Pretty Words: An Enemies To Lovers Rock Star Romance (River Valley Rebels)

by Gabrielle Sands

  “I don’t care what you tell Cole after I leave. Just give this to Oliver,” I pleaded. “It’s only a piece of paper. You don’t even need to hand it to him, only slide it under the door of the bus when you get to the next venue. He’ll find it.”

  “This is ridiculous. Why didn’t you give him your number at the hotel?”

  “By the time I thought to do it, they had already checked out.” Around midday yesterday, we got an update from Ritual Disruption’s tour manager that Jamie was getting discharged from the hospital and that they were hopeful he’d be able to perform tomorrow night. When Cole had come to my room to tell me that hours after the fact, Ritual Disruption had already checked out.

  “Can’t you find him online or something?”

  “No!” I exclaimed. “I can’t find any of his personal social media accounts. He’s a celebrity, for God’s sake. I don’t know how else I’ll be able to track him down once I leave.”

  Ran pushed his hands inside the pockets of his pants. “Your brother won’t want you to stay in touch. Getting involved with Oliver was a bad idea. He’s older than you, he’s not going to—”

  “I’m eighteen,” I interrupted. “I’m officially an adult. Cole’s opinion is irrelevant.”

  “Ivy…” He looked at me with a mixture of apprehension and pity.

  Pity. I could exploit that. “Just humor me. I’m not an idiot. I know he’s probably going to forget about me.” I cast my gaze down. “He’ll probably never actually use the phone number. But I need to know that I’ve done everything in my power to make it work. Haven’t you ever felt this way?”

  I lifted my eyes back up to his face, and I knew there were tears shining in them. That part wasn’t hard. I’d been crying all night.

  Ran sighed, shaking his head. “Fine. Give it to me. All I’m going to do is slide it under the door of the bus, got it?”

  “Thank you. Thank you so much,” I said, my voice trembling as I handed him the folded-up piece of paper with my phone number. That paper, soft and warm from being held in my hand, was my last desperate attempt to right all the things I’d screwed up.

  7

  TWO YEARS LATER

  IVY

  The auditorium echoed with the furious clacking of laptop keys as my classmates apparently attempted to document every word coming out of the professor’s mouth. I sat in my usual spot at the back, occasionally participating in the clacking, but mostly doodling in a notebook I’d grown fond of this summer. I’d found it in a dollar shop back in River Valley. At the bottom of each dated page, printed in delicate pink ink, was a motivational quote. Today it said, “You must do the tings you think you cannot do”. The quote was attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, but I was skeptical. If the manufacturer had managed to misspell “things”, what else had they gotten wrong?

  I traced over the quote with my pencil while the professor intoned something about addiction being a pattern of learned behavior. The class was called “The Psychology of Addiction”, and the only reason I was taking it was because the other psych electives I’d been interested in had put me on wait-lists.

  The freckled guy sitting a row ahead of me already had a wall of bullet points on his screen. I frowned. Had the professor really shared that much information already? It was the first lecture, and I’d started zoning out when it had become clear all he planned to do today was go over the curriculum. We’d gotten an email with all the information, so what was the point of writing it all down? Was I missing something?

  I sniffed and told myself to relax. I’d hoped that by my third year at UCLA, I wouldn’t feel so on edge at the beginning of each semester, yet here I was. New year, new class, new batch of strangers. I could count on one hand everyone I knew in this auditorium from previous years, and I used the term “knew” loosely. Freckled guy and I may’ve exchanged a word or two in passing, and the blonde sitting at the front had definitely asked me for directions once.

  Leaning back in my seat, I crossed my arms. To think that at one point, I had such high hopes of making a boatload of friends in college. Of course, that was before that summer. The summer when I learned that stepping out of one’s comfort zone was not all it’s cracked up to be.

  Yeah, I’d take being a loner over experiencing that all over again.

  When the class ended, I was the first out the door—one of the many benefits of always sitting in the back. I didn’t get far before I heard my name.

