Playing Autumn (Breathe Rockstar Romance Book 1)

by Mina V. Esguerra

  He was starting to look more real, by the way. Less like an album or magazine cover walking in front of her and more like a guy who used to hang out here. Someone whose grandmother lived in a house with a brick facade. She wanted to say something about that, but then she felt a sharp pain on her toes, specifically on three toes on her left foot, sharp as needles.

  She screamed a little, and cursed a little, or maybe a lot.

  ***

  Oliver's grandmother was not a frail, petite creature, and that made Haley feel a little better about having obscenities be the first thing she said in her presence.

  “Fire ants!” she yelled from the front porch. “Oliver, get her out of there!”

  Of course they were fire ants. The other possibility, that Oliver's grandmother had some exposed syringes scattered out on the lawn for people to step on, wasn't going to be true at all. Haley had forgotten about lawn creatures in the short time she'd been away. Living in the Lee mansion had made her soft and think she could just wear flip-flops anytime without consequences.

  In a flash, she was lying on a very big and comfy couch, barefoot, while Oliver's grandma searched a drawer for something.

  “Don't you dare scratch it,” she warned, coming over with a small bottle of calamine spray. “Not from here, are you?”

  Oliver's voice came from somewhere behind her. “She is. Mama, this is Haley Reese. But she's been living in Florida since the summer.”

  “Don't scratch,” Mama scolded.

  She knew she shouldn't, but she couldn't help it. It felt like she had to do something, because the cool spray from the calamine was taking too damn long...oh wait. Haley was starting to feel relief.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I forgot why I never wore these things on grass.”

  Mama placed the bottle in her hand. “Spray when you start feeling it again. And keep it.” She turned to hug her grandson, and Haley was surprised to note that he was only a couple of inches taller than her. “Your mom said you'd be over this weekend. Just you, though. Anything wrong?”

  He shook his head. “I can't visit my Mama? I'm helping out some kids at a music festival at the Lake Star. I'm playing on Sunday. You should come.”

  Mama smiled, the thin and polite smile of a supportive grandmother. Haley saw that in her parents’ faces all the time when it was about Breathe Music. “That's nice. What are you playing? Something new?”

  Oliver looked at Haley. “I don't know yet,” he said, to them, and to himself, it seemed. “I guess I should start thinking about it.”

  “Well,” Mama said. “Since we noticed the lawn. And you don't have any other reason for coming…” She nodded toward the door.

  “What, now?” he said.

  “You know your job, son. The mower's in the garage.”

  Oliver got half a protest out but then he shrugged, and Haley had to add it to one of the stranger things she learned about him lately. Oliver's grandmother ruled all.

  As soon as the door closed behind him, Mama pulled up a chair and sat in front of Haley, regarding her with curiosity. “So. Haley, are you?”

  Haley blinked. “Yes.”

  “How long have you known Oliver?”

  “I...I met him on the plane. But I've been a fan since I was a kid.”

  “Is it true that his label dropped him?”

  What? Haley coughed. “He...said something like that.”

  “The bastards,” Mama said under her breath, and Haley couldn't help but smile. And then she tried to kill that smile immediately. “He had a gold single on that last album. That doesn't mean anything anymore?”

  He did, didn’t he? She vaguely remembered that it charted for a short time, one of the songs, on that album she didn’t buy. There was an article about it, Is this the end of Pretty Boy Rock Stars? She got as far as the second paragraph and then stopped reading. “The radio stations didn't want it,” Haley caught herself saying.

  Mama took the calamine bottle from her hand and aimed at Haley's foot then sprayed. “That's it? He sounded exactly like he was supposed to sound.”

  “His fans grew up.” I grew up. I stopped being compulsively into him. It’s me, it’s all my fault! Was the calamine laced with something? Haley was starting to feel a little panicked. Or maybe it was guilt.

