by Piper Lawson
He lowers the hood, wiping the rolled-up arm of his dress shirt on his forehead. “You should be fine. If it gives you any grief, let me know.”
“Thanks.” The word sticks in my throat, and he holds my gaze for a beat, two.
I hurry to slide in through the driver’s door. When I hit the start button, the engine roars to life.
Relief washes over me as I stuff my blazer in the back seat and unbutton my shirt another button while the A/C kicks in. Sweat beads on my chest, and I’m fastening my seatbelt when Tyler leans his muscled forearms on the driver’s door.
“You get slapped with community service?” He nods toward the black garbage bag on top of my books.
I shift my sunglasses up on my head. “Oh, I led the litter pickup for Young Environmentalists at the park last week, but no, that’s my practice costume for the musical. It has a hole in the bottom so I can walk.”
“I see. You’ll have trouble evading horny sailors.”
“Yeah, well, Hans Christian Anderson was pre-MeToo.”
This time, Tyler’s smile is genuine. I can tell because it lands in the center of my chest like a blow.
I wish I could lick my suddenly dry lips without him taking credit for it.
He reaches into the car, and my breath hitches as he lifts his tie from around my neck, drawing it out in a long ribbon.
The silk strokes my neck for what feels like minutes, and I force my gaze away when he finally pockets the tie.
My attention lands on the lone motorcycle across the parking lot. “Next time Carly gets creative with my car, I’m borrowing your ride.”
“No, you’re not.” He straightens, shoving a hand through his messy-is-sexy hair. “Jax Jamieson would destroy me for letting his baby girl near it.”
There it is. The reason I can’t avoid Tyler completely, even I want nothing more than to cut him out of my life.
Oakwood’s rebel prince doesn’t live in a brick mansion with a closet full of V-necks and two Ivy-League-educated parents.
He lives in our pool house, thirty feet from my bedroom.
2
“Sorry I’m late. Car trouble.” I trip into the café, and Pen looks up from her table. “I did bring you presents, though. Check your e-reader.”
My friend grabs her tablet from her bag. “Ooh! How many books did you get me?”
“Ten? Twelve?” I laugh. “You’re going away. You’ll need some new material.”
“You’re the best,” she informs me when I finish telling her about the mix of fiction and nonfiction I picked out.
We go to the counter, and I order a peppermint tea.
“How was rehearsal?” Pen asks while we wait.
I fill my friend in on what happened with Carly, and her eyes widen.
“The bitches tried to stop me driving away from the crime scene,” I finish.
“Sabotaging your ride is a new low. She’s escalating.”
I roll my eyes. “Carly can’t stand people taking things she wants.”
“It’s more than that. You’re a traitor to an income bracket,” Pen says, mock chastising. “Writing essays about how her dad and a bunch of others’ are destroying the middle class through their greedy empires and campaigning with the administration to spend our community involvement hours with actual disadvantaged people instead of working with fancy ad agencies on shiny posters for environmental groups.”
Her smile fades. “For real, though. Why is this High School Musical fantasy so important to you? In a year, we’ll both be at Columbia, and this will all be behind us.”
My tea is set in front of me, and I reach for it. “She doesn’t get to decide who has a voice, on stage or anywhere else.”
Pen follows me back to our table. “So, how’d you get here if they fucked up your ride?”
“Tyler fixed it.” I glance at her empty mug. “Do you want another Americano to get through calc?”
Hands grip my arms, and in a second, I’m looking straight into my friend’s dark, dancing eyes. “No, I do not want another Americano. I want to know in what world Tyler Adams was elbow deep in your business.”
Penelope’s smart. Like, next level. She’s the head of debate team and the newspaper, she’s taking all AP courses, and she doesn’t miss a beat.
Her dad moved here from Shanghai and met her mom at UCLA before they came to Texas. Mr. Wang knows my stepmom because Haley’s in software too.
“When was the last time you and Mr. Pool House talked about something other than who ate the last Cheerios?” she presses.
“Four months.”
“Which is weird given you’ve been living together for the better part of a semester and you were friends before that.”
Yes, we were friends. Or whatever you call it when you hang with someone incessantly, argue over bands until three in the morning, and take over diner booths across an entire city on an epic quest to find the best cheese fries.
When I met Tyler, he was part of a community outreach program at my dad’s label in Philly for kids from troubled backgrounds.
He was talented and gorgeous, but none of that was what attracted me to him.
There was a deeper pull.
I knew Tyler had seen some shit the way you can tell when another person’s been through it. Still, anytime I asked about his family, he shut me down.
When my dad finished the album, we moved back to Dallas, but Tyler and I stayed friends.
“Remember when he moved here from Philly to work with your dad and everyone at school lost their designer shit over him?” Pen muses. “Oakwood should’ve eaten him alive, but they didn’t.”
And that’s what I hate the most. The boy I trusted, my partner in crime during one of the most tumultuous periods of my life, traded my friendship for theirs.
“The whole thing was messed up from the start,” I admit. “Tyler showed up at our house. My dad said they’d be working together on music with Tyler living in our pool house and finishing senior year at Oakwood. Zero additional explanation.”
