She rolls her eyes. “Oh, I’m sure. I saw what you said about me in Star. You think I’m too skinny? You’re worried about me being anorexic?”
“What?” I ask, shaking my head. I know exactly what she’s talking about: another of the endless side-by-side comparisons that basically said I was a thicker girl than Kayelee. “If anything can be taken from that article, it’s that you called me fat. But it’s a rag. I’m sure they made stuff up to stir the pot.”
“No,” she says with a gleam in her eye. “I did say that. I’d step away from the hors d’oeuvres if I were you.”
“Oh!” someone calls from the crowd. I realize that all eyes are on us and a microphone boom is hanging over our group. Her comment stings and I suddenly feel very self-conscious, but I take a deep breath and force a smile.
“I hate that you wasted any of your pre-Grammy press time talking about me,” I say, batting my lashes. “I’ve done lots of interviews, but somehow, your name just never comes up.”
Stella squeezes my arm. “Let’s get out of here,” she says quietly.
“You guys, you have to make up,” Devyn whines with a dramatic pout. She grabs Kayelee’s hand and drags her over until she can reach one of mine, too. “You’re my very closest friends and this feud is killing me.”
I do a double take at Devyn. “You and Kayelee are friends?” I ask. “Since when?”
She shrugs. I can’t tell if she’s avoiding my gaze or just too drunk to focus. “I don’t know. We did an appearance on Kimmel the same night a couple weeks ago. I think you guys would really like each other if you buried the hatchet.”
“There shouldn’t even be a hatchet!” I say, pulling my hand away from Devyn. “This whole rivalry thing is so stupid.”
“Then stop talking trash about me,” Kayelee says.
“Me?” I ask incredulously. “I’m the one who talks trash? You called my performance at the CMAs ‘amateur hour.’ ”
“Well, you basically said I’m not a good role model.”
“First of all, I didn’t say that, and secondly, you told the world I’m a high school dropout.”
“What school do you go to, then?” she asks.
“I was homeschooled.”
“Even worse.”
“Argh!” I exclaim, grabbing my head in my hands. “You are so ignorant.”
“Oh yes, call me stupid again.”
“I’ve never called you stupid, Kayelee!” I cry, completely rattled. “Why do you believe everything you read in the tabloids?”
Devyn makes a face. “Well, you did say that when you hear ‘Hashtag on My Heart’ you feel your brain cells deteriorate.”
My eyes bulge. “Devyn, what the hell?” I’d told her that in confidence.
Kayelee cocks a hip smugly as she ticks off two more insults. “You told InTouch that my music hurts your ears and you told Seventeen that my CMA dress was slutty.”
“No, I said it was ‘revealing,’ ” I correct her, so mad now I’m seeing stars. “And I stand by that assessment due to your nip slip on the red carpet.”
“Bird,” Stella says softly.
Kayelee smirks. “So you think I’m a ho.”
“I wouldn’t use that word, no…” I say through gritted teeth, “but the first time we met you did flirt with my boyfriend right in front of me.”
Kayelee sneers. “It’s not my fault if your man likes what he sees.”
I clench my fists at my side and step toward her.
“She’s baiting you, Bird,” Stella says, grabbing my arm. “Walk away. You don’t need them. Let’s go.”
My pulse is pounding in my ears, but I know Stella is right. I know she’s right. I start to turn away, feeling sick to my stomach, but the crowd is thick around us.
“Oh look, D, there’s Jason,” Kayelee says. “I thought he was shooting in Vancouver.”
Devyn shrugs. “I thought so, too,” she says, her deliberate nonchalance proving that she undoubtedly knew otherwise.
“Come on,” Kayelee says, “let’s go say hi.”
“No way. He can come to me,” Devyn says, slurring her words a little. “Oh, smile!” She holds up her phone and takes a pic of the two of them, then drops the smile and shoos Kayelee away as she tweets it. “But go over and say hi and, you know, tell him I’m here or whatever if it comes up.”
“ ’Kay. Bye, Song Bird,” Kayelee says as she breezes past me. Then she stops suddenly. “Oh! You hear that?” she asks. “I love this song. It should be your anthem.”
