She pulled me onto the tour bus after the Seattle show, and then I joined them again after San Diego. The first time, I mostly listened and laughed while Siah and Jake drunkenly riffed on Disney Channel TV intro themes from our childhoods, but last night, it’d been girls only—the others had opted for a separate tour bus to host a few groupies who’d tagged along—and we took advantage of the calm to workshop a few songs for Penelope’s upcoming album. She told me I’d get songwriting credits for helping, which thrilled and shocked me.
“I barely helped,” I’d said with a shrug, though I had been proud of my suggestion she ended up taking—changing a few notes in the verses, which made the song more sonically interesting.
But Penelope was so set on it, I knew there had to be more to her story, that she’d likely been in my shoes once with someone way less altruistic. “Don’t sell yourself short, Paige,” she’d said. “Always fight for what you deserve.”
Liam helps me over a giant rock in the path, then rubs his thumb over my knuckles once before turning and walking on.
“Do you mind,” I start, catching up to him, “if I ask about Penelope?”
“No, I don’t mind.”
I mull over what to ask. “Did you—or do you still—have feelings for her?”
He hesitates before answering. “I guess for a minute there, I might’ve. But even then, it wasn’t the same.”
“The same as…?”
“You. With Penelope, and Brenna, too, I had an attachment to them, but it was like…” He stops walking, turns to me. “It was like wading into a stream when I wanted the ocean.”
I am going to make you fall so madly in love with me, it’ll feel like you’re on a life raft in the middle of the ocean.
A lyric comes to mind:You have waves that could knock me flat.
“It’s like that for me too,” I say. “The others were just…”
“Ripples,” he concludes, and I nod.
We keep walking. “Was it the same for Penelope?” I ask.
“Penelope is highly emotional—for the record, I don’t mean that in a bad way and she’d say the same herself—so I think it was probably more for her, but that’s not a testament tome, just the way she operates romantically. Especially as a singer-songwriter.”
“Are any of her songs about you?” I ask, suddenly unsettled.
“You’d have to ask her about that.”
I decide I’m better off not knowing.
“Thank you. For telling me the truth.”
“Of course,” he says, voice rough. “Anything, always, Paige. And before you ask, I don’t even want to know thenamesof anyone you’ve been with since me.”
“Noted.Ican’t even remember their names.”
Liam’s deep laugh spills out of him with delight, echoing off the brush.
We hike in silence for a while, then play the grocery game, then twenty questions. Near the top of the mountain, our breaths become too labored to keep up conversation. When the scenic outlook comes into view, I sigh deep in my throat, pushing my hands against my hips. The mountains are craggy, almost wrinkled looking, and miles deep. They go far past my line of sight.
“I never thought I’d be in Tucson,” I say.
Beside me, Liam’s catching his breath too. He grabs the bottom of his shirt, uses it to wipe the sweat off his brow. “Me either.”
But it means something different for him. I was only commenting on the narrowness of my world perception as a twenty-year-old.
Liam’s talking about the other life he almost had.
We find a flat rock with an overhang and sit, letting our feet dangle. Liam grabs an untapped water bottle from his backpack and offers it to me.
“Are you happy, Liam?”