  “No,” Mama said, as if explaining this all to a child. “Do you see how many people watch his performances, his music videos? His audience is still there. You'd think that these suits would stop desperately pandering to the noisy majority and take care of the people who genuinely love and support their favorite artists.”

  “I felt so bad for him when he didn't hit number one this time.” Haley’s admission came out in a rush, very much like a suspect at the end of a cop show. And as soon as she said it, she felt a bit of relief. “Like I had failed him, you know?”

  Mama wouldn’t have any of her guilt though. “It would have been easier for you to support him if someone actually paid for him to tour. Perform at places. That's what musicians do. Did you get his last album?”

  “I didn't. I'm sorry.”

  “It was half crap,” Mama said nonchalantly. “It was almost brilliant sometimes, but I know when that boy's trying so hard to please somebody he hates.”

  “It's my fault,” Haley moaned, also because the pain in her foot had dulled but still stung. “I didn't buy it. And now he doesn't have the support to get new music out anymore.”

  “Is it really bad? Is he broke?”

  “I don't know how bad it actually is, he’s kind of adorably self-deprecating but maybe he’s serious…and I don't know if I should be saying anything.”

  Mama rolled her eyes. “Are you an artist, Haley?”

  She honestly didn't know the answer to that and took too long to reply.

  “Well,” Mama continued, cocking her head toward the photographs framed and displayed around the room, “My dear departed husband was an artist. So is my daughter, and her husband, and now my grandson. I can't sing to save my own life, but I know what it's like to live around artists.

  “Oliver, in particular, doesn't like to work with people. He bears the burden of his art alone, has always done that. The reason why he keeps visiting, and has never avoided me, is because I act like the grandmother he wants me to be and pretend I don't know or care about his rock star career. About any of this.”

  “But you know everything,” Haley said, or maybe asked. “You…you picked him up from his lessons.”

  “I was proud but not involved. He appreciates that very much.”

  “You know everything though.”

  “I have the Internet and a lot of time on my hands. So, is he broke?”

  “His landlord might be kicking him out, like right now,” Haley said.

  “In New York? That's not a problem. I never wanted him to live there. Is he getting money to teach the kids this weekend?”

  “He's getting a small fee. It's a non-profit, but he's still getting something.”

  “Is he still dating that girl?”

  Haley shrugged. “Um, Tori?”

  “No, not that one. The sister of the reality show girl. They had a photo on a gossip site a few weeks ago.”

  Haley's cheeks burned. No, he hadn't mentioned a sister-of-a-reality-show-girl at all, not the whole time, not a word of it as they sucked face, as she humped his fingers. But that was understandable. And inappropriate to think about at this very moment. “I really don't know.”

  “Well, that’s the only time he’s in the tabloids anymore. And they haven't been seen together since,” Mama said, possibly reading a lot into Haley's reaction. “You must find it odd that I track my grandson's life like this.”

  “Oh no, I totally understand,” Haley said. “I mean, it's out there. How can you not look?”

  “Artists try not to look, I noticed. They try not to see the things that could keep them from staying on this path, because there's so much to discourage them.”

  Life, the normal living of it, was
one big discouraging force. It was one thing to be a Cabrera, apparently, and at least have music as a valid career choice. Some people weren’t as lucky.

  Haley sighed. “I wanted to be an artist.”

  Mama laughed. “And here I thought you and I were on the same team. Because I believe that, you know? Anyone out to chase a crazy dream needs to have a stable support system. I don’t mind being that for my entire family. I’m not like they are.”

  “That’s what the festival is,” Haley said, “for a lot of people. A lot of these kids don’t come from musical families, like me, and it gives them a place to meet people who care, you know? Who can tell them what to do.”

  That was what she kept saying, what she knew in her heart as a mentor, but not a support system she ever used as an artist.

  Because she wasn’t as good as any of them?

  Because she was a good weekend mentor and that was it?

  Because she had her fifteen minutes of fame on the Internet and nothing else had come of it?

