My Life as an Album (Books 1-4): A small town, southern fiction series

by LJ Evans

  I wiped furiously at my tears. I definitely didn’t deserve to go on an adventure, and my heart probably wouldn’t be able to take another twisted break. Yet, I also knew that the feeling I’d had today—not just the lightness, but the sense of normalcy—was pulling me in like an anglerfish luring in its prey.

  Before I could overanalyze it all, I picked up my phone and texted Cam.

  ME: Do you happen to have the moron’s phone number?

  My phone buzzed in response.

  CAM: Cam is still missing her phone. This is Blake. Why do you need the number?

  I typed back.

  ME: I can’t talk to you about this. Can you please give Cam her phone?

  Buzz.

  CAM: You okay, kiddo?

  That was definitely Cam.

  ME: Yes. I just need the moron’s phone number.

  CAM: Do I need to send Blake over to kill him?

  I was ready to type out the whole thing to her, and then I realized that I didn’t want Cam to tell me her opinion. I didn’t want to know if she thought I should stay or should go. Cam always had a way of swaying me to her thinking. I needed to do this on my own.

  ME: No! I just need to give him an answer to a question he asked, and I didn’t think to get the number.

  She sent the number over via Blake, I was sure.

  CAM: Love you.

  ME: Love you too! I’ll text you tomorrow. Night. Give my love to Blake.

  Then, I turned off my light and crawled into bed. I stared at my phone and the number they’d given me for probably twenty minutes. As soon as I sent the text, I wouldn’t be able to stop whatever happened. It would be out of my control, and I really wasn’t so great with things like that these days.

  I scrolled through my Ed music and hit “This,” Ed’s voice echoing my own confusion. Would this be the start of something beautiful and new? Or would Derek be the one to make me lose it all? Was I ready to throw away all my good intentions for this? The possibility of a promise of a “this.” A possibility that I knew I hadn’t imagined, because Derek was very clear and vocal in his intentions, but I also knew that the “this” that he promised was temporary. Three weeks of temporary.

  Maybe that was all that I needed, though. Three weeks to get my head back on straight and maybe forget about the boy who’d broken my heart. Maybe. Because three weeks with Derek, who already made me feel desirable and wanted and…free, might be able to make those wounds feel not so fresh. Then I could come back and settle down under the weight of the guilt that would never leave me, without the broken heart to also go with it.

  With fingers that shook, I typed.

  ME: Hey, Derek, this is Mia. Mia Phillips. I got your number from Blake, I hope that’s okay. Anyway. If your offer still stands, I think I’d like to come with you guys on your spelunking adventure.

  Then I held my breath, waiting. I could see the dots come up almost instantaneously that said he was typing back a response. I wasn’t sure if I hoped he’d send a laughing emoji that said he’d just been kidding, or if he’d be glad.

  DEREK: Thank God! You just saved me an entirely too embarrassing scenario tomorrow where I planned to show up on your doorstep and beg like you’ve never seen anyone beg before.

  ME: Now you’ll think I’m easy.

  I hit send before I could take it back. I clunked my phone against my forehead. God. Easy? Really?

  DEREK: You cannot say things like that to me when I’m in the dark in bed.

  ME: Don’t be gross.

  DEREK: I can promise, there’s nothing gross about it.

  ME: I’m regretting I said yes already.

  DEREK: No, you’re not.

  ME: I seriously do not know what to say to you sometimes.

  DEREK: I leave you speechless. That’s good to know.

  ME: I wish there was an eye-roll emoji.

  DEREK: Can we pick you up at ten?

  ME: Does that really mean ten, or ten to ten like today? I have to pack for three weeks.

  DEREK: No pantsuits!!!

  ME: What if that’s all I have in my closet?

  DEREK: Then I’ll have to burn them. In a great big bonfire offering to the pantsuit god.

  I caught myself before I responded that then I wouldn’t have anything to wear, because who knew where he’d take that conversation. My lack of response brought another text from him.

