“But I thought you graduated in May,” I say.
“Exactly.” She sighs dramatically. “Like, forever ago.” She turns and leans against me, giving the photographers a side view of her wintry gown. I mimic her pose, back to back, and smile at the mass of cameras. “Bria and Bridget are great,” she says over our shoulders, “but they’re reality stars and I am a professional actress. I’ve worked with Tom Hanks.”
“You have?”
“It was a voice-over, but yes. And the point is, the girls and I just don’t have as much in common as we used to.”
Uneasy talking about them when we’re all here together, I glance their way. Maybe they haven’t worked with Tom Hanks, but from where I stand, it’s clear to me that Bria and Bridget certainly aren’t hurting for exposure. Their family got a reality show because their half brother, Lil’ Thunder, is a preteen rap sensation, but now both of the girls have legit modeling contracts and have been in all the major fashion magazines. Watching their lithe figures work the red carpet, it’s easy to see why.
“So why do you still hang out with them?” I ask Devyn. There’s a lot of noise on the red carpet, but I still whisper.
“Oh, Bird, there’s so much history there,” she says leading me down the carpet. We pose again, completely avoiding interviews as reporters call to us. “Plus, their dad is this big music exec who I totally need to stay on good terms with because I want to record another EP. And they have ten million followers on Twitter, collectively.”
Shutters click double-time, and I grin at her. That sounds like the Devyn I know.
“Let’s get the four seasons together!” a photographer shouts.
The twins join us and urge me to mimic some of their poses, although I’ll never feel comfortable making a pouty face. We start to have fun, getting a little silly with it all, and Devyn, who seemed cold as ice when she arrived, melts under the spotlight.
“So Dacari Waddell was there last night with some of the cast from Teen Wilderness,” Devyn says once we’re sitting down inside. She has pulled a tiny flask from her clutch and is spiking her ginger ale. “Want some?”
I shake my head, having learned that lesson fast. “Who’s Dacari Waddell?”
She gives me a look of disbelief and then shares a condescending laugh with the twins. For a moment, I’m worried that she’s about to make me feel bad for not drinking, but then she says, “Bird, do you live under a rock? Dacari Waddell is on MTV’s The Challenge spin-off.”
“He’s, like, a god,” Bridget chimes in.
“So hot,” Bria confirms.
I glance at my iPhone. We’ve been here for an hour and haven’t moved from this booth. There are superstars everywhere—Portia de Rossi just walked by my table—and I want to mingle. I want to talk to the people who run the Gentle Barn, the charity we’re supposed to be here for, but Devyn just wants to chill at our table taking pics and posting them online. Her Twitter feed looks like we’re having a blast, when in reality, we’re the most boring people here.
“So yeah, Dacari is smokin’,” Devyn says, her ice-queen eye makeup sparkling. “I’ll totally admit that. But it’s not like I’m going to go out with Jason Samuels, who was People’s Sexiest Man Alive, don’t forget, and then rebound with a reality star.” She looks at Bria and Bridget without a shred of remorse. “No offense.”
“Whatever,” Bria says, shooting Devyn a cold look. “Dacari is a billion times hotter than Jason.”
Bridget cocks her head and mimics, “No offense.”
Devyn gives them both a demeaning smile. “Dream on, girls.” Then she turns to me, scooting closer in the booth and grabbing my forearm as she essentially freezes them out. “So Bird, this guy is coming at me hard and basically ruining any potential game I might have from major players, so I go to the bathroom, and that’s when I see Austin Clark. I wasn’t sure if he’d be into me since he and Jason shot Over Getting Over You together last year, but we started talking and…”
She cocks an eyebrow and purses her lips suggestively.
“And…?” I ask.
“And we hooked up,” she says, her eyes gleaming. “Jason would die, especially since Austin just signed on for the next Batman remake, but I can’t worry about his feelings and I don’t even think they really hang out anymore.”
“So… you just… hooked up?”
She beams at me. “Yes, and he is ah-to-the-mazing.”
