Oh, that’s dangerous.
I get it now.
When I find his eyes again, Liam’s trying to read me. His hand moves up my elbow to my shoulder, featherlight.
“Paige,” he says, but it’s a question.
“You said you needed this to be different,” I remind him.
“I do need that, and it is different,” he says, eyes dilating. He swallows. “Tell me what you want. I’ll be whatever you want.”
My eyes snap closed when his thumb rubs at the fabric over my collarbone. It’s easily the most erotic thing I’ve ever felt.
“I don’t know how Maisy would feel about it.”
He leans in. Whispers, “That’s not an answer.”
But in the next second he’s up off the couch, and when I peel open my eyes, he’s grabbing a peach, biting into it with his back to me. Like he needs something else to do with his mouth.
We’re quiet for a few minutes. Eventually Liam tosses the pit and rinses his hands, then comes back, sitting farther from me this time. He hands me my guitar and pulls up the voice memo app on his phone.
“Play the song again?”
Chapter 10
June, Now
Putting in my notice at work is a nonevent; nobody turns over staff like the restaurant industry. At the apartment, Folly spends a Saturday afternoon with me packing, and all the while, we spin around my bedroom blasting Penelope Parker albums until I’ve memorized her entire catalog.
I listen to Penelope’s podcast appearances. I watch her interviews. I research the people on her team. I’ve only ever been a casual listener of her music, but the more time I spend getting to know it, the more fascinating I find every song. She’s half folk twang and half soft pop. Unthinkable but somehow seamless.
The first stop on tour is Spokane, Washington. The day I’m set to leave, Folly and Harry drive me to the airport with the windows down, all three of us fizzing with energy. As we pull into the airport terminal, Harry leans forward, shoots me a look.
“What?” I finally ask.
“You’re going to let them know you’re a musician, right?”
“They?”
“The band, the crew. Penelope.”
“I don’t know that I’ll ever be in the same room as Penelope,” I say.
Folly makes a disbelieving noise as she changes lanes. “Her openers, at least.”
Over the past few days, I’ve been so focused on Penelope Parker’s music that I forwent a deeper dive on her opening act: a band of two sisters called Etta Girls.
“When we started at Belmont,” Harry says, “you were…”
“Cute and fun? Horrid and off-putting?”
“I don’t know, Paige.” He frowns. “It was like you were embarrassed or something, when all the rest of us felt like we’d won the lottery of opportunity to be there. Even us nepo babies had to fight the other nepo babies for our spot.”
Harry’s right. I showed up for class my freshman year of college with a guilty pit in my stomach, like I’d snuck in through the back gate and was about to get caught and thrown out on my ass. On top of that, I couldn’t move past what a novelty it was to discuss music so seriously, in a way that wasn’t inherently humiliating. For two years, songwriting had been my private, secret thing, and suddenly I was thrown into a community of confidence.
It didn’t help that I was two years older than most of my classmates, made obvious thanks to my ability to drink with the upperclassmen. Or that I couldn’t get my emotions in order that whole first semester. Some days, I was a walking sad face emoji, some days I was so frustrated I could implode. Others, my relief and joy to be learning about music again felt like it filled up the classrooms I occupied.
“It didn’t last longer than a couple of months,” I remind him. “And Misha Mohan will be on this tour. Remember her?”
