A Summer Soundtrack for Falling in Love Read online

  Riptide Publishing

  PO Box 1537

  Burnsville, NC 28714

  www.riptidepublishing.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All person(s) depicted on the cover are model(s) used for illustrative purposes only.

  A Summer Soundtrack for Falling in Love

  Copyright © 2018 by Arden Powell

  Cover art: Shayne Leighton, parliamentbookdesign.wordpress.com

  Editor: Carole-ann Galloway

  Layout: L.C. Chase, lcchase.com/design.htm

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Riptide Publishing at the mailing address above, at Riptidepublishing.com, or at [email protected].

  ISBN: 978-1-62649-852-5

  First edition

  October, 2018

  Also available in paperback:

  ISBN: 978-1-62649-853-2

  ABOUT THE EBOOK YOU HAVE PURCHASED:

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  When Kris Golding leaves his dusty Kansas hometown for a fresh start in New York, he thinks an apartment and a job are waiting for him. But when he finds neither, rather than admit defeat, he takes his chances busking—and meets Rayne Bakshi of international rock band The Chokecherries. Rayne needs a new guitarist, and gives Kris his first break since leaving home.

  Rayne wears makeup and glitter and thinks nothing of kissing Kris in front of twenty thousand screaming fans for the attention. Instantly infatuated, Kris begins to question whether he might have a crush on Rayne—could he be bisexual? But since Kris originally claimed to be straight, Rayne’s wary of getting involved offstage.

  As their tour gains momentum, Kris’s sexuality becomes the least of his troubles. Between his conservative brother hell-bent on “rescuing” him from his life of debauchery, a peacock that may or may not be the avatar of a cult god, and a publicity stunt that threatens to upend the band, Kris is definitely not in Kansas anymore.

  For all the bands I’ve ever loved.

  About A Summer Soundtrack for Falling in Love

  Tour Schedule

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Dear Reader

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Arden Powell

  About the Author

  More like this

  June 12: Hershey, PA—Hersheypark Stadium

  June 13: Camden, NJ—BB&T Pavilion

  June 14: Newark, NJ—Prudential Center

  June 15: Charlottesville, VA—John Paul Jones Arena

  June 17: Grand Rapids, MI—Van Andel Arena

  June 18: Indianapolis, IN—Bankers Life Fieldhouse

  June 20: Orlando, FL—Amway Center

  June 21: Sunrise, FL—BB&T Center

  June 22: Tampa, FL—Amalie Arena

  June 23: Birmingham, AL—Legacy Arena

  June 24: New Orleans, LA—Smoothie King Center

  June 25: Dallas, TX—American Airlines Center

  June 26: The Woodlands, TX—Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion

  June 27: Austin, TX—Austin360 Amphitheater

  June 29: Phoenix, AZ—Talking Stick Resort Arena

  June 30: Salt Lake City, UT—Vivint Smart Home Arena

  July 1-6: Purple Sage Music Fest, NV

  Kris Golding wasn’t the kind of person to fly across the country without a plan. His was foolproof, or at least fool resistant—but, like most plans, was quickly crushed by circumstances outside his control. When his plane took off from Kansas, he was content in the knowledge that he had a job and a couch, if not an apartment, waiting for him. By the time he touched down in New York, everything had gone terribly wrong.

  “What do you mean she kicked you out?” he asked his cousin as patiently as he could. The cell connection was choppy as he stepped off the bus in Manhattan after two hours on public transport.

  “Well it’s her place, right?” Marty said, his voice wheedling over the line. “It’s her name on the lease. So when she found out about me and Maria, she called it quits. Threw all my stuff out in a garbage bag on the street.”

  “Wait, who’s Maria?”

  “Somebody I work with at the club.”

  “The club where you said you had a job lined up for me,” Kris clarified.

  “Yeah, man, but I got fired today.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Cuz Maria, she’s the owner’s girl—”

  Kris held the phone away from his ear to keep from throwing it into traffic. He took a deep breath before returning it to hearing range.

  “So I don’t have a job,” he said, cutting off whatever his cousin had been saying. “And your boss won’t introduce me to his music-industry guys.”

  “I’m sorry, man, the timing, it’s just—”

  “And I don’t have a place to stay.”

  Marty made a helpless noise.

  “Great. That’s amazing. Thanks.”

  “Hey, I’m in the same boat, okay? You could be a little more sympathetic.”

  Kris ended the call and shoved his phone back into his pocket.

  “Well fuck,” he said, to no one in particular. He slung his duffel bag of worldly goods over his shoulder, his guitar case secure on his back, and set off into the streets of New York to figure out what to do next.

