Chapter Sixteen Adam
Ralph talks a mile a minute while I nurse my beer, a session IPA aptly named Hair of the Dog, which I ordered mostly out of a sense of obligation.
I’ve taken only about three sips, but I am grateful for something to do with my hands as I watch Eleanor walk away.
I didn’t expect her to go so soon, thought maybe we’d leave together, even though we’d have no reason to do that.
When she’s out the door and out of sight, I refocus on the conversation happening over my head, at which point I realize Ralph’s wife, Jane, is watching me with a shrewd expression.
Mercifully, she sips her beer and goes back to listening to Ralph list off all the places he’s looking forward to eating when he’s back home in LA.
Jane is a freelance food writer, so she immediately starts throwing out names of restaurants that are on her list to review, some of which she’s specifically saved for when Ralph was home from tour.
“Do you have a favorite date spot?” I find myself asking.
“What kind of food? Are you into Peruvian cuisine?”
“Uh, sure. I like pretty much everything.”
“That’s the great part about living in LA, right? Something for everyone.”
Curtis nods along next to her, though I’m not entirely convinced the guy is paying any attention. I’m fairly certain he has a rhythm playing in his head at all times, maybe even when he’s asleep, so that could account for the nodding.
Either way, Jane winds up giving me a whole list, which I diligently type into the notes app on my phone.
“Are you seeing someone?” she asks when I’ve caught up on typing. I tense, keeping my eyes on my phone screen, but Jane does not bring up Eleanor, despite what I have begun to suspect is a super-obvious crush on my part. “If they have a favorite dish I haven’t covered, I’ve got more recs.”
“Um…” Against my will, my gaze flickers over to the high-top table where Eleanor was talking with Freddie and Sheridan a minute ago.
Now it’s just the two siblings, who seem to be bickering in Eleanor’s absence, albeit in hushed voices that don’t carry to me.
Sheridan says something through clenched teeth while Freddie pointedly gulps his beer and avoids her stare.
She flicks his shoulder to get his attention and he smacks her hand away with a huff.
I clear my throat and run my thumb along the side of my glass, collecting condensation. “No. Not seeing anyone.”
“Good to be prepared, though, right?”
“Exactly.” I match Jane’s smile, even if it feels tight.
My phone buzzes and I scramble to pull it out of my pocket, thinking—hoping, maybe—that it’s a text from Eleanor.
But it’s the group chat again, the guys arguing over which bar they should hit for happy hour.
I shove my phone away and turn to ask Ralph his opinion on scooped bagels, which has him off to the races again.
Freddie makes his way over, setting his empty glass on the bar top loudly and flagging the bartender down to ask for another.
Sheridan remains across the room. She stands with her back to the rest of us, but it’s obvious she’s fuming from the tense set of her shoulders, the way her hands brace against her hips.
She walks out the same door as Eleanor without a word to anyone.
“Everything okay with Sher?” Ralph asks, evidently having been keeping an eye on her as well.
Freddie downs half of his fresh beer before answering. “She’s fine. Just being a bitch.”
“Come on, man,” Curtis says in a disapproving voice. “We told you to cut that shit out.”
“Adam, glad you could make it.” Freddie claps my shoulder, acting as though he didn’t hear Curtis. “We still have a few things to talk about after last night.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for Sher to come back?” Ralph asks, his attention divided as Jane slips off her barstool.
“You wanna get your head bitten off? By all means, go fetch her.” Freddie takes another pull of his beer and then mutters into his glass: “Or should we sit here discussing bread for the rest of the day?”
Curtis rubs his temples like he has a headache brewing.
Jane and Ralph have the kind of silent communication that comes with being together as long as they’ve been, and then Jane heads outside, presumably to speak to Sher, but possibly just to get some distance from Freddie.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that tensions aren’t high only between the Dempsey siblings.
Everyone seems to be having trouble handling Freddie today.
To be fair to Freddie, I have been standing here half an hour and have yet to say a word about signing them.
“Man, it was so cool meeting Chris last night,” Freddie says next, and for the first time today, his ego seems to slip away.
I hook one foot on the bottom rung of my barstool. “Yeah, he’s a good guy.”
“You’re lucky, growing up around so many of the greats,” Ralph says.
This gives me pause. “I wouldn’t necessarily put it that way.”
