Emma sighs, checking her phone. One thing she hadn't anticipated from this whole singing thing is how busy she's been. She now has the shitheads who ran away from their responsibilities to catch, as well as regular phone calls to her agent and recordings and the occasional concert. The problem with getting scouted and being offered a record deal is that this thing is no longer on her own terms. Don't misunderstand, she loves that she's now able to make money from singing, but the freedom of the open-mic nights is something she sorely misses. She's in Denver, Colorado tonight. A guy with a wife and two kids has tried to get away from them for the third time, and it's her job to try and grab him again. Hopefully, she can wrap it up quickly, she's got a call from her agent scheduled for later tonight and she'd rather not miss out on the potential gig he's been hinting at. As she shoves his pathetic ass into the back of her bug, she smiles slightly. Job one done and she's still got an hour and a half until her phone call. Perfect.
Once she has taken the guy back to where he was meant to be, she checks her phone again. Fifteen minutes until her agent is meant to call. She spots a coffee place a short way down the street and heads over, figuring she can have this conversation over a coffee and bear claw. Just as she's settling down at a table with her coffee, her phone rings. Right on time, as usual. Setting her coffee down, she puts her phone to her ear.
"Swan speaking."
"Ah, Emma! How are you?" Asks her agent, "it's Mike."
"I'm doing good thanks, better now I've finished that last job," she replies, trying not to let her weariness come through in her voice, "looking forward to a couple of days with no chasing bad guys."
"Managed to catch the guy then, did you? Good, he sounded like a piece of work!"
Emma hums distractedly, knowing Mike will soon get bored of the pleasantries.
"Anyway, I was wondering if you were still in Denver? There's a couple of good opportunities there in the next week or so, if you would be up for sticking around for them."
Emma smiles into her coffee, this is what she has been waiting for. She knew this was coming from the moment she received the email setting up the call,
"Sounds good to me, Mike. What kind of opportunities? Gigs or what?"
"Well," he starts, clearly glad to have Emma's interest, "there's a couple of venues that have expressed interest in you performing there, enough for you to be able to choose between them, as well as a magazine who want to set up an interview with you. Although, the interview could realistically be done over Skype, but if you're in the area..."
"I may as well actually meet the guy, since I'm already here."
"Emma, you just read my mind!"
Emma rolls her eyes, knowing Mike too well for his feigned surprise to fool her. She considers for a second. This wouldn't be the first interview she'd done, and as long as she set out some ground rules for the interviewer before they went on record, it shouldn't get too out of hand.
"Tell me more about these gigs, Mike. How many, where, when, you know the deal."
Mike sighed, "Well, there's a couple of small ones, bars and the like, as well as a band touring who would like you to make a guest appearance. Now, for anyone else, I would have dismissed most of the small gigs, but I know how you enjoy those, so I thought I'd leave it up to you. I'll email you the details."
Emma takes another sip of her coffee and brings her bear claw to her mouth. "I'll let you know once I've had a read through of the options," she tells him, and bites into her bear claw, eyelids fluttering momentarily and she savours the taste.
"You do that, Emma, see you soon!"
Emma hangs up the phone and closes her eyes. Phone calls with her agent should not be that draining, she thinks to herself. Then she shrugs, and takes a long drink. Emma has always found phone calls draining, it's not like ones with her agent are any worse.
Her phone pings, and she unlocks it to see a new email from Mike. Opening it, she can see he's outlined the tour gig first, followed by the few smaller ones. The band on tour is the Plain White Ts, and she's heard a couple of their songs, and can see how her voice and music choice would fit with theirs. She sees that their concert is on Saturday. It's Thursday today, so it gives her a couple of days to see if she needs to revise her set list at all. She easily decides to go ahead with that one. Next, she moves on to the smaller shows. There's a couple of functions and she immediately vetoes these. Mike knows better to suggest them, and she knows he's teasing her. She'd rather not be the person expected to distract uptight businessmen from their desires to strange their colleagues, thank you very much. After having mentally crossed those off, she is left with two more. One at a coffee shop turned bar that has monthly live music nights, and one at a karaoke bar that was opening. She reckons the karaoke place is trying to get some publicity, and decides to humour them. If she's able to help some guys out while doing something she enjoys, then why not. The live music night is also moved onto the accepted pile, and she quickly types out a response to Mike, including a slight chastisement about the two business functions. Honestly! He knew she'd reject them! Checking her calendar, she sees that Saturday, Thursday and Friday are now taken up, which leaves her plenty of time to kill. She sends off a quick text to Mike, asking for the band's contact information. She wants to see if there's anything in particular they want her to do, or not to do, as the case may be. As she finishes off her coffee and pastry, she stands up and puts her headphones on. She sets her playlist on shuffle as she moves out into the city, looking forward to the week ahead.