  The misfortune of his situation didn’t detract from New York’s beauty, even as his nerves started to gnaw at him. The whole city looked glittering and pulsing with possibility—the place where dreams came true. The buildings loomed high, scraping the clouds in endless panels of polished glass. Sure, everything was huge and impressively daunting, but Kris hadn’t come all the way out here to admit defeat, no matter how intimidating the city proved.

  He had two hundred dollars in his bank account and a pocketful of loose change. It was barely enough to buy a plane ticket home, but his parents would spring him one if he asked. He would work in his dad’s garage to pay them back, and he’d have to keep
his tail between his legs for the rest of his life because the one time he’d tried to get out and make something of himself, he’d come crawling back barely six hours later. His parents could be as supportive as they liked, but it wouldn’t change the fact that he’d tried and failed. And then there was his brother, Brad, who had told him New York was a bad idea.

  “What’s wrong with Kansas?” Brad had demanded. “You can make an honest living here. All those big-shot music-industry guys you look up to, they’ve never done a real day’s work in their lives. There’s nothing but freaks in that line of work, Kris. You’re better off steering clear.”

  Kris couldn’t bear Brad’s smug face if he went back defeated.

  If he had to be homeless, at least the weather was good. The June air was warm, the bits of sky he could see between the buildings were blue, and the sun was aggressively bright, like it had something to prove. There were a few hours left before sunset, and even if it cooled down overnight, he had a coat in his bag. He could weather it. He had enough money to stay at a hostel, but only for a night, and he was loath to spend more than he had to. Two hundred dollars and change wouldn’t stretch far. No, he would sleep on a bench, and scour the streets for any hiring signs. He could work retail or fast food; he could find a shelter or a friendly couch to crash on until he’d saved enough for a place of his own. He wasn’t going to wind up freezing to death on a street corner, gnawed on by rats, as soon as the season changed. He was going to get a job, and he would be fine.

  It wasn’t a great plan, but it was something.

  He started walking.

  One problem in applying for jobs was that they wanted an address on the application form. The bigger stores did background checks Kris couldn’t pass without a permanent residence, and if they didn’t, they weren’t hiring anyway. The smaller shops didn’t offer more than a few hours a week, and unless he wanted to juggle three conflicting schedules, he’d never make enough to feed himself, let alone get an apartment. His desperation mounted as store after store turned him away, leaving his stomach a knot of anxiety and his palms itching with sweat.

  He ended up on a bench at the edge of Central Park watching the pigeons. They were fearless in the way rural birds never were, flashing their colors and strutting back and forth. They quickly determined that he had nothing of value to offer, and ignored him in favor of accosting passing pedestrians for crumbs. Rejected by one of the lowest of the city’s inhabitants—though a step up from the rats—Kris again weighed his options.

  He still couldn’t go home.

  Instead, he texted his parents to tell them he’d landed safely, and he’d call them in a few days once he got settled. He was safe, after all; he might be close to panic, but they didn’t have to be. He was an adult and he could look after himself. In theory, anyway. He had a bottle of water from the plane, an apple, and a granola bar. His nerves were like a guitar string wound up too tight and liable to snap at any second, and that put a damper on his appetite; what he had would last him till morning.

  He settled in for a night on the bench. It wasn’t the most comfortable place he’d ever been, but he couldn’t say it was the worst, either. He didn’t want to lie down in case someone recognized him for a vagrant and called the cops. If he looked like he was just resting a moment, or waiting for someone, he should be fine. He was dressed well enough. No one could tell that he didn’t have anywhere else to go.

  He crunched through his apple, more for something to do than out of hunger. It tasted sour, but it kept him awake. The sky slipped into pink as the sun sank behind the buildings, lighting them up in a warm glow as it passed. Kris couldn’t hate the city. He had chosen New York partly because his cousin was here—working for a guy who had so many connections in the music industry that Marty had sworn he could set Kris up with a gig in no time—but mostly because it was as far from rural Kansas as he could imagine. He loved his parents and he loved his town, but it had been stifling. He didn’t want to work in his dad’s garage until he was sixty. He might not know exactly what he did want to do with his life, but he was determined to find out.

  So far he was finding out that park benches were uncomfortable, and city pigeons were more intimidating than any bird had the right to be.

  As the sun went down and the crowds thinned, Kris wrapped himself in his coat and prepared for a long night. The smaller shops locked up for the night as the streets finally emptied. The moon blinked out between the buildings but the stars stayed hidden behind the haze of clouds and the solid blocks of skyscrapers. He paced for a bit, exploring the park with a measured gait, his hands in his pockets as he tried to keep his blood moving. When he couldn’t stop his feet from dragging or his eyes from closing, he found another bench and huddled down to roost again.

