by LJ Evans
My heart filled to overflowing. That he thought that I could have showed him anything after everything he’d shown me. I smiled at him and he smiled back. His eyes were summer storm clouds as he watched me process everything he was telling me.
“You’ve had a really big week,” I told him.
He nodded.
But even being this revised Mia that I was, there was a thought that flirted at the back of my head near the closet where Good Girl Mia was hiding. But instead of keeping it inside like I would have in my past, I just said it. “What if you regret it?”
“Your man, philosopher Ed, is quite right. When all the fans are gone, and no one remembers my name, and you’re seventy, and I’ve lost all my hair, the only thing that will matter is that I can fall in love with you all over again every day. That’s the only thing I’d regret. Not being able to do that.”
“You realize how insane you sound after knowing me for only three weeks,” I said, trying for sassy Mia even though my heart was beating like it was its on percussion section.
“Mysterious ways, right? I kinda like that Ed song. He wrote it about us.”
“He doesn’t even know us.”
“Every word. Us.”
“Moron—” He cut me off with a kiss. A kiss that told me to shut up. A kiss that told me just to hang on to this moment with this gorgeous BB who had somehow found a way to love me in the same way that I loved him. This man who was trying to make our stars align in a way that would become a new reality for both of us.
“Little Bird, Miss Mia, will you come stay and play house with me forever?”
My heart stopped. Painful air trying to get back in my lungs like I’d taken my drop in the cave all over again. And even though he was serious, and I wanted to scream, “YES!” I didn’t.
“I’ll think about it,” I teased back instead.
“Sassy. Miss Mia being full of sass,” he grinned. “I’m going to have to force your hand by telling your parents you’ve agreed to marry me.”
“I didn’t agree to marry you. You didn’t even ask me that.”
“You’re right. I didn’t. But I will. Soon.”
“No one will believe you're serious if you do.”
“I think they will,” he said, and he looked out the windows to where my mama was looking at us through the sliding glass doors as she sat talking to Lonnie and Daddy. She looked happy. And God, it had been a long time since I’d seen Mama really happy.
“Believe me, someday in the not too distant future, you are going to be Mrs. Mia Waters,” he said, twining his fingers through mine and pulling me with him towards the slider.
“Who says I’m gonna be Mia Waters?”
“No cleft chinned babies, and now you won’t take my name? You really are going to be the death of me.”
“But it’ll be a good death.”
We paused at the door. He kissed me again, regardless of the fact that my parents and his goofy friend were probably watching us. And it made my entire body melt into the typical gooey puddle that his every touch and kiss did.
“I love you, Little Bird.”
“I love you too, moron.”
And then we went out the door to face my parents, his best friend, and our possible future.
THE END
About the Book
Thank you for reading my book! As I said in my “Message From the Author”, I hope you enjoyed reading it and would consider writing a review. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for doing this extra step.
About the medical topics in this book, I want to humbly apologize in advance to the doctors of the world and those living with one kidney. I know that my book is not completely accurate in all of its depictions of what can happen in these cases, but beg pardon in that the book was written as a work of fiction intended to entertain and touch the spirit and not necessarily depict reality.
Regarding the PlayBabe Mansion and Hugo Brantly, some may feel that this is a slight at Hugh Heffner. But, it was not my intention to do so. Instead, I intended it to be a much more twisted fictional world than Hugh’s ever was and as such, has been created for the purposes of this story only.
One final note, spelunking, caving, is an adventurous sport. All of the caves mentioned here are real caverns that you can visit and traverse. I have added to their complexity in some cases, all in the hopes of making this novel more interesting.
Thank you for your understanding.
Acknowledgements
The list of people who have helped me with this novel is certainly not small, and I hope that I do not forget anyone in the process.
Thank you to my husband for not only understanding my need to write even though it takes up so much of our lives but also for being my number one fan and cheering section. To my daughter, who has started down her own creative path and yet always has time to help me with mine, I can only say I want your adventures to be bigger and better than any I have had. My big sister is the reasons these books are out in the world because she pushed and shoved until I had the courage to make it happen, love you Bug. Thank you to my parents who never told me that writing was a waste of time, but instead told me that creating a world that others could see was a gift.
I am grateful for all my beta readers who made this story better in ways I couldn’t always see. Thank you to Megan McKeever who I found through Reedsy and who helped me shape this story into something that my readers deserved. To Autumn Gantz at WordSmith Publicity, your help in launching this book out into the world has helped me in so many unexpected ways.
Thank you to my author friends who have helped me improve my writing and guided me through this publishing world, especially Kelsey Kingsley, Katy Ames, and Alexandra Page, go Team Penguin! Finally, thank you to Ed Sheeran for writing the beautiful words in the beautiful songs that inspired me.
