Now it’s only a few months away.
“I didn’t forget the lyrics.” It was the opposite. I remembered them so clearly, how they used to feel when I was singing them with the guys, how they felt incomplete when I sang them alone. I have no idea how the reunion will go. The only one of the guys who speaks to me is Garrett, and I can’t blame them for wanting nothing to do with me. I was the one who told them it was over.It’s my fault Luca was injured during our final performance. But I had to do it. It was the only way to keep them safe. Still, breaking through my anxiety, there’s a part of me holding out hope for one last memory to cling on to. “I just didn’t sing them.”
“Remember them out loud next time. Moving on, here are the names the label sent. Dierdre Ray is up there, great vocalist, could be fun to have the two of you integrate her R&B sound into your songs,” Derek dives in, taking her glossy picture from next to his computer.
“I thought she was in talks with a Broadway show?” I ask. “It’s just a rumor, but worth considering.”
“I’ll mark her as a maybe.” Keys clatter as Derek takes notes. “Wilson Merle?”
“Sure, sounds great, if you’re looking for someone who yells at crew members.” I lean back, tipping myself so the front legs of my chair lift off the ground. “Unless your game plan is to use that to deflect from my bullshit and make someone else look bad, though he deserves it.”
“Great.” He grimaces.
We go back and forth on five more prospects, excuses easily flying from my lips.
“Ransom Wren.” He pauses, raising a brow expectantly.
“What are you waiting for? What are his selling points?”
“Just saving my breath since you seem to have an issue with everyone at the label.”
I inspect the picture. Bright eyes. Easy smile. Hungry. “He’s so young.”
“That’s your issue? You started when you were younger than him.”
Yeah, young enough to believe people when they said they wanted to help me. I have Derek now, and by some miracle he’s stuck with me, but I haven’t always been so lucky. And the last thing I want to do is spend months around some kid whoreminds me that at some point I took a path that stripped away my innocence.
“Would you rather I say I don’t want to work with any of these people? It’s not like it matters. By the time the tour comes around, no one will care what I’ve done.”
That’s the cycle, after all. I screw up. There’s a day when I think maybe, just maybe, someone will care enough to say something. To ask why the fuck I keep pressing the self-destruct button.
But they never do, as long as I keep giving more of myself to them, temporarily satiating their appetites. Sometimes I’m surprised when I look down at myself that there aren’t chunks of flesh missing, because I feel it, each bite they take. One day they’ll swallow up the last bits of me, ivory bones picked clean. And even the vultures will want nothing to do with me.
“Is there anyone you’d consider? Just give me a name I can send their way.”
“Any name?”
“Sure, why not?”
My lips curl. There’s only one person I want to go on tour with. The one person who will tell me exactly what she thinks about me and my silly little mistakes.
“Avery Sloane.”
5
Avery
September 2024
“You’re sure you haven’t received the papers?” I ask. Wet sand crunches under my bare feet as I pace the Southampton shoreline, shoes dangling from one hand while I hold my phone in the other. “I told him one week, that means the papers should be in today.”
One week, and nothing from Wes. How hard is it to sign on a few dotted lines? I should have stayed and watched him do it, but I needed to get out. I was practically suffocating from the memories in that apartment.
“Nothing yet. As promised, I will let you know if there are any updates,” Miriam, my divorce attorney, tells me. “But I’ll be certain to keep an eye out today.”
“Thanks.”
The call ends, and I fight the urge to toss my phone into the frothing ocean. I’ve done everything right, only for him to be the final roadblock. It’s my own damn fault for putting off the divorce, convincing myself it wasn’t needed yet so why do it. Why let go of the one scrap of him I had left when it was completely harmless?
