Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 71698 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71698 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Panic. Major panic. Meltdown mode. Anxiety.
What the fuck? What the fucking hell? How does one even respond to that? Should I respond?
I might be sort of melting down, but I can’t deny that the cold sensation has fucked off. The block of ice in my gut is all thawed, liquid, and goopy.
“Did you think those songs I wrote came from a place of not loving? They’re all love songs. Every. Single. One. Of. Them.”
How did I not realize that? The tour finished over a week ago. I’ve spent all that time staring at her journal, working through the songs, putting them to music in my head, and playing them. Over and over again. Some are obviously written as love songs, but it’s not obvious that they all are. And it wasn’t obvious they were for me.
“God, you hold your cards tight. I didn’t know.”
She groans and facepalms her forehead, wrapping her hands around her temples before dragging them down past her eyes, over her nose, her lips, and her chin, stretching the whole thing out. “You should go. I need to locate a corner and die in it.”
“I don’t even know if I’m capable of loving someone.” Shit. I guess I had to match her truth bomb with one of my own.
She blinks at me. I blink back. She blinks again. Great. We’re going to have a blink-off. I try not to blink, but it’s a natural reaction, and my eyes get dry fast. I’ve heard that people slow blink when they’re comfortable and fast blink when they’re emotional or upset. That has to be a lie. We’re both slow blinking, and neither of us is relaxed.
“But you… Alicia Thorton. You dated for years.”
“The whole world thought we were a perfect match. They thought we were in love. It was an arrangement.” I need to shut up. Putting this out there tops the list of terrible ideas. This was something no one was ever supposed to know.
Of course, Carissa gets it. She blinks, but it’s a different kind of blink. It’s the slowest blink of dawning clarity. “She needed a career boost, and you needed a way to keep the hordes of adoring women from throwing themselves at you every night.”
She got it exactly. “Yes,” I say.
“But you never—” An alarming shade of crab red creeps up her throat. Boiled crab red. Lobster red.
“No. We were just friends. It was a good arrangement until we both thought it was time to move on. She wanted something real, and I liked that for her.”
“But not for you.”
My songs are personal. I give my heart to the world and serve it up on a pretty silver platter for them to eat their fill. I let them consume me in the content I put out. I’ve always been just me. It’s ironic how many people think that is the character. On stage, or in my writing and playing, I can give parts of myself that I don’t know how to put into words in a regular way. I don’t even know how to fathom that part of myself.
“It’s hard to think of sharing my life with someone for real when my life is the way it is. Doing the family stuff. The regular stuff. I’m not… I haven’t… my life hasn’t been regular for quite a while. But I do want it. One day. Until I’m ready, I don’t see the point in complicating things. It wouldn’t have been fair to anyone. I’ve never… there’s never been anyone I thought I could… do that with. Attraction isn’t love, and you can’t have love without trust. But how do I trust someone, truly?”
“I understand. When you’re constantly in the public eye, how do you know what’s real and what’s not? And even if it is, how do you make someone else believe it when you’re selling a different narrative? You just wanted to protect yourself.” She paces away and back. Away and back. She finally spins around. “Is that why you don’t write love songs?”
“Matt doesn’t like them.”
“That’s honestly the truth?” she asks.
“That’s honestly why we don’t.”
Her left eye twitches, but so does the corner of her mouth, hinting at a smile. It might also just be a nervous twitch. “That arrangement makes sense. I know most of your fans are quite respectful, but the online stuff is wild. My favorite one ever was the poem that someone wrote about licking you front and back, with special focus on your crack.” She lowers her eyes to the butcher block countertop. The wood grains are lovely in different hues. “Oh my goddddd. Can we just forget I said what I said? It’s always been in my head that I could never tell you. I needed to be professional. Even then, there was this barrier, this line that couldn’t be crossed.”