As “Be Like Me” blares over the speakers, she blows me a kiss and walks off, bulldozing her way through the crowd. I feel my shoulders start to shake. I am seeing red, madder than I’ve ever been in my entire life. “How can you be friends with her?” I demand of Devyn.
“She’s actually pretty cool,” she replies as she puts her phone back into her purse. “And I know you don’t like her, but her music is crazy fun to dance to. This song gets in my head and I can’t get it out. You should give her another chance, Bird.” Her glassy eyes go wide. “Ooh! Wouldn’t it be cool if the three of us recorded a song together one day? Maybe for my next movie or something. OMG, my fans would love that.”
My mouth hangs open. Is she serious?
“Bird Barrett,” Jason declares when he makes his way over. “You look as pretty as ever.”
I take a very deep breath and plaster on a forced smile. “Thank you, Jason.” My mind is in a fog as we hug, barely able to comprehend the last five minutes. As though on autopilot, I say, “This is my best friend, Stella Crossley.” I’ve been looking forward to the moment when I can finally introduce my best friend to her celebrity crush, but this is not at all how I imagined it going down.
“Stellllllaaaaaa!” Jason wails. Heads turn, and I flinch, looking at him like he’s lost his mind. “It’s Marlon Brando,” he tells us like it should be obvious. “From A Streetcar Named Desire.”
“Yeah,” Stella says. “I get that a lot actually.”
He leans in and flashes her a cocky grin. “But probably not so spot-on, huh?”
“Right.”
Stella looks at me, and it’s abundantly clear that the crush is over. That’s Jason Samuels: a very good-looking, really nice guy, but cluelessly self-involved.
“What’s up, Devyn?” he asks his ex. He rubs his jaw and tries to be nonchalant.
“Hey,” she says, twirling a lock of hair and trying to look bored.
He starts bobbing his head to “Be Like Me.” “Man, I love this song.”
“Oh my God, I can’t,” Stella says. She grabs my hand and pulls me along behind her, roughly pushing through the crowd and past the cameras, bumping guests on her way back into the house without a care. When we get inside, there are more famous and semifamous people working the room, more fake smiles and fake body parts, and just a general sense of NYE suckery. “Can we go home?” she asks. “Pop popcorn and watch the ball drop on the TV with your folks?”
“You read my mind,” I say, following her out the front door.
We get into Devyn’s limo and ask the driver to take us home, not even bothering to check with her first. I’m over her after tonight, wondering how I was so blind to what a crappy friend she is. I lean my head back on the seat and look over at Stella, thinking for the millionth time how lucky I am to have her.
“Sorry tonight was miserable,” I say.
“There were fun moments,” she replies. “And it was definitely an experience. I don’t think we’re going to make it back for the ball drop, though.” She pulls her phone out of her purse and shows me the time: 11:58 PM.
I sigh heavily and look out the window. “This night was doomed from the start.”
“Can I tweet this?” Stella asks a few seconds later. She holds up her phone:
Doesn’t auto-tune, writes own songs, plays 2 instruments. #belikebird #teamBB.
I laugh. “Go for it. The rivalry is ridiculous, but it’s obviously not going away, so go for it.”
&nbs
p; When my phone flashes 12:00 AM, I send a quick text to Kai:
Happy New Year!!! Missed you so bad tonight.
Then Stella grabs my arm. “Ussie!” she calls, holding out her phone, clearly mocking Devyn. She shows me the pic and we both look so pretty and happy. It’s instantly one of my favorites ever.
“ ‘Hashtag HollywoodHotties,’ ” I joke.
We laugh and once we start, we can’t stop. It was a terrible party, but as the New Year begins, I know that it’ll be a good one as long as I’ve got Stella in my corner.
31
“SO ARE YOU going to talk to him about it?” Stella asks as we look at Kai’s Instagram the next morning. It’s covered with pics he took at some indie concert last night after he got off work.
“Oh, he’s going to hear about it,” I say as I scroll through the images. I am seething. “The whole reason I didn’t fly out there was because he told me he wouldn’t have any time to spend with me, but he obviously found time to go out.”
