by L. Philips
VIKING
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
First published in the United States of America by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2018
Copyright © 2018 by L. Philips
Here With Me
Words and music by Justin Michael Williams
Used by permission
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Ebook ISBN 9780425291658
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To John: whether playing the guitar, writing, or being a friend, you’re never mediocre.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter OneNate
Cameron
Nate
Chapter TwoCameron
Nate
Cameron
Nate
Chapter ThreeCameron
Nate
Chapter FourCameron
Nate
Chapter FiveCameron
Nate
Chapter SixCameron
Nate
Chapter SevenCameron
Nate
Chapter EightCameron
Nate
Chapter NineCameron
Nate
Chapter TenCameron
Nate
Chapter ElevenCameron
Nate
Cameron
Chapter TwelveNate
Chapter ThirteenCameron
Chapter FourteenNate
Chapter FifteenCameron
Nate
Chapter SixteenCameron
Nate
Chapter SeventeenNate
Cameron
Nate
Chapter EighteenCameron
Nate
Chapter NineteenCameron
Nate
Chapter TwentyCameron
Chapter Twenty-OneNate
Cameron
Chapter Twenty-TwoNate
Chapter Twenty-ThreeCameron
Nate
Chapter Twenty-FourCameron
Nate
Chapter Twenty-FiveCameron
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Nate
“Nate! Wake up!”
As soon as I hear Tonya’s screeching voice, I feel the icy liquid. I look down. While I was daydreaming, the Mr. Freezy I’d been squirting into a cup overflowed, all over my hands and all over the floor. And, regrettably, all over my shoes. Which is a drag, because I love these shoes in particular. They started as just plain white canvas, but I’ve added blue and red circles and stars, and now they’re my Captain America shoes. Steve Rogers himself would have dug ’em.
“What’s wrong with you today?” Tonya asks me as I look around wildly for a rag to mop up, all the while trying not to move and spread sugary raspberry slush any further.
“Tired, I guess,” I mumble. I dare a glance at Victor, my best friend, who flings an already dirty rag at me and desperately tries not to make eye contact. I start cleaning up. “Sorry, Tonya. It won’t happen again.”
“Good,” she says, though I sincerely doubt she believes me. I look at her bleached hair, roots dark and thinning, instead of directly at her face. “I’m leaving for a while, if I can trust the two of you not to destroy the place.”
“We’ll be fine,” I promise my stepmother, and Victor nods.
Tonya turns slowly, inspecting us both with disdain before heading out the Dairy Barn’s back exit, screen door slamming behind her.
Victor and I both let out audible breaths.
“Dude, you okay?”
“Of course. You know how she is. Tomorrow she’ll get pissed that I dropped a peanut or something.”
“No, I mean before. You were staring off into space for, like, a good five minutes.”
“Judging by the amount of blue raspberry Mr. Freezy on the floor, it couldn’t have been more than two.” I wring out the rag in the sink, blue sludge running thickly down the drain. Victor’s still scrutinizing me. “Really. I’m just tired,” I repeat. “Had a weird dream last night.”
“Was it the one about Paul McCartney again? Because, dude, I know he’s an icon, but he’s old.”
“No, not Paul McCartney.” I resume mopping up the floor and do my best, but truth be told, there’s no amount of cleaning that could make Tonya’s Dairy Barn sparkle. “It was about Dad, actually.”
At that, Victor’s teasing smile vanishes. “The one where you’re him and you . . . jump?”
I nod.
A car pulls into the drive-thru, and Victor volunteers to take the order, speaking saccharinely into his headset mic. A couple of sundaes later and we’re back to our conversation.
“You haven’t had that one in a while,” Victor says, and because Victor and I have been friends since the day I moved to Los Angeles nine years ago, he would know.
“It was the exact same, though. I’m my dad, but I can’t control what he does. He walks out onto the balcony and climbs over the railing and lets go. I wake up when I—when Dad hits the pavement.”
Victor grimaces, and I don’t blame him. It’s not exactly a great visual; I can say that from experience. After Dad killed himself, I had the dream several times a night, reliving the steps he must have gone through in his final moments. Over the years, the dream came less and less frequently, until finally it stopped, when I was about thirteen or so. Until now, apparently.
I look at Vic. “Do you think it means anything?”
Victor considers this, then says, “Nah. I bet you’re just thinking about him a lot. Since you’ll be outta here soon and all.”
