Page 18 of So This Is Love

The DJ transitions into a classic hype song and the crowd goes crazy, the energy in the building electric. Behind me my friends are taking another round of shots. Some of them are from Chicago, some that flew out from LA, but for the most part everyone is getting along which is no small feat when you bring different friend groups together. I slipped away from the group to take in this moment alone, to just soak in this success that is so foreign from what I’m used to. Foreign altogether, these past few years.

A hand slips around my bicep and a warm body presses into me. Essence looks up at me. Essence entered the music scene a few years ago, right around the time when I didn’t resign my contract with the label. She dropped hit after hit and quickly gained success. I wouldn’t say that we’re friends but the industry is small, we’re in the same circle.

“What’s got you over here all by yourself?” Essence asks.

Her close proximity to me allows me to hear her over my friends singing and rapping along to the song in our section.

“Just taking a minute to take it all in.”

“It’s a pretty great space. You did a good job.”

“Thank you,” I say. “I had a lot of help though so I can’t take all the credit.”

“You’ve been a hard man to get a hold of, lately.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“My manager has been trying to contact yours but he’s been getting the run around. And then you up and left LA, so its not like you’ve been around.”

“What is this about?”

“I think we’d be good together,” she says, her voice low and suggestive. “On a song I mean.”

I don’t miss the double meaning in her statement. The sultry gaze she gives me while still wrapped against my arm makes it apparent but I don’t engage. I don’t want a fling right now, thelack of emotional attachment hasn’t been appealing to me for a while now. Not saying that I haven’t engaged in them when that itch is too much for me and my hand to solve on my own. But one woman has been on my mind since I ran into her again after years and that woman isn’t Essence.

“I’m not releasing music right now Essence. You know that.”

“I know,” she replies, shifting closer into me. “But I just thought you might change your mind if I asked you myself.”

Over her head I see three figures coming up the stairs, Tristan first and then two women behind him. I saw Tristan earlier in the night and can tell it's him but the women’s faces are shadowed from the low light and distance. They don’t walk in my direction, the opposite actually as Tristan leads them towards the booth that he reserved for himself. The woman in the back turns her head to the side, looking around upstairs, and recognition hits.

“Sonny?” Essence says, trying to get my attention.

“What?” I ask, taking my eyes off Laila to look at her.

“I said that I have a song that I would love for you to be on. But your manager keeps shutting mine down without even sending you the demo.”

I slide my arm out of Essence’s grasp and step back away from her.

“I appreciate it Essence, but the answer is still no. Excuse me.”

I step away from the railing and Essence, wholly uninterested in whatever she was trying to say to me.

On three separate occasions Laila and I have run into each other without any planning from either of us. I’m not usually a guy that subscribes to the idea of fate or something being meant to be, but I also don’t believe that these situations are all just by happenstance anymore either.

One time is chance.

Two times is coincidence.

Three times is …

I’m not sure of the last word for that saying but unintentionally running into Laila is something that I don’t want to just let pass. So I follow this unexplainable pull that I have to this woman and make my way over to where she sits in the booth with Tristan and her friend that I now see is the same friend that I saw on her Instagram.

I slide into the booth next to Tristan, setting my glass down on the table.

“What are you doing here?” Laila says, a scowl on her face when she sees that it’s me.

“I could ask you the same thing,” I reply, locking eyes with her. We hold each other's gaze for a long moment. I want to reach out and smooth her scrunched eyebrows but I don’t, instead I take a sip from my glass before setting it back down on the table.

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