Dad’s gait is shorter, brisker. When he’s angry, he hunches his shoulders, a man on a mission, walking with his eyes tilted toward the ground. When he’s smiling in front of a crowd, he rolls his shoulders down.
“She contacted you?”
“Yes,” I answer.
“Well then, she is officially in breach of contract.”
Breach of contract?I practically hear Anne’s smile. Harper’s family will have to return whatever money Anne offered them.
“What’s more,” she continues, “we’re under no obligation to conceal the fact that Harper was the one driving. I’ll have the story leaked to one of the more reputable papers. Really, it’s better this way. An American social climber to blame will garner more sympathy. We can get ahead of it if we manage it right.”
“I’m not pressing charges.”
Anne laughs. “It’s not entirely up to you. I don’t think the police will care that you don’t want your ex-fling to get into trouble.”
“She wasn’t a fling.”
“Edward, not this nonsense again.”
She says it as though I’m a child begging to stay up past his bedtime.
“How could you let me believe I was the one driving?”
“You didn’t want the world to know about your leg. This was the best way I could think to delay the story.”
She makes it sound as though she did this entirely for my benefit, because I asked her to.
Of course, I want to be like those Invictus athletes, unashamed of my injury. Harper would say I’ve fallen for an ableist narrative about how our bodies are supposed to look, how they’re supposed to function.
Perhaps I wanted to hide my injury because I still hoped I might become the man my father and sister want me to be; as though, if I managed myself just right, I could finally gain their approval.
But the man they want me to be wouldn’t have fallen in love with Harper in the first place.
And I don’t want to be someone who doesn’t love Harper.
The Thief
He slings his guitar over his shoulder. It’s been a while since he’s performed at the open mic in town, and it’s the dead of winter, so no one who matters will be there, but he has a plan, and this is its next step.
He’s been patient, watching her work for weeks now, coaxing every lyric out of her mouth and onto the page.
After the incident with Joni Jewell—splashed across every tabloid cover, impossible to miss—he told his mother thatshewas their chance. Rehabilitate the baddest bitch in rock and roll, and the whole world—well, the right people within the world—would flock to Rush’s Recovery.
He doesn’t care—he’s never cared—which of his parents get the center in the divorce. They’ve been at each other’s throat for months, like the center is their baby, like King fucking Solomon needs to come along and cut it in half. He wonders—if he were under eighteen, would they fight for custody of him with quite the same fervor?
He doubts it. He’s always been a disappointment: didn’t get into the college they wanted, didn’t pursue the career they approved of, in trouble through elementary school and high school. They’d been too distracted he thinks, all his life, by their own ambitions and their patients’ struggles—complaints, really—to pay much attention to their son’s.
None of it matters now that he’s turned their precious center into a means to an end. He just had to stay on Evelyn’s good side, persuade her to let him have the most menial of jobs—a cook for a woman who doesn’t eat anything but candy, a fucking chipmunk could do it. He got the tattoo—Never Settle—as soon as he was certain she was coming. He pushed up his sleeve that first day to make sure she would see it.
It was his idea for his mom and the rest of the staff to call her Florence. Take her down a notch from the moment she arrived, make her vulnerable by calling her the name she’d probably barely heard since she was a child.
His parents went to school for years to get their degrees, but he understood what all their training never taught them: Baby someone enough, flirt with them so they feel important, praise them until they feel talented, and they’ll give you anything you want. Give an addict alcohol while she’s in rehab, and she’ll love you forever, too grateful (and too loaded) to be suspicious.
He’d been planning to hit her up for connections and contacts, but it quickly became apparent she wasn’t well-connected anymore, if she ever had been. So he shifted course—he’s nothing if not adaptable—and now it’s worked out better than he’d imagined. The song is more valuable than a handful of phone numbers and email addresses could ever be.
He knows the words by heart, better even than she does. Months from now, if she tries to release the song as her own, he’ll have a roomful of witnesses who saw him perform it first. No one will believe her—even her own manager was quick to turn on her for a few bucks—and if there’s a scandal, it will only help his rising star. Joni Jewell’s simpering “Get Her Back” never would’ve hit number one if people didn’t know it was about Georgia Blue. And now look at Joni: touring the world, sold-out shows, riding the wave of Georgia’s infamy for all it’s worth.
Later, the police will ask about the altercation at the bar, but no one will accuse him of wrongdoing.She’sthe crazy one, everyone knows, even people like his parents who disapprove of the wordcrazy.
