My Life as an Album (Books 1-4)

by LJ Evans

  I rolled over to look up at him.

  “What?!”

  “Too soon?” He grinned at his impulsiveness. “But I mean it. I don’t regret having said it.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. It was something he did to me a lot. Take my words away. I knew that I didn’t want to move in with Blake just so that I wouldn’t be alone. Hell, truth was, I was good at alone now. But I didn’t want anyone else to think I needed Blake to fill the gaps in my life. That I wasn’t strong enough to stand on my own.

  “I take it by your silence that you don’t think it’s a good thing?” He looked a little crestfallen.

  “I just…” didn’t know what to say. “I don’t think I was expecting you to make me that kind of an offer.”

  “Shit! Did I offend you? Should I have proposed first?” He was half teasing and half serious which scared me more than his offer to move in with him.

  “God, no!” I threw back.

  “But I do want to be with you. All the time. I think about you constantly. I feel like you injected me with some Super Girl spell or something. The whole time I was in L.A., the only thing I wanted was to get back on the plane and come right here to your house.”

  “Kiss ass.”

  And he flipped me over and did kiss my… well. Anyway. It was funny and lightened the mood that turned into something more passionate. So, it was a long while before we came back to the subject.

  “I’d really like it,” he said while we were making root beer floats in the kitchen.

  “I’ll think about it,” was all I could commit to at that time.

  “Okay.” And I loved that he didn’t push me. That he knew when to back off even if you would never have backed off or let me breath till I answered you. You would have pushed me to a yes. That was what made Blake different, and also lovable.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  Wynn understood my dilemma. She even agreed to extend our rent on our apartment by a couple weeks in order to give me time to figure things out. And Mama and Daddy came to Nashville. I think Mama was worried about how fast things were going with Blake. I think she thought that I was tying myself to him because of his connection to you.

  I greeted her with a hug and a smile. It was a real smile that reached my eyes, and she saw it, and she kind of took a sharp breath and then hugged me so tight that I thought she’d break me.

  We met Blake at a restaurant we both liked that was walking distance from Wynn and my place. Blake saw me first and came up and kissed my cheek and said, “Hey babe,” in a way that made me thrilled down to my toes. Then he turned to my parents and stuck out his hand and shook both of theirs.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Swayne. It’s been a long time. How are you?”

  My daddy was eyeing him up and down. Blake had on his expensive lawyer suit. He’d just come from work.

  “We’re good. Sounds like you’ve been doing well for yourself too,” my daddy said, and I was surprised to see Blake flush a little, both in pride and awkwardness.

  “Yes, sir. I’ve been lucky.”

  As Daddy and Blake started talking business, Mama watched. She was like a hawk. She watched the way Blake’s hand would find its way to mine, and the way he rubbed my pinky soft and slow. She watched when he got my chair for me and the way he pulled my hand into his arm when we walked down the street to get cappuccinos at a local coffee shop.

  And she watched me. I’m sure she was more worried about what was going through my head than what was going through Blake’s. She could read him a mile away. He wanted me. And it showed. Even in front of my parents.

  He didn’t flaunt it the way you had by wrapping your arm around my waist and pulling me tight up against your body, but the way Blake touched me, the slow, sensual pinky rub, the way he’d bend his head toward mine like he wanted to kiss my cheek, but didn’t. All of that, screamed how he felt. It was sweet. Endearing. And made my heart flutter. It made me smile at him. And that…that my mama saw… the smile that I had.

  After the coffee, Blake made his excuses. “I know that you really came to see Cam and not me. So, I won’t hog your time with her.”

  “Please. Don’t be silly, come back to the apartment with us,” my mama protested in the Southern, polite way that she was supposed to do.

  But Blake knew Southern manners as well as anyone. “Thank you, but I’ll have to decline, ma’am. I have an early appointment. It was a real pleasure seeing you again.”

  He shook both their hands. “I hope that I’ll get to see a lot more of you if this woman would ever agree to move in with me.”

