Page 8 of Perfect Composition
“Never mind, Kane. Let’s get going.” After sliding in the back of my car, I call my lawyer’s office.
“LLF, LLC,” Angie’s voice vibrates through the line.
“Is she free?” I normally have time to flirt with Angie in an attempt to build up her self-confidence, but not today. Not right now. Not after my emotions are scraped so raw on the inside.
“Yes. I just scanned this morning’s feeds and prepared her. Carys has been waiting for your call.”
A few seconds later, the husky voice of my ex-girlfriend comes on the line. “Tell me your security team was with you so I can at least threaten StellaNova with reporting false news.”
My lips curve humorlessly. “Of course they were.”
“Good. Now, go sing something. I have work to do.” And Carys disconnects the call, leaving me once again disenchanted with too many things about the life I lead and no clue about how to fix it.
BECKETT
CHAPTER THREE
Someone sent me a tip they saw Beckett Miller at their local gym this morning. People, let me be clear once again. If you don’t send a pic showing off his famous tats, then I don’t believe you. #sorrynotsorry #infamousabs #wishitweretrue
— Viego Martinez, Celebrity Blogger
I slip the dumbbell back into the slot before blowing out a huge breath of air. “I can’t wait for this last bit of the tour to be done so I can cut back a bit on these workouts,” I say to my lead guitarist, Mick Ceron.
“What, keeping your abs in shape or the workout you do each day with the press?”
“Either. Both. Part of me feels exhausted over all of it.”
“And you’re what? Thirty-eight? I thought you were a baby, Becks. Now, I’m going to call you Old Man. What do you think, honey?” He directs the question to his wife.
She flaps her hand at him as the treadmill incline increases.
Mick laughs.
It’s just before sundown in Toronto, Canada. Due to the overcast, the sun is barely penetrating through the windows of the gym we’ve commandeered. It’s my absolute favorite time of day. It’s that moment where the regrets of the day before disappear and hope of the night begins. At least it used to when there were things left to hope for, goals to reach.
Now, what’s left?
Deciding if I want to be fresh for tonight’s show, I’d better ease up. I start to stretch and ponder the question.
It’s been almost eighteen years since Kristoffer Wilde caught me messing around on a piano I was supposed to be moving off the Small Town Nights stage. By then I was already making my name for myself in a whole different way even as I sweated away my pain every night, shoving hundreds of pounds of equipment beneath the often blazing sun that would beat down on me during summer tours. I knew I didn’t want to live on the edge of sanity my whole life. I’d run away to avoid that very thing. So, I chose to distance myself from temptation and did what I knew I could do best—compose music.
But it wasn’t enough. Frustration built up until one day, I overheard a conversation between Shane—the lead singer of Small Town Nights—and his business manager. They were talking about using a song Shane wrote in a commercial, and the numbers they were talking about astonished me. They were willing to pay how much for a twenty-second piece of music?
And suddenly, I had a focus. I wanted a piece of that pie.
I stopped existing for the moment and started thinking of a future beyond finding something cold to drink. I listened and found out that joining ASCAP would maybe get my music noticed by television stations, radio shows, and advertising agencies. At the hotel that night, I paid for internet access and then paid for my membership. I wanted my music to be found by whomever wanted to use it. And with more fervor than ever before, I wrote. A quick stanza here, a coda there. I held deep-seated dreams that maybe one of the songs I scribbled in between moving Shane’s piano would be picked up for a hit television show.
Then it happened, though not quite the way I expected.
I crack open a bottle of water and chug most of it down as the drips of memories trickle along with it. It started with a request by some local car dealership. Then a few months later, a regional hair salon. But, hell, tears still prick my eyes when I recall the night the crew went out to wrap up the tour in Philly and the nationally broadcast dog food commercial came on with my song playing as the black Lab cantered through the grass. To this day, I can’t spot a black Lab on the street without getting choked up. Those dogs don’t know it, but they paid for the two best things in my life—my online college education and the battered upright I wrote my first number one single, “Run Wild,”on. I still write every song on that baby to this day.
I’d been home in my apartment—a rare three days not on the road—and I’m not certain if it was the scorching temperature in the city or the vendor selling sunflowers, but it made me think of home. Ofher. She’s the only reason I can’t fully blank out my past, the only bright light in the darkness that surrounded me day after day. Before I left, Paige was the only one comfortable enough to approach the wild animal I was quickly becoming, so fearless. So with a fifth of Jack and my memories, I took out my feelings about my life before I’d run away justifying I’d made the right choices, on the keys instead of on some nameless face I had no intention of learning.
Still pissed in more ways than one the next day, I shoved it all aside and focused on the future because I couldn’t go back and change the past. Because even if I wouldn’t admit it aloud, I knew I’d left my heart there.
As Beau Miller, I began to earn a tidy fortune once a syndicated game show picked up a snappy jingle I wrote. I invested it but kept working. And then the Holy Grail happened—a computer company picked up my music to be digitized to represent their new line of devices.
I was so dizzy with euphoria, I don’t know how I managed to do my job that night. Mick and Carly commented on it, but I waved them off. We’d jammed together a few times, but this? This might be my ticket to finally escape. To run.