  Jack stood in the lobby of the building, waving at me with a big grin on his face. He wore his usual preppy uniform comprised of boat shoes, checkered shorts, and a pastel polo. His strong jaw and arresting-blue eyes made up for the fact that everything else about him screamed frat bro.

  I waved and made my way over. We’d started fooling around last year, but the last time I’d seen him was before the final exams in March. I hadn’t thought of him much during the summer, and I wasn’t sure if he wanted to resume things now that we were both back at UCLA. His appearance outside my classroom during the first week of school may be a sign that he did.

  “Hey, Ivy.” He pulled me into a tight hug and rubbed my back as if trying to comfort me. I was sure Jack thought I had some kind of a damaged past, because even though we’d technically been “fuck buddies”, there wasn’t any fucking going on. I’d let him go down on me and returned the favor, but when he’d tried to take things further, I’d told him in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t ready to have sex. He was understanding, but ever since, I’d often caught him looking at me with a thoughtful, pitiful expression, as if he were trying to guess what kind of terrible thing had happened to me. Telling him that I was still kind of, sort of, for no logical reason whatsoever “saving” myself for a man I’d spent less than two weeks with two years ago didn’t seem productive.

  Jack pulled away, placed his palms on my biceps, and scanned my face. “I’ve missed you. How was your summer?”

  “Fine.” I shrugged. “Nothing special.” Summers in River Valley rarely were.

  “You’ve barely answered my messages,” he said, keeping his grin in place. “But no worries. I know you must have been busy with your folks.”

  “Yeah, sorry,” I said, grimacing.

  Jack wrapped an arm around my shoulders and led me outside. “It was a busy summer for me, too. I was down in New York for a good month, helping my sister move to a new apartment after she and her boyfriend broke up. The real-estate situation in that city is crazy. She managed to get a shoebox for three thousand a month. Can you believe it? All it would fit was her queen bed—not even a nightstand. The kitchen’s in the bedroom. It made me so glad that I’m living in LA.”

  His mention of New York made me self-conscious for no good reason, and I began to toy with my right earring as we walked. Jack had no idea that the man I still pined for lived there, or that for a long time, New York had been my Mecca. I’d tried to plan a trip there on at least half a dozen occasions, but I’d never found the courage to go without a real invitation.

  “I have a good feeling about this semester,” Jack continued. “My professors seem chill so far, and I think I have a good chance at getting that engineering internship in the spring. What about you, Ivy?”

  We walked out of the building. “Yeah, my classes seem fine.” Did I share Jack’s enthusiasm? No. In truth, I was rarely enthusiastic about anything school related. I’d decided to major in psychology because it seemed at least a little interesting, but I lacked a real passion for the subject.

  When a few beats passed, I peered at him and realized he was waiting for me to say more. “Should be good,” I added.

  He seemed satisfied with that. “Cool. Well, I wanted to see if you’d like to grab lunch on Friday?”

  “That works for me,” I said, watching that happy-go-lucky smile return to his face.

  “Super. I’ve missed you, Ivy.”

  “So you’ve said,” I responded.

  His laugh was bashful. “Ah, I guess I did. Just wanted to make sure you heard
me.”

  I gave him a small smile, “Thanks, Jack. It’s good to see you, too.”

  He reached for my palm and squeezed it. “No pressure or anything, okay? I’m not expecting things to go back to how we left them back in March. Maybe we talk about it on Friday?”

  Did he think I was aloof because I no longer wanted to hook up? He didn’t need to be so nervous. I wouldn’t mind resuming our activities. They helped me feel like I was moving on, even though when Jack went down on me, I often fantasized about another blond head between my legs.

  “Sure. I’ll find you in the cafe after my class ends at noon.”

  With one final smile, he dropped my hand and left for his next class.

  It was the first week of October, but the heat had barely subsided, leaving the UCLA campus awfully hot. Being outside was unbearable when the sun was high and utterly unobstructed—the way it was now. I squinted at the sky. Not a wisp of a cloud.