  It didn’t get cold, exactly, but it got cool, and the hours dragged into eternity and back. He drifted off once or twice, but the park was never fully deserted and he didn’t trust that he’d wake up to find his bags still on him. He wouldn’t particularly miss his clothes if the duffel bag got stolen, but his guitar—he couldn’t bear the thought of losing that, even if Marty had lost him his chance at a career with it.

  He watched the sun rise from the wrong side of the morning for the first time since he was a teenager. The sky lightened in strips: silver, then pale yellow, before making room for blue. The pigeons cooed and rustled their wings, waking one by one and then all at once, and the subways rumbled underground, a constant churning noise. Straightening, he stretched his back until it gave a satisfying crack, and shuffled to his feet. The coffee he bought from a street vendor was black and bitter, and he was ready to shoot the caffeine straight into his veins if he had to. He was tired in a way that made everything feel thin and slightly unreal, like the world was hidden behind a film he could see through, but couldn’t quite part.

  After his first swallow, he crossed out of the park to the nearest café, busy enough in the morning rush that he could slip into the washroom unnoticed. As he splashed cold water over his face, he hoped he didn’t look too haggard. He could stretch it another day before needing to shave; his stubble always took a while to show through, and he was fair enough that it never gave him much of a five-o’clock shadow anyway. Coffee in hand, he returned to his bench, sipping the drink and trying to make it last.

  Today he would find somewhere to work. Twenty hours a week in retail might not be his dream of making a living off his music, but it would be better than nothing. He wasn’t going to sleep on the bench again.

  The pigeons looked skeptical.

  He flipped them off and resumed drinking his coffee. The caffeine hit him like a ton of bricks, slamming into him all at once and setting his heart kicking behind his ribs. He took a deep breath and flexed his fingers. It was a drastic way to start the morning, but he was definitely awake now. The film separating him from reality peeled back and left him blinking into the sun like a newborn fawn, all wobbly-legged and uncertain.

  Find a job, he told himself. Take the first one you can. This isn’t rock-bottom. This isn’t even close.

  All he had to do was wait for the stores to come back to life. Most would probably open around nine—it was just past dawn. He had a few hours to kill. The coffee place across the road wasn’t hiring, but maybe he could find a record shop or a music store that needed help.

  He took out his guitar.

  He couldn’t say why he did it. There was no conscious thought behind the action. It was like the hand of some divine entity had reached down from the clouds and prodded him, right between the eyes, and said, Hey, you. Play me something. Music had always been like that for him, talking to him the way gods spoke to prophets: in the pure, undiluted language of the universe.

  His guitar was a big acoustic thing, the wood polished until it glowed warm and gold. He’d bought it from a pawnshop for fifty bucks when he was thirteen; it had taken him all year to save up his allowances for it. In high school, he’d used to dream about his band making it big and p
laying in Madison Square Garden. It had been a couple of guys from his year and his little sister on drums. It fell apart before graduation and he’d put that particular dream aside, but he’d thought he could try his hand as a session musician, if nothing else. All he needed was one lucky break to get his foot in the door. He wouldn’t call himself a prodigy, but he was good, and even if he’d never left Kansas to seek his fortune in the industry, he would have kept playing for himself.

  As he tuned his guitar by ear, he ghosted his fingers over the frets, and gave it a strum. The chords rang out clear and true, and he drew in a deep breath as his nerves started to knit themselves together again.

  Back home he had played in front of live audiences, albeit small ones—barbeques or house parties or just sitting out on the porch with his family in the summer evenings, strumming out chords overtop of the crickets. He had never busked before, though; his hometown was too small for it, and he’d never been as desperate for quick money as he was now. Easing into a bluegrass riff, half-remembered and half-invented, he kept his eyes down as he played. The song petered out after a few minutes, finding its natural ending like bluegrass always did, and he let the city eke back into his consciousness.

  Someone tossed a crumpled bill into the case at his feet, and he smiled reflexively at the young woman who vanished back into the crowded street. He took a swig from his coffee and adjusted the guitar in his lap. Maybe one more song wouldn’t hurt. One more song, and then he would start looking for music shops in the area.

  By 9 a.m. he had thirty dollars in his case and a steady stream of attention from the park’s passersby. By ten he had as much as he would have made from a day’s work at any minimum-wage gig. His fingers ached and he was so hungry his stomach nearly drowned out the music with its complaints, but no one had yelled at him for loitering, and the pigeons hadn’t tried to make away with his money. He couldn’t stop smiling.

  He laid his guitar down in the nest of bills and loose coins and closed his case. The little gathering he’d attracted gradually wandered off, one or two people pressing a last offering into his hand as they left. It was only when the path was clear that he noticed the one man who had yet to depart, leaning against the broad trunk of a tree, his arms crossed as he watched Kris unabashedly.