Kai never texted me back last night when it turned midnight on the West Coast. I figured it was because he was already asleep—it was three AM his time, and he’d been working all night. But when I woke up this morning, I had four missed texts sent at six AM his time:
Happy New Year, Bird!
And:
Hope your night was as great as mine! Got to meet Sween Machine!!!!!
And:
Finally in bed but too hyped to sleep. What a way to start the year!
And finally:
I miss you. See you soon!
“It’s crazy, but the last text makes me angrier than any of the others,” I tell Stella. “Oh, you miss me? Then how about you act like it. How ’bout you don’t lie to me? How ’bout you freaking text me back at my midnight? He was obviously out at three AM. Why didn’t he text me ‘Happy New Year’?”
Stella shakes her head. “I don’t know, Bird. I like Kai and everything, and I know I told you to go for it at the start, but…”
“But?”
“I don’t know,” she says, selecting her words carefully. “It just seems like you guys are bickering a lot lately. Like, a lot.”
I bite my lip. I’m hurt that Kai didn’t want to be together on New Year’s Eve. I offered to come meet him. I offered to help with his bills. I was willing to do whatever it took to be together. Why wouldn’t he want the same? “I don’t want to fight,” I tell her. My voice quivers. “I’m crazy about Kai, you know? I really think I love that boy.”
“I know you do.”
“And it’s like, on tour, he was this fascinating and intriguing guy who gave me nonstop attention. We were always together or texting or on the phone. All summer.”
She nods and rubs my back. I feel tears in my eyes as I open the folder of pics Kai gave me of us sightseeing in Chicago. “We were so happy a few months ago,” I say as I click through. “How do relationships fall apart so fast?”
“Long-distance is hard,” Stella says. “And people change.”
I sniff and shake my head. “It’s like, all he cares about are these bands that no one’s ever heard of. And he acts like the music I make isn’t valid. And—” I stop and look out the window. Stella doesn’t say anything; she just keeps rubbing my back and we stare at the waves as they crash against the shore and wash back out to sea. In and out. Constantly starting over.
“Hey, beautiful!” Kai shouts.
I look up from the bench I snagged on the always-busy Venice Beach and smile. Kai took the red-eye home last night, but he still looks amazing. I feel my resolve weaken. I knew this was going to be hard, but as I take Kai in now, walking toward me with his hands in the pockets of his gray jeans, the teal V-neck he’s wearing snug against his chest, I’m not sure I can go through with it.
“Hey back atcha,” I say. I stand up to hug him and the strength in his embrace makes me a little woozy. I smell the Moroccan oil he uses and think sadly that I will miss that soothing scent. “Thanks for meeting me down here,” I say as I pull away.
“Definitely.” His fingers still grip mine. “I couldn’t wait to see you.”
“Right,” I reply with a wry grin. “You couldn’t wait, but you had time to go to the gym this morning and stop by Makana for lunch.”
He looks taken aback. “Um, I wanted to see my mom, Bird.”
“No, I know,” I say, nodding. “But if you ‘couldn’t wait’ to see me, you could’ve invited me to go to lunch with you.”
He looks away. “Oh-kay.”
We stand there in The Pause. Awkward is our new usual. I pull my hands away and sit down on them. He stands about a minute and then sits next to me. Skateboarders and bikers pass. People run and walk. I know what I need to do, but when I look at Kai’s face—at his gorgeous face that I have kissed all over—I am overcome with sadness.
“I don’t feel like this is working anymore,” I say quietly.
Kai clenches his jaw by way of response. I keep my hands under my legs, knowing that I’ll lose my resolve if I touch him. Our relationship never suffered from lack of chemistry, but after talking to Stella, I’ve come to realize that maybe it’s survived on that alone. Once the miles separated us, the differences that I loved in the beginning began to wedge their way between us. I was so intrigued by Kai’s emotional openness, by his cool, obscure tastes, by his upbringing that was so different from my own; but now every conversation feels forced, and it’s like we have no common ground.
“Are you going to say anything?” I finally ask.