“From your lips to God’s ears,” I say. Victor also knows that since day one of living here, I’ve wanted to get the hell out. And I don’t mean L.A. Los Angeles is pretty cool in a lot of ways, even if I miss New York sometimes. He means out of Tonya’s house and out from under her thumb and living on my own. I won’t be able to afford college; that’s been off the table for a long time. But as soon as I walk off the high school gymnasium stage with my diploma next spring, I want to walk into my own place. I’ve put aside as much money as I can from the Dairy Barn, which isn’t a lot, but it will cover a deposit. I’ve got the rest of the school year to save more, and by then, I hope, I’ll have plenty of guitar gigs lined up. No more Tonya. No more Dairy Barn.
Victor is probably right, so I push the dream out of my mind. I’ve never looked for signs or omens before, and I’m not going to start. Also, at the moment, there are more pressing things, like cleaning off my shoes. I bend down, this time with a clean paper towel, and try to save them.
/> “So about the concert tonight . . .”
“Here we go,” I mumble. I don’t want to get my hopes up, because the concert in question—featuring one of my all-time favorite bands, the Jacket Zippers—has been sold out for weeks. Plus it’s in a twenty-one-and-over club. Plus the bouncers at the club actually do, like, bounce people. So that’s three strikes against being able to go. But I really, really, really want to. The Jacket Zippers’ guitarist is just sick.
“I think I could get us in.”
I stand up, Captain America shoes forgotten. “With fake IDs? Yeah, I don’t think so. I mean, the last time you got us fakes, we had Chinese names.”
“So?”
I gesture to us. I’m a pasty white mix of Irish and German. Victor is 100 percent Italian. If he wasn’t so overweight, he’d be a dead ringer for a young Pacino.
Victor waves away my concerns. “We could be adopted. Anyway, we don’t need IDs. Not the way we’re going.”
“Through a shady back alley door?”
“Precisely, my friend.”
My shoulders slump and my hopes right along with them. “Don’t tell me. You once did a favor for a guy who knows a guy whose cousin is one of the Jacket Zippers and he owes you.”
Victor stares at me. “How’d you know?”
“You are a walking cliché.”
“Says you.” Victor eyes my outfit, piece by piece: the Captain America shoes, the cut-off jeans, the red suspenders, and the purple paisley button-down shirt. I’m not sure which cliché he’s referring to, but it could be any combination of the following: geek, eccentric musician, hipster, and gay. I readily admit that I am those things and very proud of it, thank you, but Victor has a point.
“Trust me,” Vic says, a phrase oft repeated and usually followed by a very, very good reason not to trust him. But I really want to see the Jacket Zippers, and a night out with Victor is always guaranteed to be entertaining, whether or not he pulls off his promise. Maybe especially if he doesn’t.
“Okay, let’s go,” I say. But I’m not getting my hopes up that I’ll actually get to see the band because . . . well, Victor.
“Awesome.” Victor is already texting someone. Perhaps his overprotective mother, perhaps any number of the “connections” he has. Or perhaps he’s just boasting about our evening plans all over social media. Whatever he’s doing on his phone is far more important than working, obviously, because when another car pulls into the drive-thru, he doesn’t acknowledge its presence. Or mine.
“Why don’t you play on your phone while I work?”
He nods and hops up on the counter, thumbs going like mad, my sarcasm completely undetected. “Thanks, man.”
With a sigh, I pull my headset down and plaster a smile on my face so that the customers can hear it in my voice. “Welcome to Dairy Barn!” I am the epitome of job satisfaction. “Would you like to try a cookie dough Icy Typhoon today?”
Cameron
Tess strides into my room and does a turn, modeling her outfit for me. I whistle softly. “You look like you’re out for blood.”
“Taylor Huffman’s blood, if you must know.” She turns again, this time to see herself in the full-length mirror in the corner of my room. “Do you know he visited me in Paris? Didn’t even take me to dinner.”
I tsk. “Noble.”
She smooths down her hair. It’s her natural auburn at the moment, cut in a sharp bob that accentuates her dainty chin and her high cheekbones. In her short silver dress, she looks every bit the fashionista she wants to be, and more like our beauty queen mother than anyone will ever dare mention.
“Father would kill you if he saw you in that.”
“Well, he won’t see me, will he?” she says, winking at me (or herself) in the mirror.
“He will if you’re going out with Taylor. I think he’s currently on the cover of every magazine in existence.”
Tess shrugs. “Some people like the spotlight.”
And since she is one of those people, I let it drop. Father will probably not actually kill her anyway. Usually, Tess can do no wrong in his eyes. It’s me who can’t breathe without making a mistake.
“What are you up to tonight?” she asks, hair sufficiently smoothed.
“Headed to a club. There’s a band I love playing. The Jacket Zippers.”
“Never heard of them.”
“In a year, they’ll be all anyone’s talking about.”