I go on at her raised brows. “I was so thrilled he was here that I let the weirdness slide. That was my first mistake. Do not, I repeat, do not let the weirdness slide.”
I take a sip of my tea, and Pen scrunches up her face. “But he’s not an asshole to you like the others are. So, why did you stop talking to him?” Her dark brows pull together.
The night at Carly’s birthday party comes back to me in a rush.
I remember the way he’d looked at me when we were alone, as if I was the only person who mattered—right before he humiliated me.
“She’s nothing. Nobody.”
“It doesn’t matter, Pen. I’m over it.” I reach into my black leather bag for my schoolbooks. We have a history test Friday, calculus is a never-ending nightmare, and there’s a poetry assignment breathing down my neck. I love writing but wish I didn’t have to do all the other crap too.
“But you liked him before he was cool,” she insists. “He looks like Adam Levine fucked Paul Rudd and, through some miracle of modern science, they reproduced.”
I shift in my seat. “Accurate.”
My friend grins. “You should write him a limerick.”
“There once was a prince of a clique. His guitar was pretty slick…”
“If this ends with a punchline about his dick, I’m going to die.”
I pick up my tea, eyeing her over the rim. “I’ve never seen his dick, but I’ll call it ‘Ode to Pretty Assholes.’”
This time neither of us can stop the laughter.
“You need to get laid,” she says once we’re both breathing again. “If only so Carly stops calling you that stupid nickname. There are a lot of guys who’d love to help you out.”
“I’m not having sex to spite her.” I narrow my gaze. “Besides, you don’t give a shit about my sex life. You’re going to Italy for a week.”
Her smile melts away, and I cock my head.
“Wait, why do you look as if that Americano is
your last meal?”
“It’s the last third of the semester. Exams are coming up. Debate team needs to be prepping for state. I need to hand in this essay, and—”
“And you’re going to be in Tuscany, drinking Chianti and flipping us off while your dad works.”
Pen sighs. “Promise you’ll keep me up to date. The most exciting things always happen when I’m gone.”
“This is fucking impossible,” a low voice grumbles as I make my way through the back hallway of our house after parking in the six-car garage.
The sight greeting me in the cavernous kitchen is the biggest rock star in the last two generations bent over a high chair, feeding my almost-seven-month-old half sister. Judging from the amount of baby food on the tray and Sophie’s face, my dad’s losing.
“Shouldn’t she be sleeping by now?” I drop my bag on the island big enough to host a dinner party.
“If I could’ve gotten some damned food into the kid, she would be.”
Jax Jamieson can rock stadiums, produce multi-platinum albums, charm new stagehands, and cut down aggressive reporters with a stare.
Apparently, he’s met his match in Sophie. With her chocolate eyes and full head of dark hair, she can barely sit up but is capable of yanking Dad around as if he’s dangling on a cord like one of her zoo-animal-shaped soothers.
“Think I was this tough to feed as a baby?” I come up next to the high chair, folding my arms.
My dad pinches my side. “Seems like you ate enough.”
“Oh my God! You can’t say that to teenage girls. Every pamphlet says so.”
“I gave those to the band to read.”
We joke about it, but the truth is he wasn’t there when I was a baby. He didn’t even know I existed when I was Sophie’s age.
My birth mom was someone he met during his early days touring when he was swept up by the lifestyle. He was still a teenager. He says she wasn’t a hookup but refuses to talk about how it all went down.
Once he found out, he decided I should live with my aunt Grace and her husband until I was older. You might expect learning your insanely successful rock star uncle is actually your father would be a gift.
It wasn’t.
I’m beyond fortunate. I’m reminded every time I volunteer at one of the shelters in Dallas or pore over research for a civic policy paper.
Still, it can’t erase the feeling I’m missing something inside.
A necessary component that’s irreplaceable, that no amount of money can fix.
“Come on, little hellion,” Dad murmurs. Sophie lets out a wail and slaps at his hand hard enough to send prunes flying onto his face.
“You look like a crime scene victim.” I take the spoon from him and ply Sophie with little coos. The kid is cute when she’s not wailing. “Dad, do you want to watch a movie tonight? You’re way behind on your Marvel.”
He grunts. “They make one every damned month. But tonight, I need to get a couple guitar tracks worked out for a project. You seen Tyler?”
Disappointment courses through me. “Not since school. I had rehearsal, then studied with Pen.”
“Glad to hear it. The studying, not the rehearsal.”
“Because in your world, the men play the guitar and women do the math,” I deadpan.
“There is one world, and in it, my daughter is going to college.”
When your dad happens to have been the biggest rock star on the planet before he semi-retired, things like graduations and diplomas and college admissions don’t seem nearly as impressive as millions of album sales, screaming fans, and seven-figure endorsement deals.
I would give anything for his musicality, his confidence. The way he commands a room, the God-given spark that makes it so you can’t look away.
Instead, I have his eyes and his flair for the dramatic.
Hardly a fair trade.
“Do me a favor and watch Sophie while I go down to the studio with Tyler,” my dad says on his way to the sink. “Haley’s at a meeting but should be back soon, and there’s lasagna on the stove.”
