And now, instead of picturing Felix in that chair, I’m seeing Mason, with the thick-rimmed glasses that Leo always teased him about and his cello that, like the folding chair, was also covered in stickers from random bands he liked.
I blink and look away.
“But yeah,” Alec says, and I think he was lost in thought about Mason for a minute there, too. “Felix is great. Good find, especially so close to tour.” He stands up and stretches, then sets the guitar on the couch where he was sitting. “Just take my advice and—”
“Please don’t say the word ‘bang’ again. Seriously, does anyone even say that anymore?”
Alec grins. “I’m a hot rock star. I can get away with it.”
I shake my head at him but smile back. Confidence is Alec’s strong suit.
Alec holds his hand up in goodbye and leaves the studio. I pull my phone out of my purse to do some work before I head out, too—I need to send Felix our music, and then answer some questions about color preference from our costumer, Allison—and I see I’ve got a message from my mom.
No, not from my mom. From Ty, using my mom’s phone.
Hi Mom! Is Felix in the band!
I smile. Ty has been even more excited these past couple days about Felix possibly joining our band than he was back when Roxie first joined—and I heard him talk about her “hair that’s pink like bubblegum!” for weeks.
Yep, I text back, adding a smiley face for good measure.
Ty texts a bunch of celebration emojis, and then some random animal ones, because anytime he gets his hands on a phone, he feels the need to text a whole zoo at me.
God, I love this kid.
I text a bunch of animals back and lean against the armrest of the couch.
I’m happy Ty likes Felix so much. Band members being good with Ty is important to me—Ty comes to practices occasionally, and he always comes on tour with me, so they all end up spending some time with him. And Felix and Ty seemed to hit it off pretty well—at least Ty sure thinks so.
Is Ty too excited about this, though, what with Felix being some guy he just barely met?
Am I?
I think I know the answer to that second question, unfortunately.
I let out a shaky breath and focus on sending the files of music to Felix. I’ve finished that, and gotten halfway through my email to Allison, when my phone rings.
It’s Felix, calling me.
My heart slams against my ribs as I answer.
“Hey,” I say, hoping he doesn’t hear how breathless I sound. “I just sent over the music. Did you get it?”
“Just got it,” he says. “But I had some questions. I’m not used to performing with a band, you know? Would you be willing to meet me for lunch?”
It’s not a date, I tell myself. Not really. A business lunch.
I try to ignore the fact that we could probably talk about any questions he had over the phone, or text. Because really, I’m just so happy to get to see him again, even though it’s probably been twenty minutes since he left.
And I think maybe he feels the same way.
“Sure,” I find myself saying. “Name the place.”
“There’s this sushi place on Wilshire,” he says. “Sound okay?”
Getting some time to talk with Felix over sushi, just him and me? It sounds way better than okay.
“Great,” I say, not able to wipe the smile from my face. “Send me the address and I’ll head over there.”
It’s after I hang up that the pit in my stomach forms, somewhere underneath all the butterflies going haywire at the thought of time alone with Felix.
I’m going to have to tell him about the rules. If he’s as interested in me as I think he is, I don’t want to lead him on.
I’m going to have to decide—well, we’re going to have to decide—if the one-night stand thing is an option. If that would help us, as Alec says, “get it out of our system” and just be able to be band mates. Friends, maybe.
But for right now, I can’t help but let myself feel the butterflies, that excitement of the possibility—even if it’s not real—that we could actually be something more.
Six
Felix
I grin all the way to the restaurant to meet Jenna. Sure, I lasted less than thirty minutes before I called her, but I’m desperate to talk to her. And it’s not as if there’s anyone else I can tell about what’s going on.
When I get there, Jenna’s waiting for me, and Alec is nowhere in sight. I’ve never been so happy to not see someone in my life.
Jenna’s whole face lights up when she sees me, and she throws her arms around me like we’re old friends. I squeeze her back, careful not to hold on too long, but long enough to learn that her hair smells like coconut.
When she steps away, my whole body aches.
Jenna asks for a table away from the main room, and the waitress either recognizes her or sees enough celebrities to honor these requests, because she shows us to a booth that’s tucked in a side room. This must be an overflow area because all the other tables are empty.
Jenna smiles and thanks her, and the waitress takes our drink orders and disappears. And for the first time ever, I’m alone with Jenna Rollins and I’m trying like hell not to look like an idiot.
“So,” I say. “That was some bomb you guys dropped on me.”
Jenna cringes. “I know, right? It’s pretty intense. If you don’t think you can handle it, we can’t make you stay—”
“No, I’m good. It must be hard, though, yeah? Living with your ex?”
Jenna wobbles her head. “It’s not so bad. Alec’s gone a lot, so he leaves the house mostly for just me and Ty. And he sleeps in a room off mine. It used to be a huge closet, actually, so no one sees it, and we can look like we go to bed together if there’s anyone over, just for appearances.”
I nod. “But you’re not sleeping with him.”
“No, not since we broke up.” She winces again. “And maybe for a little while before that, too.”
