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

by LJ Evans

“I’m heading out in the afternoon, so it has to be early. What? Are you too much of a princess these days to get out of bed before noon?” I asked, taking your damned miniskirt in all over again.

  You just snorted. “Hell, no.”

  “Okay then, I’ll see you at eight, Super Girl.”

  I had to leave before I dragged you out of that theater right then.

  For the next twelve hours, I reminded myself of Jake, and Matt, and the fact that you were not even fifteen years old. That you weren’t like any of the girls I’d been with at college. That you were innocent, even if the words seemed somehow an oxymoron to the Cam I saw in my head.

  When I arrived at your house the next morning, the only reason you had to open the truck door for yourself was because I was stunned again. Your riding pants were clinging to those new sexy curves you were sporting, and I repeated to myself what I’d been saying all night. “She’s not even fifteen, dumbass. She’s your friend’s girl. She’s your brother’s ex. Don’t be an asshole and screw this up by letting your male body win over your brain. You aren’t a prehistoric Homo sapien.”

  Laugh now if you want, but I truly was having to give myself that pep talk so I wouldn’t do something stupid, like touch you.

  “How’s Ole Miss?” you asked with a growl.

  It made me smile because, Jesus, you were good at putting me in my place even as a teen. You’d always been good at that. It was what made you seem older than you were and was part of my struggle that morning. “It’s awesome. I’d recommend it to you as well, but I have a feelin’ you’ll be following someone to UTK.”

  “As if I’d ever be traitor enough to go to school in Mississippi!” you hissed, but we both knew the truth. You were going to follow Jake, wherever that meant.

  “You still playing?” you asked once I’d finally found the country rock station I’d been searching for.

  “Got a band together. We’re shit, but it’s fun,” I told you.

  “And gets you lots of ladies, I bet,” you teased back.

  It did. But at the moment, I wasn’t thinking of the all-too-easy-to-swoon college girls. The autumn air that day helped cool my blood. Helped keep my head on straight until you started jumping. And I was back to watching a movie, or art, or something close to it as you and Blue Suede and the wind and the sky all became one thing again. You were just as magnificent then as you had been when I’d started teaching you a couple summers before.

  I nit-picked at every little thing I could so that I could focus on the logistics instead of the Super Girl that could literally stop hearts with a glance.

  Reading your words from that day…it helps. To know that, even then, when you were all about Jake, I could make you forget him for a little while. That there was enough between us at that moment that I could somehow make you mine for just a bit. I didn’t think I needed that. I didn’t think I needed to compare our love and what we have to what you and Jake had, but maybe I did.

  Is that why you had me reading your journal? So that I’d see there was always something there between us, but that you’d just been focused on the first thing you’d been tied to instead of the guy who came next?

  But I guess I wasn’t the guy who came next.

  That guy was an asshole with a bike.

  One Day You Will

  “And every heartache makes you stronger

  But it won't be much longer

  You'll find love, you'll find peace

  And the you you're meant to be.”

  Performed by Lady Antebellum

  Written by Mills / Kelley / Scott / Haywood

  Matt and I didn’t talk about you much. More in passing. You were just a part of his crowd that he hung out with. But every time he talked about you, I’d see you in that damn miniskirt, or I’d think of you blurring together with the sky as you jumped over the creek. They were images that I couldn’t quite shake.

  The day he called to talk about you specifically…that day is burned into my brain, too.

  “Hey,” I’d said as I answered Matt’s call. “How are you?”

  “Worried,” was his response.

  “Aw, love you too,” I’d teased.

  “Not about you, jerkoff.” I’d snorted, and he’d sighed. “I was wondering if you happened to have Jake’s number.”

  That got my attention. Because the only reason he could want Jake’s number was because of you. “What’s going on?”

  “Cam’s dating this shithead from the Bronx. She’s kind of been a loose cannon lately.”

  My heart skipped a beat. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s like…like she just doesn’t care what happens to her.”

  I could hear the sadness in Matt’s voice, and it echoed across my soul. The thought of you, full of sass and energy and just goddamn life, being unhappy enough that you just gave up and threw caution to the wind. You’d always done stupid stunts, but they’d always been stunts that you could pull off. Stunts to make a certain pair of hazel eyes turn in your direction.

  Maybe most people would have asked why he needed Jake’s number. Why he wasn’t just calling your parents or some helpline. But those of us that had seen the two of you grow up together knew the truth. Jake was the only thing that could turn the wildness in you to calm. At least, I’d thought that at the time.

  “He pushed her from the cliff at the lake,” Matt said quietly.

  “What the hell?” I responded, my voice turning into a growl. “Did you pound him into the ground?”

  “A bunch of us planned on doing just that, but Cam jumped in between us and kissed him like she was the only thing going to save him. We couldn’t exactly pull her off of him. She insists she jumped, but we could tell he pushed her. She dragged him from the lake and took him home before any of us could really do much more about it.”

  “So beat his ass the next time you see him.”

  “You know, Cam. That’ll just piss her off,” Matt said. “I don’t want to push her away even more. I don’t want to give her a reason to defend him.”

