reputation

by Dr. Rebecca Sharp

  This was my life. Never simple. Never easy.

  Never a clean heartbreak.

  No one here to save me.

  The laughter didn’t stop. Tears fell along with it—and not because I was laughing too hard. Ash and Tay both stared like I was going crazy. That’s what happens when you stay in Wonderland too long.

  “I hate to break it to you, big brother,” I said with the sharpest edge I could manage. “But what you see isn’t reality. I lose myself in this life. I feel too much. I care too much. I give too much. And I love it. But it makes me lose the parts that still need to feel and care and give back to myself. Zach helps me find that. That is why I cling to him. Every day I feel like I’m a kite flying too high, pulled this way and that by the winds of the world—‘smile,’ ‘sing,’ ‘fall in love,’ ‘but don’t do it too quickly’… Sure, those winds can lift me up—but they can also kill me in the end. And Zach… He. Holds. Me. Steady. He grounds me. He cares for me. He finds me when I’ve lost myself.”

  The expression on his face changed just as quickly as those tropical storms that appear at the shore from out of nowhere. He’d come here dark and vengeful—and just as quickly, the clouds that had been blinding him cleared and the anger washed away.

  “Never mind.” I let out with a huff—too emotionless to continue, too tired of feeling to even want to. “I didn’t do this to hurt you. I can’t help the fact that he’s what inspires me—that he’s what saves me. Maybe I won’t need him anymore, now that I don’t have a heart.”

  “Blay…” he ground out my name, whether it was to scold me or apologize, I’d never know.

  “Don’t, Ash. You’ve done enough,” I cut him off as Tay stepped between us. “Now that that is cleared up and my life seems to be back on the track you feel is the right one, I’m going to go crash and burn.”

  I turned and walked back into the bedroom, slamming the door behind me. Tay could hold her own out there with my brother. She’d have my back even if it was hard to recognize the way it was so full of holes.

  Track 19: Take the Fall

  “Love is two parts: me and you.

  One part to give it all.

  The other part to take the fall.”

  I LOVED NIGHTS LIKE THIS in Franklin. Not because of how I felt. No. Heartbroken nights were the most painful kind—and a pretty prevalent kind at that when I was here. No, the nights when it was silent and clear. The slight chill sent me curling tighter into my fuzzy jacket as I lay in the hammock out back. My mom had turned on the porch light fifteen minutes ago when she finally got tired of watching me from the window, waiting and worrying for me to come back inside and go to bed; there was nothing they could do for me.

  I wanted to stay here. I wanted to go back to being grounded—to being able to look up at the stars and appreciate their beauty instead of empathizing with their shimmering pain. I didn’t want to go back up there. I didn’t want to go back up to be stared at and used by the press for my heartbreak to make them millions. Like the moon, they took my light… they took it and reflected it to make them shine.

  “Millions rally around Blake Tyler after her authentic, heart-wrenching concert of strength in Minnesota!”

  “We all thought Zach Parker was the one!”

  I tapped my pen on the notebook that sat empty in my lap. The last time he’d broken my heart, the words had come easily. This time, my heart still echoed with nothing but the hollowness of a black hole.

  “Blake Tyler was love-struck-out on her Lovestruck tour.

  What will happen in Nashville?”

  More tears slipped from my eyes and I wished they’d turn into words instead of useless blobs of wetness on my sweatshirt.

  Why did he do this? Why was I not enough?

  It was the million-dollar, million-star, mystery of life question. It chanted in my head every moment since that show. A sick and twisted taunt mingled with a healthy dose of ‘I-told-you-so’ deja-vu.

  Why did I fall for it?

  That was the real question. How did I end up back here? In the hammock. Wallowing. Lost. Crying because Zach Parker had turned my love for him back in my face. At least last time the rejection had been private; this time, the whole world had front row seats to the concert of my crumbling heart.

  I was a wreck and he was the wrecking ball.

