“I know.”
Those words break the dam inside me, and happiness pours out everywhere, just everywhere, and I was right. Spinning Britta around beneath the fireworks while she laughs, my ring on her finger, is another
“best” moment of my life . . .
. . . and there are a million more just around the corner.
THE END
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Now available from Avon Books . . .
#1 New York Times bestselling author Tessa Bailey delivers a sexy, hilarious stand-alone holiday rom-com about the adult children of two former rock stars who team up to convince their estranged mothers to play a Christmas Eve concert . . .
Prologue
2009
The second Beat Dawkins entered the television studio, it stopped raining outside.
Sunshine tumbled in through the open door, wreathing him in a halo of glory, pedestrians retracting their umbrellas and tipping their hats in gratitude.
Across the room, Melody witnessed Beat’s arrival the way an astronomer might observe a once-in-a-millennium asteroid streaking across the sky. Her hormones activated, testing the forgiveness of her powder-fresh-scented Lady Speed Stick. She’d only gotten braces two days earlier.
Now those metal wires felt like train tracks in her mouth. Especially while watching Beat breeze with such effortless grace into the downtown studio where they would be shooting interviews for the documentary.
At age sixteen, Melody was in the middle of an awkward phase—to put it mildly. Sweat was an uncontrollable entity. She didn’t know how to smile anymore without looking like a constipated gargoyle. Her milk chocolate mane had been carefully styled for this afternoon, but her hair couldn’t be tricked into forgetting about the humidity currently plaguing New York, and now it was frizzing to really accentuate the rubber bands connecting her incisors.
Then there was Beat.
Utterly, effortlessly gorgeous.
His chestnut-colored hair was damp from the rain, his light-blue eyes sparkling with mirth. Someone handed him a towel as soon as he crossed the threshold, and he took it without looking, rubbing it over his locks and leaving them wild, standing on end, amusing everyone in the room. A
woman in a headset ran a lint brush down the arm of his indigo suit, and he gave her a grateful, winning smile, visibly flustering her.
How could she and this boy possibly be the same age?
Not only that, but they’d also been named by their mothers as perfect complements to each other. Beat and Melody. They were the offspring of America’s most legendary female rock duo, Steel Birds. Since the band had already broken up by the time Beat and Melody were born, their names were bestowed quite by accident, without the members consulting each other. Decidedly not the happiest of coincidences. Not to mention, children of legends with significant names were supposed to be interesting.
Remarkable.
Obviously, Beat was the only one who was meeting expectations.
Unless you counted the fact that she’d chosen teal rubber bands.
Which had seemed a lot more daring in the sterility of the orthodontist’s office.
“Melody,” someone called to her right. The simple act of having her name shouted across the busy room caused Melody to be bathed in fire, but okay. Now the backs of her knees were sweating—and oh God, Beat was looking at her.
Time froze.
They’d never actually met before.
Every article about their mothers and the highly publicized band breakup in 1993 mentioned Beat and Melody in the same breath, but they were locking eyes for the very first time IRL. She needed to think of something interesting to say.
I was going to go with clear rubber bands, but teal felt more punk rock.
Sure. Maybe she could cap that statement off with some finger guns and really drive home the fact that he’d gotten all the cool rock royalty genes. Oh God, her feet were sweating now. Her sandals were going to squeak when she walked.
“Melody!” called the voice again.
She tore her attention off the godlike vision that was Beat Dawkins to find the producer waving her into one of the cordoned-off interview suites.
Just inside the door was a camera, a giant boom mic, a director’s chair. The interview about her mother’s career hadn’t even started yet, and she already
knew the questions she would be answering. Maybe she could just pop in very quickly, recite her usual responses, and save everyone some time?
No, I can’t sing like my mother.
We don’t talk about the band breakup.