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Logline
Sparks fly between a spontaneous singer-songwriter Angie and a by-the-book engineer Mike after a one-night stand, but when Angie gets an opportunity to go on tour with a popular rock band, they're forced to figure out if a spark will be enough to light the flames of something more, or if Mike's desire for perfection and Angie's seize-the-day mentality will fizzle it out.
Blurb
After her performance at a Friendsgiving bash, ambitious singer-songwriter Angie can't take her eyes (and hands) off Mike. The most erotic handshake in Angie's twenty-three years of life leads to an evening full of heated conversations and to an even more heated night. Angie's rule is to live in the moment, and she is eager to get lost in the magic Mike wields over her.
Mike, a structural engineer by day and martial artist by night, is the perfect son, brother, colleague, and friend. He'd like to add a title of a perfect husband to the list, but that would take too much of his time and energy. One-night stands are not for him until Angie shatters the mold he's been stuck in for twenty-four years and sends him questioning what the f he's doing with his life.
Mike's all in, ready to forget his job, and himself to be with the woman he's never dreamed of when Angie receives the offer to open for a popular rock group on their US tour, a break she's been working toward for years. She screams yes even though her connection with Mike tugs on her to stay in Chicago.
Can one night together be enough to sustain months apart?
First 1,000 Words
(Thursday, November 26th, 2017 Chicago, IL)
(ANGIE)
If it weren't for my doctor's—rather exaggerated, in my opinion—insistence that I give my hand a rest, I would've been playing at my third outdoor festival in California this month. If it weren't for my planned three-day trip to perform at the event, my parents wouldn't have left for a Caribbean cruise to avoid feeling like empty nesters. If not for their absence, I wouldn't have been alone in Chicago for Thanksgiving for the first time in my life. If not for my roommate Amelie's plea to do her a favor and join tonight's entertainment, I wouldn't have been in this luxury downtown apartment at Amelie's boyfriend's parents' Friendsgiving Bash. And if not for all of that, I wouldn't have been right here having the longest handshake in the history of humankind with this gorgeous man, who must be a Greek God come to life.
"I'm Mike, by the way." His deep baritone is low and commanding. Is it closer to a cello or a bass? Mike's dark-brown eyes ignite a fiery craving in my stomach. I escape his gaze by moving mine to the V of his neck muscles leading to the unbuttoned collar of his denim shirt. His darkly stubbled jaw lowers as if he's about to say something, and I long to hear more of his voice to find the right spot for him in the orchestra in my head.
His bearpaw-hand dwarfs my average-sized one, and believe me, I have wished for my hands to be freakishly large and grant me the ability to cover more than an octave on the piano. As a teenager, when other girls wished for bigger boobs, my secret hope was for my hands to hit a growth spurt and transform into Rachmaninov's big ones with long fingers. How would I fly through his challenging pieces, my average-sized hands otherwise struggled to play.
Mike doesn't let go. I squeeze-shake what has become a hot charged tangle of fingers enough to send oodles of pheromones through the palpable connection that has formed between our bodies. I have to learn more than his name. His thumb grazes my palm, and a wave of passion mixed with reckless abandon swells in me.
"Ben's friend," he says, as if his explanation would rationalize the chemical reaction between our bodies. As if it would justify the way his pupils dilate as I rake his face for clues. As if I'm not the only one relishing the surge that's escalating between us. As if Mike knowing Amelie's boyfriend is a perfectly logical reason why he doesn't let go of my hand either. As if his friendship with Ben can stop us from turning this into the most obscene handshake of my life.
"Follow me, Angie," says Ben. He might be the one person in the room oblivious to the silent conversation between me and his friend. Although Ben succeeds in breaking our contact and leads me into the depths of the palatial apartment to meet the rest of the musicians, it's like an invisible string is now in place between Mike and me. As I leave the room, it doesn't break, but grows longer, transmitting the attraction I want more of.
"This way." Ben brings me into what looks like a home office, with a view of downtown Chicago spreading before us like a page of a photo calendar.
"My young people," says Ben's mom, Marguerite. Delight written all over her face, she gives me an air-kiss, her silvery bob moving like a sleek curtain between us, and ushers me into the room. Ben's parents have been hosting the Friendsgiving Bash for years for their friends who have no family to spend the day with, and now that Ben and Am are officially together and for once I'm one of the people who has no family to spend Thanksgiving with, I got the invite as well.
Guests bring food and provide entertainment, and as there are several musicians at the Bash this year, Marguerite came up with a brilliant idea for a mini concert. She asked us to select pieces from classical or contemporary music and combined the musicians attending the party into groups to perform together. The fifteen people in the audience will get to hear us after one or two partial run-throughs, which guarantees loads of imperfections, but who cares. None of us could pass up such an artistic collaboration, and I can't wait to hear what we can create.
"Come on in." Marguerite leaves my side and waves more people with instruments into her impromptu rehearsal studio.
Music has always been part of me, like a constant companion. I've heard it every night since I can remember. It was in the pounding of my heart, in the swirling of the fan above my bed, in the wind of the trees beyond the windows of my bedroom. Around six, at a playdate, I touched the piano for the first time. I was in my Aladdin phase. I pushed the mysterious keys of the giant baby grand in the open living room of my friend's house and found the right sounds to match the melody in my head.
"A whole new world," I whispered as my index finger played the tune.
At the urging of my friend's mom, a piano teacher, I started coming over every week to take classes and then to play with my friend. From that moment on, the piano was my joy, a treat, and something to look forward to. At nine, I became the prodigy. who was destined to play at Carnegie Hall. At twelve, I was the rising star on the competition circuit. At seventeen, I was auditioning for Julliard. At eighteen, my parents, crying and hugging me for the hundredth time, dropped me off in New York to study at that very prestigious institution.
"Hi, everyone." I wave at the five people gathered in a circle around me, eying a raven-haired woman in her thirties with a guitar over her shoulder, who I'm certain I've seen before, but can't place. A guitarist wasn't on the list of musicians Ben sent me.
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