  An aggravated and strangled yell escaped me as I stood, tossing my notebook and pen onto the fabric. Arms over my chest, I looked back at my parent’s house. There were still lights on which meant I wasn’t going back inside. I couldn’t bear any more questions, let alone reassurances that everything was going to be ok.

  I spun in the other direction, hating what I was faced with.

  The treehouse.

  Maybe Ash was right. I did lose myself when it came to Zach.

  Wiping my cheeks with my sweatshirt sleeves, I crossed my arms over my chest, a sudden spark of determination flaring inside me. My heart might have been broken but I wasn’t. I was angry—angry at how quickly I’d let myself fall back into old habits, how quickly I’d let myself fall back in love with him, and how devastatingly quickly I’d crumbled.

  Next I knew, my feet were crunching over the newly growing weeds and branches on the forest floor as I made my way to the treehouse. I hadn’t been back here since that night. I refused. It had been too painful at first and then I was away so much that it didn’t matter. When I was here, it was just another place to remind me how foolish I was with my heart.

  Blake Tyler never learns. That should have been the headline. Maybe I should have Tay see if we can get that one out there. Or how about, ‘Blake Tyler on a permanent heart break until further notice.’

  I laughed because what else do you do when something hurts too much?

  A drop of water landed on the tip of my nose. It took another two for me to realize that these were actually from the sky and not from my eyes.

  The rungs of the ladder shifted slightly under my weight and I wondered if anyone had been up here since that night. Hoisting myself through the entry, I stood in the empty room. It seemed much smaller than I remembered. Maybe it was just the significance of the memories that it held that made me remember it bigger.

  Walking to the window, the wood of the awning creaked as I forced it up and locked it into place. My hands came to rest on the cool wood and I drew the long deeps breaths like I’d learned in the yoga class Tay dragged me to on Wednesday.

  I blinked slowly, staring into the star-speckled night, listening to the steadily increasing raindrops on the tin roof. Or maybe they were raining on me. I sure felt like I’d turned into the tin man, desperate for a working heart.

  What was I doing here?

  Sometimes, things happen in life that shake you… that break you a little bit. It’s hard to go back to the scene of the crime, but even after all this time, time was taking its sweet old time erasing him. Maybe I thought that coming here would help. A burial of sorts to the old Blake. There would still be scars, I knew; this love had left permanent marks.

  My phone buzzed and I pulled it out to make sure it wasn’t my mom freaking out or Ash trying to talk to me again.

  ‘Please just leave me alone,’ I’d said to him in an eerie monotone, glazed eyes meeting his as we boarded the flight home. Ash was the instigator, dousing me with gasoline before Zach had lit the match. I could see how he regretted our argument and what he said; the look in his eyes was the same look he’d had when he realized what telling me the truth about Santa Claus had done.

  He’d been annoyed that Zach continued to play along when I was younger and still believed. He sat me down, insisting that I couldn’t hang out with them if I still believed in Santa. And then he told me the truth about the fat man in the suit. I, of course, played it cool—like the truth hadn’t put a giant crack in my childhood. But it was on Christmas morning, when he watched as I picked up one gift after another, looking at the stickers that said ‘From Santa’ on them, and realized what he’d really done. S
ure, he’d given me the truth, helped me grow up a little—but he’d also stolen the magic.

  Whatever he’d said to Zach, he thought he was doing me a favor. His eyes as they took me in, all bruised and broken, told me he now saw that all he’d done was take more magic from me again.

  I refused to talk to him after that. Wednesday was the last day he bothered coming to the house—probably because Tay had taken it upon herself to give him an earful, ending with, ’So loyal, huh, Ash?

  I let out a sigh. Speaking of. It was Taylor who was calling me.

  She was visiting her cousin in Nashville—a planned get-together otherwise I had no doubt she would have been glued to my side all day, just like she had been every day for the past week. Movies. Spa days. Yoga. All-you-can-eat Chinese take-out. I secretly wondered if she thought all that high cholesterol would fill in the cracks of my broken heart.

  It wasn’t fool-proof. I’d had plenty of meltdowns, but I would have melted down had she not been by my side.