“Ah, so it’s business and pleasure tonight.” Tess cocks her head at me, smirking. “Going to talk them into signing with us?”
“That’s the plan.” I shrug. “If, of course, they don’t run screaming from the big, popular record label. They’re kind of indie, and you know what indie musicians can be like.”
Tess nods, then eyes me with scrutiny. “Is that what you’re going to wear?”
I ignore the judgment in her voice. “Yes, it’s what I’m wearing. It’s a concert at a club, Tess. Not tea with the queen.”
“No, it’s fine. I mean, if you don’t mind looking like a mortician.”
I look down at myself and have to admit she might be right. I’m wearing all black. Black jeans, black tee, black leather jacket. Black has become my standard uniform lately. Black is inconspicuous. Black is a shadow. Black is practically nonexistent.
I join her at the mirror, because now she’s got me paranoid. I don’t see what she’s seeing. I think I look fine. “I prefer to think I look like a vampire,” I tease.
She turns to me, cups my face in one hand like our mother always does, and looks me straight in the eye. “You are far too handsome to be undead, brother of mine.”
I hate it when she’s sincere. It’s embarrassing. I squeeze her hand and remove it from my face in the process. “It’s good to see you, sis.”
Tess nods. “It’s nice we’re both home for summer, isn’t it? It hardly ever happens that we’re here at the same time.”
What she doesn’t say is that it’s rare I come home at all. I mostly avoid “home,” opting instead to visit Europe with distant family or Cabo with the boys during my breaks from boarding school. What she also doesn’t say is that I’m not here by choice. Richard Pierce deemed it necessary that I come home right after high school graduation and, instead of going to college in the fall, take a gap year so I can shadow him at Paradise. And when Richard speaks, it’s law.
“He wants me to be his mini-me,” I tell Tess, but I don’t have to. She already knows that our father wants me to take over the business one day. Right now, all I do is follow him around Paradise Tower like a puppy, sitting in on meetings and shadowing his every move. But with a whole year off of school, I’m sure he has bigger plans in store, with a lot more work and responsibility. And then one day, when he kicks the bucket or retires or hell freezes over, whichever comes first, I will become owner and president of Paradise Entertainment.
Tess’s smile tightens. “I know. Well, you are the favorite.”
“You’re his favorite. And you know he’d love it if you showed an interest in Paradise.”
“Sure. To work there. But I’ll never be president. That’s reserved for the men in the family, isn’t it?” Tess says, tone sour. She sits on my bed, crossing her designer-heeled feet. “But let’s be honest. You probably won’t even get the chance. Daddy will only give it to you over his cold, lifeless body, and you’d be the same way with me. I’d have to outlive you both.”
I don’t want to argue, and she seems particularly edgy, so I change the subject. “Do I really look like a mortician?”
“No.” She eyes my outfit again, this time with a little less disdain. “You don’t look like anybody.”
I nod. “Exactly.”
Tess stands, still shaking her head at me. “Do me a favor?”
“Anything.”
“Don’t make tonight all about busines
s. Dance with someone. Have a drink. Have fun. You don’t have to be the big boss yet.” She turns abruptly, gives me a small kiss on the cheek. “So good luck tonight. Maybe you’ll hook up with someone as hot as Taylor.”
“Hey, maybe he’ll decide he swings both ways and you’ll have some competition.”
Tess only lifts her nose higher. “Please. As if any man would choose you over me in that outfit.”
Nate
Victor is incredibly offended at my lack of faith.
“When have I ever let you down before?” he asks, then holds a finger up before I can answer. “That was rhetorical.”
We’re walking through the seedy alleys of L.A., looking to meet a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy, and although I’m not one to be nervous in the city, this is new territory for me. Victor looks a little nervous too, which does nothing to improve my confidence. Then suddenly a man steps out of a darkened doorway, and I instinctively duck behind Victor.
“Nice, Nate. Real nice. Glad to know that in an emergency, I’d be your human shield. Nate, this is my cousin Martin. Martin, my cowardly friend Nate.”
When I step out of Vic’s shadow, I can see that Vic’s cousin is maybe five years older than us, if that, and he’s got the roadie look down. His face is scruffy, and it looks as though his T-shirt hasn’t been washed in a year.
“You tour with the Zippers?” I ask him, curiosity and awe outweighing my embarrassment.
He shrugs. “Sometimes. Jack and I go way back, and I did a few favors for him in the past. So when I need the extra cash, Jack lets me haul their equipment.”
Jack is the Jacket Zippers’ lead guitarist, and he might be one of the better players of the past decade. My insides curl up and I try hard not to squeal. “Seriously? You know Jack?”