  He pulled me close and kissed my cheek again. Then flicked me on my nose and made his last goodbyes.

  We were all silent at first, walking home to my place. Daddy looked like he wanted to say something, but Mama was giving him the evil eye. Me. I was smiling still.

  Daddy hugged me. “It’s good to see you smiling again, honey.”

  “I know!” I said with a lot of my old sarcasm and attitude which made my mama smile too. “So, don’t hold back now. Tell me what you think,” I said to both of them, but mostly Mama. If I’d never listened to her while you were alive, it had almost been the opposite since. I listened to her all the time.

  “I think he likes you a whole lot,” she said and she actually choked up.

  “Because it’s pretty hard to like me,” I said with a smile again.

  “Well…” my daddy teased in a way he used to tease me but hadn’t in a long time for fear I’d break.

  “I think the bigger question really is, what do you think?” Mama asked.

  I was quiet. Considering. “I think at first I liked him because he remembered me the way I was. And then I think I liked him because he wasn’t afraid to fold Jake into our conversations. But now...”

  I didn’t know how to put it into words.

  “Now?” Mama prompted me.

  “And now I think I like him because he’s Blake. I like his smile, and his charisma, and his Southern charm. And I like the way he makes me feel, and the way that I don’t have to pretend to be anything I’m not around him. I don’t have to pretend to not have loved Jake.”

  Mama hugged me. “That sounds like a lot of reasons.”

  “I miss him when he’s not with me. And I think of him more than I think of Jake.”

  I breathed out shakily. That sounded disloyal to me. Saying that aloud about you. But Mama got all teary-eyed.

  “Those are all real good things.”

  “But…”

  “But nothing. Don’t you know by now, Camdyn, that life is too short for buts? If this is how you feel, and he wants you to be with him and you want to be with him, then just do it. Worry about the rest as it comes up. Enjoy what you have. If it lasts, great; if it doesn’t, then you’ll have some more beautiful memories to add to your life story.”

  And you know what? Mama was right. I can see you pretending to have a heart attack at me admitting she was right. I can see you tousling my hair and rubbing it in. But it didn’t hurt so badly like it used to, because I knew that I’d get to tell Blake Mama was right too. And he’d be happy in a whole different way.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  When I told Blake, he sent Mama a bunch of flowers. Right then. He stopped kissing me, took out his phone, dialed 1-800-FLOWERS, and had them deliver flowers to my mama’s house. It was kind of hilarious. And sweet. And so impulsively Blake.

  He was bouncing off the walls with energy. He started pulling things out of my drawers and throwing them on the bed. I laughed at him and told him I wasn’t moving in that day. And he asked why not?

  And you know what else he did? He went out and got boxes. Right then. He said Mama was right, life was too short not to make every moment the moment you wanted to live. Right then.

  Of course, I didn’t move in that day. I started packing though. And every day for a whole week, when he’d get off work and I’d get out of school or work, he was there with ta
keout and boxes. It wasn’t that I had that much stuff. Really, it was an apartment, how much could there be? But we’d get sidetracked. You know, like you and I used to get side tracked studying. I was good at sidetracking people. I’d forgotten how good at it I was, and I was enjoying remembering and getting more practice at it.

  But even though I could sidetrack Blake, he never let me lie on my butt and do nothing after. He had me up and packing again. He said I could relax once I’d moved in.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  He actually owned a house. A very grown-up kind of thing to me. It was on a quiet, tree-lined street that reminded me a little of our street. Except that it was in the city. Way more cars. Not a street where kids could really play football. But that was okay too.

  I’d only been to Blake’s house twice before I moved in. So, it seemed a little like I was going to stay at a hotel, or sleep over at a friend’s. But Blake wanted me to make it my home too. He said he didn’t give a rat’s ass about anything that was in the house. So, if I didn’t like something, toss it. If I wanted to add something, go right ahead.

