Love in Music (5 page)

When we reached her place, Topaz said she was going to take a shower. I could see she was still near tears and I figured she wanted to go cry in the shower so I couldn’t see her and chastise her again over shedding more tears over that idiot. I didn’t have the strength at that moment to fight her on it so I nodded and set about my task in the kitchen.

I was deep in thought until I heard her belting out a tune from the shower. She had the voice of an angel. Hina had never told me the woman could sing. I confronted her about it when she got out the shower and came back into the kitchen dressed in white lounging pants and a soft pink top.

“No,” she had laughed and dismissed my words.

“You sing,” I reiterated.

“No. I just…no.”

I shook my head. “You’ve been holding out on me, woman. You have a beautiful voice.” I was starting to think I should ask her to do vocals for some of my music, but then I wasn’t going to cut anymore of my own music for myself. I was going to focus on the artist I would be working with producing and recording. They would have the choice to write their own, use some of my musical pieces or hire somebody to write for them, but my instrumental work wasn’t going into a CD of my own. Then again, with a voice like Topaz had we could make something great together. I kicked the idea around in my head and then kicked it out just the same. I wasn’t looking to take on a new project and Topaz wasn’t in the music industry. She was a graphic designer and artist. She needed to stay focused on that. Besides, the music industry could rip somebody as innocent as her apart and not even care about it. No, I wouldn’t have that for her.

I wondered why I cared so much. I wondered why I was taking it upon myself to try to help her and then I decided it was because we had shared the pain of betrayal.

“So where’s your head on the design?” I needed to stop thinking about personal business and focus on work.

“Oh I have so many ideas,” she said very animated in her response. “Oh, I hope you love them and we’ll definitely tweak them to fit whatever you want, but…okay it has to have edge yet still be professional. Ooh, if I were doing your website too I could definitely come up with more.”

“That’s right you do websites.” I knew this because she had done Hina’s, but I didn’t want to seem as if I knew everything about her. She nodded fervently. “I already put in the partial payment with these other people. They’re taking a while, but they came recommended so maybe it’s worth the wait.”

“Yeah, it’s not an overnight type thing, but it could be if they really focused on it. You know, not fully overnight, just faster than months of wait time. Anyway, enough about websites, let’s talk logos.”

I listened to her talk about what she had in mind for my new logo. More like I watched how excited she was about it. I loved her ideas. I was willing and ready to go with it, but for some reason I wanted to keep her working with me for as long as I could. “I like it, but can we keep coming up with ideas?”

“Of course. This is so much fun for me. I love this. Love it,” she giggled. I loved hearing that sound come from her. Maybe she was going to be okay sooner than I thought. Judging from the words of her song she was singing in the bathroom I thought maybe she was working through the Jace thing. I hadn’t heard the song anywhere so I figured it was her own makings.

God the woman was smart, talented and beautiful. Whoever ended up winning her heart was going to be a really lucky man—really lucky.

We had three weeks together before her mother returned home and another additional week before my sister returned home. I had only spent the first three weeks sleeping in the bed with her. I told myself I was still worried about her and didn’t want to leave her alone, but in a way I realized I enjoyed sleeping next to her, holding her, feeling her soft body pressed against mine. Topaz was fine, she was and I could tell that from the fact that I caught her with sullen looks less and less over those few weeks. But the day her mother came home was the day I had to start back sleeping in my own bed. My bed felt empty. I had a really hard time getting to sleep that night. I guess she did too because she called me with some new ideas for the logo. She said she had worked it up in a mockup and would love for me to come see the design when I had time.

I went to her place that very next morning. I loved the design. That was the problem. Loving the design meant our time together was over so instead of giving final approval I asked her to give me one more option.

“Sure,” she had said freely.

“I love it, but I just want to be sure.”

She had laughed and agreed once more. The day my sister came home was the day I was set to go back and approve the logo design. I had told Hina about what happened to Topaz. I told her I had hired her to do the logo to try to get her mind off things, but I didn’t tell her I had spent three weeks in her bed.

