#eaglone

Now that the high of the invitation had worn off, Ashley questioned whether she should have been so eager to agree. She'd been staring at a blank page in her journal for over an hour, and nothing had come to mind yet. Nothing had come to mind for the past two weeks, and so far, her journal was filled with rejected lyrics crossed out in annoyance. She was supposed to have something to show soon for Luis and the film's composer, so they could confirm that they liked the direction of her song before recording could fully proceed.

She couldn't show up with trash. They expected a masterpiece from the popular Ashley Graham.

At 20-years-old, Ashley Graham had been a household name in the rock-pop music scene since she was 15. Discovered by a talent agent during a performance at her local coffee shop—just her and her acoustic guitar—Ashley's rise to stardom was rapid. She already had 3 studio albums under her belt, with a fourth on the way, and all three were certified platinum. 85% of her music was written by her (no matter what the gossip magazines or radio hosts liked to claim). Each tour she did always sold out. She started guest starring on popular TV shows two years ago, and made her film debut last year playing the daughter of Angelina Jolie's character. The movie was a box-office hit.

Ashley was at the top, and there were still more places for her to reach.

Except if she couldn't think of a song worthy of Luis Serra, her career might be over before her next birthday.

"Of all the times to have writer's block!" she yelled. One of her platinum records shook on the wall, and she thought she heard a string pop from her vintage Gibson Les Paul.

Her studio was a mess—there was crumpled paper, empty ink pens, trash bags she'd yet to take out, random records scattered about, and instruments lying out instead of in their proper spots. It was not the type of atmosphere to inspire creativity. Ashley's head slumped to the table, its cold surface cooling down her hot cheeks. Maybe she needed to take a spontaneous trip overseas to clear her head and find inspiration. That was the advice her mother always gave. Ashley thought her mom just wanted an excuse to go on a (free) vacation with her.

Two quick knocks, followed by a third knock seconds later, sounded on the door. Ashley grumbled a reply, then heard heavy boots walking and a rustling bag. The person stopped beside her.

"You good?" a familiar voice asked. Ashley grunted, then sat up, blowing hair out of her face.

Her bodyguard of 3 years, Leon Kennedy, held up a take-out bag from Ashley's favorite restaurant.

"Lovely," she said at the same moment her stomach growled. She had accidentally skipped breakfast again, and today's lunch consisted of a mere butter croissant she picked up from a grocery store on her way to the studio. She dug her Sidekick out of her jeans pocket and slid open the screen to see four unread texts (one from Leon, one from her dad, and two from her manager) and that it was way past dinnertime. Whoops. "I'm starving."

"Funny how that happens when you coop yourself up all day and don't eat properly." It stung a little, but Ashley knew he only said it because he worried about her health. He was a bodyguard for another singer before her, someone a few years older who was sadly no longer performing, and the things he saw happen to their health made him ill. He didn't want that for Ashley.

"I know, I know. You know how I get," she said. She cleared off some space on the table for him to unwrap the food, then grabbed two cans of pop from the mini fridge in the corner of the room. The chilled air hit her wrists, and a line of lyrics popped into her head that she ended up scoffing at. Ugh, no. It didn't fit the tone of Luis' film at all.

Ashley shut the mini fridge with her heel and headed back to the table. Leon had everything set out and placed Ashley's utensils neatly on top of a napkin. She used to tease him about it. It seemed oddly proper for someone like him, but that was how he was. He did it each time he brought food for her, and each time it made Ashley smile.

Leon waited until Ashley had both cheeks filled with food before asking her a question. "Any luck on the song?" She stopped mid-chew to glare, and he had the nerve to arch a brow like he hadn't done anything.

She took her time to finish chewing and swallowing. "I'd be demanding a celebratory drink if I had made any progress on it."

"You're not old enough to drink," Leon said, a little too seriously. As if he didn't know what she got up to at her friends' houses. Ashley had drunk alcohol in front of him a few times.

"My birthday is in 3 months; it doesn't matter," she sighed. "Besides, tell that to those studio musicians who keep asking me out to the bars."

Leon paused, holding his drink mid-air. If Ashley hadn't spent the past 3 years secretly drawing his face in the margins of her notebooks, she might not have noticed the slight muscle twitch in his jaw. "They're bothering you, too?"

"No, I was just saying. Trust me, you've scared them plenty."

Her tone made it seem like she was annoyed, but Ashley wasn't. She'd heard horror stories about other younger singers whose bodyguards turned a blind eye to certain activities, or took advantage and joined in on them. She felt lucky with Leon. He did his job of protecting her and looking out for her without acting like a third parent. Unlike some of her past bodyguards, he didn't treat her like she was less intelligent than him. He didn't act like she was an annoying part of his job. Most days, Ashley referred to him as her friend, not just her bodyguard. Truthfully, she thought of him as something more than a friend.

