“You’re right. Scrapbooking it is.”
Levi surprises me by brushing a strand of my hair behind my ear. “Then let’s get to it.”
I try not to think about how nice his fingers felt in my hair as we turn our attention to the art supplies in front of us. I printed out a stack of pictures that I’d been taking over the last few weeks. Shots of the bus and the venues, the band and the girls. And shots of Levi and me in all the places we had visited it. It was a nice collection of moments from the tour so far. Totally suitable for scrapbooking.
If, you know, scrapbooking is your thing. I wasn’t sure it was mine yet, and that’s why it was next on Levi’s list of hobbies for us to try.
As we work, I’m very aware of the nearness of Levi. Throughout the course of our fake relationship, there hasn’t been much need for us to get too touchy feely, even in public, because most of the couples on the tour keep that stuff private—with the exception of Cash and Sam, which shouldn’t be surprising. Cash has always had trouble keeping his hands to himself.
But on occasion, it was inevitable that Levi and I would touch. It was generally casual things—an arm around the shoulders here, a hand holding there.
What was surprising was how much I enjoyed it. It wasn’t like there was some flash of fire or electric sparks every time he touched me or anything like that. But it felt…nice. To lean into him a little when we were standing together. To feel his hand cover mine. He was so solid and warm and…dependable. I liked knowing that he was there and having the physical proof of it on my skin.
But his fingers in my hair…that brought on a whole host of memories that it was dangerous to think about.
Maybe you’re just needy, I think to myself, attacking a sheet of polka-dotted paper with a pair of zigzag scissors. I had spent a large portion of my life chasing boys to satisfy whatever urge I carried to find affection. Had I replaced that with limited, casual physical affection with Levi?
You are seriously messed up, Karen, I think to myself.
Before I can get too deep into my funk, there’s a knock on the door. Levi looks at me with raised eyebrows. “Expecting someone?”
I shake my head. “I told the girls we were hanging out.”
He jumps up and walks to the door, peering through the peephole. He shoots me an unreadable look before swinging the door open to reveal Paige and Reed.
“Hey, guys,” he says. “What’s up?”
I take one look at Paige and know she’s been crying. And from the protective arm Reed has glued to her side, I’m guessing she did a fair amount of it in his presence.
“We were just about to head down to the bar for a drink,” Reed says. “We wanted to see if you guys felt like coming.”
“Oh,” Levi turns to me, uncertain. “We were, uh, kind of in the middle of—”
“Are you doing crafts?” Paige asks. She sounds a bit stuffy from crying, but her eyes are wide in interest.
Levi meets my eyes, questioning, and I nod, resigned, knowing there’s no way in hell we’ll get Paige out of here now that she’s seen glitter. Levi opens the door further. “Come on in.”
“We’re scrapbooking,” I explain, feeling kind of stupid. It’s one thing to get caught doing crafts on a Friday night by Paige, but an entirely different thing to get caught by Reed Ransome.
“You never want to scrapbook with me!” Paige cries, looking genuinely upset. Reed frowns, watching her.
“It’s totally my fault,” Levi says, stepping between us. “I like, really wanted to learn to scrapbook.”
“You did?” Paige asks, skeptical, while Reed gapes at him.
“Yeah. Of course. I promised Karen she could pick our next date if she scrapbooked with me tonight.”
“Which is why our next date is taking place at Barney’s,” I say happily, and Levi turns around to glare at me. His expression couldn’t be clearer—I’m helping you out here. Are you really going to turn on me?
I just grin at him.
“Yeah, well,” he says, turning back to the others. “That’s why we’re scrapbooking.”
“You picked out all those supplies?” Reed asks, pointing at the table, where a sheet of hot pink hearts is sitting on top of my book.
“Um. Yup. That was me.”
“This looks really fun!” Paige says, apparently mollified by Levi’s excuse as to why I would scrapbook with him when I firmly refused to do it with her for years.
