CHAPTER FIVE
Hendrix
T he music is loud and my muse is flowing for the first time in days as I swing my hips and pipe yet another sample design on the top of the cookie.
I hum as I decorate, the defiant screw you lyrics of my favorite artist like an anthem I can relate to more than anything else in my life right now.
I’ve shut out life. Paul and his indiscretions. Paul’s unabashed theft of my savings. My landlord informing me that my rent will be increasing in two months. The crippling pang of heartbreak that hits out of nowhere every once in a while when I think I’ve already gotten over it.
So I sing.
I decorate.
I shimmy like no one is watching.
And when the phone rings and it blasts through my Bluetooth speaker, my yelp can probably be heard down the street.
A quick glance at the clock tells me it’s after eight in the evening, long past closing time, and so I don’t owe it to whoever it is to pick up their call.
But a customer is a customer, so I lower the volume and answer, “Cookie Cutter, this is Hendrix, how may I help you?”
And then in that beat of silence when no one responds, I wage an internal debate over whether I should have said can instead of may and which one is actually right.
Ridiculous, but a way to fill the fleeting silence.
“Is it true what you said, Hendrix?” The honey-coated-over-gravel voice says my name and I know who it is instantly.
“Jase? How did you... never mind.” A simple internet search would tell him my phone number since he knew the business name. I’m flustered by the unexpected call, and it takes me a second to gather my thoughts. “Is it true that I said what?”
And while I sound bothered, a small part of me, the part in every single person that heartache can try but can’t exactly crush, flutters—for reasons I’d rather not acknowledge.
“About needing money to save your business.”
I pause at his words. Me and my big mouth . “What are you getting at?” I look around the bakery as if someone is there waiting to prank me.
“I was curious if you were serious. Is money really something you need?”
I laugh self-deprecatingly and it sounds like how I feel—confused. “I’m sorry. I—I just met you, why would I tell you that?”
“Because you want to. Because it’s been a shit month, and I’m a nice guy. You know as much as I do that it’s killing you not to say, ‘Yes it’s true,’ and then proceed to tell me what a prick that guy you were on the phone with was to you.”
“You have an active imagination, I’ll give you that.” I lean my ass against the kitchen island and smile.
“I do and you know you desperately want to even if it’s simply to keep me on the phone a bit longer because you like how the sound of my voice makes you feel.”
“And now that imagination has kicked into overdrive.”
“So, then what you said was true. You need money to save your company. Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you need the money? Do your cookies taste like shit? Are you—”
“They taste like fucking heaven,” I say emphatically, drawing a deep, rumbling laugh through the line.
“A woman who believes in herself. I like it. So why don’t they sell?”
The man’s asking questions that are none of his business and yet I feel compelled to answer him. Maybe it was the kindness in his eyes or maybe it was his undeniable sex appeal—I don’t know. All I know is I want to tell him.
“What did the note say?” I ask.
“Note?”
“On the napkin the woman handed you. You want to know my business, I think it’s only fair that I get to know yours.”
He stutters a laugh, and I can picture that smile and those dimples deepening. “That’s fair.”
“Then what did it say?”
“Nothing. I paid her to walk up and hand it to me. Its sole purpose was for you to be jealous so that you’d be forced to say yes.”
“You’re full of shit.”
“Most of the time, maybe. But not on this.”
I roll my eyes even though he can’t see it and shake my head ever so slightly. “Wait. Say yes to what?” Exasperation and good humor tinge the edges of my tone.
“Look something up for me.”
My first thought is, don’t tell me what to do. My second is, “Why?”
“Because it will make you believe me when I tell you I know how to fix your problem.”
“You don’t even know my problem.”
“I know you need money. Customers. New business. Is that not enough?”
I’m already not liking this topic despite enjoying this conversation. Or more along the lines of, I’m liking who I’m having it with. “Okay. I’ll play your game.” I wipe my hand on my hand towel and move over to my computer. “What am I looking up?”
“The name Jase Gizmodo.”