  I silenced the call.

  Sorry, Tay. The old Blake can’t come to the phone right now.

  A drop of water landed on the screen and I immediately looked up, thinking that the roof was somehow leaking—but no, just tears.

  Loving Zach had been like driving a Ferrari the wrong way down a one-way street. Exhilarating. Passionate. And sure to end suddenly. Painfully.

  It was everything about this moment. The silence. The stars. The rain on the roof. It was the train that ran off its tracks. I was hanging up the life that I’d dreamt up and that we’d never get back.

  It was sad. Beautiful. Tragic.

  “Blake?”

  I whipped around, my heart going into overdrive.

  Blinking several times, I stared at Zach, standing a few feet in front of me. Instinctively, I raised my hands and wiped my eyes again, convinced that he was a mirage in the middle of my desperate desert.

  “Zach?” I rasped. “What are you doing here?”

  It only took me another second to see my answer: he’d come wearing his best apology. Too bad all I could think about was how many times I’d had to watch him leave.

  “I need to talk to you.” His face was partially in shadow, but I saw the pain glinting in his eyes. Or maybe that was just mirrored from my own.

  “What more could you have to say that I haven’t heard before?” I offered quietly.

  His jaw ticked and I knew I’d hit a nerve.

  “Blake, I need to talk to you. I need to explain what happened,” he insisted, taking a step towards me. I retreated, bumping back into the wall, my hand going to the sill of the open window. “Please.”

  “How can you do this?” I didn’t want to know the answer. My head flew side to side furiously. “No.” I couldn’t go through this again. “No, Zach.” He stepped closer again and my body lit up like a runway, ready for take-off. “I can’t do this again.” I put my hand up, my head turning away as I searched for strength; I might as well have been looking for water in the desert.

  “No, Blake.” His hands clasped my arms. I froze, slowly turning up to his face; he looked watery through my tears. “It’s not what I made you think. I gave you the wrong idea. On purpose, but wrong. So wrong, Blakebaby.”

  My throat seized on a sob. I’d barely pulled myself back together this week. Imagine you had a jar of sand and it spilled. Well, trying to put back every grain of sand would have been much more manageable a task than putting myself back to rights. His palms cupped my face and I realized that I’d still been shaking my head ‘no’—a silent plea to not do this to me again.

  “He said they were going to ruin you,” Zach admitted with a low, tortured voice. “He said the press found out about our plan and that they were going to publish it; the story would have destroyed you. Even if we came out with the truth, no one would have believed us.”

  “I would have… I would have believed in us because for me, it’s always been you.”

  “Blake,” he groaned, thumbs wiping away my tears. “I couldn’t do that to you. I couldn’t let you take the fall. You’re too bright, Blakebaby, and the world needs your light.”

  “But I needed you.” The words felt foreign, like I was talking about a girl I used to know. “And now, I need to not.”

  He swore under his breath, the warmth brushing across my face. “I need you, Blay. And I fucked up. I tried to be unselfish. I thought I needed to put you and everything that you’ve accomplished before what I wanted. Just like all those years ago when I put your future and your brother before how I felt. I’m a slow fucking learner, babe.” He let out a soft chuckle. “Too many hard hits in football or something like that. But I’m here. I’m here and I’ve finally fucking learned that how I feel for you can’t be ignored.”

  His words echoed inside the empty space in my chest where my heart had been.

  His hoarse voice crept over me again. “What we have is written in the stars—and I won’t let anything or anyone cross them again.”

  A soft, sad laugh escaped me.

  “Don’t you get it, Zach?” I whispered. “I know… I knew… that what you said wasn’t how you really felt. But even though you knew that, you said it anyway.” His jaw clenched. “I don’t care what you think—or what Ash or Bruce said—you’ve been up there, you’ve seen them. I would have survived whatever was written. We would have survived.”