“It’s not too bad,” I admit as Levi comes back to table to join me. “Levi is really good at laying out his pages. He has a good eye for this kind of stuff.”
“I am so going to kill you,” he mutters under his breath so that only I can hear him.
Paige is looking so hopefully at the supplies, her eyes still red from tears, that I feel a little tug in the region of my heart. “Do you guys want to join us?”
“Do you mind?” she asks, her entire face lighting up. “I don’t want to interrupt your date.”
“By all means,” Levi says drily. “Not like there was going to be a lot of seduction going on after all this.”
I stomp on his foot under the coffee table. Paige has turned her hopeful expression to Reed, who I can already tell will be powerless to stand up to her pleas. I know the feeling well, buddy.
“If that’s what you want to do tonight,” he says, resigned.
“Yay!” Paige claps her hands together and sits cross-legged in front of the table. “This is going to be so much fun. Oooh, I wonder if Daisy would want to come.”
“Call her,” Reed says, staring down at the table with something like dismay. “If I have to spend my evening with glitter and stickers, Dalt should too.”
“Is that okay?” Paige asks, looking at Levi and me, her hand already on her phone.
“Fine by me,” Levi says, though his tone makes it clear that he has little interest in spending the evening with Daltrey.
Daisy must agree to join us without cajoling, because Paige puts her phone away only a moment later. “Hmm,” she says, looking down at the supplies. “I wonder if we have enough for six people.”
“They can use my share,” Reed mutters, but she goes on as if she hasn’t heard him.
“You know, I think I have some scrapbooking stuff in my room!”
“You do?” Levi asks. “Why?”
“Why are you even asking?” I mutter.
“In case we needed it,” Paige says, as if her packing habits should make sense to anyone else.
“I’m not sure there’s really room here for more stuff,” I tell her, pointing down at the already crowded table. She frowns at it for a minute before brightening. “Let’s go downstairs! There’s that conference room where you guys were doing interviews. I doubt anyone else would be using it at this time of night.”
Levi looks at me, and I hold my hands up in surrender. There’s simply no use arguing with her when she gets like this. All you can do is go along for the ride.
And that’s why we find ourselves, twenty minutes later, down in the conference room, a metric crap ton of craft supplies on the long table. Paige has managed to get hotel staff to set up a serving table in the corner, which is stocked with chips, candy, beer, and soda. She even has her iPod and portable speakers.
“This is what you would call a full-blown scrapbooking party,” Levi whispers in my ear.
“You forgot to add crazy.”
Daltrey and Daisy are already sitting at the table. Daisy made a beeline for the snacks the minute she entered the room, even though we ate less than an hour ago. To my surprise, they aren’t the only couple that joins us.
“Is this where the scrapbooking party is being held?” Cash asks innocently from the doorway, Sam and Wyatt at his side.
“You’re hilarious,” Paige tells him.
Cash holds out a hand for Wyatt to high five. “Heck yeah, man! Let’s scrapbook this thing.”
“Did you call Lennon?” I ask Levi, but he points to the door.
“On it.”<
br />
Lennon is looking at the scene in the room with a half amused, half resigned smile. “You guys do realize that we’re in a rock band, right?” he asks. “That we’re actually performing on The Late Show tomorrow?”
“You sound like Cash,” Paige chides. “This is fun!”
“Yeah,” Levi says, punching Lennon’s arm. “Crazy fun.”
As I look around the room, the surrealism of the turn our evening has taken hits me. Cash is helping Wyatt glue stickers to every available inch of his paper. I think he might have glitter in his hair. Daltrey’s tongue is sticking out in concentration while he works on cutting out a picture. Even Reed has started gluing, though he doesn’t look entirely excited about it.
I don’t notice that Paige has approached me until she takes the seat next to me. “Can I sit here?” she asks, sounding a little scared. “Or did you want to sit next to Levi—”
“Paige, come on,” I say, setting my scissors down to look at her. “You don’t need to act all upset and freaked out around me. I told you I wasn’t mad.”