“Uh—”
“G-I-Z-M-O-D-O or Gizmo for short with a hard G.”
I laugh at that. “Noted. Hard G.”
“I was teased way too many times by kids who chose to use a soft G.”
“I bet— OH ,” I gasp as my screen populates and picture after picture of the man I met earlier, the man whose voice is in my ear, fill the screen in front of me.
Holy.
Shit.
The man from Josie’s Java with the ice-blue eyes, the undeniable charm, and the roguish smirk is the drummer of one of the most popular rock bands on this planet—BENT.
Words escape me. I wish they would have escaped me earlier when I told him to have more dignity for allowing women to assume he was someone special. Different. Famous.
He’s famous all right.
And if I spent any iota of time wondering what those hinted tattoos looked like, my next scroll down gives me an answer in living color. Images of them on a shirtless Jase—or Gizmo, who the world knows him as. In the image staring back at me, he’s standing with his arms out, his muscles defined on broad shoulders and toned arms, with an array of varying tattoos on his arms and chest. The image cuts off at his lower waist but gives the image’s intended audience exactly what they’re hoping for—the indentations and the deep V just before his hips.
My cheeks flush, and it’s Jase clearing his throat on the other end of the connection that reminds me he’s there while I’m ogling his body.
“Jase, huh?” I state.
“If I had told you my name was Gizmo—”
“With a hard G.”
“Yes, with a hard G”—he chuckles—“would that have made a difference? Would you have known who I was?”
Yes. No. All he had to say was that he was part of BENT and I would’ve known.
“Hawkin Play or Vince Jennings, you would have known off the bat, right?” he asks, mentioning the band’s lead singer and guitarist. “But not Gizmo. You see, drummers never get any love.”
There’s certain truth to his statement, a raw honesty in it, but I don’t sense any animosity in the words. Rather it’s more playful, much like his demeanor was earlier.
“Oh, I have a feeling you get plenty of love, Gizmo.”
He chuckles. It’s low, loaded with warmth, and does something funny to my stomach. “Please. Call me Jase.”
I pause, wondering why it feels so intimate for him to ask me to call him a name no one else does. At least it seems so by the screen scrolling in front of me.
“You know I feel like a total ass right now, right?” I ask.
“For?”
“You let me believe that you were some wannabe trying to reel in the women because of it—”
“You believed that all on your own, Hendrix. You assumed . I simply chose not to correct or argue with you over it.”
“Well, you should have,” I state definitively.
“Really?” He chuckles. “In our short interaction, you seemed so taken with the male species in general, I’m not exactly positive you would have loved a man you’ve never met before arguing with you over your very assertive opinion.”
I open my mouth to argue but then shut it because he’s right. Nail on the head, annoyingly right. “You still should have told me.”
“I’ll remember that for next time I meet you for the first time.”
“Funny.”
“I try,” he murmurs.
Silence stretches between us as I let it sink in that Jase Gizmodo is on the other end of the phone. And not just on the other end, but the man actively sought out my phone number to call me. But why ?
“Well, I hate to break it to you, but I don’t have any stunning revelation to share with you as to who I am. I’m not famous. I don’t do any surprising parlor tricks to wow your friends and make them like me. Hell, I don’t even know what I’m saying right now...”
“No tricks needed. I like who you are or I wouldn’t be calling.”
“And why is that again? The you calling part.”
“Because you mentioned needing money to save your business—the cookie bakery, I presume.”
“You’ve presumed right.” Those words are so hard to say. Failure isn’t an easy thing to admit.
I wait for him to ask why, to question why I’d partially put my faith and future in another person’s hands—much the same way I’ve questioned it every minute of every day since I walked in on Paul and the bimbo—but Jase doesn’t.
“Okay, well, I might have a way, an opportunity , for you to earn what you need to help you stay afloat.”
“That sounds shady as shit. ‘Earn what I need’ spoken from a man I just met.”
He barks out a laugh. “You sure don’t disappoint, do you?”