About the Author
LJ Evans, lives in California’s Central Valley with her husband, daughter, and the three terrors called cats. She's been writing almost as a compulsion since she was a little girl where she was both inspired and spurred on by her older sister. While she currently spends her days teaching 1st grade in a local public school, she spends her personal time as a voracious reader, writing, and binge watching original shows like The Crown, Stranger Things, and Downton Abbey. Her debut novel, my life as a country album, was the 2017 Young Adult Book of the Year in the Independent Author Network's Book Awards. My life as a pop album is her second novel in the “my life as an album” series.
Connect with LJ Evans and learn more at:
www.ljevansbooks.com
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Books by LJ Evans
my life as a country album – April 2017
my life as a pop album – January 2018
my life as a rock album – coming summer 2018
my life as a mixtape – coming soon
Continue reading for a preview of the other novels in the
my life as an album series
my life as a country album
The End: Out of the Woods
“Are we out of the woods yet
Are we in the clear yet
Good!”
- Swift & Antonoff
IT HAPPENED WHEN WE were out and about looking at apartments that we couldn’t afford. It was a failed attempt to reclaim some of our Polaroid moments of color and passion that had disappeared months ago with your kidneys. The sun streamed through a set of picture windows and highlighted you in a halo of light that captured my breath. In that moment, caught in the shimmery white, you almost looked like the football god you once were and not the weaker version of yourself you’d become. You gave me your slow, heart-melting smile as you grabbed my hand and twirled me around in the empty space until I was held tight against your chest, feeling like the only girl in your world. You swayed me back and forth, slow and sensual, and for a second we f
orgot it all. We forgot the realtor, the year of doubt, and the harsh reality of the future. I let out a breath into your neck and thought maybe, just maybe, we were in the clear. We’d held onto each other through it all. You tipped my chin up, and I was caught, as I’d always been, in the sparkle of your beautiful, green and gold mosaic eyes. The only eyes that ever made me feel alive.
You kissed me, reaching down to the depths of my heart where you’d forever claimed every last tile on the walls of my soul. The realtor cleared his throat, but we just ignored him like we’d ignored everyone for that picture-perfect six months we’d been away at college. You smiled against my lips, and I couldn’t help but smile back. You whirled me out of your arms and then dragged me up the stairs at a jog.
I was smiling, still caught in that precious moment, when you turned to me again and whispered, “Cami,” and I listened because I always listened when you said my name that way and not the short version, Cam, that we both preferred. And this time, my heart melted for a totally different reason when your mosaic eyes turned to me with an indescribable look. It was like a switch had been thrown from that brief second of life below until now. Then you said something that would tear at me for the rest of my life. You said, “I love you, Camdyn,” before you crumpled to the floor.
An ambulance ride later, we were at the hospital. Again. How many times had we been there this year? It didn’t actually matter because I already knew. I already knew that this time it was going to be different.
You see, it was the only time in our entire life you’d called me Camdyn.
the beginning: mary’s song
(oh my, my, my)
“And our daddies used to joke about the two of us
Growing up and falling in love and our mamas smiled
And rolled their eyes.”
- Swift, Rose, Maher
PEOPLE WHO DON’T KNOW us, people like the therapist I saw not long ago, they always ask me the most ridiculous question. They ask me how you and I met. And I know, it is only ridiculous to us because we obviously know the story, but my tolerance for stupidity and my quick mouth running ahead of my brain, always has me replying with an equally ridiculous answer. I respond with a cryptic, “’Mary’s Song’!” And when they look at me puzzled, I just wave a disgusted hand and say, “Just listen to that song, and then you’ll know.”
You’d be grinning and laughing that deep, skin-tingling, Jake laugh of yours if you ever heard me say that. You’d tousle my plain, brown hair and say something smart-ass about me comparing our life to a country song. Not that you minded country music. We live in Tennessee after all and have a great many country artists on our playlists. You’d just find it humorous that I was comparing us to any song. Especially knowing me; knowing that I’m not really a girlie girl who gets all romantic and mushy expecting you to sing to me like Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing.
But, I still can’t help it because it’s the only response I know to that moronic question. When I think of our beginning, those lyrics are the first thing that pops into my head. It has two kids who are a couple years apart living next to each other and playing in their tree house, inseparable. It has them growing up with stolen kisses and tangled hands in truck rides out to the creek… or the lake in our case. And, you know it’s true that the essence of that song is the inexplicable connection between the two kids. And that definitely was us. Will always be us.
I think thee moment your parents remember most as cementing our childhood connection is the “treehouse incident”. I’m almost certain that you’d agree. Do you remember the hushed tone they’d take when speaking about it, as if some alien spaceship has landed in the middle of Tennessee? It really wasn’t the beginning of us… but it was the moment that made your parents scratch their heads and wonder about the nature of the universe and God and what things were meant to be.