“I know,” she says quickly. “But you are sad. I could see it on your face when you said we were on different trajectories.” She grimaces when she says the word, like it tastes bad in her mouth.
“It’s okay to be sad about changes in our lives, Paige. It doesn’t mean we’re any less close, okay?”
“I know. That’s what Reed says. But I still feel shitty.”
I sigh, turning back to the piece of paper in front of me. I’ve already glued three pictures on the polka-dotted paper, all from the bus. One of Levi and me sitting together in the lounge. Another of all the boys playing Halo together, Cash on his feet, Wyatt’s hands pumping the air from some victorious move. The last one is Paige, Daisy, and me, painting each other’s nails in the dinette.
“I’m sorry things are changing,” Paige says softly. I look over at her and see that she’s staring down at my pictures. “I know I need to accept that and stop trying to pretend like they aren’t.” She gestures at the photos. “But things haven’t changed totally. We can still have this together, can’t we? Even if I don’t come back to school, you’ll still come out to visit. We’ll still hang out, with the band or not. Right?”
“Of course we will, Paige.”
She nods, looking somewhat appeased. “And we’ll have fun. Just like we have on this tour.”
I nod. I have had fun on this tour. And I know I owe a lot of that to Levi.
“I’m sorry if I’ve been pressuring you about Levi,” Paige whispers, as if reading my mind. “And I’m so sorry I told Reed when you asked me not to.”
“Thank you.”
“I just… I guess I’ve been feeling a little distance between us. So I was really excited when you got together with Levi, because I thought it would give us even more time to hang out together, you know?”
I nod. “I kind of figured that.”
“I also knew you were sad.” I freeze in the act of applying a suitcase-shaped sticker to my page.
“Sad?”
From the corner of my eye, I can see that she’s watching me. “Yes. Ever since we got back to school in the fall. You haven’t been yourself, K. I don’t know why. And I don’t know why you don’t want to talk about it.”
I swallow heavily. We got back to school not long after Dan came to Nashville for those three amazing and heartbreaking weeks.
“You don’t have to tell me,” she says. “I wish you would, but you don’t have to. I just want you to know that I noticed, and I’ve been worried. Because I care about you.”
“I know that,” I whisper, my voice ragged.
“Well. That’s a big part of the reason I went so overboard about you and Levi. I knew he would be so nice to you. I thought it might help with whatever’s going on with you.”
I finally look over at her. She’s staring at me with wide, steady eyes. For all her silliness and hyperactivity, it can be easy to forget how perceptive Paige is. And how seriously she takes the happiness of the people she cares about.
“It has been helping,” I whisper, feeling a lump in my throat. “Levi has been helping a lot.”
She nods, looking relieved, and goes back to the art supplies in front of her. “Good. I hope you can talk to him about it, if you don’t think you can talk to me.”
“Paige—”
“It’s okay,” she says, and I know she means it. “I’m not offended. Sometimes there are things that are hard to say. I would rather you tell Levi than not talk about it at all.”
I nod, too overcome to say anything else. Across the room, I see Levi watching us. He looks concerned. I manage a smile and he smiles back, waving a little.
“I’m glad you have him,” Paige says, and I wonder if she saw our exchange.
“Me too,” I say, and I mean it completely.
Chapter Sixteen
Levi
The vibe is pretty hyped after the taping of The Late Show. The crowd at the taping was into the performance, many having waited there for hours just to see the guys. The mood in the dressing room is pretty jubilant—even more so when Will comes in with news about the record sales.
“Just talked to the label,” he says, his face giving nothing away. “They have sales numbers for the first week.”
Everyone in the room, from the guys in the band to the girls and the roadies, all seem to hold their breath. Then Will grins.
“Best release to date. You’re blowing the second album out of the water.”
I release a breath I didn’t realize I was holding just as Cash pumps his hands into the air. “I told you!”