  Blake had paid someone to move my stuff. Not because he didn’t have the muscle to do it, but because he said he didn’t want me to have to do it. Sweet, right? He was always sweet. After they’d gone, leaving the boxes strewn about the places we’d directed them, Blake said, “I have something to show you.”

  And he led me down the hall to his bedroom. Well…our bedroom. He had this massive king-sized bed in it that made me wonder about how many women had been in it, and made me realize that I really didn’t know very much about Blake. Or rather, grown-up Blake, but also that I didn’t really care. I was here now. I thought he had one thing on his mind, and when I went to kiss him, he kissed me back, but then pulled me to the nightstand.

  He looked down at it, and that’s when I saw that there were two pictures on it. One was Blake and me. Some stupid picture he’d snapped with his iPhone that first night that he’d taken me out, and I’d worn Anne’s scarf and jacket. But we both looked happy. I had a real smile on my face, not my fake one. The other picture was a picture of you and me. My mama must have given it to him. It was you with your arm wrapped around my waist, chin on my head. And we were both so blissfully happy. In the background was the Tower Bridge in London. It was from the time you’d gone with me to worlds. It felt like a lifetime ago.

  I looked at the two pictures, and I got all teary-eyed. I wasn’t really crying. Just emotional. Blake pulled me into his arms and hugged me and then looked down at me.

  “I want you always to remember that I love you right now for who you are. For all you’ve been through. But I also want you to realize that I never, ever want to take Jake’s place. Your love for him is there. Will always be. I get that. Our love can be here, separate. Our own thing. Just like the two pictures.”

  “You love me?”

  “Who wouldn’t?”

  “Kiss ass.”

  “Super Girl.”

  He flicked my nose, and I smiled up at him.

  “I love you too, Blake.”

  “I know.”

  “Egomaniac.”

  And then he kissed me and made me forget all about you for a while. For a long while. It was longer and longer each time, but it would never be forever. You were mine and I was yours and that wouldn’t change. But for now, I was also Blake’s and he was mine. And I liked that too. And I know, somewhere out there in the stars in the Delphinus constellation, you are thinking that it’s good too, and that you are happy that I am happy. And for right now. That’s enough.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  I hope you loved Cam’s story. I hope your heart is full now. But maybe you want a little more of Blake’s part of the story? You can go directly to that by clicking on the link to his short, THIS LIFE WITH CAM, or just keep reading for Mia’s story in My Life as a Pop Album

  Want to check in with how Cam, Blake, and the entire Album series gang are doing in the future? You can do so for FREE when you download an EPIC bonus epilogue for the entire My Life as An Album series when you sign up for my newsletter:

  https://BookHip.com/WZVAFM

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  Playlist

  Dedication

  Prologue: Hello

  Chapter One: I’m a Mess

  Chapter Two: Happier

  Chapter Three: Even My Dad Does Sometimes

  Chapter Four: Tenerefe Sea

  Chapter Five: Where We Land

  Chapter Six: This

  Chapter Seven: Perfect

  Chapter Eight: Little Bird

  Chapter Nine: Fall

  Chapter Ten: Kiss Me

  Chapter Eleven: Firefly

  Chapter Twelve: Photograph

  Chapter Thirteen: Cold Coffee

  Chapter Fourteen: One

  Chapter Fifteen: Save Myself

  Chapter Sixteen: How Would You Feel?

  Chapter Seventeen: All of the Stars

  Chapter Eighteen: Thinking Out Loud

  Available at http://bit.ly/MlaapAlje

  To philosopher Ed Sheeran for sharing his love songs with the world and for inspiring my love story. To my hubby who understands the words that drive me and loves me anyway. To my daughter who floors me with her own creativity. To my family, readers, and other indie authors who have cheered and supported me in ways that continue to astound me. This is for all of you.

