Willow
TWENTY-THREE
Having a day off should feel restful. That’s the theory, anyway.
In practice, it means I’ve been awake since seven, cleaned my kitchen for no reason, reorganized the record shelf twice, and walked Daisy long enough that she’s currently passed out on my couch like she pays bills here.
I’m standing in front of my closet now, staring at three nearly identical pairs of jeans like one of them is going to magically reveal whether I’m underdressed for a visit to a recording compound full of famous people and whatever exactly I’ve become in relation to the three men who run it.
The answer, unfortunately, is no.
All three pairs are jeans.
All three say the same thing, which is: Willow Jameson still has no idea what she’s doing.
“Helpful,” I mutter.
Daisy cracks one eye open at the sound of my voice, judges me silently, then goes back to sleep.
I drag on the darkest pair and a fitted black tee, twist my hair up, pull it down again, leave it half up instead, and regret caring.
This is stupid.
I’m not going there for a date.
I’m not going there for whatever the opposite of a date is when you’ve already slept with the men involved.
I’m going there to work. Which is a very adult and normal sentence.
If I keep repeating it, I might even believe it.
By the time I get in the car, I’m doing that thing where my stomach feels tight for no good reason.
It’s not just them. It’s the whole thing.
The possibility of it.
The fact that I liked what we talked about over dinner. Liked it enough that I spent part of yesterday jotting down ideas on the back of an order pad when I was supposed to be refilling coffee.
I can’t remember the last time something outside my regular life grabbed me like that. Not because I hate my life; I don’t. I love the diner, most days. I love knowing where things belong.
But this feels different.
Bigger.
Like standing near a door I didn’t even know was there and realizing it might open if I push on it.
That should probably be inspiring.
Instead, it mostly makes me want to throw up a little.
The Hawthorne House looks smug when I pull up.
I know houses can’t actually look smug, but this one manages it anyway. Big old stone thing sitting behind its trees and gates like it’s fully aware people talk about it in town.
Which they do. Constantly.
I grab my notebook, lock the car, and head up the drive before I can decide to be a coward.
The front door opens before I knock.
Gabe.
He’s in a dark button-down with the sleeves rolled, no tie, no jacket, looking exactly like a man who could either negotiate a million-dollar contract or ruin my day with one look.
“Hi,” I say, and I hate how small it sounds.
His gaze moves over me once, but not in a way that feels invasive. More like he’s checking that I’m really here.
“Hi,” he says. “You found us again.”
“I had to fight my way past the terrifying gravel.”
“That sounds difficult.”
“It was. I nearly turned back.”
A corner of his mouth shifts. “I’m glad you didn’t.”
Before my face can betray me any further, I step inside and glance around. “Am I early?”
“No. Xander’s in Studio A. Julian’s with one of the bands in the live room.”
“And you?”
“I was waiting for you.”
There’s absolutely no reason those four words should feel loaded.
Unfortunately, they do.
“Right,” I say, very dignified and not at all flustered. “Cool. Normal.”
Gabe’s mouth moves again, almost a smile this time. “You can still leave if this feels like too much.”
I look at him, because Gabe says careful things in a very controlled voice, and if you’re not paying attention, you miss how much he means them.
“I know,” I say.
Then, because I need to hold myself on something more solid than that, I lift the notebook. “I brought ideas.”
His gaze drops to it, snapping into focus in that way it does when he’s interested. “Good.”
That one word shouldn’t be attractive.
A lot of things about this man shouldn’t be attractive.
We walk deeper into the house, past the kitchen and down one of the long halls that leads toward the studios.
The place feels different again today. Busier.
More real. There are voices somewhere ahead, music bleeding faintly through insulated walls, somebody laughing in the distance, actual work happening.
It should make me feel out of place.
Weirdly, though, it calms me down.
“You’ll meet a few people today,” Gabe says as we walk.
“That sounds ominous.”
“It isn’t.”
“It always is when someone says it like that.”
He glances at me. “They’re artists, Willow. Not a firing squad.”
“I work in food service. The firing squad would probably be more polite.”
That gets a small breath of laughter out of him.
I’m proud of that.
We stop outside a glass-walled studio where a band I don’t recognize is setting up around a drum kit. The singer’s pacing with a lyric sheet in one hand. There’s an energy to all of them that feels half restless, half hungry.
Gabe opens the door and gestures me in.
