“They’re so rough.”
“Who cares. Lindz sounds like a dying cat when she makes voice notes. Can’t be worse than that.”
I plugged in and found the voice notes I’d made for myself. The first one was the roughest and I cringed listening to it without any production to clean it up.
James tapped on the steering wheel as the song cycled through to the end. She made a twirling motion with her finger for me to repeat the song. Her husky voice picked up the lyrics on a third way through. It was so sharp versus my cleaner vocal style.
She rearranged a few of the words and I itched to write them down, but she changed them four more times and every single one was amazing. It annoyed me how limitless her prose was, right off the cuff.
I poured over my lyrics sometimes for hours to find one word.
By the time we got back to my house, she was pulling her earbuds out and taking over my phone. I rolled my eyes, grabbed our bag, and followed her to the door. She had her eyes closed as she listened intently. When I opened the door, she ran inside, passed by my mother and father, and went right into the music room.
My mother’s eyebrows rose. “She didn’t even say hi?”
“Sorry, she was on fire in the car. Let me just go get her.” I set the bags down and ran after her.
James had been to my house a few times, but never with this kind of singular focus especially when there was food in the room. I pushed the door open to my music room and James was already at the piano.
It wasn’t her usual medium, but then again she hadn’t stopped to get her instruments.
She was scribbling on the sheet music I always kept on the piano. I was about to urge her back into the kitchen when she held up a finger and spit out the singular most hauntingly perfect bridge I’d ever heard.
I dropped down on the bench beside her, my bones rattling.
James finally snapped out of her trance. “Think that’s it.” She left me there at the bench, the door still open.
“Hey, Mrs. D. Looking good,” I heard her say.
Her throaty laugh faded as I stared at the sheet music. All the words I’d poured over simply rearranged with a hook that had been missing.
The hell of an ocean of streets between us.
Daring him to leave me.
Daring myself to hold onto blind faith.
I scrawled “Blind Faith” across the top of the paper.
The one thing I was so freaking afraid of.
While my career had been soaring, all of my personal relationships had crashed and burned without fail.
Blind faith was asking a whole lot from me.
22
tate
It had beena long day of adding decorations to the oak barrels we’d installed along the winding path. I was trying my damnedest to make the Wonderland Village look like it had been there forever. I’d found high quality silk poinsettias that would survive the harsh cold of New York. The Wonderland was dog friendly, so we definitely didn’t want to have the real deal poisoning anyone’s pet.
Thank God for Molly. She thought of everything I missed.
A snow squall during the evening had added just the right amount of winter to the Wonderland and I wanted nothing more than to show it off to Amber.
“Tate, wait! We need to do a few videos. It’s too perfect!”
I sagged with exhaustion. Valerie was not who I wanted to share this with.
