“Yeah. So I was thinking, why is it taking me so long to catch up?”
“Maybe you don’t need to catch up. Just stop comparing yourself to your sister.”
She didn’t say anything. She watched me smoke for a long moment, until I couldn’t stand it anymore. I crushed out the blunt and headed into my bedroom.
She followed me, even though I didn’t invite her in. The clock on my bedside table said it was two-something in the morning.
Was she waiting up for me all night?
Something churned in my stomach, fueling my unease.
“Something’s bothering you,” she said gently. “What is it?”
“Well, Breakneck is done. So there’s that.” I picked up the vodka I’d been drinking earlier and continued where I’d left off.
“What do you mean? What happened?”
“I talked to Yash. Apparently, this is the only way to avoid a lawsuit. Breakneck is no more.”
“What does that mean, exactly?” She shook her head when I offered the vodka to her.
“It means that the band I gave the last eight years of my life to is done.”
“But… what does that mean for you and Noah?”
“It means, since Breakneck is no longer a thing, no one can use the name or move forward with it. Including us. This is a slight problem because it also kills the record deal and forces me to basically start over.”
Angeline breathed a soft, wounded sigh, for me, and I looked away. “Are you sure about the record deal?”
“I’m sure. Trey was crystal clear. The deal was with Breakneck. And since there is no Breakneck… no deal. Also, I can’t use the songs we already wrote together. None of us can. So everything I’ve been writing the last six months or so… gone.”
“Shit…”
Angeline followed me as I went to flop into a chair in front of the fireplace wall. She crouched down in front of me, her blue-gray eyes flooded with emotion.
I looked away.
“Johnny. I’m sorry. But this isn’t the end.”
“Of course it’s the end. Did you not hear me?”
“I heard you. But just because your band—”
“Would you stop? Just stop.” I really tried not to look at her, but it was impossible, with her soft eyes sucking me in like that.
She took a breath. “Johnny, did it ever occur to you that maybe you’re just not meant to play with Breakneck anymore? And maybe the whole reason the band struggled so much and the whole dynamic just didn’t work, in the end, was because it wasn’t the right dynamic foryou.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means, maybe you’re just not a lead guitarist in a band, period. Maybe Johnny O is a solo artist.”
I stared at her.
How was it that this girl always said the exactly right thing? Even if it was nowhere near anything I was ready to hear.
She was annoyingly, kinda frighteningly like Rory that way.
“Hear me out,” she said gently. “My sister recorded a solo album because she had things she wanted to do, musically, that didn’t quite fit with Dirty. And so did Jesse Mayes. There have been many exceptionally successful rock stars who’ve had a period of their career where they’ve been a solo artist leading a band. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Paul McCartney and Wings… Elton John, Jimi Hendrix, I don’t know, I’m sure you can think of way more examples than I can. They could’ve called themselves something else, a band name instead of their own name, but they didn’t. Because they were clearly the star of the show—”
