"Can we go eat something?" Domino suggested. "Burgers?"
"Fries!" Billie agreed.
"Grilled cheese," Meg agreed.
"Sounds like the diner down the street, then?" Vero asked. She checked her watch. "11:23pm. We should be fine as far as crowds go."
Vero hadn't meant that they'd have to wait in line for a table. She was talking about paparazzi and fans.
Zoey sometimes got the TMZ-treatment, but going anywhere with one of the biggest pop stars in the country was a dicey move.
"We can go somewhere else, babe," Billie suggested, her hand finding Vero's.
Domino was on her phone. "You'll never believe this. Sabrina just got a regular, weekly segment on Pia Marino's show," she said, bouncing up and down.
Sabrina, Domino's new-ish girlfriend, was a home organizer who had started the promotional rounds for her own personal brand recently. She was Zoey's friend first, but Zoey only rarely rubbed that in.
Zoey could barely even think about that at the moment. She had heard Pia's name again.
Her stomach flipped up and clenched and spun in a very messy pirouette.
"I'm not feeling well, so I'm going to go get some sleep," Zoey said. "You guys have fun, though."
"There's absolutely nothing to be nervous about tomorrow," Billie said, misreading Zoey’s emotions for solely songwriting nerves.
Zoey smiled and nodded. "Yeah, well, I still am a bit," she lied, seeing an out. "I'll see you guys in the morning."
She grabbed her bag and jacket and hurried out of the studio and down the hall, then burst out the front doors of the building.
"Get it the fuck together," Zoey said, trying to give herself a bit of a pep talk. "Get it together."
Maybe it was just nerves for the next day. Maybe she was truly nervous about recording her first personal song with the group. Nevermind that she almost always added lines and changed lyrics in other songs after hearing demos. And nevermind that the song they were recording was about meeting a mysterious person who her soul connected to instantly.
A little dramatic, but even she deserved a bit of poetic license.
Another fear that had been whispering in the back of her mind popped back up. What if someone heard the song and had seen them kiss and leaked that it was about them?
She thought back to the kiss, as she had almost every thirty seconds since it had happened only weeks before.
They had been standing in a dark corner, with no one nearby. People went wild at midnight on New Year's Eve — no one was probably even looking their way.
Right?
She had to believe that, or else she'd never have the courage to record the song.
She was proud of the song. Domino wasn't wrong — it was a gorgeous song. She was excited to record it and release it and show the world that she was more than a pretty face and a keyboard player who stood off to the side of the stage.
Billie and Domino had obviously become the face of The Shrikes, and she was fine with that. After all, they were an Aries and a Leo respectively, so as a Pisces, she never stood a chance of outshining one of them.
But she deserved to shine, too, didn't she?
And 'Midnight' was her chance to do just that.
Chapter Two
May
Pia
Pia stared down at the signed contract. Her mother-in-law had finally agreed to come on the show.
On the anniversary of her wife's death. July 10.
She had largely kept that part of her life out of the spotlight, but of course, people talked. They talked about nothing else when it first happened, but it had largely fallen out of public knowledge in the past five or so years.
And now, on the 10th anniversary of Elle's death, she was going to spotlight it herself. On her own terms. With Sheila. Who she hadn’t talked to since… well, nearly 10 years.
Despite the fact that Sheila was the president of the foundation they had started together… But Pia had stepped away in order to let Sheila run the foundation as she saw fit. They had never gotten along, so Pia wasn’t heartbroken about being a silent donor.
She felt light, staring down at the paper.
She hoped it would bring some closure, but also she hoped that telling Elle's story would keep her alive in some way.
The icy claws of grief no longer threatened to rip her heart out whenever she thought of Elle, but she still woke up most nights in a cold sweat, expecting to reach over and find Elle there.
Lifeless beside her.
She shook her head to clear the thought.
Her phone dinged. It was her best friend, Freya.
Freya: Did she sign it?
Pia: Yep. In my hands now.
Freya: Wow, big! You excited?
Pia: Nervous, mostly. Want to grab a glass of wine tonight and you can talk me off the ledge of cancelling it?
Freya: 8pm at Postino’s.
Pia smiled to herself, then texted Mark, her assistant, to let him know to make a reservation.
Kelly, one of her producers, poked her head into Pia's office. "We need to film a few intros, can we get you into makeup in five?"
Pia nodded, yawning. "Can I get like seven more coffees before we do that?"
"How about one?" Kelly said, rolling her eyes. She tapped on her headset. "Coffee cart emergency. The Eagle is tired."
Pia rolled her eyes. "I hate it when you call me that," she said. She hopped out of her chair. "I'm not the president."
"Oh, speaking of people I wish were president, Oprah's people called and we're rescheduling her appearance. We're shuffling some things around, but it should be fine. She sends her apologies," Kelly said.
Pia blinked, realizing for a moment that she was the host of a talk show that interviewed Oprah.
She had always been afraid of having made it. Of peaking. Of it all being downhill from there.
And now, at 45-years-old, she was thinking that might be true.
Most people she knew would buy a Porsche and get a younger girlfriend. Not a terrible idea.
“Do you think I should buy a Porsche?” Pia asked.
“Please don’t. That’s a slippery slope,” Kelly said.
“A slippery slope to where?”
Her cell dinged.
“Insisting everyone call you P-Dogg,” Kelly said with a sigh.
“I don’t hate that as long as Dogg has two Gs,” Pia joked.
“You should settle for nothing less,” Kelly said, nodding.
The text was from Sabrina, a woman who had guested on the show with an organizing segment. She loved Sabrina's enthusiasm, and her audience loved that Sabrina had silly phrases. On the last segment she had cracked Pia up by dropping a tin full of coffee on the ground and yelling, "Oh, fishsticks!" instead of cursing.
She had officially booked her for recurring segments back in February.
Pia thought she saw a meme of it somewhere.
Sabrina: Did you just cancel The Shrikes performance?
Pia raised an eyebrow, looking up at Kelly as they walked down the hall to makeup.
"Who are you shuffling for Oprah?" Pia asked.
Kelly glanced down at her clipboard. "The Shrikes and Gwenyth."