“What about the live performance aspect of it?” Candice asks. “I know you used to say you never wanted that.”
“If anything, I want it less than ever,” I tell her, laughing as I remember Penelope having to mother a few fans the other night who were flinging their drinks into the crowd. “Now that I’ve seen it up close.”
The way she’sclaimedby strangers all the time. Like they’ve convinced themselves they get to own a piece of her, to commenton her body, her voice, her outfits, her dating life. It’s as if, because she offered up something, her right to withhold anything else is forfeited.
And even if I were willing to put up with everything Penelope puts up with, it’s not lost on me that she hassomething—some magnetism and star talent so rare—that even most musicians whoareinterested in performing would never be able to mimic.
“Paige always helps out with sound checks, though.” Liam’s hand comes to the small of my back. “If you guys are free in the early afternoon tomorrow to come by the venue, you can see for yourself.”
“That’d be awesome,” Hailey says, flashing me a wide grin.
After that, the conversation slips to Folly’s pregnancy updates (solicited) and advice on pregnant-friendly Kama Sutra positions (unsolicited). Harry tells us about the latest jingle he sold for big money to Nintendo, and we close the evening planning for Candice and Hailey’s wedding this fall. It’ll be back home in Bristol at a beautiful barn, andyes, Dad and his wife are coming, Candice promises us,I made them send me screenshots of the flight confirmation.
We all help bring armfuls of things down to the kitchen, and Candice and I go back up for the last of it. Like I knew she would, she pulls me aside, and we stare out at the dark streets by the roof’s edge. She loops an arm over my shoulder, pulling me into her side.
“Folly told me.”
“Yeah. I figured she would.”
“Does anybody else on the tour know?” she asks.
I shake my head.
“That man is in love with you, Paige. It’s clear as day on his face.”
How in love with me are you today?Liam had asked me last night, right as he got into bed and pulled me close, but didn’t try anything more.
Eighty-five percent, I’d answered, and it’d been a lie.
“I’m in love withhim,” I whisper. “Even though I know it can go deeper, get bigger—I know it can, and I know it will, but I’m already there.”
Candice pulls back just enough to watch my face. “Then why do you look sad about it?”
Is sad how I look?
Apprehensive, maybe. Liam and I have been in a suspended state since we migrated from clinging to each other on waking to preemptively doing it before we fall asleep.
“He won’t touch me,” I admit. “Sexually. When we made our deal, Liam said he couldn’t be intimate with me until he felt that we had—trust, between us. And then I made it worse on the first night by suggesting leaving—”
Her brow crinkles. “Why’d you do that?”
“Because this is hislife. Liam’s fitting me into his life, and I’m meeting the people he works with, befriending them, and lying to them at the same time, askinghimto lie to them, and I feel this guilt,” I gasp, grabbing at my chest, “all the time. Pushing down on me like a weight, and I used to think I was angry enough at Liam for what he did not to feel guilt where he’s concerned, but that’s not the caseat all.
“I don’t have any anger left for him,” I realize in a verbal epiphany. “It’s gone, and now all I have is a constant sickness in my stomach. Because this relationship—it isn’t fake to me, it’s real. But he still won’t touch me, which means I’m not doing enough to convince him.”
I push my fingers through my hair. “It’s not that I need sex to make it real. I just need what it represents. I want him to be able to touch me because he trusts me as much as he loves me.”
Candice pulls me into a hug and whispers, “Breathe, breathe.”
I sob quietly on her shoulder, overcome with the emotions spilling off my tongue. Somehow, she gets me to verbalize things I can’t even line up in my head in her absence.
“Trust takes time,” she says. “It’s only been five and a half weeks. He just needs more time.”
But time is the finite resource we’re running low on. On tour, we’re in a closed loop, a locked environment, but that will change. It’ll have to.
“Hailey and I have been together for twenty years,” Candice says, petting down my hair, “and in small ways, we still break each other’s trust. The fact that Liam is here means he’s in this with you. He wants it to work.”
“But how do I get rid of the guilt?” I ask her.
