Love is a Harmony

2. Melanie

2

MELANIE

Melanie Snyder didn’t take crap from anyone. She spent her career dealing with difficult rock stars—some were worse than others. And the hardest of them all sat in front of her saying he wanted a bigger tour.

“Blake.” Melanie rubbed her temples. “This isn’t exactly a discussion for your publicist.”

Blake’s face reddened, and he slapped a sheet of paper on her desk. “Do you see this? Not a single arena.”

Melanie scanned the paper. “These are some great concert venues.”

Blake snorted. “Sure. If you’re a nobody like Noah Clarke.”

Irritation spiked through Melanie. Noah played stadiums because he could fill stadiums, especially when teaming up with other stars. He was far from a nobody. But Blake didn’t do multiple-headliner tours. And he didn’t fill arenas.

“Are you insinuating Noah is somehow inferior to you?”

Blake leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, not saying a word. If Melanie didn’t want to throat punch him every time she saw him before, she would now. Blake Coleman was her least favorite client, something she wasn’t allowed to admit. Not only was he combative and egotistical, but he’d gotten Jo Jackson pregnant and then completely abandoned her.

Not like Jo would accept anything from him anyway.

Melanie pinched the bridge of her nose, wishing she could be anywhere else. This job exhausted her. Between dealing with Blake’s ego and Noah’s antics, she’d had enough of this week.

A picture of Noah and British model Ava Sinclair now circulated across the internet, generating millions of likes. Noah messed up, and the people loved him for it.

Melanie had closed her eyes when she first saw it, willing it not to exist. Noah was a good guy, she truly believed that. A good guy who made bad decisions.

Blake, on the other hand…

He huffed, standing and kicking back his chair. The chair toppled over, crashing to the ground. “When my contract is up, maybe I’ll go to a label that has more respect for me.”

Melanie straightened the papers on her desk with more calm than she felt. “I wish you luck with that.”

He stared at her like he expected more. More reaction. More anger. More… hurt?

After a tense moment, he stormed from her office.

Melanie only had a few minutes of quiet to forget about him before her dad walked in. “Hey, sweetie.”

She smiled and stood to kiss him on the cheek. “What do you need?”

“Do I have to need something to come see my only child?”

“Yes.” She loved her dad, but as the head of the label, he got lost in his work so often she’d created a habit of bringing him dinner only to watch him not eat it while his mind was elsewhere.

He laughed at her honesty. For most of Melanie’s life, it had been just her and her dad. Her mom died when she was young. “Well, daughter of mine.” He pulled out a file he’d been holding behind his back.

“Give it here.” She took it and flipped open the file to find printed out articles about Drew Stone.

Her father righted Blake’s overturned chair and sat down. “We have a problem. Drew’s new relationship with his dancer doesn’t play well with the safety squad. My assistant brought these to my attention. They’re all conservative publications, and I’d like interviews with Drew and Lola set up with the largest ones.”

Melanie nodded. “On it.”

“I knew I could count on you. Now, to another matter. Dinner. What are we eating?”

Melanie shrugged. “Sorry, Dad. I promised Jo I’d go see her.”

“You are very good to your clients, dear. But now, I’m going to starve. Cindy went home early.”

“Why would your assistant do that?”

“I told her she could, and now I’m regretting it.”

Melanie laughed. She wondered when the last time her dad ordered food for himself was. “I’ll order food before I leave.”

“Okay. Something fried.”

“Something green,” she challenged.

He sighed. “Compromise? A salad with fried chicken on top?”

“Only if there’s no ranch dressing.”

“You’re mean.”

She flashed him a smile. “Yes, now, scoot. I still have work to do before I can leave.”

He stood and offered her a salute before leaving her to the blissful emptiness of her bare office. Noah made fun of her every time he was here, saying she lacked color.

She knew he meant the room, but she wondered if it was true of every aspect of her life. This job was Melanie’s world. She worked all day before going home to an empty apartment, waking to do it all over the next day. At least, that was her life now. It hadn’t always been like this. Before, there was Justin.

Shaking herself, she studied the list her dad gave her before firing off a few emails. Drew was a pain in the rear, but she loved him and didn’t mind easing some of the media gossip if it meant he and Lola could be happy.

She didn’t know how much time had passed when her phone rang. For a moment, she hoped it was Noah. She had two cell phones, one for work and one for personal, and Noah was the only client who always called her personal line, insisting they were friends.

His roguish grin flashed through her mind. Something was up with him. First, the scandalous photos with the British model after he’d been on his best behavior for the better part of a year.