He was great. He was so great that Ashley had a mind-numbing crush on him since the first day he was assigned to her. So original.

The conversation gradually eased into silence as they focused on eating. As she cleaned her container of all food, bits of lyrics and melodies continued to filter through her head. Her attention drifted to Leon. He was taking his time eating, not scarfing everything down as Ashley had. Parts of his bangs covered his face. She remembered back during their first year together, she commented on how thick his hair was and how long he kept it for someone his age. Leon had said he only started growing his hair out once he stopped working at a police station. He showed her a picture of himself during his early officer days. The photo gave her inappropriate thoughts, and she wrote a song about it that no one else has heard.

Most of the love songs she wrote over the last few years were secretly inspired by Leon. She wouldn't be surprised if a day came when someone noticed and asked about it. Hopefully not for a long time.

More lyrics scrolled through her thoughts, but they were too intense. Luis wanted a song that focused on the romantic aspects of the film. Something a little slow and sweet, maybe sorrowful. He wanted it to explore the aftermath of the two main leads' feelings for each other. What happens once they're separated back home, and the agent closes himself off again, because he thinks the daughter will be better off without him. How she might feel. The yearning they might have for each other, but won't admit.

"Do you need the trash can? You look like you're gonna throw up."

Ashley blinked, redness slowly overtaking her cheeks as she stood up and gathered their trash. Leon had finished eating while she was zoned out.

"It's kinda rude to comment on a girl's appearance like that," she mumbled.

Genuine confusion appeared on his face. "What?"

"Sorry." She carefully dumped everything into a trash bin, taking note that she really needed to clean up. "I'm fine. Just stressed about the song." She pivoted on her heel and made like she was going to sit down, only to start pacing beside Leon. "It's just, I can't think of anything! I want to make the perfect song, but nothing sounds good enough. I'm gonna fail. Luis Serra will never ask me to write him a song again. I'll be blackmailed out of Hollywood; no more acting gigs, and that dumb Daily M and those other gross magazines are gonna call me a lousy, kid songwriter again even though I'm a goddamn adult—"

"Ashley, breathe."

She stopped mid-pace, eyebrows furrowed, and sucked in one long breath. Held it, then released. When her nerves finally calmed and the urge to blow up subsided, she slowly came back to Earth. Who would have thought that the breathing exercises she did as part of her vocal training also helped calm her down?

Leon held some concern, but he mostly appeared unfazed. He'd witnessed every emotion Ashley had to show during his time with her. Embarrassment sank in as she sat back down in her chair. She often felt like a kid throwing a tantrum in front of him, even when he reassured her she wasn't.

She apologized again, and Leon waved it off.

"Don't have to be sorry," he said. "You're clearly stressed out."

Ashley smiled, grabbing her notebook and flipping to a new page. "Just a little."

"You're really talented." Leon's gaze felt like a hot spotlight being shone down on her. She fiddled with her pen and scribbled spirals in the corner of her notebook to distract herself. "But you already know that."

"Maybe," she chuckled. People told her she was good at what she did all the time, to the point that the compliments sometimes felt meaningless. Like a lie. She knew Leon genuinely meant it, and he never said it like he was trying to get something out of her. She'd met too many people like that.

"I've never seen any of Luis Serra's stuff—"

Ashley's eyes bugged out. "Seriously? His last TV show, Rookie, was super popular with people like you. It's like mandatory to watch it in police academies now because it teaches—"

Leon's left eye seemed on the verge of twitching. "That doesn't make—whatever, let me finish first. I've never seen his stuff, but I'm sure the song you'll come up with will work perfectly fine for him. He'll like it. People will love it. It won't be the end of everything if it's not the best song."

What he said wasn't new. It was stuff Ashley already believed in when she first discovered how much creating music spoke to her. She wrote songs to calm the heavy thoughts in her head. She sang because it was freeing. If her songs were good, that was great. If people loved them, that was wonderful. They didn't have to be the absolute best. Unfortunately, record companies wanted more than the absolute best. While Ashley tried not to let it influence her over the years, it had, and she had moments like this where the thought of making a bad song sucked dry all of her creativity. In the worst cases, it paralyzed her.

"Right," she mumbled. The spirals on her paper had taken up the whole page, so she turned to a fresh one. "Yeah, you're right."

"What's this movie about anyway?" he asked. "Maybe talking it out will help."