Regina smiles as Henry comes running toward her.
"Momma! Momma! Guess what?!" He shouts excitedly, struggling to control his volume in his excitement.
"Henry!" Regina grunts as he comes barrelling into her, "what's got you so excited?"
Instead of replying, Henry makes a big show of opening his mouth, and wiggling one of his teeth. It shifts, and Regina can see that it's on its way to falling out. "Oh my, Henry! It looks as though you're falling apart!" She cries with false terror, "what are we gonna do?"
Henry giggles at his mother, and closes his mouth, "no silly! It's meant to happen! It means I'm getting all big and strong and grown up! Soon, I'll be able to ride on my bike without stabilisers!"
Regina smiles at his enthusiasm, glad she's able to share this exciting time with him.
"Ah, is that what it means? So I guess you'll be helping Momma with all the housework as well then, if you're a big boy now?"
Henry's face takes on a thoughtful expression, "well... maybe I'm not that grown up. I mean, I wouldn't want to get in your way, so I'll leave the housework to you, and I'll do all the really hard stuff, like learning to ride a bike, and protecting the house from pirates!"
Regina smiles indulgently, and nods, "I suppose that makes sense. I can't have my white knight too tired to protect me from all those nasty pirates!"
Henry nods decisively, as though Regina has made a good point, and gives her a hug. When Regina asks him how school was, he immediately starts talking again, and he doesn't stop until they've both sat down at the dining table with a drink. How he managed to talk all the way home from school about how he'd been asked to collect everyone's drawings in for the teacher was a mystery to Regina, but she enjoyed it nonetheless, listening with wholehearted interest. As soon as there was a lull in Henry's chatting, she manages to ask him if he was given any homework, but he shakes his head.
"Miss Bond says she's going to give us homework tomorrow, so I don't have anything to do today! I thought maybe we could play a game?"
"That sounds nice, Henry. What game were you thinking?"
Henry seems to consider for a moment, before pointing at Regina's sound system.
"Wanna play royal ball, with music and dancing! I'll be a prince, and you can be a queen!"
Regina smiles at the irony. If only he knew. She has attended many royal balls in her time, but has only begun enjoying them since Henry created this game of his. The only sense of enjoyment she ever got out of those spectacles was when she ended up getting something out of it. Henry's excited bouncing in his chair brings her back to the here and now, and she smiles, again, and nods, again. He squirms out of his chair and stands near the speaker, holding his arms up ready to dance. Now that he's six, he's a little big for her to pick him up and dance with him like she's about to, but she's never going to turn down any opportunity he gives her to be close to him. She lifts Henry up so that he can see her CD collection and allows him to choose the music for his 'ball'. She smiles in approval when she sees his choice. It's a compilation of different, modern artists singing covers of old songs. She loves it because the singers remain so true to the emotion and feel of the originals, while avoiding sounding like karaoke. There's a couple of her favourite singers in this album, and she loves that Henry enjoys it as much as she does. Regina knows the order of the tracks on this CD like the back of her hand. After Twist and Shout has faded into Yesterday, she knows her favourite song is next, and she pulls Henry even closer than their dancing has already brought them. Henry is grinning, his eyes sparkling with joy. He too knows which song is next, if only due to his mother's reaction. As soon as the words start, both Henry and Regina sing along.
"You don't own me..."
While Regina adores the song itself, there's something special about the singer of this particular version. Regina is usually of the opinion that nothing can ever compare to an original, this cover manages to surpass the it. Both the technique of the singer, as well as the pure emotion behind the words makes the song sound new in her voice. The first time Regina heard this cover, she tried to find out as much as she could about the singer. However, this particular artist was of the sort who revealed next to nothing about themselves. Regina had done what she could, followed The Orphan Queen on as many social media pages as she could find and subscribed to her VEVO channel on YouTube, but there was far too little content for Regina's satisfaction.
As the song wound down, Regina put Henry down and turned off the music. She steered Henry into the living room with a book and went into the kitchen to start on dinner, singing the song under her breath.
"I'm free, and I love to be free...!"