I was going to take Hina home first, but she wouldn’t let me. She just had to go over to Topaz’s house and see her. I told her not to bring up Jace, but apparently my sister didn’t have the fine art of understanding because she did just that when she wrapped her arms around Topaz and doted her with hugs, kisses, and a mix of angry words about Jace and comforting words about Topaz being able to heal.

Topaz had laughed. “Hina, I’m fine. Arashi put me to work and made sure I worked through things instead of moping. It still hurts, and I guess it will for a while, but I’m okay. I’m moving on.” She gave Hina one last hug and patted her on her on her back as she looked up into my eyes and mouthed the words “thank you.” She didn’t need to thank me, she already had done that, but she seemed to like saying it. Maybe I liked hearing it too. Maybe it was something about knowing I had helped her get through this that made me feel good inside.

Topaz showed me the designs. I approved the first one because that was the one I wanted even when she showed it to me the first time. I thought that was it. We wouldn’t spend time together again. I knew she would be over at our house because Hina had invited her for lunch, but I thought the relationship Topaz and I had been building would be gone now. I was wrong. Hina had invited me to step away from mixing music to have lunch. I never stepped away from mixing music just for lunch, not until I started connecting with Topaz. I dropped what I was doing and I joined the ladies for lunch.

One lunch was what I thought it would be, but one lunch turned to daily lunches and the next thing I knew I was finding myself at the table alone with Topaz more often than not. Sometimes Hina would receive a call and have to excuse herself to take it, leaving us to eat and talk without her for twenty minutes or more. Sometimes it was an emergency at the spa and she had to go so that left Topaz and I together for the entire afternoon because we both seemed to lose track of time. More like she lost track of time while I ignored it.

This was my sister’s friend and she deserved a lot better than me so I pushed all my thoughts of how amazing our moments together were back into the pile of friends only. I should have considered her just my sister’s friend, but I couldn’t. We had bonded. We had shared a lot and I couldn’t look at her as anything less than my friend too. I hoped my sister didn’t mind sharing because I wasn’t planning to let go of what Topaz and I had developed. I might not get to claim her heart, but I would occupy a space in it as her friend. That was enough for me—at least that’s what I told myself.

Chapter Four

A
rashi had been right. it took a while, but I did manage to get completely beyond Jace. I was working, really busy actually, and Arashi had loved the logo I did for him so much he called me in to do more work. I also got the emergency call from Hina when Arashi’s site wasn’t working. His sister was angry, but she said he wouldn’t even think of calling me for help. That’s just crazy because while I don’t like reviewing somebody else’s code I can do it and see if there’s something I can fix here or there to make it work.

When I showed up at his place he had his head in his hands looking defeated. “Arashi?” I kept my tone soft. I knew that look he had. It was the look of somebody who saw a mess with no hope of repair. The look of somebody who had spent far too much money on a product they now couldn’t use.

“They won’t even fix it. They don’t care that I won’t pay them the rest until it’s right. They’ve taken the money and scrammed. I can’t even get an answer on the phone now. I used them because they were recommended. Ten grand down the drain. Now I’m going to have to find somebody else and start all over again. Worse, I can’t even get the old site up and this thing,” he pointed at the computer screen, “is not doing my business any good.”

I looked at the screen and saw the problem. Pictures were floating in places they shouldn’t have been, text was garbled, codes hadn’t been closed properly so things that shouldn’t have been in headline format were—and that meant some things in the middle of a sentence were too. I shook my head. Fixing that mess would not be a joy.

I walked over and placed my hand on his shoulder. “Okay, you have two options. I can sit here and try to find every broken code and every botched code. Or I can give you something new. The first will take weeks, if not months. The second I can get something done for you by morning, but we’ll have to tweak it to fit whatever specifics you want slowly. I have clients that need me too.”

“I’ll pay you.”

“No you won’t. And this time,” I said this while holding up my hand. “I won’t take no for an answer. Move over” I urged him to get out the chair and go find another. “I’m going to take your site down. I would rather your visitors get a “check back later” page than this fiasco. And, Arashi, I urge you to sue their pants off.”

