I noticed a picture tacked to his bulletin board of Cole and me when we were seven years old and had both lost our front teeth. We’d shared a room when we were younger, and even though we were way too old for that now, I missed him being close by. Everybody had called us the twins, despite the fact that we were born nine months apart and had different mothers and were different races.
But even then, people could tell we were brother and sister because of my father’s stupid genes that seemed to dominate every one of our DNA strands. We all had his musical talent, dark caramel-colored (as my mom had liked to say) hair, and high cheekbones. And even Cole, who was half-black, had our dad’s pale-green eyes. I’d read once that green eyes were one of the rarest eye colors. Something like only 2 percent of the entire world had them. (Given my father’s favorite pastime of creating offspring, that 2 percent was probably related to him in some way.) It somehow seemed fitting that my father’s DNA took over everything and dictated how things would be for us, even at a molecular level.
I hated that I had to be reminded of him every time I looked in a mirror or into the faces of the people I loved best, or every time I sang or played. That I had talent because of him.
After I closed Cole’s door, I went to find out if my oldest brother had seen my phone. He sat at the kitchen table, which was papered with bills and a single calculator. Fitz had his hands fisted in his hair, his head bowed, his shoulders caved in.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
He jumped as if I’d startled him. “Maisy. Hey.”
Usually Fitz was the most mellow person in the world. He took whatever obstacles came his way and didn’t worry about getting past them. It made him the perfect guardian when our mom had to leave. Things didn’t worry him.
But now? His feathers looked seriously ruffled. “What are you doing?” I asked.
He let out a world-weary sigh. “I might as well tell you. I can’t protect you from this much longer. I think we’re going to have to sell the house.”
“What?” I couldn’t keep the panic out of my voice. This was not just a house. This was our home. The only home I’d ever known. Fitz couldn’t sell it. “Why?”
“Because Century Pacific has raised their rates again, and the money is almost gone. I don’t know how we’re going to make next month’s payment.” He handed me a piece of paper. It was a bank statement.
Showing an almost zero balance.
I sank down into the chair next to him, dumbfounded, and stared at the statement. I’d known for a long time that things were not great, that we had to tighten our belts, but I had no idea we were at “sell the house” bad.
Especially because Fitz had always been so responsible. He’d created a strict budget for us, and we’d stuck to it. We didn’t go on vacations; we didn’t have big Christmases or birthdays. We bought only necessities.
We all had day jobs—at our mother’s insistence. Although she had encouraged our musical aspirations and put us in lessons when we were kids, she told us we had to have something to fall back on just in case. Fitz had gone into carpentry, Parker did graphic design, Cole baked, and I cut hair. I really hated cutting hair, which is why I never made much money doing it, but I contributed to the household finances.
It still wasn’t enough.
“I can’t believe the entire inheritance is gone.” It felt surreal.
“Mom never wanted us to touch the principal. She always supported us off the interest. But that facility costs so much that I didn’t have a choice.” We had maxed out Mom’s long-term disability and her health insurance about two years after the accident.
“How long do we have?”
Fitz rubbed the dark stubble along his jawline. “A little less than a month. We should probably get the house ready to put on the market.”
We wouldn’t have to do much. We lived in a really desirable location. It was only a five-minute walk to one of the most famous beaches in the world. Which meant that even if the entire house was repeatedly flooded, festered with termites, and declared an annexed protectorate of the Cockroach Kingdom, we would still get millions of dollars.
But how long would that last? Our mom was only forty-eight years old. She would hopefully be around for a long time.
I racked my brain, trying to think of solutions. We didn’t have anything of real value except the house. “Maybe we can bring Mom home, and we can take care of her.”
“She needs round-the-clock medical supervision, Maisy. None of us are qualified to do that. She’s also much happier there than she was here.”
“What about government assistance?” Now that we were officially superpoor.
“I don’t want Mom to end up in a government-run facility. Not if we can prevent it.”
He was right. Angie had told me horror stories about state-owned institutions. Fitz was always right.
“Earlier—was there something you wanted to ask me?”
Now was not the time to mention my missing cell phone, when my brother was already drowning in financial woes. “Do Cole and Parker know?”
“They know. They’re not happy about it, either.”
I tried not to get upset. Of course I was the last to know. My brothers thought it was their job to protect me from everything in the world, including bad news.
“Don’t worry, Maisy. Things will work out.” He leaned over and patted the top of my hand. “I’m going to turn in. Good night.”
“Night,” I mumbled, chewing on the end of my hair. It was something I did when I got really stressed.
This was the worst thing that had happened to us since the night of Mom’s accident.
This house allowed us to live together while we pursued our dreams of making it big as a band. It made it so we could work menial jobs that freed us up to practice and perform. Now what would happen? We’d probably all go our separate ways. Fitz would most likely marry his on-again, off-again highly religious girlfriend and start his own family. Cole had talked a lot about moving to New York, wanting to meet his biological mother’s relatives. Parker would probably get an STD and die without me around to remind him to get annual physicals.