"Oh, so, it's going to be part of a trilogy, assuming this first one does well. Which it will. But basically, it's about this guy who's like a super federal agent. He's been trained to take on bioterrorism, but his first assignment ends up being a rescue mission. The president's daughter was kidnapped from college and taken to Spain by some cult."

Leon nodded. "Classic setup."

"Right? Kirsten Dunst is gonna play the president's daughter, but it's a secret who the male lead is. Anyway, it's not just some 'normal' cult. They worship these horrifying, old-timey parasites that they want to use to take over the world, and there's some conspiracy stuff going on involving certain governments. And there's love, sex, and violence, and the agent and the daughter get infected with the parasite and have to race against the clock to remove it. And through all the shitty stuff that happens, they realize they're falling in love with each other."

"So that's the romance part."

"Yeah, but it's kind of forbidden. The agent's a professional; he's not supposed to have feelings for her. But he also feels like he doesn't deserve love from someone like her. He has a traumatic background." Ashley rattled on about the agent and the daughter's characters. As she neared the end of her tale, a light flashed on in her head. "Y'know, the agent reminds me a lot of you."

If Leon had been drinking, he might have sputtered. His bewilderment made her laugh. "I don't know about that," he said, crossing his arms. Perhaps she was seeing things, but she was certain his neck turned a dark pink.

"You've told me before you worked briefly for the government," she said. "You probably did top-secret missions you can't tell me about."

"Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe all I had was a desk job and did paperwork for the actual agents all day."

Ashley's laugh turned into a snort, and her shoulders shot up to her ears in alarm before quickly falling. She hated snorting in front of people, but Leon had called it cute one time, so she wasn't as embarrassed to do it around him.

She tapped her pen on her notebook and noticed she had doodled a picture of her driving a motorcycle, with Leon holding onto her. Behind them was a horde of zombies.

"I'd go on a life-or-death mission to rescue you." Ashley's head shot up. His neck was definitely red now, and hers probably was, too.

"You're just saying that because you're my bodyguard," she countered.

"Nah." There it was again—the heavy change in atmosphere that occurred whenever she and Leon spent a long time in each other's presence. It made her question if she was being too obvious in her feelings. If Leon noticed her crush on him. The corner of his mouth lifted, and Ashley took in a deep breath to steady her quickening heartbeat. "I'd do it no matter who I was. I'd do whatever it took to save you."

I wish I could kiss him, Ashley thought, the urgency burning straight through her. Vivid images appeared in her vision like someone had turned on a projector. A melody played clearly, but only she could hear it. Her pen nearly flipped away as she hurriedly wrote in her journal before the lyrics she conjured vanished. Each one felt right. This was the story she wanted to tell.

Leon kept quiet, not wanting to distract her.

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"I'll keep working on it for the next few days, but I finally have something to show at my next meeting with Luis!" Ashley cheered as she stuffed her notebook and other needed items into an oversized handbag. "Need to think of a title, though."

"You'll think of something, I'm sure," Leon said. He stood by the door as Ashley made sure she had everything and that the things that needed to be turned off in the studio were. She'd come back in the morning and clean up all the junk.

"Thanks for being here with me," she said, stopping a few inches away from Leon.

"Don't have to thank me for that." He flipped the lights off and held the door open for Ashley, but she didn't move. "You okay?"

She gripped the handle of her bag and dug the toe of her shoe into the floor. The urge to kiss him was still there, but it was always there. She imagined herself doing it. Would it be inappropriate? Would he get mad? Maybe she could play it off as an accident. Maybe he wouldn't mind. Maybe she could ask, and he might say yes.

Compared to her peers—who were her age and also famous since they were children—Ashley hadn't done much to warrant much scrutiny from the tabloids. Mainly because her parents drilled it into her that she had to be careful or risk tarnishing her image and career for good. Even the most innocent thing could be misinterpreted. Most of the time, the gossipers made up stuff about Ashley because she was "too boring", according to them.

Could she not be careful, just this one time?

"I'm okay," she hummed, heading toward the door. Before she could completely pass Leon, she darted up to place a kiss on his cheek. Light and quick enough that they both could pretend it never happened, if they wanted. The faint, glittery imprint left on his face would say otherwise.

It wasn't much. It would have to do for now.

Ashley turned back toward him. "Ready?" she asked. "Where's your car?"

Leon had yet to move, but soon the shock wore off, and he began walking. He didn't look mad. Ashley thought he almost looked amused and a little flustered. He cleared his throat.

"I drove my motorcycle here," he said, hovering close to her side as they navigated the private parking garage.

Her eyes sparkled. "Can I drive this time?"

"You're sitting behind me with a helmet and elbow pads on."

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    [NOW PLAYING: CAN I LEAVE ME TOO? BY ASHLEY GRAHAM]