“Thanks, Topaz. God, thank you so much.”

“Time to work my magic with option?”

“We trash it, you build it.”

“That’s what I thought. I’m also changing out your codes and passwords because they have those and I’d hate for them to do anything to your site.”

He nodded his understanding. My first task was taking down the mess and putting up a temporary page. I still had his logo on a USB so I put it on the page so it wouldn’t look too generic while I worked on the new site. My second task was to change his FTP access. For the host he used that basically amounted to changing his access password so that was quick. I had to get his old password, which he seemed nervous to give me. I told him to type it in and I wouldn’t look. Once he did that I had him type in the new password while I wasn’t looking. My third task was getting started with trying to build the site from scratch. I knew then that it was going to be a long night—very long.

When I’m being creative I love to listen to music. So I pulled out my MP3 and headphones and got started with my work. Of course Arashi didn’t seem really happy about being excluded. He leaned closer to me trying to hear what I was listening to. I guess he got tired of straining his ears because he pulled the headphone away from my ear and leaned closer. Of course the tugging made me lean closer to him.

“I can’t work like this,” I laughed. As nice as it was being close to him I really couldn’t work while leaning halfway out the chair.

“I have an idea,” he said as he pulled my headphones off completely. I turned off the device and watched him go over to some equipment in the corner and then I heard the music. It was really good. I could feel the passion just sitting there listening.

“Wow. I like that.”

“It’s some of my work.”

“You wrote that?”

He nodded. “I played it too.”

“Wow.” I knew he both wrote and played music, but I hadn’t actually heard anything in detail. When Tanaka was in studio and I was there she wanted to play her pieces and record them first so I didn’t get a chance to hear any of Arashi’s pieces. Hina talked about him a lot, but she didn’t play a lot of music when we were together. I know she liked music, but I think she just didn’t live and breathe it like we do.

I looked over at Arashi and smiled. “That’s really good.”

“Thanks.”

“Could you make me a copy? I could play this while I work, workout, drive, shoot pictures—”

“Naked?” He grinned deviously.

I was sure I was blushing by now. “Maybe,” I said bashfully before smiling. “Yes.”

“Hmm,” he groaned. “I’ll burn you two full sets if I get to see the pictures.”

“You’re so easy,” I nodded my agreement. I wanted to tell him I’d let him see the pictures if he’d take his shirt off and model with me, but I couldn’t say that. I wanted him to do it. He has a great body and he’s the only guy I’d feel comfortable doing that kind of shoot with but I couldn’t make my lips form the words to ask.

I could stare at him all day and fall in love with him and his music and that scared me because I couldn’t love this guy. His mother might be nice to me now, but she made it clear from day one that I was not to be a staple in her son’s life. Besides, music was really the only thing he and I had in common. We both loved it more than average and that’s all. Okay, maybe that wasn’t all, but still, we couldn’t be more than friends. Plus, I had a date planned for the next day anyway. This guy is nice. He’s a firefighter. Typically I avoid guys in high risk jobs, but we met at the market and he approached with a respectful confidence that was hard to ignore. I realized when he asked me out that it was time to really get back out there and date; plus the package enticed me to want to go out with him. By package I’m talking his outer shell. He’s gorgeous. He has those beautiful blue eyes that I love, blond hair—I can get past that. I typically like black hair or something dark like it. He’s also tall and I like tall guys. He’s in shape, so that’s another plus. He made me laugh on our first meeting, which is attractive too. So getting to know him could lead to something more.

I thought Arashi would leave the room at some point and spend time with his sister, and his parents who were back up in San Francisco. I noticed they came a lot, but I figured that was because they were all really close. I wondered how it would have been if my parents had shared a strong love for each other. I love them both, but even as a kid I could see the problems in their relationship. Add to that the fact that my siblings had their head up their own butt and I could honestly say I wasn’t sure I believed in familial love—not that storybook kind anyway. And then I met Hina and I saw that even with some problems their family seemed close, loved, and their parents were in love. I couldn’t miss that. I wanted that for myself one day. God it sucked realizing I wanted something I might not ever have. It wasn’t as if I was getting any younger.

