NO STRINGS ATTACHED #Jiminfanfic (COMPLETED)

CHAPTER 5

Jimin pov:

“Jimin? Knock, knock. Jimin?”

Startled, I looked up. I’d been staring at my laptop but not seeing anything for a few minutes.

“Yeah, sorry, Lini. What’s up?”

“Just wanted to go over the schedule for next week if you have a minute.”

“Sure.”

Lini was our office manager. Part of a pretty good church choir, she was the one who organized the choir when they all came in to use the studio. We must have been pretty messed up that week because she came back a few days later, told us how we were screwing everything up and presented us with a five-page typed up document about systems we could put in place for scheduling and sharing space and half a dozen other problems she saw. Then she told us we should hire her and let her take care of it.

Big Mike looked at me, I nodded and he told her she was hired. That was more than fifteen years ago and it was the best decision we’ve made. I don’t care how good we were as a collective of engineers, studio musicians, and assorted staff; if we couldn’t book enough hours, we wouldn’t make money. Within a month Lini had us running like clockwork.

“Anything for today?”

“Uh-huh. You have a meeting at noon with Bryn. He likes what you did on what he sent over and he has some new material he wants to run by you. Sort of unfair for you two to be working together. Maybe you’ll give it a rest for a while and let someone else win a Grammy.”

Bryn Lake was one of the best songwriters working. Labels paid the two of us astronomical amounts of money and a piece of the back-end when they wanted sure-fire hits for someone new they wanted to push. He specialized in pop and I focused on rock. We balanced each other out and worked well together. To be honest, he was the more talented of the two of us, but he couldn’t play guitar, so I’ve got that going.

I’d kept writing after I dropped out of the band and became anonymous again and had gotten enough acclaim and awards after giving the songs to old friends that I was offered gigs as a song doctor. Bryn and I would write together or fix someone else’s work. We both moaned and groaned to the labels about how hard it was to write in someone else’s style, but it was all bullshit. We could fix something within a couple of days.

He was always either back home in England or traveling, so we did everything via teleconferencing. It was another way for me to keep my toes of the industry water without actually playing gigs. Those days were long gone. I could BS with Bryn, exercise that creative muscle, make some damned good money and live my quiet life.

When we were done talking, Lini left and I went back to staring at my laptop. There was just something off about that little girl and it kept poking around at the edges of my brain. Eventually, I sighed and picked up my phone.

Her voice was slightly raspy like Amy Winehouse’s had been. It sounded oddly warm and as if it was from someone who had truly lived life.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Ms. Kim, this is Alex from Afterglow Studios. We, uh, well, you know who I am.”

“Oh yeah, hey Jimin. You can just call me Em, you know.”

There was a hint of teasing in her voice, a flirty kind of undertone that I liked. As much as I liked it, it also made me nervous.

“Uhm, listen, I put some thought into it and I’d be happy to teach Leia.”

“Oh. That’s ... Look, I wasn’t trying to get you to do it yourself, I just wanted recommendations or to see if one of the people there were looking for a side gig. No offense, but are you ... There’s no right way to put this, so I’ll just say it. You any good?”