I shake my head. “Let me start over. Before the tour started, IaskedLiam to date me, because this music executive at Stillwater wants to sign me, but he also said my lyrics were uninspired. Andthen I realized I haven’t written anything heartfelt since Liam, so I asked him to be with me again so I could rediscover the feelings that made me care about songwriting in the first place. We hadn’t even kissed until three days ago since Liam wasn’t sure how it’d work. But now we’re… in it? I think we’re both really in it for good, except I needed to tell you all the truth because we’ve become friends, and I respect you as musicians so much, and even if you think I’m a cop-out, I wanted you to know.”
I pant heavily into the silence. All four of their heads rotate forty-five degrees as they stare at me.
Eventually Penelope says, “Haven’t you two been sharing a bed this whole time?”
“Yes.”
Her smirk slides into a maniacal grin. “Only one bed.”
“That’smyfavorite trope!” Henrietta cries.
“Oh, this is delicious,” Gretta chimes in, and Misha cackles, face toward the ceiling.
“Hang on,” I say, recalibrating. I was expecting disdainful glares. A lecture about my lack of artistic morality. “Aren’t you guys mad? Or like, disappointed at least?”
“Why would we be mad or disappointed?” Penelope asks as she stands. “I’m delighted you shared this, if only because it’s the juiciest thing to happen yet on tour. But it’s also franklynoneof our business.”
The others nod, looking to me for an answer, curiosity splashed on their faces.
“Because you’re all songwriters,” I say by way of explanation, throwing a hand around the room. “And the songwriting I’ve been doing on tour hasn’t been normal. It’s been…” I bite my lip, searching for the right word. “Inauthentic?”
After a stretch of quiet, Gretta—who’s on the floor, legs crossed—says in a soft but sure voice, “Says who?”
Nobody, I guess. Certainly not them.
“You told us once you’ve been writing your favorite songs ever on this tour?” Penelope asks, and I nod. “So then, let me ask you this. If you hadn’t agreed with that person about your lyrics, would you still change them, just to please him?”
Immediately, I shake my head. “I would’ve taken less money, kept the songs as they are.”
“Except you hold your work to a higher standard,” Penelope says, and shrugs. “Frankly, I think that makes what you’ve written on this tour the most real of all your music. It’s the product of your best effort.”
Henrietta sits beside her sister, the movement of her limbs fawn-like, and gazes up at me. “I’ve been through a songwriter’s drought before. I thought alcohol would help me loosen up, but it only deteriorated my craft. I’m sober now, and here to say forcing somethingneverworks. Which means if it’s working, babe, you’re not forcing it.”
Her wisdom loops in my mind:if it’s working, it’s not forced.
“There’s this saying,” Gretta says.“Art for the sake of art. I love that idea. That we write songs simply because we want to, maybe evenhaveto.”
I get a flash of twenty-year-old Paige writing lyrics under her breath, learning techniques behind closed doors.
She was a girl who wrote for herself.
Everyone’s quiet in our agreement, like we each know exactly how the other feels without needing to voice it—like our foundational, physiological makeup is the same—and tears threaten to well in my eyes at the community of it.
“If my label dropped me tomorrow,” Penelope says, “I’d still be writing songs.”
“If we’d never gotten discovered”—Henrietta glances at her twin, who smiles back—“we’d still be writing songs.”
“I think we all do this,” Misha says, “because it’s the most honest thing about us.”
It’s as though they’re washing out my doubts and disbeliefs, drowning them so they stop pulling me down, so I can finally swim to the surface and breathe. I swallow thickly, nod my agreement to each of their throwaway, staggering observations.
“Thank you for telling us, though,” Henrietta says. “It means a lot. Especially so we can help you say fuck off to the impostor syndrome of it all.”
“And fuck your boyfriend, for fuck’s sake!” Penelope adds with a sly smile. “Like, you should actually fuck him, and then write a song about it.”
I laugh. “In one month,” I admit, “I’ve written almost enough songs about Liam to double my catalog.” My head shakes in pure disbelief. “Nothing has ever come to me so quickly.”
“That,” Gretta says, grinning, “is how you know it’s real.”