Then, the disappearing act.

It took her a moment to recognize the ringing as her work cell, not the personal, and she sighed before answering. “Melanie Snyder.”

“I thought you were coming over.” Jo huffed out a breath, and Melanie could just picture her twisting her pink-tipped hair around her finger. “I even bought the good ice cream.”

Melanie leaned back in her chair with a laugh. She was less than ten years older than the Rockstars Anonymous crew, but sometimes she felt like their mom. “And what constitutes the good ice cream?”

“It’s cold.”

Melanie laughed at Jo’s surliness. Most people didn’t get the enigmatic drummer, but Melanie always had a soft spot for her. “Okay, I’m leaving now.”

“Just get here.”

Melanie hung up with a shake of her head and stood, swinging her jacket off the back of her chair and over her shoulders. After placing an order for her dad’s dinner, she stuffed the papers on her desk into her computer bag, figuring she’d get some more work done when she inevitably couldn’t sleep tonight. Looping her arm through the strap, she walked into the hall, passing dark offices, their occupants already home with their families. Her dad’s light was the only one still burning. She poked her head in his doorway.

“I’m heading out, Dad. Your food will be here soon. See you in the morning.”

He barely glanced up. “Love you, sweetie.”

Like father, like daughter. Both workaholics, both drowning their pain in stacks of papers and full email inboxes. She imagined most would call what they did unhealthy, but it worked for them. While they had the label and each other, they didn’t need anything else.

She thought of what she’d tell anyone in the rock star support group if she thought they weren’t dealing with their feelings.

Talk about it.

Use your music.

Don’t let the pain become all you are.

If only she could take her own advice. Her clients felt like they knew her, but they only saw what she showed them. Despite knowing everything about them, there were parts of her life she kept bottled up.

It took half an hour to drive to Jo’s apartment in the city. She lived in the same building as Ben Evans, front man of the band Fate and another of Melanie’s clients. She’d hooked them both up with their leases in the last couple years.

Unlike Ben, Jo wasn’t flashy. She didn’t live in the penthouse looking out on the L.A. lights. Melanie flashed the doorman a smile.

“Good evening, Miss Snyder.”

Passing the elevators, Melanie pushed into the stairwell. She was an exercise nut, for reasons she hadn’t revealed to anyone, but it had been a week at least since she’d found time to go for a run, and her calves burned as she made her way to Jo’s fifth-floor apartment.

She’d barely knocked when Jo’s voice came through the solid wood of the door. “If you think I’m getting up to answer the door, you’ve lost your mind.”

Melanie smiled to herself and pushed into the apartment. She hadn’t talked to Jo since the Rockstars Anonymous Zoom meeting two days before. Currently, she was the only one of the group other than Melanie in the city.

Jo lifted her head to look over the back of the overstuffed blue couch. “Good. It’s you. Get the ice cream out of the freezer.”

“You waited for me?” She quirked a brow.

Jo scowled. “No. I waited for someone to come in and get the ice cream so I didn’t have to get up. The doorman would’ve done. Or a burglar.”

“I feel so loved.”

“If you wanted to feel loved, you’d have gotten here earlier.”

Touché. Melanie wasn’t exactly a social butterfly. On the few occasions she did meet with people, she was late. Well, maybe that was why she didn’t have many dates or friend hangs. She called them meetings.

Melanie found bowls and spoons before taking the cookie dough ice cream out of the freezer and dishing it up. When she handed one to Jo, the drummer took it. “Bowls, Mel? You getting posh on me?”

“You’ve been spending too much time with Noah.” He called things posh all the time.

Jo’s face darkened. “Don’t mention Noah in this apartment.”

“Whoa there.” Melanie sat next to her on the couch. “You two have a lover’s quarrel?”

“For us to quarrel, he’d have to answer my calls.”

Jo was as independent as they came, but being pregnant changed something in her. Maybe it was being pregnant and alone. She held on tighter to the group, almost as if she feared they’d abandon her. But Noah… the friendship he had with her was special, something Melanie envied. They had a connection.

“If it makes you feel better, he hasn’t answered my calls either. Not since I chastised him for the pictures with the model.”

A laugh burst out of Jo and then another until she couldn’t stop. “He can’t help himself,” she wheezed. “I knew he’d get himself in trouble as soon as he left me.”

“Why did he go home?” Melanie hadn’t been able to get a straight answer out of him. In fact, she didn’t know much of anything about his life in London when he wasn’t being Noah Clarke, beloved British bad boy rocker.