Bridget rolls her eyes and stands up. “We’re going to the bathroom,” she says, grabbing her sister’s hand.
The girls leave, gliding through the crowd gracefully, and Devyn sits back, self-satisfied as she takes another sip of her spiked soda. “They’re mad about the reality show comment, but they’ll get over it,” she tells me. “And they’re probably jealous about Austin, too. He’s gorg.”
“So what exactly is your definition of ‘hooking up’?” I ask. I’ve wanted to ask her this question several times, actually.
“Nothing major,” she says, shrugging. “I think he’s dating Rachel Bilson, and he’s, like, pseudo-serious with her, so we just made out in the VIP room.”
My chin hits the table. “Devyn!”
“What?” she asks, raising a frosty eyebrow. “It’s not like I slept with him.”
“Um, I hope not!” I exclaim. Like that had even crossed my mind. I can’t imagine going at it with a guy at a club, not to mention one who’s taken and ten years older than me.
“Bird,” Devyn says, frowning. “Don’t judge. It’s gross.”
“I’m not judging,” I say, snapping out of my, well, judgment.
Then Devyn squints at me and leans in closer. “Oh my God,” she says. “Bird, you haven’t done it with Kai yet?”
I look down but feel the blush creeping up my neck. I shake my head slightly.
“Are you serious?” she asks, slapping the table. “He’s older, right?”
“He’s not thirty,” I say. Devyn shoots me a cautionary look, so I back off. “But yeah, he’s twenty. And we’re taking things slow.”
“But you’ve had sex before, right?” she asks. I just stare at her, not even sure how the conversation about her illicit VIP make-out somehow became about me. “OMG, Bird Barrett! You’re still a virgin, aren’t you?” she asks loudly.
“Now who’s the one judging?” I fire back. I cross my arms and sit back hard in the booth. I hear my wings crunch and look up at the ceiling. This event is so not what I’d imagined.
“Oh, Bird, I’m not judging,” Devyn says, cozying up to me. She lays her head on my shoulder and squeezes me around my waist. “I think it’s sweet how innocent you are. It, like, goes with you. The whole good-girl country-singer thing.” She sits up and looks at me with a genuine smile. “I thought it was part of your image, but it’s, like, real.” This oddly amazes her.
“I’m just waiting for the person I’m going to be with forever,” I say quietly.
“But you love Kai, right?” she asks.
“Well, yeah.”
“And he loves you?”
“I think so,” I say. I stretch my neck, suddenly very antsy.
“Okay, so you waited for love, which is totally admirable, but now you love each other, so what’s the problem?”
“There’s no problem, Devyn,” I snap. Her eyes widen and she holds her hands up in defense. “Sorry. It’s just—” I exhale loudly and look down at my hands. “We love each other, yeah, but I mean, we haven’t said it. And also, it has to be right, you know?” I glance up at her. “I mean, he’s never here. I haven’t seen him in over two months.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah,” I say. “So we’re just taking it slow, okay?”
“I get it,” she says. She squeezes my hand, but it feels like she’s patronizing me.
I’ve had enough. I didn’t get dressed up to sit at a table the whole time and be antisocial, so I grab my purse and stand. “I’m going to check out the silent auction.”
“Bird, wait!” Devyn says, scramb
ling to get out of the booth. She grabs my arm, partly to stop me and partly to steady herself on her four-inch heels. “I wasn’t being mean. You know how I am, vomit mouth, no filter. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
“No, really,” she says, batting her long, frosted eyelashes at me and pouting. “I really am sorry, okay?”
“Okay,” I say, somewhat exasperated.
“Come on,” she says as she links her arm through mine. “Let’s have some fun.”
Finally, I think as we weave through the crowd. We stop at a tall cocktail table to snag a mini-quiche and suddenly “Notice Me” comes on over the speakers.
“OMG, your song!” Devyn squeals. She holds up a fake microphone and sings:
“Maybe you like me, or do you like me not?
May be wishful thinking, but wishin’s all I’ve got.”