  Hello

  Hello. I’m Good Girl Mia. Mia Andrea Phillips. You probably don’t know me, but you might know my brother, Jake. You might know Jake because, for a short while, he was plastered all over the sports channels and magazines as the future of the NFL. That was when he was the superstar quarterback for the University of Tennessee, and before his diabetes and his bad kidneys forced him to quit.

  My brother, Jake, was the first one to call me Good Girl Mia. It was his way of teasing me about never getting in trouble. And it’s the truth. I am a good girl. There’s nothing I can do about it. I have always been the good girl. I’ve been the friend, the helper, the one you could count on. The one to drive you home if you drank too much. The one to stop you from making monumental mistakes. The one who never gave her parents any problems because her brother and his girlfriend gave them enough.

  In fact, I’ve been so good at helping others that I actually gave Jake a kidney. Yep. An actual body part. Unfortunately, that didn’t end very well, so maybe I’m not as good at helping out as I’d like to be…

  If you are a good girl also, then you know how it goes. You know that good girls never break rules and that they never, ever run off with the bad boy.

  Well then, how in holy potato peels did I end up here, with a sexy-as-all-get-out musician lying naked next to me? Well…that’s the real story, isn’t it?

  The Meet

  I’M A MESS

  “I’m a mess right now, searching for sweet surrender.”

  -Ed Sheeran

  My best friend, neighbor, and almost sister, Cam, once told me that her life could be played out in a series of Taylor Swift songs. I understood what she meant because her life with Jake was like all the old Taylor songs. Angst and heartache and yearning.

  After I had graduated from the University of Tennessee and moved back home to run the family business, my life became a series of Ed Sheeran songs. “I’m a Mess” seemed to resonate with me at first because I felt like I was just going through the motions while secretly looking for a sweet surrender. And I definitely couldn’t figure out how everything was all going to work out.

  I guess that wasn’t completely true as I did have one thing going right for me and that was working at my daddy’s car dealership. The one he planned on handing over to me in the fall. Contrary to most people’s opinion of me, I liked running the dealership. I loved the vague idea that we might be starting a tradition where someday I would pass the dealership on to my kids. Not that there was any chance in the near f
uture of me having children.

  Because, let’s face it, my personal life was the part of my life in all sorts of disarray. You’d never know that by looking at me. I prided myself on the fact that very few people knew about the emotional turmoil that rolled like waves through me on an almost daily basis. My mama once told me that if you went into someone’s house and the place was nice and tidy but the cupboards were a disaster, that it said something about them. I knew exactly what she meant because that described me to a T. Neat and tidy outside, chaos on the inside.

  My life wasn’t going to get any easier that July because that’s when HE entered my world, flipping it on its axis even more.

  That day, it was hotter than blue blazes with the humidity like a wall you could almost see if you squinted hard enough, and I contemplated lying down on the tile showroom floor to cool off like our dog, Sparky. Instead, I lifted up every last hair on my head and stood under the air conditioning vent trying to dry the sweat off my neck.

  And, of course, it was then, when I had my hair, bangs and all, swept up like a Conehead, that he sauntered into our dealership. While I was a sweaty puddle, he looked like a Jamie McGuire book boyfriend come to life.

  He was lean and muscular in a blue t-shirt and just-tight-enough ripped jeans that accentuated every sculpted line. Lines of gorgeous muscles that belonged in an underwear ad. He was tall, but not too tall, around about six feet, and had sexy, bed-tousled looking brown hair that highlighted his pale gray eyes. Eyes that were the color of the winter skies right before a tornado. I was a sucker for a boy with tattoos even if I thought I’d never date someone who had them. And this piece of gorgeousness had them.

  There were words wrapped around each wrist and some sort of bird on his neck. None of it was easy to make out over a distance, but that made me think about how, if I was close enough, I could brush aside those curling ends and investigate more. I suddenly wanted to do that very much. Every fiber in my body was aching to drop my grossly sweaty hair and sweep up his, just so I could get a good look at him and his tattoos while inhaling his scent.