Chapter 4 #2
“Damage control?” I repeat. “I didn’t do anything wrong. It was a complete misunderstanding.”
How was I supposed to know she didn’t recognize me?
Sure, she didn’t seem one hundred percent positive at first, but then she played along like she’d figured it out just fine.
Like in high school when the popular girl still vaguely recognizes the nerdy guy who has the same English teacher, even if he’s otherwise escaped her notice.
I told her I was with the label; it never occurred to me she’d take that to mean a regular employee.
Braden scoffs. “No one’s going to believe that. And worse, you’re at risk of her ruining your whole public persona.”
“How?”
“She’s saying ‘your face is a facade.’ Fans will go looking for info online to find out what that means. You let your guard down—why?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting to see her in The Habitat.
She just showed up. I was caught off guard, started talking in my normal voice, and …
I couldn’t go all honkytonk halfway through introductions.
That would have been way worse than simply revealing the fact that I’m not exactly how I seem when I’m ‘Riff.’ Besides, plenty of country singers don’t talk the way they sing.
Like Taylor Swift when she first started.
Or Shania Twain, who’s from Canada. Or better yet, Keith Urban; no one’s mad that he’s Australian. ”
“Okay, but Australians are effectively the UK’s ‘southerners.’”
I scrub my hand over my jaw. “I guess. But as far as Harmony is concerned, I don’t think she has enough fuel to cause me any damage.”
I mean, yeah, she criticized my name and my “lack” of accent and my clothes for not lining up with my stage persona. Would she really go so far as to ruin my career, though?
Regardless, the more I think about the song, the faster my blood pulses.
“Nothing but fiction”?
Harmony Sonora doesn’t know me at all. She has no idea how hard I’ve worked to get where I am, how many hours I’ve spent perfecting my stupid country albums just to appease producers and fans.
My vinyl collection is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the kind of music I actually care about—and maybe someday I’ll actually get to make that music, but in the meantime I don’t have a lot of options.
She’s trying to call me out for being a fraud when we spent less than an hour together? Where does she get off?
On my lap, I think sardonically.
“What happened?” Braden presses.
“She thought I was a Glambam employee,” I tell him. “We made out, then things got a little …”
“Tell me you didn’t—”
“Don’t worry, we didn’t get far. Hunter came out to grab me for Populus, and then Harmony realized who I actually am and got furious. She thought I had let her think I was someone else on purpose—but I hadn’t had a clue what was going on in her head. I tried to explain but she didn’t believe me.”
“Well, the optics aren’t good.”
“Yes, I’m aware that having a different style and personality for work than I do in everyday life is going to make me look like a liar.
And to be fair, I chose a not-very-cowboy thing to wear to the release party—maybe because I not-so-secretly want to start rebranding myself.
I also introduced myself as Griffin, so that’s on me, but, I just hate when people in my social life call me Riff. ”
“And you wanted her to be a part of your social life.”
“I definitely wouldn’t complain if she were.”
“Typical.” Braden scratches the back of his head and frowns. “We have to be careful. You saw what she did to Luke Onstenk. Half her fourth album was about him.”
“Didn’t they date for a while though?”
“Two months.”
I grimace.
“Let’s hope this is the last of it,” Braden adds, “and that it’ll blow over soon. Maybe we can weather the storm.”
“Hang on,” I tell him, mentally going over all of Harmony’s former love interests—the ones I know of, at least.
If I had to guess, I’d say there were nine or ten.
Some of those were brief attachments that I remember my sister going on about when Harmony first got famous.
One guy was part of a boy band, the others were TV show actors.
Later on there was Kelton Roth, a solo artist known for talk-singing a lot of his lyrics in a slam-poetry type way.
Then there was Luke Onstenk, an established action-movie star who is eight years older than Harmony (the subject of “Closing In”).
Then it was a producer, a Major League Baseball player, and I believe a couple more musicians.
I mix up some of those British dudes, but I think the most recent one was the bass player for Eight Minutes Late (a.k.a. EML).
“Have any of her musician exes ever written songs back to her?” I ask.
Braden strokes his chin. “A few of them have tried. Kelton Roth did ‘All Over You,’ which has potential lyrical ties to Harmony’s ’Say the Word,’ obviously about him.
Dylan Wentz clapped back at ‘Nice Try’ with ‘Thanks, I Woke Up Like This’—or so people claim.
Also, EML had one line in ‘Girls Will Talk’ that alludes to Harmony’s relationship with Josh Villefort—the bassist—but I don’t think the whole song is about her.
None of those got much attention though.
Frankly, they weren’t very good songs, and their subjects weren’t clear. ”
I chew my lip for a sec. “What if I write a song about her?”
“You want to write a country song about Harmony Sonora?” He laughs. “The label will never let you do that. Harmony’s way more established than you and she makes them lots of money; they won’t do anything that might hurt her.”
“So we won’t reveal that it’s about her,” I say.
“You think you can make the message subtle enough to get past the label execs, but obvious enough to Harmony and both your fanbases to put her in her place?”
“I know I can.”
“She’ll just write another song in response to yours. What will you do then?”
“Then I’ll write another song too.”
“Please tell me you’re kidding,” Braden says. “What is this—high school?”
“Adult life is just high school with more money. The dynamics never go away.”
Braden shakes his head in disbelief. “So you’re going to try to take down, effectively, one of the most popular girls in school?”
The thought that Harmony would call me out in music gets worse the longer I think about it.
From afar, I always gave her the benefit of the doubt, no matter what the tabloids said.
I appreciated her work regardless of the way the subject matter sometimes had people complaining.
The number of times I’ve listened to one of her new releases and whispered “damn” to the wit in her phrasing …
I’ve lost count. But one wrong move and now I’m in her crosshairs?
“Look,” I tell Braden, “I wanted to believe she wasn’t the melodramatic diva everyone made her out to be—but now that I’m her target, it hits different. Some of her critics may have a point. And she’s not going to stop unless she gets a taste of her own medicine.”
Braden sighs. “I don’t know, Griffin. I guess I can run the idea by Charles—to fast track your first single with the label.
They’ll want to see a return on investment sooner rather than later, I’m sure.
But that means it’ll need to be damn good.
You know that, right? It has to be fit to go on your first Glambam album, and it has to be hit material. ”
I nod. “I understand. I promise you won’t be disappointed.”