As she sings, people near us start to point and turn their heads. It’s crazy, but it still feels so good to hear one of my songs in public, to see people singing along and dancing, especially famous people. As annoyed as I am with Devyn, there’s a reason she got a song on that movie sound track. She belts out my country song with gospel soul, doing it justice while giving it a new twist. I feel myself soften toward her as she serenades me.
Soon Bria and Bridget have found us, and they start singing along, too, although it’s painfully clear that their little brother is the one with the musical talent. “If I’m a wildflower, then you’re the blowin’ breeze!” they yell. “I could get swept away, don’t know where you’d take me.”
“Come on, Bird,” Devyn says, leaning into me and holding up her phone for a quick video of us. “Is it real? Do you see? Say—you notice me,” we sing together.
She immediately posts the Vine and sighs. “You know, Bird, you’re like the Katy to my Rihanna.”
I laugh out loud and shake my head. Only Devyn.
25
“HOW’S IT COMING?” my dad asks from the patio door. I had a conference call with Troy and Dan this morning, and they both agreed that I need to be recording again. Problem is, record what?
I sigh heavily. “Not great.” I gesture to my journal lying in front of me with a million black scratches across both open pages. “The lyrics are so generic and the sound…” I set my guitar down and flop backward on the chaise. I’ve been out here on the balcony all afternoon thinking the backdrop of the beach would be the perfect place to work, but that’s just it: songwriting never really felt like work before. “Please! Put me out of my misery.”
“Oh, Bird,” he says, picking up my guitar. “It can’t be that bad.”
He starts strumming a few chords, just playing around.
“You working on a love song?” he asks, not looking me in the eye. “Maybe something about Kai?” It’s been a lot easier for my dad to accept that I have a boyfriend now that that boyfriend is hundreds of miles away.
I turn my head on the cushion and smirk. “Dad. No. You’re safe.”
He grins. “So nothing too mushy.”
“I’d take mushy,” I say. “I’d take anything.”
Then the chords he’s playing morph into something I do recognize. “Maybe you need to get back to the basics,” he says. He scoots my legs over and sits down with me on my chair. He is playing “Before Music,” the song Dylan and I wrote about life before our little brother, Caleb, drowned. It’s the simplest song I ever wrote, the purest, just raw emotion. To hear my dad strum it now seems to quiet even the crashing waves. “You know, hon,” he says, “the best songs ever written are the ones that come from the heart. I think you know that. I think you’re feeling too much pressure, looking at it all like a business, showing up to write songs with your journal and your guitar and your mind, but you keep leaving your heart at home.”
He plays softly and I pull my legs up to my chest, rest my chin on my knees, really stop and listen. I hear my song, remember the heartbreak, listen to the waves crash and the seagulls call out to one another as the chords float away on the wind. As my dad plays, I think about what the phrase “before music” means to me now, what my life was like before I was discovered, before I was compared to anyone else. What was my music like before I knew anyone would ever hear it? My dad, a very talented picker, works out an intricate melody where the bridge usually is, and I close my eyes, hearing something sweet and special there in his riff. This idea of life before fame has me gripped, makes me consider who I was before, who I am now, who I want to be, who I want to be with—which makes me think of Kai. Who was I before I was in love?
When the song comes to a close, we sit together in silence as the sun dips low on the horizon. For the next ten minutes, we just watch, my heart and mind spinning around with the idea of “Me Before Love.”
Finally my mom breaks the spell.
“Supper?” she asks from the patio door.
“Yeah,” my dad says, standing up.
“Bird?” she asks.
“I think I’m going to keep working,” I say, finally inspired. My dad passes me my guitar and gives me a knowing grin. “Turn the light on for me?”
He nods, and they go inside. I start to pick out a melody, basing it on his riff, the phrase having taken hold in my fingertips. I play something fun but not overly up-tempo—something I think Kai would like but Dan would, too. I let my fingertips dance over the strings and then slap them quiet, adding percussion between the halting phrases. Already, I like this song better than anything I’ve written all summer. I don’t have lyrics yet, but my heart is full, so something will definitely come.