“This is Willow,” he says. “She’s helping us think through some outreach and positioning.”
I nearly choke. “Positioning?”
He looks at me calmly. “Would you prefer I said vibes?”
The guitarist laughs.
I glare at Gabe. “You’re enjoying this.”
“A little.”
The drummer, a girl with shaved sides and a silver hoop through one eyebrow, grins at me. “I like her already.”
“Thank you,” I say. “I’m fighting for my life in here.”
The singer finally stops pacing. He’s tall, dark haired, probably twenty-three at most, with that nervous intensity some musicians have when they still care so much it makes them awkward.
“I’m Noah,” he says. “We’re South Avenue.”
“Willow,” I say dryly. “Positioning expert.”
The guitarist snorts. Gabe doesn’t apologize.
For the next twenty minutes, I mostly listen. It turns out to be easier than I expected.
They tell me how they found each other. What kind of venues they used to play. Which songs the crowd always latches onto first and which ones matter more to them, even if nobody streams them.
Noah talks too fast when he’s excited. The drummer, Lena, talks over him whenever he starts sounding pretentious. Their bassist barely says anything until music comes up, and then suddenly he has a whole thesis on why people are tired of polished indie bands pretending to be raw.
I like them right away.
They’re talented and serious enough about what they make that it leaks through everything else.
I find myself asking questions without thinking.
What songs do people remember after a set? What line gets quoted back to you online? Who makes your flyers? Do you hate your social media or just tolerate it?
That one gets a collective groan.
“Okay,” I say, flipping my notebook open. “That’s already useful.”
Gabe says nothing, but I can feel him watching, which should make me more self-conscious than it does.
Instead, I start writing. Bits and pieces. Words they use more than once. The kind of details people latch onto when they feel real.
Lena has this brutal, deadpan delivery that would be great in short video clips if someone let her loose. Noah’s nervous in a way that’s charming once he forgets to be polished. The bassist, Omar, has opinions biting enough to build a whole identity around if they stop hiding him in the back.
I hum under my breath while I write, some half-formed tune that’s probably been stuck in my head since I walked in.
Lena notices first. “You do that when you think?”
I look up. “Do what?”
“The humming.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t even realized.
She grins. “Cute.”
“Let’s not make it weird.”
“Too late,” says the guitarist.
Gabe, to his credit, says nothing.
The next room has a completely different sound.
Older band. Heavier. Less tentative. Three men and a woman in their late twenties, maybe early thirties, all of them carrying themselves like they’ve already had one bad label deal and lived to become suspicious about all future human interaction.
These ones I understand even faster.
Their lead singer, Talia, has that look people get when they’ve had to become their own defense attorney too many times. She shakes my hand like she’s testing whether I’ll waste her time.
I don’t let that bother me.
The first thing I learn about them is that they hate the photos their old management used.
The second is that nobody ever let them decide how to tell their own story.
By then, I’m all in.
“That’s your problem,” I say before I can stop myself.
Talia raises a brow. “Excuse me?”
“Not you,” I say quickly. “Them. Whoever handled your rollout before. They treated you like a product line.”
Gabe’s attention shifts to me fully at that.
Talia folds her arms. “That’s exactly what they did.”
“Yeah,” I say, already flipping to a new page. “And the audience can feel that. The music says one thing, the branding says another, and then everybody acts shocked when people don’t stick.”
The guitarist, Mason, lets out a short laugh. “You sure you don’t do this for a living?”
“No. I carry pancakes to ungrateful men and occasionally get yelled at by tourists.”
“That feels like transferable experience.”
“It is.”
We spend the better part of an hour with them.
I ask about fans. Touring. What they wish people understood about their sound. Which songs mean the most and which ones perform the best and whether those are the same. Usually they aren’t.
By the time we break, my notebook is a mess of arrows and underlines and names and ideas.
I’ve also completely forgotten to be nervous.
Which I don’t realize until Gabe and I step out into the hall and he says, “You’re good at this.”
“I’m just asking questions,” I say.
“No,” he says. “You’re hearing what matters.”
That does something to me I don’t particularly enjoy, mostly because it feels suspiciously like wanting more.
More of this. More responsibility. More chances to use a part of myself I’ve never had much reason to use before.
I look down at the notebook in my hands. “Maybe.”
He watches me, like he can see the whole thought as it moves across my face.