Kai turns to me, searches my eyes, and smiles sadly. “If I say what I’m thinking, then I may not ever see you again.”
“What are you thinking?”
He inhales, holds it, then hangs his head and sighs. “Aw, Bird.” He looks up at me and then he says something that breaks my heart in two. “I’m thinking that you’re right.”
32
“BIRD?” MY MOM asks as she taps on my bedroom door.
I set my guitar down and lean back against the huge pillows on my bed, grateful for the interruption. “Come in.”
“How’s it going in here?”
“Not great,” I say. I gesture to the heap of balled-up paper all around me: abandoned songs and forced lyrics. The label is really pressing me for the second album now, especially since I’ve finally laid down a few tracks in the studio. “They want snappy and fun and upbeat stuff, and Mom, I’m trying, but I just broke up with Kai.” I close my eyes and throw my arm over my face. “And I’m just… sad.”
“Breakups are hard,” she says, walking over to my bed and sitting next to me. “Even if you’re the one doing the breaking.”
I feel a lump in my throat and try to swallow it down. Every day I check Kai’s Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, all of it. And I’ve almost texted him a million times, but I never know what to say. I’ve had two relationships bite the dust now. Is this how it will always be: having to choose between my career and my love life?
I hear my mom unwrinkle a discarded page of lyrics, and I open my eyes. There is obvious amusement on her face. “Don’t, Mom,” I say, sitting up.
“ ‘Getting off the Ferris Wheel of Love’?” she reads aloud, trying not to laugh.
“Mom!” I say, embarrassed. “Throw it away. I was trying to get inspired at the beach and saw the rides going on the Santa Monica Pier. It’s terrible.” I snatch it from her and wad it up again.
She looks away, but her shoulders start to go up and down, as she tries with all her might to keep it together. “Mom, seriously,” I say, throwing it at her the same moment she turns back to face me.
“Ow,” she says, flinching.
“Oh!” I cover my mouth. “Sorry!”
“No, I’m sorry,” she says. “I should be more sensitive.” She purses her lips, but her eyes are still shining. “But honey, how much is a ticket for the Ferris Wheel of Love?”
I try to be mad, but I can’t. I finally crack a small smile, and that gives her the green light to bust out laughing.
She pulls me in for a hug, and soon I, too, am laughing so hard that tears run down my face.
“Oh, Bird,” she says once she catches her breath. “You’re just in a rough patch. You know what you ought to do? Call Bonnie.”
I grab a tissue and wipe my face, considering the idea.
“We just did yoga downstairs this morning, and I think her husband’s out fishing. You ought to call her. If nothing else, you can get a little advice from somebody who’s been there.”
“Where?” I ask as I climb out of bed. “On the Ferris Wheel of Love?”
She snorts. “Oh honey, we’ve all been there. And one of these days, you’ll sit in the bucket with the right guy and you won’t ever want to get off.”
I pick up my phone to text Bonnie and smile at my mom. “I hope you’re right.”
“So what’s going on, girl?” Bonnie asks as we settle into her super-comfy sofa a little later.
“Just writer’s block,” I admit. “Still.”
She nods knowingly but doesn’t say anything, so I go on.
“It’s like, A and R wants this fun pop stuff, but—I don’t know if my mom told you—I just broke up with my boyfriend. Everything I write about him is so sad, and everything I write for the label is so fake.” I drop my head into my hands. “I feel like I’m losing my mind.”
“My second album was by far the hardest,” she says. “I felt so much pressure, and I was writing songs that didn’t even make sense, like square pegs in round holes.”
“Exactly!”
“Well, it’s simple, honey. You’ve got to write what you feel. That’s what they want to hear; sometimes they just don’t recognize it right away.”
I shake my head. “They really want pop.”
She doesn’t even flinch. “Good for them. I want to be a size two again, but we don’t always get what we want.”
I laugh out loud. She does, too. It feels good.
“You know, Bird, that pressure? Well, it can get to you. It got to me,” she admits. “I got all caught up in the fame, the perks, and especially the scene out here with the partying and stuff. It was not good.”
The Road to You Page 21