  “I didn’t want you to feel like I’d forced you into sacrificing all of this…”

  “So, you thought you’d fall on the sword instead? The worst part is, Zach, every time you think you’re sacrificing yourself for me… the reality is that you’re just sacrificing me.” I wasn’t trying to twist the knife, but he had no idea what he’d put me through. “And this time, it was for the whole world to see.” A sob wracked my chest.

  “Blake, please.”

  I felt his fingers tighten ever so slightly on my face as his whole body tensed in frustration. He was saying all the right words. It was just too late.

  “This is the last time, Zach,” I said quietly. I was defeated, but I didn’t care. It’s only by starting from the bottom that I could rebuild myself whole again, piece by shattered piece. “This is the last time you tell me that I’ve got it all wrong, the last time I tell you that it’s been you all along. This is the last time I let you in.”

  Pain seared across his face before his lips descended on mine with pleading desperation. I kissed him back. Opening and letting his tongue sweep inside, I sighed, tasting how his addictive sweetness became tainted with the salt from my tears. I knew he thought that this kiss could change things—could change my mind. Nine years ago, I had thought that the night in the treehouse could change how he saw me.

  But just because I could jump out this window right now and spend a moment suspended in the air didn’t mean that I could fly.

  And for a long time, with Zach, I believed that I could. Lesson learned.

  “I’m sorry, Zach,” I mouthed against his lips just as they separated from mine. “I can’t say I’ll forgive you and risk another goodbye.”

  I hated hurting him. If I thought that being with Zach was only possible in my wildest dreams, then this—right here, right now—where I was the one pushing him away was a complete alternate reality.

  Right before his eyes, I was breaking. This was no longer about the past. There were no more reasons why.

  “This is the last time… I won’t let you hurt me anymore.” I pulled my face from his hands—and he let me, because he knew better than anyone that when push comes to shove, I will follow my feelings every time—whether they lead me to make a fool out of myself for him or they pull me away.

  He stood, an immovable statue, turned to stone by my words. I stepped around him towards the exit as I wiped my face with the ends of my sleeves, not bothering to hide my sobs anymore. It was fitting, I thought, that the story of us had started and now ended in this treehouse.

  As I brushed past him, the rain on the roof was like a smal
l army of applause, a watery ovation for the first time I’d had the courage to walk away from what my heart so detrimentally needed.

  Track 20: Clarity

  “Love is insanity.

  Insanity gives me clarity.”

  “I’M NOT GOING TO LIE, B,” Tay said with disbelief ringing clearly in her voice. “Even I might have forgiven him… and I’m not the one who’s been in love with him for over a decade.”

  I knew she wasn’t trying to make me second-guess (or in this case, millionth-guess) the decision I’d made on Saturday when Zach had surprised me in the treehouse. It was her blunt honesty that had kept us friends all this time, especially in times like this.

  “He’ll always think that something—my future, my brother, my job—will trump how I feel about him. I can’t… stay… with someone who thinks it’s easier to give up on me and us every time. Even if his intentions are good.”

  She stared long and hard at me as we sat in my parents’ kitchen, the backdoor open, the perfectly cool beginning-of-summer breeze blowing through the screen door. Max lay snoozing just inside the door; Muffin was currently curled up by Tay’s feet.

  “I know. It’s just crazy. All of it.”

  “It was a mistake,” I said quietly. “This whole thing.” She winced, so I quickly added, “It’s not your fault, Tay. I went along with it. I agreed with it. I had lost myself.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “They were right. The press. What they wrote about.”

  She gasped and pointed a scolding finger at me. “Bite your tongue, lady.”

  “I’m serious.” I ate another bite of watermelon that my mom had cut up and left in the fridge for us. “I mean, they were all narcissistic jerks. But I was also lost and spiraling.” I sighed. “Last year, when Matt and I fought that last time about how he was nasty and distant to me because of how famous I was… when I told him I was breaking up with him, he said, ‘Go right ahead. You’ll never find someone to love you. You live in a fantasy world, Blake Tyler. And anyone you date will just be falling in love with the fantasy of you.’” I rattled off the words that had been embedded deep inside my brain a year and a half ago.