“For the sake of team morale,” he said, “I’m going to refrain from threatening to kill you guys.”
Chapter Sixteen
I ask Jake Moody if the boy band stereotype ever bothers him. He hesitates for just a moment before answering, “I think people tend to put you in a box, whether you’re famous or not. Like, there are high school cliques and yearbook superlatives. Celebrities aren’t an exception to that. There are lots of people out there who can’t really see the person right next to them.” Intrigued, I ask him if he wants to tell the world who he really is. Enigmatic as ever, Jake answers, “The people I want to know me are the ones who can see past all the media and stereotypes themselves. They don’t need me to tell them.”
—“Behind the Band,” an interview with Emma Cardiff
When we got back to Somerset, I parked in front of the Jackson Motel, and Leon took Phillip and Aspen inside to get settled.
I got out of the car and stood, stretching my legs. A summer breeze swept over the empty lot, causing the dandelion puffs inthe overgrown grass dividers to scatter like fairy dust under the darkening sky.
Jake stood beside me, not following the others in just yet.
“Getting a minute of quiet before you dive back in?” I asked knowingly.
His lips curved up just a touch. “I love them. But they’re—”
“Loud?” I supplied without any hint of malice. “Like they should come with their own background music and confetti cannons?”
The other three band members made me think of all things bright and fun and chaotic. Like when you’re juggling and can’t stop the motion or else everything will fall, or when you have high energy humming in your blood at two in the morning after a party and you know you should sleep but you’re just too wired.
But calming? That they weren’t.
“They’d all die two seconds intoA Quiet Place,” Jake commented with a laugh. “I live for how loud it all is, sometimes. There are these moments during a show where I can feel every single strum of a guitar and beat of a drum and note that’s being sung pulse through me and boom through the speakers and buzz in the stage under my feet. It makes music feel like it’s not just something I can play, it’s something that’s part of me. But sometimes...” Jake trailed off for a moment, watching the dandelion puffs slowly come undone bit by bit. “Sometimes I just need the quiet too, to think.”
As Jake spoke, his fingers moved lightly against his leg, rising and falling in sequence, playing invisible piano keys.
I nodded down at his hand, wishing I could hear whatever he was playing. “You still do that.”
“Oh.” Jake stopped, surprised. “Yeah. Habit, I suppose.”
“You really do live and breathe music.”
He laughed softly at that. “I even dream in song, sometimes. I don’t really feel like me without a melody.”
Maybe this new Jake wasn’t so different from the old Jake after all. Maybe what I saw on TV was only one side of him.
After all, the drive home had been interesting.
Phillip—the supposed stuffy, high-brow one—delighted me by making several pop culture and geeky references. Aspen didn’t sound a thing like he did on TV when he wasn’t relying on the teleprompter. And Leon obviously had the uncanny ability to switch between an adorable, cuddly Gizmo to one of those evil, chain saw–wielding gremlins after you stupidly fed it after midnight.
“The guys aren’t how I thought they’d be,” I admitted.
Jake inclined his head slightly. “I don’t think any of us are.”
Sophisticated. The responsible one. Easygoing. The bad boy.They were all simply labels slapped onto the guys, boiling them down to one specific trait to be packaged and sold.
Maybe all the best qualities of the old Jake were still part of the new Jake.
The wind shifted and I shuddered, rubbing my arms in my thin shirt.
Before I knew what was happening, sudden warmth enveloped me, stopping me mid-shiver and smoothing over the goose bumps blossoming on my skin.
Jake had taken off his leather jacket and draped it over me.
My senses were hit with the scent of vanilla and spice, and my goose bumps reappeared, but for an entirely different reason.
To my credit, I did not bury my nose in it and take a huge whiff.