  “Look,” Mama was saying, “I would appreciate it if you did not tell Oliver about what I know. I help him out whenever I can, but he has to think I'm his innocent, doting grandmother, or else he won't accept any advice I give. There was a time when it was only my phone calls he’d pick up, because he does that—when it’s bad, he withdraws from everyone related to his music. And he’s never done that with me, so we have to keep this up. Is this all right with you?”

  “If I'm asked about it, I won't lie,” Haley bargained.

  “Fair enough.”

  Mama excused herself to go to the kitchen, and a few minutes later Oliver came back in, sweaty, with blades of grass in his clothes and hair.

  “You okay?” he asked her. “Mama treating you all right?”

  He didn't know it, but to Haley he had become so real, and open, and vulnerable. Did it change the way she felt about him?

  No, but what exactly did she feel about him? Haley aimed at her foot and sprayed.

  “She's the best,” she said.

  Chapter 18

  They were going to be late for the evening performance, but Oliver had to stay for Mama's pumpkin pie. Fall, and Mama's pumpkin pie. It was the best combination of any two things.

  It had been a while since someone actually questioned him on this, but yes, he apparently didn't know his grandmother's home address. He knew the route she used when she picked him up from music lessons as a kid and brought him back to her house, which went on for months sometimes when his parents were away on tour. She only took side roads, so it took her longer to get anywhere, and the family had moved east when he finally got his license. He was using a grandmother's route, from memory, and thank God some things never changed.

  “You seem better,” Haley said beside him on the passenger seat of the “borrowed” car.

  He did feel better. Something about the blue door, the house, the fireplace that was never used (because a bird had built a nest somewhere in there), the lawn that he spent most of his childhood mowing, all of that together made him feel comfortably insignificant again. Years ago, when his ego was at its most inflated, he talked up his achievements and platinum records to Mama, hoping she'd finally seem interested and impressed. But she was always happy for him in that subdued way, probably because his grandfather was still a better songwriter, his father still a better violinist, his mother still a better singer. Or she was blandly supportive but not really into it. She wasn't a musician the way they were, after all.

  Today he longed for that insignificance, again, because at least to her he was never a failure. Since she wasn't all that impressed by his highs, she wasn't all that devastated about his lows too.

  She told him to enjoy being a mentor at Breathe Music, reminding him of the time when she taught high school decades ago.

  “Young people are a pain in the ass, but being around them makes you feel you can start over,” she told him.

  He really should be more into this, the mentoring thing. Even just for the weekend.

  “Mama sets me straight, all the time,” he told Haley. “Pie and coffee and Mama. I'm really sorry about the ants.”

  “It's not your fault,” she said. “You reminded me. Now I want to scratch.”

  “Don't scratch.”

  Haley lifted her affected foot and sprayed at it again. “Oh God. I'm running out of spray.”

  “We can pass by a CVS, irony of ironies.”

  “We're already late. Victoria is going to kill us.”

  “Just blame me. How bad can it get?”

  He said that bravely, all rock star-like, but he did feel a smidge of regret when he experienced the look that Victoria gave him when he turned over the car and when they showed up in the middle of the evening performances.

  “Am I going to have to put a watch on you both?” Victoria hissed, taking the car keys from him and throwing them into her purse. “You don't just take off when there are a zillion things happening and two zillion things I need help with. I’ve had to kick out an intern for blogging about this and feeding photos to the Trey Girls. “

  “I'm sorry,” Haley said. “I'm injured.”

  “I will deal with you later,” Victoria said. “Your student is Mia, right? She needs help setting up. And I bumped Kari and John to the end so you'd actually get to see them, Oliver. Go ask if they need help.”

  “Yes, ma'am,” he said.

  ***

  Dinner was at the Lake Star Hotel’s ballroom, really the three function rooms on the second floor merged by opening up the dividing walls. Because Oliver and Haley were late, they lost prime spots at many of the tables and had a small table at the back all to themselves.