People would say it was past time for us to move on with our lives. I was almost twenty-two years old. I should have been living on my own. With an actual career, like Angie.
I should stop pretending this band thing really had a chance of happening.
In a daze, I went back to my room and closed the door behind me. I absolutely had to find my phone now. I’d seen for myself that there was no money to replace it. I pulled up the phone-finder app on my computer. It took forever to start up and pinpoint the location.
I’d expected to see a glowing dot at the location of my house. Instead, my phone was in Calabasas.
Which was an extremely upscale, ridiculously expensive place to live.
Why was my cell phone in Calabasas?
I sorted through my memories, trying to figure out when I could last remember having my phone. I hadn’t used it when I’d visited my mom. In fact, the last time I had it was . . .
When Diego took a picture of me, Ryan, and Angie.
Diego had my phone.
I wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
Now I had to contact him and get it back.
Since this wasn’t my first rodeo, I knew what I needed to do. I ran into Cole’s room and quietly grabbed his phone. I texted my number.
If my phone was on, it should buzz, and the message would be visible on the locked home screen. That would mean somebody had to be standing by my phone, ready to answer. Which was why I alternated my texts with calls. Call, text, call, text. Losing my phone so often had made me something of an expert on strangers and cell phone behavior. Talking on a random phone completely freaked out some people, but they had no problems texting. It was why I alternated, not knowing who would be on the other end. If they were weirded out by talking, hopefully the ringing would get them to pick up. Once I had texted and called my phone for two
hours straight until somebody responded.
I tried to do a search for “Diego De Luna” and “Calabasas” on my computer. If he didn’t get my texts, maybe I could find his address and drive up there. Unfortunately, we had the crappiest internet service known to man, which made the page just hang and not load a response. It seriously would have been faster to drive to Google and ask them my questions in person.
Thankfully, ten minutes later Diego answered my text.
CHAPTER FOUR
How quickly I’d forgotten that he thought he was hilarious.
I saw three dots scrolling while he typed his response.
Was he serious?
I always liked sparring with someone who could keep up with me. And despite his ridiculous assertions, Diego was staying with me, quick with his retorts.
I was enjoying this way more than I should, especially given Rule #1.
I would never keep a diary on a device I lost on a regular basis. I quickly racked my brain, trying to think if there was anything mortifying on there.
Especially because I couldn’t recall everything I stored on it. Did I have sappy song lyrics on there? Pop songs in my library that I hadn’t yet deleted? I really should pay more attention to the kind of stuff I put on my phone.
My devotion? What was he doing?
I opened Facebook on Cole’s phone and searched for my name. There at the top of my page was a picture of Angie, Ryan, and me. The caption read:
He’d followed it with a bunch of heart emojis. I would lose what little street cred I currently possessed, and my brothers would never let me hear the end of it. Like if I died before them, they’d make it a point to drive to the cemetery and hang Ryan De Luna posters on my tombstone.
What could he be watching? I’d never once taken a naked or risqué photo of myself, and since I hadn’t slept with anyone, there obviously wasn’t a tape that could be leaked, but I found myself strangely apprehensive all the same. What was he looking at?
Ack! There was something completely humiliating on there! I typed quickly.
He didn’t respond. He wasn’t typing. He just left me hanging, not knowing what he would do next.
The reason I’d created that clip was because I had noticed that other singers had success by doing covers of famous songs and earned a decent income through YouTube. I’d thought maybe we could do the same. So I had uploaded all our original songs and done a few solo covers. I kept trying to get my brothers to do a song alone or a duet with me, but they just mocked me instead.
Anyway, I’d turned Ryan’s dance/pop hit “One More Night” into a slowed-down acoustic version. Even though the lyrics were about a girl staying at a club to dance one more night with the guy singing, I sang it thinking about my mom. How I wished I could have one more night with her.
But the videos made us only a few bucks a month. Nothing that would help, especially given our current situation.
I could explain it easily. My fingers flew over the buttons.
What could I say? That it was the song I put on repeat when my musician father permanently walked away from us and my mom stopped being my mom? That I wanted something happy and upbeat to counteract my sadness? That I desperately wanted to believe in fairy-tale romance and love at first sight? That when I finally felt like I could get out of bed and face the world, I never wanted to listen to another false, lying pop song ever again?
I finally settled on:
Then I added:
Why did that make me smile?
It was true—I’d seen many a failed relationship between a musical person and a nonmusical person. They didn’t get the drive, the need to create, and how that usually came first before everything else.
But I was not going to be my mother and blindly devote myself to an unreliable, cheating musician, ruining my life and the lives of everyone around me. I had to draw a line in the sand somewhere.