  I’d been working on my tan for two years now, but my skin had its own agenda. I knew if I stayed outside, I was likely to burn. I was still far from achieving the image of a sun-kissed Cali girl I had in mind. With a sigh, I dropped my head and headed toward Powell Library. I needed to get a few hours of work in before going back to the on-campus apartment I shared with Zoey.

  The library was filled with freshmen eager to get a head start on forming their study groups and finding new friends. I walked past a few rows of desks before finding a reasonably secluded spot in a corner. I didn’t want to be disturbed.

  I got through almost one chapter of the psych textbook when my phone buzzed in my bag. It wasn’t him, which meant I could ignore it for a little longer. His messages came accompanied by three rapid buzzes—a setting I had put in place years ago in an attempt to retain my sanity. Before I’d done that, every single notification would set my pulse racing, demanding my attention, and causing me to desperately claw inside my bag for my phone.

  I flipped to the last page of the chapter and finished taking my notes before placing my pen down and checking the message. It was from a number I didn’t recognize. I tapped on the notification icon and began to read.

  “Hey, Ivy. This is Jamie."

  My eyes bulged. What on earth?

  “You might remember me as the singer of Ritual Disruption. Not anymore, of course, but maybe you already knew that. A lot of things have changed since you last saw me. I’m doing the whole twelve-step-program-thing, and I’ve been clean for two years now. I’m reaching out because I wanted to apologize to you for what went down on that tour. I’d like to do it in person if you’re up for meeting me. I know you might not want to, and I respect that, but I thought I’d ask anyway. I saw on LinkedIn that you go to school in LA now. I live here, too. Anyway, let me know. It would mean a lot.”

  I chewed on my nail. My first instinct was that this was some kind of sick joke. But who would think to mess with me like this? As I reread the carefully worded message, instead of finding clues that this was indeed fake, I began to hear the words spoken in Jamie’s velvety voice.

  I’d never admit it even to Zoey, but I dreamt of that voice sometimes. Usually, it was just one element of convoluted dreams that featured an entire cast of characters from that summer. The hero was Oliver, the heroine, me, and the dreams didn’t have a happy ending.

  The message had to be real. I reread it three more times and felt my initial disbelief give way to a simmering anger. Jamie wasn’t someone I had any desire to see again. His lies had started the entire sequence of events that had ended in Oliver walking away from me. Did Jamie expect me to move past that?

  After I helped get him to a hospital, he never played another show again. They announced the tour was cancelled, and two days later, the news broke that he was leaving the band. I followed it all by stalking online forums and trying to get as much as I could out of Cole. Then I got that first text from Oliver. The hopeful euphoria I’d felt seeing that first message was stamped into my memory. Back then, I’d thought it meant our relationship still had a chance.

  Oliver told me what really happened with Jamie. After the singer got discharged from the hospital, he said he was done touring and didn’t want to make music anymore. Oliver tried to convince him to stay, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. Music had been Jamie’s religion, but he had a new god now. Alcohol. He couldn’t properly worship his god if he was constantly distracted with performing. Jamie had quit Ritual Disruption, and when the band tried to keep going without him, Jamie turned hateful, spreading lies about Oliver and deterring anyone in the industry from working with him.

  Their friendship had burned down in a fiery inferno, and the band broke up. I could tell from the tone of Oliver’s messages whenever the topic came up that he was incredibly upset about it to this day. If I agreed to this off-the-wall request from Jamie and Oliver found out, I doubted he’d be pleased.

  But there was one thing that didn’t add up. Oliver had made it sound like Jamie left the band to succumb to his addiction, not to kick it to the curb. So was the singer straight up lying about the two-years-clean part?

  This was all very confusing. I needed to talk to Zoey. Stuffing my books into my bag, I hurried out of the library.

  Our building was a ten-minute walk away, but I made it back in five. I was sweating through my T-shirt from sprinting through the campus by the time I got inside our two-bedroom apartment. Zoey stood in the kitchen with a tumbler in one hand, which I knew was filled with iced coffee. She raised a brow at my appearance.