  I’d thought about what he was saying, and it made sense. If the guys had beat Seth to a pulp, you would have been pissed. You would have defended him, and you would have gone down yourself with him just to prove a point, because you are, if nothing else, stubborn as hell when you have your mind set on something.

  Don’t roll your eyes. You know it’s true. You know that it takes an army of talking to move you from a decision you’ve made in your head. It’s part of the reason I love you. That you put yourself all in no matter what.

  “I’ll call Jake,” I told Matt. And I did. I hung up with him and dialed the number I hadn’t called since I’d berated him for breaking up with you.

  “Hey, if it isn’t the country rock king himself,” Jake had joked when he answered.

  “Hey, if it isn’t the asshole who’s going to get Super Girl killed,” I said with a rumble, and there was silence on the other end of the phone for a long time.

  “What?” he finally asked.

  “That shithead she’s dating,” I responded.

  Jake was quiet again. “He’s just a phase.”

  Maybe he really believed that, or maybe he was telling himself that because it was the only way he could stay sane while he thought of you with another man’s arms around you. I didn’t know, but it wasn’t just a phase. It was a phase that was going to end badly.

  “He pushed her off the goddamn cliff at the lake, Jake,” I said, barking at him with so much anger. I was angry that he wasn’t there to protect you the way you needed. The way he was supposed to. Life had decreed that you should be together, and he was ignoring that calling. It was enough to piss me off way more than it should have for a girl that I barely knew. A girl that had played on the edges of my childhood.

  “He what?”

  “She says she jumped, but the truth is, Matt and the others all saw him push her.”

  “God fucking damn
it.” His own anger radiated back at me through the phone.

  “This is your fault,” I continued to growl.

  “My fault?”

  “You can’t love someone like that and then let them go, Jake. She isn’t built for that. If you care about her at all, if you do truly love her like I think you do, then you better run back home and tell her. You need to make it right before you lose your chance and the asshole ends up killing her.”

  And then I hung up. I couldn’t stand to hear his response.

  My anger was so irrational. I mean, I wouldn’t have been happy if anyone had done that to anyone I knew. Like your friend Wynn. I wouldn’t have liked it at all, but I wouldn’t have felt like I was on the edge of insanity because of it.

  But Super Girl losing control and maybe losing her life?

  That was enough to eat a hole in my heart.

  Hearing from Matt that Jake had come home and taken care of it, that he’d slugged the asshole who’d dared to touch you, helped. But for some reason, it hadn’t healed the hole completely. There was an ache there that I could still feel.

  It was at that point, for the first time in my life, that I found myself going through women like they were beer at a tasting bar instead of the whiskey I needed to savor. I was trying to fill the ache with something. I just hadn’t known there was only one thing that could fill it for good. But I damn well knew something was missing.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  When I moved back to Tennessee, to Nashville, to go to law school at Vanderbilt, I was still going through that phase. Women. Lots of them. It should have been so obvious to me, looking back, because instead of dating the typical Southern blondes that I had been known for dating up until that point, I was suddenly dating women with chestnut hair and attitudes that screamed independence.

  None of them stuck. None of them made it into even a corner of my heart.

  I was just finishing up law school and was focusing on passing the bar when I got the call from Matt.

  “Hey, Matty. What’s up?”

  “Jake died,” he said, not even greeting me.

  I was dumbfounded at first, and then my whole body hurt. Hurt like I’d never been hurt in all my years of playing football, because I couldn’t imagine it. I couldn’t imagine a world without Jake. Without you and Jake. The two of you, together.

  The world lost someone that was irreplaceable. Someone honorable. Someone so talented that it was like a gift the gods had passed down to him. The god among men that you called him. But, if you remember your mythology at all the way I do, you’ll remember that the gods were often selfish and cruel.

  “How’s Cam?” I asked with a frog inside my throat that wouldn’t clear no matter how often I coughed.

  “Devastated,” Matt responded, and his own voice was choked and brutally clogged with emotions.

  “I’ll be home in a few hours,” I said and hung up.

  All the way home, I was thinking about you. Wondering if you were holding up at all. Wondering if you’d be going off a cliff again—this one both real and figurative. I wondered if the permanent loss of the thing you needed most was going to spiral you out of control way more than it had when he’d left you behind and some asshole rebel without a cause had found you.

  I came to see you. That was the first thing I did when I got back into town. But you weren’t seeing anyone. Mia answered the door. I didn’t recognize her at first. She had grown up while I was gone, but her eyes looked so much like Jake’s that it was easy to know who she was. Her face was red and puffy, and the house was silent. Tomb-like. There wasn’t movement, or music, or clocks ticking. Just silence in a way that Marina and Scott’s house had never been silent. It was like the entire house had taken a big breath and was holding it until someone could wake up and say it was all just a bad dream.

  I hugged Mia. “I’m so sorry,” I told her.

  She nodded, tears filling her eyes. She wouldn’t meet my gaze. I didn’t know at that time that Mia had given Jake a kidney. I didn’t know about it until later, after we’d been together and you’d gone off on me for letting Derek sneak her away. I didn’t know that it was her guilt over Jake dying with her kidney in him that was holding her back. At that moment, I’d just thought she was sad.