  DEREK: I’ll see you at ten.

  ME: Okay.

  DEREK: Sweet dreams, Mia.

  ME: Good night, moron.

  Then my phone stopped buzzing. I placed it on my chest, which was heaving in a way that was so unusual for me. That I’d only really felt one other time: the time Hayden had texted and asked me to go out on a date with him. Well, it was really to attend this big charity thing with him on his dad’s behalf. We were going to stay in a nice hotel in the city, and he’d broken up, yet again, with Marcie just the week before. I’d known that it was my chance. My chance to be something more to Hayden Hollister than his vice president in our business fraternity.

  I’d bought my green dress and been as excited as a dog in a sprinkler. He’d picked me up with his golden smile, and driven me to a golden hotel, and we’d had a golden time. I’d ended up in his bed after too much wine that I didn’t even like but that he drank by the bottleful.

  When we got back to our reality, I found out that, while I’d been dreaming of our new life together, he’d gone and gotten back together with the beauty queen.

  So, that whole adventure hadn’t ended very well, just like I had lots of doubts about this adventure ending well. But I thought that if I knew going into it all, that it was just a three week thing, that I would be okay. That I’d just try, for once in my godforsaken life, to just live in the moment. To just be a twenty-something girl on a crazy adventure with a group of boys who had nothing but pleasure in mind.

  It was hopeless to try to sleep. I switched on my bedside light, grabbed a notebook from my pile of unused journals, and started to make a list of things to bring with me.

  Stop One

  PERFECT

  “Baby I’m dancing in the dark,

  with you between my arms.

  Barefoot on the grass,

  Listening to our favorite song.”

  -Ed Sheeran

  True to his word, Derek showed up at ten. I am not sure who was more of a basket case, my mama or me. I’d already waffled between not going and going about a hundred times since getting up after a restless night.

  I had two bags packed. A medium sized suitcase that was really only half full because I didn’t have very much that was not business clothes. I was either going to have to do laundry every third day or find some more clothes to wear. Next to that was my smaller bag which held my laptop and a handful of books. Because I wasn’t going anywhere without some books. Sure, I had hundreds more on my Kindle app, but there were some books I didn’t go far from in my life.

  Derek pulled up in the Camaro. My heart fell to the pit of my stomach like stones in the lake, and when I looked at Mama, I could see that she was battling all of her emotions as well. Daddy reached out, grabbed her hand, and squeezed before tucking her close up against him.

  I wasn’t supposed to be causing them pain. That was the deal I’d made with myself, and yet, there I was getting into Jake’s car and driving away with a boy who wasn’t Jake at the helm. So that I could be free. I didn’t deserve it. I swallowed hard.

  But now that they wanted me to do this, not going would make them feel equally bad. There was no way out of the emotions I was causing my parents. Guilt hit me hard, as it always did. It was part of the reason I was running away. Because, let’s face it, that’s what I was doing. Running.

  Daddy handed me a wad of cash, and when I protested, he said he was going to put even more into my account and that I should just think of it as a signing bonus. I told him he was crazy, but I didn’t turn it down. Daddy didn’t usu
ally hand out money like it was free samples any more than he handed out compliments.

  Derek jogged up to the steps in his usual uniform of tight, ripped jeans and another tight t-shirt. God, he really was like a Jamie McGuire book boyfriend. My heart pounded crazily, and I couldn’t help a weak smile.

  He smiled back, gray eyes flashing.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Phillips, good to see you again,” he said, shaking their hands. I could have sworn he grew up in the South instead of Hollywood because everybody knows that Californians don’t know squat about manners.

  Daddy held on tight to Derek’s hand. “You’ll take good care of our Mia on this crazy trip.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll look after her better than my guitar, and I promise that’s saying a lot.”