The waitress brings our sodas, and I take a sip of mine. I’m glad she ordered one, too, if only so I don’t seem out of place not ordering alcohol. I’ve never been an alcoholic, but I hear enough stories at twelve-step about people trading one addiction for another to keep the clinic rules for sobriety.
When the waitress leaves us again, I flip open my menu, but I don’t look at it. Jenna does the same. “Was it a bad breakup?” I ask.
“Not really,” Jenna says. “We’d been unhappy for a while. Fighting all the time. One night we were bickering about what to get for dinner, and I was in the middle of saying something huffy when Alec asked me, ‘Jenna, are you happy?’” She rolls her eyes. “And I was like, ‘No. Your dinner selection does not make me happy.’”
“But he meant for real.”
“Yeah. And once we both admitted how miserable we were, I think we were just relieved to discover we weren’t breaking each other’s hearts.”
“So you weren’t in love with him.”
Jenna meets my eyes, and my cheeks burn when I realize what a personal question that is. But they’ve spent the last two and a half years plastering their love all over the internet, parading their relationship around as the pinnacle of true love.
And besides that, I need to know.
“I thought I was,” she says. “And we care about each other. But no. I wasn’t in love with him. At least not in a forever way.”
“Is it hard to lie about it?”
“Sometimes. But it doesn’t all feel like a lie. We’re performers, and we’re telling a story. I believe in the story, even if it isn’t ours.”
My shoe rests against hers under the table. I’ve been a flirt all my life, but never a romantic. Listening to her talk about the story like that, though—
It makes me want to believe in
it too.
“That’s a nice way to look at it,” I say.
She eyes me cautiously. “You don’t approve?”
I shrug. “It’s just a lot to keep straight.”
Jenna shakes her head. “I’m with Alec. That’s all you need to remember.”
“Is that what you want me to remember?” I ask.
I hold my breath, my pulse pounding in my ears, and her eyes meet mine. For a moment, we stare at each other, and the current between us is so strong I’m surprised the air doesn’t crackle.
Then Jenna gives me a coy smile and looks down at her menu. “Have you been here before?” She studiously avoids my eyes, but the smile keeps playing at her lips.
I take a long drag of my Coke. “Yeah, once,” I say. “But it’s been a while.” I notice she hasn’t asked me what my questions are about the band, which is a good thing, because I can’t think of any. I just needed to see her, and she sure as hell doesn’t seem to mind. I wonder if this secret she’s carrying has left her as isolated as sobriety has left me. It can’t be easy to have friends outside the band when you have to carry on the facade of a relationship even for them.
And with her ex-boyfriend so involved with the band—it’s probably hard even to talk to them about how she really feels.
The waitress comes back, and we both order. I get the salmon sashimi, because last time I had a tuna roll, and I hate to order the same thing twice. Jenna gets the sushi sampler, and when the waitress leaves again, I shake my head at her. “You know samplers are for people who can’t make up their minds.”
“I made up my mind that I want to try everything.”
“All right,” I say. “I can’t argue with that.”
Jenna’s shoe taps against mine, and I know she’s aware it’s there. She doesn’t move hers away.
“So does Ty know about you and Alec?” I ask.
“Yes. The band knows, Ty knows, Phil knows, and my parents know. And that’s it.”
“Alec’s parents think you’re together?”
“Alec’s parents are still in Michigan,” Jenna says. “That’s where we’re from. And he barely talks to them. So they get the news about our relationship along with the rest of the world.”
“But your parents are out here?”
“Yeah,” she says. “They followed Ty and me. We’re kind of all they have, so they wanted to be close. My dad found a job here and we all moved together.”
“You get along with your family?”
She nods, and then shakes her head. “We do, now. It wasn’t always that way, but it’s nice to have them around for Ty.”
I’m aware I’m peppering her with questions, but I can’t help it—I want to know everything about her. And she doesn’t seem to have any hesitation in telling me. “And Ty’s dad? Is he still in the picture?”
“No,” Jenna says. “The public story is that he was a guy I dated in high school.”
I’ve read as much. I was right about her age when I first met her—she’s only twenty-three, just a year older than me. And her kid is eight, not six.
“The public story,” I say. I’m not sure if she’s going to tell me the rest of it, but we’re in this strange place now. I know these intimate details about her life, things hardly anyone else knows, but I’m missing the basic facts. It’s a bizarre way to get to know someone.
She takes a deep breath. “Yeah. The truth is I don’t know who Ty’s father is.”
Her hand is resting on the table, and I want to reach across and take it, but I don’t dare. The waitress could be back any time. I move my ankle closer under the table.
Her knee brushes against mine. “Ty’s father,” she says, “was one of a number of guys at various frat parties at the U of M. I have no idea which one, and even if I did, I never really knew any of their names.”
My throat constricts. I’ve had my share of one-night stands, especially when I first started using, before the drugs messed my body up. I don’t remember most of their names. Except the last one.
But. “You were a kid,” I say.
She gives me a sad smile. “Fourteen.”