  “Can I see Cam?” I asked.

  And Mia actually sobbed, hand to her mouth, before she collected herself again. “Sh-she’s not seein’ anyone right now.”

  I didn’t know that meant that you were literally not seeing anyone. That your parents and Jake’s parents were letting you grieve in his room all by yourself. That they were all so caught up in their own grief that they didn’t have it in themselves to pull you from it. I can’t imagine it. Losing a child. Because the thought of our baby and you struggling right now…

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  I had to take a walk. I had to get some fresh air before I came back to this. The grief of that time bled into me a little. But I can’t let it. You’re going to be just fine, Super Girl. Our baby is going to be just fine. We’re going to laugh over my stupid words later. I’ll give them to you, and you can punch me in the shoulder and tell me what an idiot I was for worrying. I can’t wait for that. Because it means I’m going to get to pull you up against me and prove just how much I’m not an idiot. How I know better than to ever let you go the way Jake did.

  The day of Jake’s funeral was the first time I saw you after I’d heard the news. You didn’t register much of anything. When you got up to talk, I saw Super Girl break apart into pieces like I’d never seen you break before, and I felt myself falling apart, too. I was crying without even knowing that I’d started. I was crying not only because of Jake, but because I swore I could actually feel your loss inside my own heart.

  Those beautiful gray eyes, normally lit up as if there was a flame glowing inside them, were clouds of despair. Your lean frame, which had grown into a woman’s body with just the right curves that made a man ache to touch them, was hunched onto itself. All I could see was this glorious star burning itself out because it had lost the energy that normally resided inside it.

  When we went to the reception back at the house, you were gone. I actually went up to Jake’s door and knocked, but when I opened it, you weren’t there. The bed was empty. I guess I should have known that you’d been in the tree house, but I never knew how much those handfuls of boards and nails meant to you until I read your journal. I wouldn’t have known to look for you there.

  I was taking the bar exam the Tuesday after the funeral. I’m pretty sure you never knew that either. I was just about ready to graduate from law school and had signed up to take my first of what I thought would be many attempts that following week.

  So, I dragged myself back to Nashville and filled my head with the law. And maybe because I was trying to escape visions of you and the ache in my heart, it made me study extra hard. It’s probably the reason I passed on my first attempt instead of my third or fourth like so many of my fellow law students.

  Once I’d passed the bar, I focused on applying to every single one of the entertainment law firms in Tennessee. I went back to my orbit of music, and regulations, and building my career and a partnership that I wanted so badly I could taste it. I went back to a trail of women coming and going in my life.

  I didn’t stop to analyze why.

  I didn’t stop to analyze much of anything beyond my career and music.

  Until that day at the coffee shop.

  Better Man

  “The first time I laid eyes on you

  In that downtown café

  How I loved the way your auburn hair

  Danced across your face.”

  Performed by Lady Antebellum

  Written by Kelley / Chandler / Haywood / Edwards / Gambill / Long

  I was walking out of the coffee shop when the sunlight hit the top of this stunning chestnut hair by the window, turning it into a fiery flame of reds and golds and night sky that was enoug
h to stop me completely. Then I realized it was you. Super Girl. And those were the shocked words that came out of my mouth.

  In your journal, you act as if you were only an extension of Jake. That he was what grounded you. Made you whole. But the truth is, you’re the gravitational force holding many of us to the earth. I’d been drawn to you those last few times we’d interacted, but I hadn’t realized until that moment in the coffee shop that you were the pull I couldn’t resist. Like an apple will never resist the gravity drawing it to the ground. Newton was right. I wish he’d met you enough to name the force that is Cam.

  When you looked up and smiled a smile that was more the old Cam than the last time I’d seen you, I felt something burst free inside my chest like a balloon letting go. Hearing my name on your lips was enough to rupture that weak human muscle. As I got closer, I saw there was still sorrow in your eyes, but that the smile on your face was pushing at that sadness like an unwanted visitor.

  I suddenly knew, with perfect clarity, exactly what I’d been put on this earth for. It hadn’t been to be your first. Any of your firsts. It had been to be your last. To see you now and lift the heartache from you just a little tiny bit. When I actually got to wrap you in my arms in a hug that I felt in every single nerve ending in my body, I was hopelessly lost and hopelessly found all at the same time.

  You blushed when I talked to you. I’d never seen a Cam that could blush. Yet you did. You hid your face behind those silky strands of fire that I ached to touch, and I knew that the hurricane I’d once known had slowly become a tropical storm. I wasn’t sure what I thought of that. If I was sad, or angry, or intrigued that you were somehow quieter, tamer, and less wild than you once had been. I just knew there was a change in you. Older. Wiser. Way older than you should have been at twenty-three to my twenty-eight.

  That’s why you couldn’t get rid of me that day.

  That’s why I couldn’t walk away, even when my phone rang and it was Blake Shelton on the other end. I couldn’t let you out of my sight. Not until I’d made more plans to see you. So, instead of walking away like all of those doubters and haters would say I should have, I sat there, trying my damndest to keep that smile on your face.