  “I’m not a musical instrument,” I said with a huff. He turned those devilish eyes on me, and I knew that if we weren’t in front of my parents, he probably would have made it into a sexual innuendo. My heart pounded. Was I really going to do this?

  I went to pick up my suitcase, but Derek beat me to it, brushing my hand away, and I couldn’t help but rub the spot where our hands had met. Melting away already. And I was going to spend three weeks in a car with this guy? What on Earth was I doing?

  “Wow, it doesn’t feel like there’s anything in here,” he whispered to me with a sly wink, and I turned a thousand shades of red.

  I turned away from him to my parents. I squeezed Daddy, and he held tight, patting my back and saying, “Have fun, baby girl.”

  When I went to Mama, she was already in tears. “Mama,” I started and was about to say that I would stay, but she cut me off.

  “No, no. I’m just being a silly ol’ lady. I love you.” She hugged me tight. “You enjoy yourself, but don’t get mad at me if I text a lot.”

  “I hope you do,” I told her, hugging back as hard as I could.

  Derek had my stuff stowed in the back of the car, and I picked up my slouchy bag with the books inside. I gave my parents another quick hug and then stepped off the porch to where Derek already had the door of the Camaro open.

  “Make sure you check the oil and water. Jake’s… the Camaro can be temperamental when it gets hot,” Daddy warned.

  “I promise. I really will take good care of them both,” Derek said just as he had before. He sank into the driver’s seat. We pulled out, and he honked.

  I turned back and waved at them on the steps, wrapped around each other. They looked so alone. God.

  We drove in silence for a few minutes while I collected myself. Trying hard not to cry. Trying hard not to demand that he turn around. Then, I realized we didn’t have the boys with us. And really, he was driving after he’d told me that was why he needed me to tag along in the first place. I said as much to him.

  “The boys headed out in the bus when I came to get you. They’re just a little ahead of us. We’ll hook up with them for lunch. And I’m driving today, but you’re driving tomorrow before we get to our gig.”

  More silence. It should have been awkward, but it wasn’t. Maybe he understood that I needed to get myself back into a place where I could behave normally. In any event, he waited quietly for me.

  He fiddled with the radio, going from one country station to the next.

  “You’re not going to find much more than country in this part of Tennessee,” I told him.

  “What would you listen to if you had a choice?”

  “Ed Sheeran.”

  He sighed. “That’s so not what I expected of you.”

  “What? He’s an amazing writer.”

  “I don’t dispute that. But I’ve come to expect the unexpected from you, and Ed is a little too mainstream these days.”

  I didn’t know what to think about that. That he thought I was unexpected. I felt I had lived my life in one big expectation box. But I could also sense that this was somehow important to him. Probably because his life was music.

  “My friend Harry and I used to listen to blues and jazz and ragtime tunes on vinyl. That kind of stuck with me.” I shrugged.

  “That’s much better.” He grinned.

  I took off my flip flops and curled myself up into the seat of the Camaro. Old muscle cars always had plenty of room in their seats for tiny people like me to curl up. It was an advantage. The disadvantage being that old cars were always loud. Traveling for three weeks in the Camaro wasn’t going to be a picnic.

  I looked over and caught him taking me in before his eyes flitted back to the highway and the long stretch of nothing ahead of us.

  “You look good like that,” he said with a tone in his voice that made my body turn hot and zingy.

  I ignored his comment. I was just in another pair of jean shorts and a t-shirt, hair in another ponytail. I knew I looked tired as sin after two nights of pretty much no sleep. And let’s not forget that the emotions of the last couple days had been high. Dark eye rings had greeted me in the mirror this morning.

  My phone buzzed.

  CAM: Please tell me your mama is wrong!

  ME: If you mean, am I currently in the passenger seat of Jake’s Camaro driving to Oklahoma with the moron? Then I’m afraid she’s right.

  CAM: Blake’s literally going to kill him.

  ME: It’s not like that.

  CAM: Ooookaayyy.

  ME: Seriously.