The idea of Jenna as a fourteen-year-old girl at a party like that makes me want to punch all frat boys in the face. “They must have known you were underage.”
She laughs, but it’s humorless. “Oh, they knew. They might not have known how underage I was, but they definitely knew what they were doing.”
I tighten my fists. “I’m so sorry that happened to you.”
Jenna fiddles with a napkin, like she’s suddenly aware of how much she’s told me. I expect her to change the subject, but instead she sighs. “It didn’t happen to me. I knew what I was doing, going to those kinds of parties. If I hadn’t done that, it never would have happened.”
I stare at her, but she won’t meet my eyes. There are so many things wrong with what she’s saying that I don’t know where to start. “You were a kid,” I say. “That isn’t your fault.”
“Yeah, well,” she says, “I knew better. But I don’t regret having Ty. Just the way I had him, I guess.”
I want to circle back around to how very much she’s not at fault for a bunch of guys who think statutory rape is a good way to spend a Saturday night, but this is our first real conversation. I don’t want to argue with her, to shut her down.
All I want in the world is for her to keep talking.
“Ty seems like a cool kid,” I say. “Even if his taste in board games is questionable.”
She smiles, clearly more at ease on this topic. “He is. He likes you, you know. He was thrilled when I told him you’re joining the band.”
It surprises me the kid remembers me enough to care, but I smile anyway. Her knee brushes mine again, sending a thrill through me, and I have to ask. “So, are you seeing anyone?”
Her face falls, and for a second I’m terrified she’s going to confess some passionate love affair with her bassist.
“I can’t,” she says. “We have . . . rules.”
My tongue seems to swell in my mouth. “Rules?” I manage.
“Yeah.” She gives me an apologetic look that tells me she knows exactly where I was going with this. Her foot moves away from mine under the table. “When Alec and I broke up, we agreed we couldn’t get serious with anyone. Too much chance someone would find out.”
I’m aware I must look crestfallen, but the ache is too powerful to cover. “So, what? You’re going to be celibate for the rest of your life?”
She laughs. “Oh, no. Alec was worried about that, so there are some loopholes. We can’t date anyone, but we can have sex. As long as it’s never more than once with the same person. There are other rules, too. No fans. The other person has to be clear that this is just a one-night thing, no strings. And of course we have to be crazy discreet.”
Jenna is back to not meeting my eyes. I lean my elbows on the table. I wonder if that’s why she agreed to meet me, if I’m about to become a notch in her bedpost.
I’m startled to find I don’t like the idea.
“How’s that going for you?” I ask.
“It’s been ten and a half months,” she says. “So there’s that.”
“Ouch,” I say.
She lets out a little sigh. “I’m just not all that into one-night stands, as it turns out. Too much like the old days, I guess. I’m more of a relationship person.” I must look like I pity her, because she shrugs. “It’s not forever. When we broke up, we made a five-year plan. We figure in that much time the band will have peaked—we’ll have gotten the mileage we need to launch our solo careers. So then we’ll script a breakup that lets us both get out of this with our dignity intact and hopefully a good chunk of our fan base as well.” Her forced smile is back. “One year down, four to go.”
“Damn. You must be lonely.” I wince. “That sounded like a line
.”
Jenna laughs, and it’s genuine this time. “It did. Are you seeing anyone?”
Ha. I should have thought that was painfully obvious. “No,” I say. I’m trying to figure out how to tell her I meant that line about being lonely exactly the way it sounded, but the waitress comes back with our sushi, and instead I mix some wasabi and soy sauce and fill my mouth with raw fish.
“So your family’s here in LA?” Jenna asks. “You said you’re living with your dad?”
“Yeah,” I say. “My dad is down in Valencia and my mom’s in Orange County.”
“They’re divorced.”
“Just over a year.”
“Is that hard?” she asks.
“Yes and no.” It’s sure made it easier to play them off each other, both for money and a couch to surf on. The former I’m making a point not to take advantage of since rehab. The latter, not so much. “It’s not like it affects me all that much, so it’s fine. But all they want to talk about is what the other one is doing. They either need to move on or get back together and get it over with.”
“Do you think they will?”
“No,” I say. “So I think I have many years ahead of me of telling them to call each other if they need so badly to know what the other one is doing, or buying, or saying.”
“That sounds super fun.” Jenna scrunches her nose. It’s ridiculous how adorable that expression looks on her. “Are you their only child?”
“No,” I say. “I have two sisters. Gabby and Dana. You?”
“I had a sister,” she says quietly.
I remember too late she said that she and Ty were all her parents had.
“She died.” Jenna swishes her chopsticks around in her soy sauce.
“I’m sorry.”
She hesitates. “It was a long time ago,” she says after a moment. “A car accident. I was nineteen. She was only seventeen.”
I wonder why I didn’t read about this online. It must not be something she talks about. I get the feeling I’m hearing a lot of things she doesn’t talk about, and I wonder what it is we’re doing here. She’s been flirting with me for days, but now I know she’s available, she says we can’t date. But here we are, out to lunch, in a booth so secluded we might as well have our own private room.
Everything We Are Page 5