I kicked the thoughts out of my head because I was working and having Arashi sitting nearly on top of me was distracting enough. Once I completely focused on my work completely it was like I stepped through the portal and the rest of the world faded before me. I hadn’t even realized Arashi had fallen asleep on the small couch in the corner. I’m not even sure how the man fit on there comfortably but he seemed to be doing just fine.

He had brought me water, tea, juice, whatever I needed while I worked. He had tried to get me to stop for dinner but I was in a groove so he brought me what he called a snack. It was really something like cheese and crackers and fruit, something I could eat while I worked, but I still appreciated his thinking of me.

I worked through the night until I at least got his site operational, professional and still artistically beautiful. It wasn’t as perfect as I wanted it but it would do until I could make additional changes. I didn’t even realize the time until Arashi awakened, and I smelled breakfast cooking too.

“Have you been up all night?” Arashi stretched his arms over his head as he stood up.

“I wanted to get this done for you. I uploaded it so I hope you like it. We can tweak it as we go.” I pulled his site up so he could see the live view. I was glad he still had all of his design programming and that I had the logo and other graphic arts on a USB with me.

“Before I go I’ll show you how to make changes in design mode. I know you already know some of this and the code is expertly put together.” I smiled with pride in my work. “It should be easy to maintain, and I’ll help you whenever I can. I have a few logo designs to do.” Those designs were going to take a lot of work. I yawned and my eyes watered.

“You should have gotten some sleep. My bed is open to you, anytime.”

I shrugged. I worked like this at home—well no, usually I would work from about three in the morning until no later than ten at night. This was an all nighter first for me.

“Get some sleep, Topaz.”

“No, I’m going to show you what you’ll…” I yawned again, “have to do and then I’m…” I yawned and my eyes started leaking more water, “I’m going home.” More yawning followed that.

“Yeah, sure.” Arashi got up marched over to my little XO purse and grabbed my keys, unhooking the carabiner that held them on the XO silver loop. His feet carried him out the room. I got up, swiftly slipped my shoes on, and I went after him.

I watched as Arashi pulled the ignition key off the key ring.

“Arashi,” I huffed. “Give me my keys.”

His family sat at the breakfast bar watching. “Go get some sleep, Topaz.”

“Oh he is right,” Akio said. “You have been up all night, all morning too. It won’t be safe for you to drive home. It’s too far when you haven’t slept.”

“I’m going home. I have work to do and—Arashi!” I watched as my car key drifted to the bottom of the fish tank. That tank was not there when I got here yesterday, but it was now. Fine, I could get my own key.

I marched over, ready to get my key and Arashi caught hold of my wrist and stopped me. I glared up at him.

“My father thought piranha would be a nice addition to this home. I don’t agree, but perhaps they are useful.”

I pulled my wrist free and placed my hand over my stomach. Okay, so maybe I wouldn’t be getting my key back with my bare hands.

“Now,” he placed one hand on my upper arm. “You go sleep in my bed and once you’re rested I’ll get your key out of there. And father will take these fish elsewhere.”

His father laughed. “Ah, I was hoping you would say that. Your mother said if you didn’t want them I could keep them. He doesn’t want them, Natsumi. Therefore I am taking them back to San Diego with us.” He laughed as if he knew that was going to happen and Natsumi rolled her eyes.

Arashi looked at me so seriously yet there was something sweet and soft about his gaze. I could see his concern for me. “I’ll get it out, but I won’t do it before you sleep. Come on.” He moved his hand to my lower back and guided me toward his bedroom. “You sleep now. We will keep the noise down as much as possible.”

I could have kept fighting him on this, but I really was tired. While I didn’t live super far away it was far enough that if I didn’t get some sleep first I could run the risk of falling asleep in the car while driving.