Once I’ve got a good idea of the music, I grab my iPhone to record it. That’s when I see the text from Devyn:
Hey BB, hitting up Greystone Manor tonight.
Mary Jane & Molly will be there Meet at 11
I don’t know who Molly and Mary Jane are, but after the lame Halloween event last night, I have no desire to go clubbing with Devyn and her friends. My answer is immediate:
Have to write. Label needs songs, like, yesterday.
Have fun!
Knowing Devyn, she’ll text me a million times, tweet at me, and beg me to come, so I turn my phone on AIRPLANE MODE and pull up my recording app. After the champagne incident, I had to beg my dad to let me go to Hollywood Howls by myself, and the only reason he agreed was because it was for charity. There’s no way he’d let me go to a nightclub where there is definitely drinking and probably drugs. And honestly, that’s just not my scene. I’m happy to stay home and write, especially when the air is buzzing with creative energy.
I pick out the melody, working a little with tempo, waiting for the words to come. Right before I read Devyn’s text, I was thinking about sunsets and sunrises, about beginnings and endings, about how much you can love somebody but how hard it can be, too. But now my mind is taking over again. What if Devyn was right about Kai? I mean, I wasn’t surprised when he said we could take things slow—it made me like him even more and it was the biggest relief—but maybe he was just saying that? Or maybe it’s too slow? I mean he is twenty. And he was raised in a major city, not like me in an RV where I was overprotected by my parents and older brothers. And I know I’m not his first girlfriend, although I hate to think about that.
I finish the instrumental recording and decide to shoot for lyrics after supper. I smell something good through the screen door, and I know there’s no way I’ll conquer this writer’s block over the noise from both my mind and my stomach.
26
“WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE thing about being on the beach?” Kai asks me over the phone.
I stand on the hard, wet sand, letting my feet sink with each pass of the waves. “Just this feeling of serenity. I’ve never felt anything like it.”
“Yeah?”
“And watching the ocean,” I say, putting my hand over my sunglasses to block out the bright afternoon sun. “It’s massive. Think how much water. Think how someone thousands of miles away might be looking right back at me from another shore.
Think how many feet have been right where mine are.”
“But don’t your toes get cold?”
“Huh?”
“Right where your feet are,” he says. “Just stuck in the sand like that.”
“How do you know my—?” It’s crazy, but I look around. And then I see him. I see Kai and I scream. He is running toward me, full speed.
“Kai!”
I jump into his arms, and the force knocks us both down. His face is in my hands, his lips on mine. It feels like a dream.
“What are you doing here?” I ask when we come up for air.
“Astrean has the flu, so she canceled this week’s shows,” he says, smiling.
I beam up at him. “Poor Astrean.”
He laughs. “Your empathy is touching.”
He brushes my hair from my forehead and just stares down at me as if taking me in, the sun backlighting his head. Is it possible that he got more handsome while he was on tour? He kisses me again, and I let my head fall into his hands. Kai is here. I laugh out loud, laugh right into his mouth and he pulls away, laughing, too. Kai is home.
“Okay, so the ingredients you e-mailed me are in the crisper drawer of the fridge, Kai,” my mom says, her eyes twinkling.
“You knew about this?” I ask my parents. I am still in shock that Kai is here.
“Oh yes,” she says, kissing me on the forehead. “And we’re going down to Bonnie’s for dinner, so we’ll see you two later.”
My dad waves at me as he walks past and then takes Kai’s hand in what looks like a pretty firm handshake. When the door closes, Kai turns to me and shakes his hand out dramatically. “I think that was a warning,” he says with a smile.
“Whatever would he be warning you about?” I ask coyly.
“This,” he says, rushing over. His arms are around me and his mouth is on mine in an instant. My pulse races. I run my fingers through his hair, taking pleasure in messing it up when I know he likes it styled just so. We back up until I am against the wall by the front door, his hands moving down to my hips. “God, I’ve missed you,” he whispers.
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