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other guy she had dated.
       “Hey where’s your mom? I wanna say hi to her,” John said. This was one of the other things that made him score more points; he was so good with older people and totally got along with her parents.
       “She’s in the living room with some guests, come meet my friend Jamie first then we’ll go say hello to Mom later. Amy’s here too.”
       “Oh great, I was going to ask her something about the finance class assignment.”
       As they reached the beginning of the stairs, Chelsea hesitated and looked back. Someone had opened the front door.
       “Hey Tyler, where have you been all day?”
       “I was playing basketball over at Ashley Steven’s house. I told Mom.” He crouched to remove his shoes, completely ignoring John in the process.
       “John is here,” Chelsea said. Maybe her brother hadn’t seen that her boyfriend was right there beside her. “Amy is here too.”
    No response.
       John got along with everybody in her life except Tyler, her darling brother who was never afraid to let you know exactly how he felt about you and from the very beginning. He never liked John. No matter how hard she tried, those two just couldn’t stand each other. John was an only child and wasn’t used to having younger little brats around him.
       “Hey let’s go inside,” John nudged.
       With held hands, they marched together up the stairs and happened upon Amy listening intently to Jamie. What in the world could he have been saying to her? Amy being the chatterbox that she was, wasn’t known to be a good listener.
       “Hey guys, John is here.”
       She introduced Jamie to John looking on proudly as her boyfriend and her childhood buddy hit it off. John was always good with making conversation but Jamie was also very articulate. They talked about basketball, music, cars, finance, Wall Street, politics and the economy. You couldn’t tell which was from a poor background from their conversation; Jamie’s intelligence and knowledge made up for that and he could hold his own in any environment. He wasn’t a shy teenager anymore.
       Jamie was surprised by John’s unassuming, unpretentious outward bearing. There seemed to be a self-effacing attitude oozing out of the guy. Honestly, it was a little disappointing. He expected a cocky, self-centered, spoiled brat who Chelsea would later realize was nothing but a jerk that didn’t have anything in common with her. John was the opposite of what he expected, what he wished. Amy also joined in whenever they talked about anything that interested her but Chelsea just sat beside her boyfriend, her head on his shoulders, enjoying the company of three people she cared about. 
     
    ***
     
       Amy wanted to hear more about what Jamie intended to do with jazz music in the future so she asked him to continue from where he stopped when John and Chelsea interrupted.
       “I think I can push the boundaries of possibility and make jazz music mainstream. Although mixing genres like hip-hop and rock is not new to jazz, I think it needs to be a bit more catchier. What I’m trying to do is infuse it with sounds that will grab the attention of a younger demographic like people our age and even younger. So Jerome, a friend of mine, and I make sure each song is not more than four minutes. I think young people have a very short attention span, more so nowadays. We start most of our songs with a little bit of rap in the first minute, that’s where we hook them, it’s like an invitation.” They listened intently, the passion in his voice drawing them in.
       “Then in the middle of the songs we move on to more traditional jazz sounds. We also infuse the drumming styles and baselines of rock music in the final parts of the songs.” He sensed that they probably didn’t understand fully what he was saying.
       “How can I explain this?” He paused, looked up, and then continued, “Ok...it’s like those bacon-wrapped