“Hell yeah!” Daltrey hollers, picking up Daisy to swing her around. Then everyone is laughing and shouting, giving high fives and hugs. Karen comes over to hug me, grinning, and I can’t help grinning back. For the first time since coming back to the band, I really feel like I’m a part of this success. I didn’t realize how much I missed that.
“We have work to do tomorrow,” Will shouts over the commotion. “So go enjoy yourselves tonight.”
“Hell yeah, we will,” Cash says, pulling out his phone. “Levi, get over here. Where’s that place we went last time we were in town?”
“Looks like I’m planning a party,” I tell Karen. She laughs and squeezes my shoulders before releasing me.
“Better make it a good one. I could use some partying.”
Cash and I spend ten minutes on the phone with club promoters and limo companies, and just like that, our night is planned. An astronomically expensive restaurant for dinner followed by a string of the hottest clubs in town where we’re sure to be surrounded by the young, rich, and gorgeous of Manhattan well into the night. I have a fleeting thought of Karen in a little dress suitable for clubbing, and realize that I’m actually looking forward to the night’s activities.
Until Lennon makes an excuse about being tired and says he’s heading back to the hotel.
A shot of worry courses through me as Cash turns to him. “What do you mean you’re tired?”
“It’s this phenomenon, Cash, where the body needs sleep, see, so it—”
“Nice, smart ass. You know exactly what I meant. You’re bailing on us?”
“It doesn’t sound like fun to me right now. You guys go and have a great time, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I can tell from the scowl on Cash’s face that he isn’t going to let this go without a fight. His relationship with Sam seems to have tempered his desire to have everyone around him participate in the rock-and-roll lifestyle 24-7, but it seems this occasion is one where he feels participation should not be optional.
“Didn’t you just hear Dad? We had our best release week ever. Ever. We have to go out and celebrate. Together.”
“Yeah, man,” Reed says, joining his brothers. “This is a pretty big deal. You know what a struggle this album was to pull off.”
“I know.” Lennon sounds tired and my worry grows. “But I’m—”
“You’re ti
red, we get it,” Daltrey says. “Which is why we need to get out and have some fun. So that everyone can relax.”
“Dalt—”
“Dude, we’ve put a lot of effort into getting Dad to chill on our schedule,” Daltrey goes on. “We did that so that we would be able to enjoy our time in these cities, you know? So that we could hang out. So let’s go have a kick ass night before we have to get back to work tomorrow.”
“I would rather sleep tonight, so I can get back to work tomorrow.”
“Lennon.” Cash places his hands on his younger brother’s shoulders. “It’s seven p.m. You’re not a senior citizen. So how about you pull the stick out of your ass, stop being such a wimp, and come out to celebrate with your brothers.”
How in the hell do they not see it? After all of this time, how can they look at him and think that he’s just being a wimp? I don’t understand how they can’t they see it in his eyes. Why aren’t they scared?
I’m fucking terrified.
“Fine,” Lennon says, his shoulders slumping a little. “I’ll come.”
“God,” Cash mutters, walking away. “You say that like you’re agreeing to a death sentence.”
Reed slaps Lennon’s back in an encouraging kind of way before he and Daltrey walk off to talk to Will. Once they’re gone, Lennon slumps down onto the couch, grabbing a beer from the table beside him.
“Hey.” I take the seat next to him. “You don’t have to do this.”
“They’re right,” he says, resigned. “This is a big deal. We should be celebrating.”
“You shouldn’t be guilted into it. Especially not if you’re feeling like…” I trail off, knowing he won’t want to talk about it here, surrounded by people.
Lennon surprises me by turning to me with a smile. “You don’t have to worry about me right now, Levi. I feel okay. I really am just tired.”
“Yeah, because you’re not sleeping. Which, I’m sorry, is totally something I’m going to worry about.”
His smile fades. “That’s as bad as it’s been, I promise. Just the sleeping.”
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