If only my dad would see me the way he sees Tyler. They spend hours together discussing guitar, sound, vocals. Working on new tracks for other artists and causes.
In less than a month, I’ll be the one on stage, and they won’t be able to ignore me.
Not Carly. Not Tyler. Not my dad.
Then he’ll see me like he sees Tyler.
Then I’ll matter like they do.
My phone vibrates, and I glance at it.
* * *
Kellan: Think about my idea?
* * *
A temporary truce with Carly and the others would mean I wouldn’t have to constantly worry about getting a knife between the shoulders between now and opening night.
“I want to have a few people over this weekend,” I decide.
Dad turns off the faucet, his shirt clean but soaking wet. “Haley and Sophie and I are in LA.”
“Even better. You hate parties.”
“And teenagers at my house leave behind messes that will linger until I’m back.”
He frowns down at his shirt as if realizing teenagers aren’t the messiest part of this household.
I play my trump card—my dad’s longest friend and guitarist, better known to the world as Mace. “Not if Uncle Ryan’s supervising.”
Dad yanks the shirt over his head, apparently giving up on trying to get it clean, and heads for the hallway leading to the stairs. “If Mace is free, you can have friends over,” he calls over a shoulder. “But if they break anything, I’ll break you and them.”
Yes. It’s the closest thing to a resounding affirmative I could hope for.
I’ll host an epic cast party for the rich assholes, prove to Tyler Adams he’s wrong about me tempting Carly and her minions, and the entire musical standoff will be resolved by Monday.
Easy peasy.
3
“This is sick, Annie.” Jenna looks around the patio on Saturday night. “Don’t you think, Carly?”
Carly lifts a bare shoulder under her perfectly waved blond hair. “It’s better than nothing.”
“Better than nothing” is an expanse of natural rock with a waterfall wrapping around the end of a pool that takes me twenty strokes to span. The stone surrounding it stretches for ages, with enough space to host a hundred people standing.
This patio is my sanctuary. There’s no pressure here, no haters, no self-doubt.
Unless all of those things are lounging in chaises drinking vodka-laced punch.
“You should’ve invited your friend,” Kellan, whose low-slung black swim trunks show off an impressively sculpted torso, says to me. “Pamela?”
“Penelope. She left for Italy yesterday.”
He nods. “My uncle has a place in Florence.”
When you attend private school, stripping out of uniforms is an occasion we take seriously. The girls are wearing bikinis, the guys in swim trunks hanging low on toned abs the dress shirts only hint at during the week.
I’m in a cherry-red one-piece bathing suit, and I pulled on jean shorts too. I could probably use the padding from a bikini top—I’m still hoping my boobs make a late surge senior year—but my goal for tonight isn’t attracting attention. It’s making peace.
“How’s your car, Annie?” Carly asks sweetly. “I saw you still in the parking lot Thursday when I left.”
“Good as new.” I won’t give her the satisfaction of getting to me, especially since I’m trying to smooth things over.
I glance around the patio. During the daytime, I love swimming laps in this pool. Now, the lights turn it electric blue. Sleek chaise loungers with side tables are arranged around the perimeter. A table with a bar and snacks sits discreetly off to one side. Built-in speakers at thirty different points in the patio—including some of the chairs, umbrellas, and the gardens—make it feel like the music’s inside us.
My gaze lands on the house. Uncle Ryan’s rules for tonight were no drinki
ng and no coming inside—except for Miss Norelli, whom he greeted at the door. Now they’re in the living room, staring at each other on the couch.
The form I spot through the sliding glass doors isn’t Uncle Ryan.
I hold up my cup in a toast—the minions had the carafe spiked with Grey Goose before the caterer left—and Tyler shakes his head.
The slider opens, and Carly shrieks, “Tyler, let me get you a drink!”
She dashes to the bar and fills him a Solo cup, her curves bouncing under her tiny bathing suit.
“Come play ‘I’ve Never’ with us,” she insists as he crosses to where we’re standing along with Lana, Tara, and Jenna.
Of course Tyler’s jeans and T-shirt come off more compelling than the half-naked guys outside. I see him in school clothes as often as not, and I try not to stare at the way his black T-shirt hugs his chest and reveals strong arms, beautiful hands.
But when my gaze locks on his, something says he caught me looking.
Kellan starts the game, and I force my attention to him.
“I’ve never been fucked up the ass.”
Carly shoves Kellan but drinks. “Only me? Fine. I’ve never had a thousand people screaming my name.” She steps close enough to brush her boobs against Tyler’s arm as if she has fleas and he’s a scratching post. “That’s you, baby. That show you did in Miami last month.”
He cocks his head. When he speaks, his voice is amused, with an edge of something I can’t make out above the music. “I filled in as a favor to Jax when their guitarist had a car accident. The crowd didn’t know my name.”
“They were undressing you with their eyes. Same damn thing.”
Tyler looks as if he’s about to argue but takes a drink. “I’d rather be good than famous,” he says after, staring into his cup. “The best guitarists aren’t guys like Jax. They’re session musicians. They’ve played on every radio edit you’ve ever heard for the last seventy years, and you couldn’t name one of them. Not everyone needs thousands of screaming fans to be worthwhile.”
