ve had dinner together a couple of times—”

“How do you figure that?” she snorted speculatively.

I spread my hands out in a “duh” gesture. “We were eating at the same time.”

Brooklynn laughed, and I grinned at the beautiful sound. Her laugh was almost as beautiful as her singing voice. Not that my dick could tell the difference. He perked up at the sound of either. Then again, just about everything Brooklynn did turned me on.

“The natural progression is for me to take you out,” I said in an authoritative tone.

She sighed and stood, then walked away, shaking her head.

Holy shit. This was the first time she hadn’t given me a flat-out no.

The next day, we recorded the acoustic version of “Sanity” with the whole band. We went through it three times so we had multiple versions to choose from. Finally, the door to the recording room opened and Cooper walked in. He grinned and stuck his hands in his front pockets. “That’s it.For Your Sanityis done. I gotta say, guys, I think this is your best album yet.”

We were all grinning like loons. “This calls for a celebration!” Simon yelled gleefully. Laughter broke out, and we all made plans to meet up at Dublin House later that night. Brooklynn and I followed Cooper from the room and into the sound booth. We were going to listen through the raw tracks and choose one of the group recordings to put as a bonus track on the standard album. Then we’d choose one from the recordings of just she and I to put on the iTunes exclusive, deluxe version of the album.

The sound guys cleared out so we could listen without it being overly crowded in such a small room. We started with the duets. There were four different versions for us to pick from. After listening to all of them twice, we narrowed it down to two. Then decided to move on to the group versions and come back to the others with fresh ears.

When all the intricacies of recording a song are completed, you’re left with as perfect of a rendition of the song as possible. It’s incredible to hear your composition on a recording, the way you hear it in your head. It’s surreal. And, it’s what sells the albums.

However, there was something special about performing in the raw. There was perfection in the mistakes as long as the depth of emotion was there. I honestly couldn’t tell you which I preferred because they were unique and not really comparable. Apples and oranges.

That song was special though. I’d never been so entranced by the acoustic version of a song as I had been by “Sanity.” Maybe because there was no hiding behind techs who fixed every mistake. Performing in the raw is just that. Raw. It’s gritty and rough, scraping over your wounds, laying you bare to be judged by every person who hears it. The only choice is to give in and let it happen. If you fight it, the performance comes across as contrived and lacking true feeling, the listeners know it’s fake. And everything about “Sanity” magnified that experience, because it was so much a part of us. Letting someone see inside your soul is terrifying, and “Sanity” came from deep inside Brooklynn and me. It was a part of us. No, itwasus.

As we sat there, listening to the six of us give ourselves over to the music, tears sprang to Brooklynn’s eyes, and she beamed at me. I wiped away the wetness on her cheeks and tucked some of her hair behind one ear. Then I took her hand and squeezed it gently but didn’t let it go.

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