“What...” Does that mean? That I don’t disappoint ? But the thought dies because I’m still trying to focus on the opportunity he’s hinting at that will allow me to earn what I need.
And this is where my brain needs to take a rest. I’m a baker. He’s a famous musician. The man is calling you for cookies. Probably a lot of cookies. That’s the only reasonable answer for this very bizarre, flirty, and coded conversation.
“How big is the order?” I ask.
“Order?”
“Yes. How many cookies do you need? I’m short on staff and supplies—hence my off-the-cuff comment about needing money,” I say to simply save face. “So it just depends on the timeline and quantity needed if I could take your order.”
“I don’t want your cookies, Hendrix.” The way he says those six words sounds like the most seductive refusal I’ve ever heard. He laughs. “Yes, that sounded just as bad as we both think it did.”
“Glad I wasn’t the only one thinking that. But I am wondering if I should be offended that you don’t like baked goods.” I pause.
“Something tells me that no single cookie order will net you the kind of cash you muttered at the coffee shop.”
“Oh. Okay. So no cookies then?”
“No.”
“Then . . . what?”
He clears his throat. “I can’t exactly tell you.”
“You’re offering me an opportunity to make a considerable amount of money but you can’t tell me what that is? You do realize that’s—”
“Weird. Strange. Yes. And totally not my idea, but Legal says in order to talk about it, they’d need you to sign some documents first to ensure confidentiality is kept.”
“A non-disclosure agreement?”
“Yes.”
“Just to talk about whatever it is you want to talk about?”
“Yes.”
“Again . . . you’re aware how odd this sounds?”
“I am. But I’m also aware how easy it is in my line of work to discuss something with someone and then have it splashed all over the internet because the best gossip goes to the highest bidder.”
“Like I’d even know who to or how to sell your juicy story.”
“You’d be surprised how quickly people come out of the woodwork and what they offer when they know you’re associated with me.”
That very fact is scary and probably truer than I want to acknowledge. And still... very weird to be asked this.
“Is whatever it is you want to do, or me to do, or talk about me doing, illegal?”
“No.”
“And yet you’re calling me, a woman you just met...”
“Look, I know it sounds crazy, but there’s a situation and my lawyer and team told me I needed someone to help me with it. They made their own suggestions and none of them called to me in the way you did.”
“Called to you?”
“Yes. You were the first person I thought of.”
“Why?”
“I’m known for being impulsive.” There’s humor in his voice but also a good dose of honesty, if I’m reading his tone correctly.
“But we only just met. You don’t even know me. I could be a serial killer or a stalker.”
“True. You could be although in order to stalk me you’d have to know who I was, and I didn’t exactly get that vibe then or now. I think the boyfriend would have been axed first if that was the case, and you were on the phone with him so we all know he’s alive.”
“There’s time yet,” I grumble as he laughs.
“And this is why I like you.”
“Enough to ask me to sign an NDA to talk about things that we can’t talk about so that I can—”
“Yes. Please . Are you trying to talk me out of not liking you, because if you are, you’re starting to do a good job of it.”
“Way to sweep a girl off her feet,” I tease.
“So?” he asks, and the hope in the word hangs on the line. I look around at my bakery, at the blood, sweat and tears I’ve put into this place so far, and acknowledge the real fear that I might lose it all very soon if something doesn’t change.
Maybe this chance meeting is the change I didn’t know I needed.
“Tell me something,” I say.
“Only if I can get a yes or a no after I tell you.”
“My name... why did you say it was fitting?”
“Jimi Hendrix was ballsy for his time. A little out there, complicated, daring, and beautiful all at the same time. That was also my first impression of you.”
Of all the things I expected him to say, that was most definitely not it. I hate that tears are welling in my eyes from the answer. How is it that someone has seen me so clearly in such a short time? And that I love that.
“Yes,” I say.
“Yes, you’ll come tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Because I like your answer.
Because it feels good to be seen.
“Because let’s face it, if I’m going to become a stalker, I need to start somewhere.”