I know I shouldn’t remember it as clear as I do, seeing as I was only four while you were seven, but I guess the “treehouse incident” isn’t something you forget, even if you are only four. If I close my eyes, I can almost relive it moment by moment in my head. I remember it was my nap time, and I hated nap time just like I pretty much hated anything that kept me from your side. So, what did I do? I sneaked out of my house and went searching for you in “our” back yard. And of course, people who don’t know us look at me puzzled again, because we didn’t live together in the same house, but we did share a backyard. That’s because it’s really two yards, but our daddies tore down the fence that separated them before we were ever born, so we’ve always had this one big rectangle of suburbia that our families share like we pretty much share everything.
Focus, Cam. That’s what you’d tell me. Because it’s one of my worst traits, the way my thoughts and actions lead me down a completely different path than the one I start on. I could claim a disability I’m sure, but my family isn’t really into the making excuses for your action kind of family. Any-whoo. That day, the day of the “incident”, there was a ladder propped up against the aging oak tree where our daddies had begun building a tree house for us. And, like always, my body had clambered half way up the ladder before my brain caught up. And when my brain did catch up, it was because my body was soaring through the sky. There was nothing holding me but the thick Southern summer air. And then… Then what? Then I was in your arms all smiles.
Everyone thought I should have been frightened, falling from a ladder like that at four. But I wasn’t. That moment of free falling filled my little body with electric energy as if I was a baby bird spiraling from its nest for the first time. What did scare me, however, was the look you gave me as I beamed up at you. It was the first time I remember you being angry with me. Definitely not the last. But the first. Your eyes turned this deep, deep lake green, and you yelled at me as much as you could with your seven-year-old voice and your adorable, dark, shaggy hair shaking about you.
“You could’ve been killed!” And even though you were furious and only a little kid yourself, you pulled me into a hug. At that point, I didn’t know better, so I squirmed away from your surprisingly strong arms just like I would my mama’s a minute later.
So? People would say. So, you caught me from falling. What’s so crazy about it that our parents call it the “treehouse incident” in whispers? Well, it’s really about how you came to be in our yard, standing by that tree ready to catch me that gets everyone going.
Your mama, Marina, was two seconds behind you, and she hauled me to my house shaking like a kitten in a bath. She was babbling to my mama in that rapid-fire way of hers, “Jake and I were just eating lunch at the counter as always, when all of a sudden, he got this awful look on his face like he might throw up. He ran out the back door quick as a June bug, and I followed. And what do I see? Cami flying off of the ladder, and Jake catching her.”
“Oh my lord!” my mama exclaimed, pulling me and then you against her, to which, of course, we both objected and yanked ourselves away. “How on Earth did he know?”
Your mama and mine regarded us as if we were La Chupacabra itself because, as you well know, the golden granite bar in your kitchen has no view of our treehouse. None at all. So, the question became how on Earth had you known that I was out there? That I was climbing that ladder? That I needed saving? At that time, we didn’t care for the wild look in our mamas’ eyes, so we really did take off as quick as a couple of June bugs. And where did we go? Right back up the tree. To the place that became our little haven many times later in life.
People don’t believe me when I tell them that story. They don’t believe that I can remember it in such vivid detail when I was only four. They don’t believe that you took off from your house to save me without seeing me on the ladder. They think I made some kind of noise or something that you heard. Maybe. Maybe I did. All I know is that it wasn’t the last time we saved each other in crazy, unknown ways, was it? People can believe it or not. But it’s true. Cross my fingers and hope to die, stick a hundred needles in my eye.
That’s another thing, isn’t it? I never had to tell you I was telling the truth. You just knew. Just like I knew when you were telling the truth. It was the same whether we lied over stupid things like who ate the last MoonPie or more serious things like wounded hearts. No matter what, we just knew. I think that’s why you chose not to talk to me about some things later. So you wouldn’t have to pretend to lie, and I wouldn’t have to pretend not to know.
***
The “tree house incident” is your parents’ favorite story about “us” from our childhood, but it’s not my mama’s. Did you know that? My mama’s story always starts before I was even born. Before you were even born. When I was little, she used to tell it to me daily over our breakfast cereal because I’d plead with her until she caved. I’d say, “Tell me how Jake made me,” and she’d grin.
Mama would say, “Well, Marina and I met in college. We were roommates and best of friends. That’s how it all really started.”
And, I’d roll my eyes and say, “Mama, not that part.”
And she’d say, “Cami, the good things in life all have roots that start somewhere else.”
You know how hard it was for me to sit still when I was little. Even now, it still is. But, I’d try my best because I knew the good part was coming. The part with you in it. I’d sit with my spoon waggling around and my foot going crazy kicking the table leg while mama got all dreamy in her story telling mode.
Mama would say, “When Marina and I met Jake and your daddies, it could have all gone south, but it didn’t. We all got along so well that it was just meant to be.” I didn’t get that when I was little, but I guess it could truly have gone haywire right then because sometimes couples just don’t get along, right? We certainly haven’t liked all of each other’s boyfriends and girlfriends. So, I guess it was meant to be that our daddies were as keen on each other as our mamas.