Freddie snorts a laugh. “Uh, okay. I get you’re biased, or whatever. But Atlas Shaw is objectively one of the greatest musicians of our time. He left behind such a legacy.”
All I can manage is a nod. While Freddie waxes poetic about my deadbeat dad, I nod and think about being nine years old and listening to his albums under my covers, headphones on so my mom wouldn’t hear, memorizing every lyric and looking for some sign that any of it was about me.
At some point I stopped expecting anything from him.
Stopped waiting around on my birthdays in the vain hope Atlas would show up—hell, that he’d send a fucking text.
I told myself I was done, I didn’t care.
I wanted that to be true, but the reality is I never stopped seeking his approval.
I didn’t grow out of it when I graduated from Berklee, or when I started interning at Exeter, or when I signed my first artist. It wasn’t enough when someone on my roster won a Grammy, or when I got promoted.
I gave up on my dad, but I didn’t really, because I only transferred that shit onto Billy. I thought I wanted his professional approval, when really I wanted fatherly approval. He’s been a good mentor to me, but I’m not an inexperienced kid anymore. I don’t need him to fill that role.
It’s only now that I’m listening to Freddie fanboy over Atlas, and praise me for how plugged in I am in the industry, that I can admit the truth.
I’ve let Billy be my guidepost for too long.
I thought I was being objective about Billy, told myself I could separate his good ideas from the bad ones, and that showing my loyalty was more important than agreeing with every little thing he said.
I told myself it was enough to acknowledge when he was being inappropriate, without actually having to do anything about it.
But Eleanor was right. I’ve let too much slide.
I was going after Dempsey the wrong way, for the wrong reasons. I like Dempsey’s music, I really do. But that’s not why I’m here. I’m here because Billy told me to be. I’m here, and Eleanor’s not.
The beer sours in my stomach. I set my glass down with a shaky hand. Push it across the sticky bar for good measure.
“I’ve actually got to head out,” I say.
The surprise is evident on Freddie’s face. “For real? Thought you’d head back to the venue with us.”
“Yeah. I’d love to,” I lie. “But something’s come up.”
It’s a weak excuse. Transparent as hell. I don’t care.
The smell of spilled beer and brewing mash is making me sick. I have to get out of here.
“Tonight,” I tell them, already edging closer to the exit. “We can go over everything at the after-party. Can’t wait. You guys are going to kill it. It’s going to be a great night.”
It’s almost an out-of-body experience. Like watching that security video—it feels like some other version of me is the one backing out of the room like a weirdo, blowing potentially the biggest career opportunity I’ve ever had.
I’m in control, and yet I can’t believe I’m acting this way, even as I’m actively doing it.
Outside, there’s no sign of Sheridan or Jane.
I start walking without any clear idea of where I am, or which direction I should be heading in, and after a few blocks I finally make myself stop and check a map.
I’m a mile and a half from the Strip. The whole walk back, my dad’s voice plays in my head—the grizzled voice I’ve heard in interviews but seldom in real life—telling me that I’m a fuckup, that he’s surprised I even managed to get promoted once since I clearly can’t do my fucking job, that if it weren’t for him I would’ve been fired by now.
I hear Billy telling me pussy isn’t worth tanking a deal over.
Suddenly, I’m livid. At Billy, for speaking the way he did about Eleanor this morning, and at myself for not telling him to shut the fuck up.
I’m angry that I’ve wasted so much time and energy trying to be a person my dad might like and respect even though he never wanted to know me.
That I’ve based my opinions and important life decisions on what these men would do, despite knowing deep down that I don’t want to be anything like either of them.
And why the fuck didn’t Billy ever mention being friends with Griffin Hastings?
It’s a random piece of information, and not really any of my business, so I get why he wouldn’t tell me out of the blue.
But I keep thinking about how the only times Griffin’s name has come up in conversation is when it related to Eleanor.
When I signed Maya. And when Billy sent me to sign Dempsey.
Billy is a lot of things, not all of them great, but he’s not vindictive.
Yeah, he’s grumbled about the lack of loyalty in this industry.
And yes, he’s mentioned Eleanor in a less-than-favorable light, before.
But he and Eleanor have never personally had problems. As far as I know, they’ve never even crossed paths.
It makes no sense that sending me here would have anything to do with Eleanor, or Griffin. He would never use me that way.