  “Did someone chase you home or something?” she asked before taking a sip through the straw.

  I was too out of breath to respond for a few moments. “Jamie texted me.”

  Her eyes widened as she placed the tumbler down on the kitchen island. “Come again? Jamie? Jamie who? Not the Jamie I’m thinking of, right? Enemy number one?”

  I nodded frantically and slid my phone across the counter to her. “Here. Read.”

  Zoey’s forehead scrunched as she read the message I’d nearly memorized by now. She knew of my suffering firsthand, having nursed me back to life after the heartbreak of that summer. I’d returned to her and Sophie in pieces, telling them I would never fall in love again. Sophie had consoled me as much as she could in the days before she’d moved to France to attend Paris School of Business, but Zoey had to deal with me for much longer. I knew she would grasp the full significance of this text.

  When she finished reading, she placed my phone down, and I snatched it back.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked calmly.

  “I don’t know. I’m leaning toward ignoring it. Does the guy really deserve a response?”

  “That’s pretty cold, Ivy.”

  I started to chew on my nail. “Is it? For all I know, he could be lying about getting clean. The guy’s a known liar after all.”

  Zoey cocked a brow. “Why would he lie about that?”

  “I don’t know, just to fuck with me? I mean, why is he reaching out in the first place? Why now?” I said, flinging my hands up.

  “If he’s in a twelve-step program, one of the steps is making amends.”

  “Well, I don’t want his amends. Whatever guilt he feels for what he did to Oliver and me is well-deserved.”

  “You told me he tried to warn you,” Zoey said, crossing her arms at her chest.

  “Warn me? He tried to turn me against Oliver by slandering him,” I corrected her.

  “Why would he want to do that?”

  “How the hell should I know? Their relationship was already on the rocks by then, so maybe he just wanted to hurt Oliver.”

  “Or maybe he had good intentions and you’re missing some pieces of the puzzle.”

  I gave her a startled look. “Seriously? Have you forgotten everything I told you about Jamie? He’s not someone who deserves the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Trust me, I remember perfectly,” she deadpanned. “You must have narrated the events of that tour to me in painful detail m
ore than a dozen times. I still think you should hear him out.”

  “Why?” I asked, my tone incredulous.

  “For one, if he’s genuinely trying to better himself, and the apology is part of his process, wouldn’t you want to help him in this small way?”

  “I don’t owe him anything,” I insisted. “By all accounts, he’s an awful, selfish person.”

  “Well, then do this for selfish reasons. I think seeing him might help you move on.”

  My hands dropped to my sides. “Move on from what?”

  Zoey pursed her lips. “Don’t play stupid, Ivy. I know you’ve been trying to get over Oliver in your own way, but it’s not working. That tour still has its claws buried deep inside of you.”

  I forced myself to hold her gaze, despite feeling my cheeks heat. “We’ve been over this. I’m handling things, and even if I wasn’t, I really don’t see how meeting with Jamie would help.”

  “Maybe hearing his side of the story will give you a new perspective on what happened. You’ve haven’t stopped blaming yourself for how things ended, and it’s hurting you.”

  “Hurting me? I’m perfectly fine,” I insisted.

  Zoey let out a frustrated sigh. “Shall we take inventory? How many friends have you made in the past two years?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, averting my gaze. “What do you want me to do, count them?”

  “Please do. I know it won’t take long.”

  “Look—”

  “Next question. When was the last time you went to a party? Remember how excited you were about letting loose once you got to college?”

  I began to toy with my earring. “Yeah, I was, but then I decided there was no point—”

  “Next question,” Zoey interrupted. “How many times have you gone out on a date?”

  Ha! “I saw Jack all the time last year,” I said triumphantly.

  She snorted. “Meeting in either of your dorm rooms doesn’t count. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy you’re at least getting it from someone, but there’s nothing authentic or vulnerable about your arrangement with Jack. If he disappears tomorrow, you wouldn’t blink an eye. That’s not putting yourself out there.”