Jo shrugged. “I’ve never understood his need to go there.” Her eyes lit up. “Maybe it’s a woman. You think he’s really in a relationship with that model? Noah has never done relationships well.” She stuck a spoon in her mouth. “Oh, this will be entertaining.”

Melanie set her bowl on the coffee table. “Does that explain why he missed the Rockstars Anonymous meeting? Or why he won’t answer any of our calls?”

“He’s Noah.” Jo shrugged. “He’ll turn up, eventually.”

Something tugged at Melanie, some feeling of wrongness. She couldn’t help worrying Noah wasn’t okay.

“Melanie Snyder.” Jo gasped, leaning forward to peer into Melanie’s full bowl. “You haven’t taken a single bite.”

Melanie leaned back and looked to the ceiling. “Not hungry. Just tired.”

“Bull. When a pregnant chick invites you for ice cream, you eat ice cream.”

Melanie hid her worries from her clients and sort of friends. She didn’t tell them she considered how each morsel she put in her mouth would affect her health, that she couldn’t shake the fear of doing something that would hurt her in the long run.

She’d seen what an early death looked like. She’d watched someone gasp for their last breaths.

And she made herself believe she could prevent the same fate from happening to her, that she was in control.

Because if she wasn’t, if it truly was up to chance, well, she wasn’t sure she could handle that.

Melanie stayed until Jo fell asleep and got back to her empty apartment close to midnight. Like her office, she hadn’t gotten around to decorating in the three years she’d lived here. Boxes of her old belongings from a life a decade in the past sat in one of her small closets.

She had two bedrooms, one of them converted into a small office. Her kitchen was what her dad called a one-butt kitchen, only truly big enough for one person. The label paid her well, and she could’ve afforded more, even in the expensive city, but she’d never wanted more.

Dropping her computer bag on the couch, she slipped off her shoes and sank down, wishing she could just curl up in bed and go to sleep.

But she’d never slept well, only getting a few hours each night, and there was no reason to believe tonight would be any different.

Checking her phone once more for any missed calls from Noah, she set it on the coffee table and sighed. This was about the time she gave up on sleep each night and got some work done instead. Everyone at the office thought she was efficient because of how much she accomplished. No, she just worked harder than anyone else.

And still, she couldn’t stop staring at her phone, thinking something was wrong. “Come on, Noah.”

Glancing from her phone to her computer bag, she sighed. No work tonight. Not when she was worried. She pushed up from the couch and walked into her bedroom, not bothering to remove her jacket.

An old shoe box called to her from her closet, and she lifted it down, removing the familiar lid. Her fingers skimmed the worn folds of the papers inside. Soon, she’d need a bigger box for all the letters. None of them were ever sent… but then, who would she have sent them to?

The person she wrote to was ten years dead.

Closing her eyes, she soaked in the stillness for just a moment before setting the box on the bed and retrieving a notebook and pencil. She walked to the large windows that looked out on a wooded area, her favorite part of the apartment. Pushing aside the curtains, she smiled when she saw the full moon hanging overhead.

Justin had loved full moons, the night when he claimed they could see the whole truth—that there really was a man in the moon.

Thoughts of her husband never came slowly. They weren’t a trickle into her mind. Instead, they slammed into her with the force of a battering ram.

“Justin,” she whispered.

Sliding to the floor, she rested her knees against the cold glass and started writing.

To the man who makes me smile.

When they were dating, he used to write her letters and always said they were to the woman who made him smile. She never wrote him back, always telling him how she felt instead. It wasn’t until she saw him in the casket, looking fast asleep, that she wished she had.

She’d spent ten years rectifying that.

I miss you, but I’m scared. It seems as the years pass, I think of you less. You don’t consume every waking thought anymore. If you were here, I know you’d tell me that was a good thing, that I have to remember I’m still here.

But what if I’m not here? Not really. What if this version of Melanie isn’t the girl you loved?

Have I told you about Noah Clarke? He’s one of my clients, probably my most infuriating. I haven’t talked to him in days, and I assume the worst. Do you know why? It’s because of you. I’ve seen what can happen to a healthy young man. I’m not rational, Justin, but you loved that about me.

Sometimes I wonder if I forgot what it’s like not to fear. To be impulsive instead of logical. You once told me the best thing about me was that I didn’t think.

Well, now it’s all I do.

Does that mean you wouldn’t love me anymore?

Your Melanie, always.

The pencil fell from her grip, bouncing off the soft carpet. No tears fell, she didn’t let them. It had been ten years since she lost the love of her life, the one person who understood her. And she’d moved on. Sort of.

But it didn’t hurt any less.