  CAM: I’m not your mama. Don’t lie.

  ME: Okay. It’s not like that, Cami.

  CAM: Ugh. Don’t Cami me.

  I couldn’t help but smile.

  CAM: Why are you doing this?

  I thought about how I could best respond to that question. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I could answer it, even to myself. Especially when no one in my family even knew about Hayden’s existence. I looked over at Derek— heartbreakingly gorgeous Derek—and the closest thing I could think was because I didn’t think I could not do it. So, I typed that. Her response came quick.

  CAM: I’m worried about you, kiddo.

  ME: Don’t. It’s gonna be okay.

  CAM: Hmm. Well, at least have fun. But don’t do anything I would do. Do only what sensible Mia would tell crazy Cam to do.

  It made me smile again.

  ME: I promise.

  I wasn’t sure I was telling the truth, though. Because I wasn’t sure I could promise her that I would be my normal Mia self. Normal Mia wouldn’t even be in the car.

  I put the phone down. Derek was still glancing between me and the road. I hadn’t had to look up to know that. I’d felt it the whole time I’d been texting Cam. That intensity he gave off was wafting over me like the echolocation it was.

  “Cam?” he asked. I guess that’s pretty much the only person he’d seen me text. In truth, I didn’t text many people more than her. Wynn. Harry occasionally. My mama. Cam’s mama.

  “Yes. I’d be careful the next time you see Blake; he might be carrying a gun.”

  Derek laughed that belly laugh that made his chin stretch and drew my eyes to his chest and the way it heaved under the muscles. He looked too good to be real. The fact that I was the girl sitting next to him in his car seemed dreamlike.

  “She’s not your sister, but it’s like she is. Tell me how that works,” he said.

  Surprisingly, I wanted to. I didn’t tell many people Jake and Cam’s story. Our families’ story. In our town, you didn’t need to tell it because it was a legend. In college, I’d wanted to not talk about it. I’d wanted to just be Mia and not “Jake’s little sister, Mia” because I’d thought it would make the guilt go away. But it never had.

  So, I found myself telling Derek the whole story. I told him how we had all grown up together in our houses with the shared yard and tree house. I told him that our families were so close that it was like one family with two sets of parents. I told him how Jake and Cam had grown up in each other’s pockets, and that when you saw them together, it was like they were one person instead of two. Like they were only whole
when they were together. And when they were apart, they were still people, but missing something.

  I told him about Jake’s time at UTK and how he’d had to give football up. I told him how Jake had followed Cam to Virginia, and how they’d lost it all to Jake’s disease. And I told him, which I never told anyone, about how when Jake needed a kidney, and I was a match, that I couldn’t imagine saying no to him—to Jake and Cam—because they deserved to be a whole person instead of the painful halves they would be if he didn’t survive. So, I gave them a kidney, but he hadn’t survived anyway… and, well… enough said.

  When I was done talking, I looked out the window at the flat ground and grass flying by the Camaro. I wasn’t sure why I had wanted to tell him all of that when I’d kept it to myself for so long. For some reason, I’d wanted this BB to know my story. The story of a girl who gave up a body part to save a brother who everyone wanted to survive more than the girl herself. And how that hadn’t worked out.

  “Wow,” he said after a few minutes of silence. It was as if he’d really taken the time to absorb my story. Like he seemed to absorb me every time he touched me. Even though I heard him, I didn’t turn from the view outside. I wasn’t sure what I’d see in those expressive eyes of his, and I really wasn’t sure I could handle whatever was there.

  I felt his hand grasping for mine, and it wasn’t till then that I realized I was clutching the edge of the seat so tightly it could have torn. He forced my fingers open and clasped them in his own. “Mia?”

  I looked down at our joined fingers before I finally had the courage to look up at his face. There were no smiles there now. God, I felt like such a depressing twit. One of the things that had attracted me the most about him was all those enormous smiles, and less than an hour on the road with him, and I’d wiped it away.