A Song for Julia

didn’t say that I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to go to graduate school. Or into the Foreign Service, which is what he’d long expected of me. It was just assumed. I would go to Fletcher. Carrie and Alexandra would go to law school. The twins—who knew? At six, their lives weren’t fully under control yet. But that would come.
    My mother gave me a long, speculative look, as if she knew what I was thinking.
    To be honest, I was starting to get overwhelmed in here with three kids under six bouncing on my bed, a preteen, a teenager, me and both of my parents. My room was spacious, but not enough for eight people.
    Then my cell phone rang. It was on the desk, and rang and vibrated at the same time, buzzing and slightly moving across the surface of the desk.
    “Oh, dear,” my mother said. “I hate those things.”
    “Let me grab that,” I said, reaching for the phone. I flipped it open and answered, “Hello!”
    “Are you alone?” Crank asked, his voice heavy, almost a growl.
    “Hey there,” I said. “No, actually my family just arrived.”
    I realized that not only was my room crowded with two parents, the twins, a four-year-old, a twelve-year-old and my seventeen-year-old sister, but they were managing to block any exit from around the bed, and they were all watching me as I talked on the phone.
    “Can’t really talk right now, guests, you know?”
    “All right,” he said. “I’ll be sitting here alone. Imagining you without your clothes.”
    I felt the blood rush to my head. My face and neck grew hot, even though I knew … or at least hoped … my parents couldn’t hear what he was saying. I’m fairly certain, however, that my face telegraphed some of it, because Carrie grinned at me, my father looked away, and my mother’s expression became grim. I turned away, toward the window, feeling almost naked.
    I found myself hoping one of the twins would start bouncing again, or do something else to catch my parents’ attention. Maybe Sarah would break something?
    “That sounds great,” I said, keeping my voice quiet. “I’ll see you in the morning?”
    “Only one question: did you talk to Murray?”
    “I did … or rather his assistant, Terry Woolard. We’re having lunch next week to hammer out details.”
    “So, no deal yet?”
    “No, not yet. We’re going to have some negotiating to do.”
    “They made an offer, though?”
    “Yes. But very low. I’ll fill you in on all the details later, but I’ve got to go now.”
    “All right. Tomorrow,” he said.
    “Bye,” I said.
    “Bye,” he replied.
    I didn’t want to hang up the phone, but I did. Slowly. I snapped the phone closed and turned around to face my family. “So … let’s go?”

    Too good for you (Crank)
    What do you do when there’s absolutely nothing you can do? I desperately wanted to call Julia back. Get all the details of her conversation with Murray’s assistant, every nuance of the conversation. What exactly did he offer? What did she mean by ‘we have some negotiating to do’?
    I paced in my room in circles, frustrated as hell. Lunch next week? Why the hell was it going to take that long to hammer out a deal? I could go insane in a week.
    Finally, agitated, I went downstairs to the studio and sat down in front of the keyboard. I’d been wrestling with the same song for nearly two weeks. Something just wasn’t working, and I hadn’t been able to even get started on anything else while this was still stuck in my head, there, but not quite there. I’d tried twenty different arrangements, but they all came down to the same thing. I needed four hands on that keyboard for this song to work.
    Frustrating. I was stuck.
    “Something’s missing.” Serena spoke the words from the bottom of the stairs. I’d been so occupied, playing through the chorus over and over again, that I didn’t notice her come down.
    “Yeah, I know,” I said.
    “It’s almost there,” she responded. She was wearing a tight tank top with spaghetti straps and white capris. Enough to inspire lust in anyone, but she was safe with me. The band was more important, always had been. And now … Julia. That changed everything. Except maybe it didn’t, because the only thing Julia would commit to was confusing the hell out of me.
    That didn’t mean I couldn’t look.
    “What did you think of Julia?” I asked. Okay. That might have been a little passive-aggressive on my part.
    Serena gave me a sour look. “You’re all tied up in her,