I stared down at my guitar, letting the spotlight hit it, just right, the way it deserved. The first song would be about my father. After his funeral, I didn’t know how to direct my anger and my unsaid words at a dead man. So I wrote him a song.
Wide eyes on a clock that stood still
Waiting for you in rooms you never did fill
Tiny hands folded like paper on my lap
When I dreamed about them outstretched around your neck
You made some other house your home
You crushed your little girl to the bone
If home is where the heart is
Then what was I to you
I felt hot tears on the surface of my eyes. These words were harder to sing aloud than they were to write. This song was like opening a page of my diary and sharing it with strangers.
I decided to slip into the next song faster, without a break, knowing that even reaching for a sip of the water bottle below my dangling feet would give me time to think about the loss stuck in my throat. So, I pivoted from my daddy did me wrong to first love kicked my ass. Clearly, the theme tonight was Pain.
I wrote “Under Different Skies” the night after Asher and I had that agonizing final phone call. I was sitting on my twin-size bed in my dorm room, choking back tears, thinking that life couldn’t get any worse. I had no idea my father would die two weeks later. So the moral of that story is: little girl, it’s so much easier to cry over a boy than it is a man.
I sang the chorus, taking a moment to scan the crowd, soaking in their beaming faces, letting their expressions bring a smile to my lips, even as I unleashed the saddest breakup song I’d ever written. My mouth opened to belt out the bridge, but all at once, there was fire in my chest, a ringing in my ears—my insides too hot and loud for any words to escape. My wide eyes were locked on Asher as he made his way from the back of the room toward the stage, his head down, his eyes covered by the brim of a baseball cap. Muscle memory kept my fingers dancing on the chords as my heart beat faster and faster, like a young child following a trail of bread crumbs out of the dark woods. He stopped below the stage and glued his eyes onto mine, the spotlight bathing us both.
22
THIRTY-FIVE
I COULDN’T CATCH MY BREATH, but somehow, I belted out five more indie folk songs. The crowd caught on during my last song—when one woman shrieked in the audience, catching Asher’s eye. People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive was staring at me like I was the most important person in the world. There were, I swear, tears in his eyes as he watched me sing. Phones were pointed in both our directions, and a gaggle of college-aged women started to swarm him for selfies. I had never seen so many little flashlights, or had so many people care about what came out of my mouth. Asher didn’t seem to love the attention, and he made it a point to keep his eyes on me—even as flashes blinded his face.
When my set ended, I tugged my wide eyes off Asher’s, and I disappeared behind the stage curtain, hyperventilating backstage and texting Summer to get her ass there immediately. I laid my back against the brick wall with deep breaths, my chest pounding wildly.
Summer danced her body past the curtain and grabbed both my wrists.
“Okay, what in the actual fuck—”
“I don’t know!” I said before she could finish. I shrugged, baffled, with wide eyes.
“Did you invite him?” she asked.
“No. How did he know I was here?”
“The internet, you dum-dum.” Summer tilted back on her heels. “Oh boy,” she said, with her signature wicked cackle.
“Stop doing that. Your big smile freaks me out.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you guys had sex when you went to play him your song. You lying slut!” Summer swatted my shoulder.
“We didn’t have sex! I didn’t even touch him.” I tilted my head. “Okay—maybe like, my arm touched his chest, and my hand, but that was…just like two touches.”
Two super-fucking-sexy touches.
“So, you guys just look at each other like that, for no reason at all?”
I shrugged, even though it was nothing to shrug about. “It’s how we are—were. How we were.”
“You’re going to go viral, you know that, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re a normie who just had eye-sex with Asher Reyes in public. He’s a notoriously private A-lister, and if you don’t think you’re about to be the top story on E! News, think again.”
“There was no eye-sex—” I stopped talking, shifting back to the meltdown at hand. “Summer, I think he’s here to let me down in person.” I held my chest, feeling my body crouch to the ground. “I can’t go out there. I can’t hear another no. I don’t think I’m strong enough to keep doing this, to keep trying to make it—”
All at once, Summer grabbed my elbow and tugged me up, pulling me toward the stage curtain.
“Shut up and go say hi to that gorgeous man and let him slice your face open with his jaw,” Summer demanded, as she pressed her palm onto my spine, shoving my body past the curtains.
I whipped my head back to her, mouthing, “Come with me,” but she returned my plea for a best friend life raft with a smirk, letting the curtains close between us.
My heart thumped as I stepped offstage and into the main room. A few yards away, a group of young women had formed a circle around Asher, giggling like fangirls as he spoke to them. I watched Asher shift uncomfortably, but he held a warm smile toward the women, grinning past his unease to make each one feel valued. Asher Reyes could have become That Asshole, but he didn’t—not even a little bit. He turned toward me, and I watched his body light up the moment we locked eyes. I lifted my hand up in a slow wave.
He squeezed past his fans, his eyes refusing to leave mine, until we stood inches apart. Asher glanced around, increasingly uncomfortable with the peering eyes on us. He leaned in and whispered in my ear.
“Can we get out of here?”
I’d go anywhere with you.
All I could do was nod. I felt his hand squeeze mine, and lightning shot through me as if I were seventeen again—a girl with an entire world of opportunity in front of her in screaming color. After a moment, I realized my hand was still in his, as the biggest movie star on the planet, my ex-boyfriend, was pulling me past a gaping crowd and into a shiny Escalade.
I sat in the seat next to him in the SUV as his driver sped away from the Bowery Electric, my mind tripping over itself. He grinned out his window—brown eyes watching the lights and the people pass us by, taking in the universe the way he always had. I used to drown in his eyeline, collapse in the way he saw the world. I felt my body melting into the leather seat as he looked at me.
“Now,” he said.
I squished my brows together, confused.
“Now…what?”
Asher smiled, holding up his phone—the email that I had forgotten I sent him. “Now is when I’m going to tell you that you got the gig.”
My eyes were wide and there was a ringing in my ears.
“I got the gig? Are you fucking with me?”
He grinned even wider. I blinked back white spots in front of my eyes, and I felt heat envelop my body. I was floating. My jaw was wide open.
“I can’t believe you’re serious right now.”