  “Like a date,” Oliver teased.

  “With maybe the best or worst dinner music, depending on how it goes,” she muttered with a smirk.

  He gestured for her to take a seat next to him at a round table set for four. A hotel waiter gently laid a white plate of salmon atop fresh greens and a pale yellow sauce. They seemed to have settled down in time to see Trey’s student Ash, and she took the stage with a shy smile.

  “You know who she reminds me of?” Oliver said as his knife slid into the pink flakey fish.

  “Blair Casey?” She threw that name out so casually, her eyes on Ash as she began the first few lines of—surprise surprise—a Katy Perry song.

  Blair Casey was the winner of Tomorrow’s Talent the season right after his. She was almost completely his opposite: contemporary, female, and plain enough to be molded into anything. They even dyed her hair three different colors throughout her run to see what made her the most popular, and blonde it stayed. And yes, that was what Oliver was going to say.

  He didn’t often get to hang out with people who knew his…history like this. The guys in the band didn’t care. Rob his former manager barely remembered that he was on a talent show, and his parents considered it a gaudy episode from his childhood that shouldn’t be brought up in polite company.

  “She’s like pre-makeover Blair,” Haley continued, already eating her fish. “She’s really pretty.”

  And she wasn’t a bad singer. Something about her wasn’t popping though, the same way that Blair hadn’t popped on TV until the stylists figured out what to do with her. Because that wasn’t going to happen here, Ash would have to rely on her style, which right now sounded like Katy Perry and Trey Lewis had a lovechild.

  “They’ll make her lose ten pounds, you know,” Oliver said, “That’s going to be one of the first things she’ll hear.”

  “Is Trey saying stuff like that to her? Because Victoria is really against it. I mean, you can tell them about image, but…”

  “But you want them to think they can make it on their own, by being themselves?”

  Her shoulders pulled into her body a bit. “You think it’s naïve.”

  “I think it’s sweet.”

  Her eyes dropped, and her fork moved the asparagus on her plate this way and that. “You got by, being yoursel
f. You don’t think it’s possible for anyone else to?”

  “I think I’m not the shining example of being successful at being yourself.”

  “I think—”

  “Wait. Is this mentoring? Didn’t we agree not to?”

  Haley smiled and her lips shut. “Fine. Oh, Mia’s next.”

  Onstage, there was a shuffle of hands as Mia figured out which to use to adjust the microphone and which one to keep on the guitar. She fussed a little, cursed under her breath, and then apologized to the diners.

  “Well, that’s a great start,” Haley said, the encouraging smile frozen on her face.

  “Hi,” Mia breathed into the microphone, needing to tilt her head up because she hadn’t moved it down properly. “So, um, this is Head Over Feet by Alanis Morissette.”

  From the look on Haley’s face, Oliver guessed a bait and switch had occurred. “What was she practicing?”

  Smile still frozen, she bit her lip. “Definitely something else. I don’t get her.”

  “Wasn’t expecting Alanis from her, to be honest.”

  “It’s a great song for her voice. I could have…told her how to sing it. But she didn’t…” Haley shook her head, fork tossing around a different stalk of asparagus. “This is it, right? The sign from the universe. I lose my job, and for the first time I get a student here who joins for mentoring and absolutely refuses to be mentored.”

  “Signs.” He noticed her fidgeting, had been fidgeting for minutes now, and it occurred to him that her foot was bothering her. That was his fault, right? Because he had dragged her to Mama’s. Because he forgot about the pests that inhabited that garden. She’d have a quieter weekend if he chose to sit beside someone else, Mr. Bolton for example, but he was messing up her life instead.

  He wasn’t exactly letting up though.

  Mia received pretty much the same level of applause as Ash, something between polite and encouraging, and Haley sighed as she contributed to it.

  “How did you know it was over? You and Tori?” she asked.