He seemed to think about that one; it took him a bit longer to respond this time.
Why did that make me blush?
Ha. I just bet he wouldn’t.
The owner of the club, Rodrigo Sanchez, had taken a liking to us. None of us knew why, but playing at Rodrigo’s was the only gig we could consistently count on. Unfortunately, it didn’t pay a whole lot. Just a little bit more than what it cost us in gas and repairs on our dilapidated van.
I didn’t need the winking emoji to know he was teasing. I knew I really should put a stop to all this flirting we were doing.
What was he expecting? Was he still on that “We should hook up” thing from last night?
That should shut him down.
At least he wasn’t acting like every other shocked and outraged musician who had ever hit on me and expected me to swoon at his feet. It was refreshing that he could joke about it.
I had thought Diego was cute, and although I’d enjoyed chatting with him backstage, this entire exchange made me like him even more. His sense of humor was like mine. He’d made me laugh several times. He was quick and clever and fun. My brothers might even like him and possibly wouldn’t punch him if he tried to hold my hand or kiss me.
Cole’s phone buzzed. Another text from Diego.
Why did that make my heart pound and my skin flush?
And why was I picturing Ryan De Luna saying those words to me instead of Diego?
I hadn’t expected to hear from Diego until I saw him in person on Wednesday. But he texted me the next morning, asking who my favorite guitar players were.
Which I found out only after Cole came storming into my room to show me his screen. “Who is this fool texting you on my phone?”
I explained the situation to him, but it didn’t do much to calm him down. “Diego and I are just friends. It’s not a big deal.”
“Whatever. I read your texts. This dude does not want to be ‘just friends’ with you.” Cole handed me his phone. “Give him your email. Because if he sends you a picture of his junk on my phone, I’m not going to be responsible for what happens after that.”
I pressed my lips together so I wouldn’t laugh, and I told Diego to email me instead, giving him my address.
Then, sadly, I sat and waited for my in-box to load. It took so long that I nearly died of boredom.
But there it was! An email from [email protected] with just one question:
Who are your favorite guitar players?
I hit the REPLY button and wrote:
Joni Mitchell, Lita Ford, Christa Harbinger. Also, Bonnie Raitt is a goddess. What about you?
I pushed SEND, but I knew it would probably be a while before I got his response. I left my room and made myself some toast while I waited. Just as I sat back down at my computer, I had another email from him.
Hendrix (obviously), Jimmy Page, Muddy Waters, and Johnny Ramone are my favorites.
Most guys would say Eddie Van Halen or Keith Richards or Slash when you asked them. They were the more obvious choices. I liked that his picks were a little offbeat.
His next line asked:
Why don’t you have any men on your list?
I responded:
Why don’t you have any women on yours?
He replied:
Touché.
Back and forth we went, talking about our top five bands and singers, favorite albums, best live concerts. It was slow going because of my machine and the connection. Like Pony Express slow. I wondered if he was playing me. I knew from experience that the way to a musician’s heart was to ask him or her about their musical influences or why they’d written a certain lyric, or to tell them how much you loved a specific melody. I’d watched my brothers fall prey to many a girl who’d focused all her attention on just the music instead of gushing about how hot my brothers were. To make it seem like she was different from the others.
They fell for it every time.
Even after I pointed it out.
Our online flirtation continued until Wednesday evening finally rolled around and my brothers and I headed to Rodrigo’s. Des
pite Rule #1, I was strangely excited to see Diego. We unpacked our van, which was currently leaking coolant. Another expensive problem we couldn’t afford to fix. Our instruments were arranged in the back like pieces in a Tetris game, but we’d been doing this so long it was easy to extract them in the right order.
We went inside Rodrigo’s and got set up. I plucked at my vintage Martin Dreadnought. I’d found it at a garage sale a couple of years ago and had seen that the woman selling it had no idea how much it was actually worth. She had put a five-dollar sticker on it. Part of me wanted to pay the money and run, but my conscience wouldn’t let me. When I told her she was really underselling, the woman said her husband had left her for her sister, and the judge had ordered her to sell their assets and split the proceeds. She apparently had a trust fund he couldn’t touch, thanks to an ironclad prenup, and she didn’t need this money. She was very happy to sell me the guitar for five bucks.
Sometimes I played my Dreadnought onstage; other times it was the Gibson Les Paul that had been passed down to me. Fitz had given it to me, but I suspected that my father had initially owned it (and most likely paid for it with my mom’s money), but I didn’t ask because I didn’t want to know.
I didn’t want him tainting my guitars, too.
He’d ruined so much of my world already. Like how I disliked performing in clubs. My childhood memories of my father centered around how he smelled after a show—stale cigarette smoke, cheap booze, and even cheaper perfume. Every club we ever played in specialized in that particular aroma combination.
#Moonstruck_A #Lovestruck Novel Page 4