Page 71 of The Heartbreakers
I hesitated when I reached Alec’s door. He was a hard person to gauge, and I didn’t know if he’d even be willing to talk to me. I twisted my nose stud around a few times before taking a deep breath and knocking on the door. There was no answer, but the light was on and I could hear someone moving around inside.
“Alec?” I called, knocking again. I bet he had his headphones in and couldn’t even hear me. After a moment of silent debate, I twisted the doorknob and poked my head in. Sure enough, Alec was pacing the room, buds in his ears. “Sorry,” I said, when he turned to me. “I knocked, but you didn’t answer.”
“Hi, Stella,” he said, and I took that as an invitation to come in.
“What’s going on?” I asked, not beating around the bush. As the question left my lips, a million more came forward. “I mean, with the band. Why were JJ and Oliver so mad at each other? Is the label making you do something you don’t like?”
Alec turned toward the window and fixed his gaze on the city outside. “It’s kind of a long story.”
“I don’t have anywhere else to be,” I said, which wasn’t entirely true. My latest blog post was almost due, but I still had some time. I needed to hear what Alec was going to say.
“All right,” he said, breathing a long sigh; it wasn’t one of exasperation, but of weariness. He gestured toward the bed. “Do you want to sit?”
Nodding, I tucked a leg under my butt as I plopped down. Alec sat next to me, but instead of diving into the story like I thought he would, he pulled his headphones from his neck. Without a word, he handed them to me.
Curious, I stuffed one of the buds into my ear. It was silent as Alec searched for something on his iPod, but then he clicked a button and a song started to play. It was grungier than the music I usually listened to, but the feedback effect with the song’s slow tempo and gruff vocalist worked well together. My eyes closed as I enjoyed the rest of the song. There was something strange about it—I knew I’d never heard it before, and yet I had.
When the music faded out, I handed the headphones back to Alec. “It was good. Who is it?”
“Infinity and Beyond,” Alec said, watching me closely.
“Bull,” I said, but I knew he wasn’t lying. It was Oliver’s voice that I recognized. Without the backdrop of a sickly sweet melody, his voice opened up, the sound throatier and layered with edge.
“This is one of their old songs,” he said. “Before we were the Heartbreakers.”
“They were so good,” I said.Whathappened?I almost asked, but I didn’t want to insult Alec. I carefully worded what I asked next: “Why’d they change?”
Alec ignored my question and chose to respond with another. “Did anyone ever tell you how this all happened?” he asked, waving his hand around.
“You mean the band?” I responded. “Yeah, Oliver did. Isn’t your dad the CEO of Mongo Records?”
He nodded. “Yeah, and he didn’t want me to be a musician.” Oliver had told me that too, but I wasn’t going to interrupt Alec’s story. “And he definitely didn’t want to sign me.”
“Why not?”
“Ever heard of Jackson Williams before?” he asked, and I shook my head. “Not surprised. He was a one-hit wonder. My dad took him on a few years after he started the record label. He helped Jackson produce his first single. It did really well, but then Jackson wanted to do his own thing, take his music in a completely different direction.”
“So what happened?”
“My dad let him because he’s family. Jackson is my cousin, his nephew. When the record flopped, my dad blamed himself.”
I frowned. “It was just one record, right? That happens to artists all the time.”
“Yeah, but this…” Alec said, shaking his head, “this one was bad. Like destroyed-his-career bad.”
I suddenly realized where he was going with this. “And he didn’t want that to happen to you.”
Alec nodded. “He wouldn’t even take a chance.” His eyes flashed with a rage so fierce that I leaned away—not because I was scared, but because I’d never seen such raw emotion from him before—but Alec clenched his fists, reining in his anger, and it passed as quickly as it appeared. “I was good,reallygood, and he wouldn’t even listen.”
I pursed my lips as a growing annoyance for Alec’s father built inside of me. “What’d you do?”
“I wasn’t willing to let it go,” he said. “I told myself there were other labels, different producers, more chances for me, but nothing seemed to work out. Nobody wanted to take on a kid whose own dad didn’t believe in him. That’s when I found Oliver, JJ, and Xander. It was totally by accident. I was just surfing YouTube, watching music videos and stuff, and then I came across this band. They were sick, and I knew my dad would want them, so I emailed Oliver saying I could get them a meeting, but only if they let me join.”
“You were right,” I said, and for the first time since Alec started his story, a smile spread across my face. “Your dad liked them.”
“He still hated the idea of my involvement, but eventually he agreed to sign them, me included. Of course, there was a catch—we had to agree to a whole list of conditions.”
I’d gathered as much from past conversations with Oliver and his fights with JJ, but I wanted to know all the details. “Like what?”