“Come on,” he says then, gentler. “Let’s go through the logistics before Julian decides every band should promote themselves with flirtation and acoustic madness.”
I snort. “That does sound like him.”
“It should concern you that he’s suggested both already.”
“It concerns me that you let him keep talking.”
“We all have our burdens.”
He leads me upstairs to his office. I should’ve prepared for this.
I didn’t prepare for this.
The room is exactly as horrifyingly organized as I expected.
Every folder lined up. Pens in a holder. Notes stacked. Books squared. Nothing out of place except the coffee cup on the desk, which I assume is his version of letting loose.
I stand in the doorway and take it in.
Then I look at him. “This is worse than the kitchen.”
He closes the door behind us. “That sounds dramatic.”
“That sounds accurate. You could perform surgery in here.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
I point at the desk. “Nobody should have a workspace this controlled unless they’re hiding a body somewhere else.”
He takes his seat like this is a normal thing to be accused of. “That’s a serious allegation.”
“I’m serious.”
“You say a lot of things seriously that would concern a less stable person.”
“I’m counting on you being too organized to snap.”
His mouth curves. “Bold strategy.”
I sit opposite him, still clutching the notebook. “So. Logistics.”
He nods once and turns the laptop so I can see the screen.
For the next hour, we work.
He asks me what patterns I noticed. I tell him.
He pushes for specifics, and I give them.
We build little frameworks out of the conversations I had downstairs.
What each band’s strongest angle is, what audience they naturally pull, where their current image clashes with the music, what can be fixed quickly and what needs to evolve over time.
Gabe takes notes while I talk.
That alone feels strange.
A man like him shouldn’t be writing down my opinions with that level of focus. At one point, I get up and start pacing because it’s easier to think while moving.
“These two bands can’t be marketed the same way,” I say, flipping back through my notebook. “South Avenue needs discovery. Grassroots. Let people feel like they found them first. The other band—”
“Riot,” Gabe says.
“Right. Them.” I point with my pen. “They need authority. Not polish, exactly. Just confidence. They already sound established. Their visuals should catch up to that.”
Gabe nods, typing something. “That tracks.”
I stop pacing and look at him. “You keep saying that.”
“Because your thinking is consistent.”
“That sounds like a line.”
“It isn’t.”
I hate that I believe him.
He looks up. “What?”
“You’re very annoying to compliment.”
“That’s an interesting criticism.” He leans back, assessing me with that calm, focused gaze. “Would you prefer I was vague?”
“No. I’d prefer if I had thicker skin.”
He goes still at that.
And before he can say anything careful or kind or dangerous, I drop back into the work.
“Anyway,” I say, glancing down at the page again, “you should have artists doing small local appearances before anything bigger. Not all the time. Just enough that the town gets used to them as people, not an invasion.”
Gabe catches the pivot and lets me have it. “That would help with resistance.”
“Exactly. Right now half the town thinks celebrity means disruption. If the artists show up at a market, or a bookstore, or Friday Night Live without turning it into a spectacle, that changes.”
He nods. “Integration instead of intrusion.”
I point at him. “See? That’s why you get paid the big bucks.”
“I also get paid the small ones.”
“Still not enough, apparently.”
He smiles then. It changes his whole face in a way that should be illegal at a federal level.
I look back at the notebook because I’m not strong enough for that.
By the time we’re done, I’ve filled six pages. Full pages. Not scraps. Not daydreams. Work.
Real, useful work.
Gabe closes the laptop and looks at the notebook in my hands. “You realize this is more than just a few ideas.”
I glance down at it. “I realize I wrote like a deranged raccoon, yes.”
“I can read it.”
“That makes one of us.”
He folds his arms. “Willow. You could do this. For real.”
I laugh softly instead, because that’s easier than letting the moment hit where it wants to. “That seems wildly optimistic.”
“It isn’t.”
“You say that like you know.”
“It’s based on evidence.”
I shake my head, but I can’t quite stop smiling.
Outside the office window, I can hear faint music from downstairs. Someone running a verse over and over. Drums joining in. The whole house breathing with it.
I look down at my notes again, then back at Gabe. At the terrible, obsessive neatness of his office. At the focus in his face. At the way this whole day has felt more natural than it should’ve.
“It still might not last,” I say.
The words slip out before I can stop them. He doesn’t pretend not to understand.
“No,” he says. “It might not.”
I swallow.
He holds my gaze. “But that doesn’t make it less real now.”