Page 8 of Places I've Never Been

“You don’t get to waltz in here and demand we all jump like nothing happened. You wanted to live life onyourterms. Well, guess what? When you dumped us, we all had to learn to live life onourown terms too, and I’ve learned that lesson reallywell. You think I’d hook my future to yours now and just hope you wouldn’t change your mind again? No, Della. You don’t get to un-ring that bell. For once in your spoiled life you have to live with the consequences of your decisions.”

“Mattie—” Della said. Her voice cracked, and her eyes widened as if she saw an oncoming train and couldn’t move out of the way.

“Save it.” Mattie picked up her purse with shaking hands. She brushed the tears off her cheeks again. She’d done enough crying over the years, and she was done with all of it. “You have to be the most selfish person on the entire planet if you thought you could just simper and bat your eyelashes at us and it would all be okay. It’s never,evergoing to be okay that you ripped my heart out and didn’t even notice. I just…I’m done.”

Della’s face crumpled. She looked devastatingly pretty in the middle of the beautiful flower-filled space, like the tragic heroine of an old movie.

Mattie felt the tug of her sister’s distress, and for half a second concern replaced anger. Then anger came to her rescue and the urge to comfort Della vanished, replaced with bitter resolve.

Mattie stalked to the door, determined to get away from the pain, the hurt, and the sadness before they ripped yet another hole in her heart.

“Mattie,” Lizzie called. “Wait. Please…don’t leave.”

She turned back. “I’m sorry, Lizzie. I can’t do this.”

Mattie caught Piper’s eye. “See you later, okay?”

Piper looked stunned and a little proud. She touched her cap in salute and nodded.

Mattie brushed past the server and stormed out of the restaurant on a wave of fury, leaving absolute silence in her wake.

Chapter Two

Adam Brooks stood in the cramped lobby of his band’s Los Angeles recording studio and stared at the text his dad had just sent with exasperation.

It won’t work. It has a pool.

He’d been trying to buy his parents a new house for the past two years. The place they lived in now had been beaten up by years of kids, dogs, and general living. His dad was close to retirement, and his mother had always dreamed of traveling. Adam wanted to give them the easy retirement they deserved, and the first step to that was a house they didn’t have to constantly update.

His mother was excited by the idea and had embraced the house hunting trips with relish. His dad, however, found an excuse to say no to every option they found. The yard was too big or too small, the plumbing too old or too new, the floors creaked, the walls were crooked, it smelled, the bedroom faced the wrong way—that one had totally thrown Adam—the list went on and on.

Adam shook his head and texted back.What’s wrong with a pool? Swimming is good for you.

Dots indicated his dad was responding. He waited.

“Dude,” His brother Brandon called. “We got the new track queued up. You coming?”

Brandon was three years younger and three inches taller, but they shared the same black hair and dark brown eyes they’d inherited from their mother, and the lopsided grin they got from their father. They also appeared to share terrible luck with women, since neither of them had kept a girlfriend more than a couple of months. Brandon had managed to get married once in Vegas, but it had been annulled the next day, so it didn’t really count.

“Yeah,” Adam shouted back. “In a sec.”

Their band, Delusions of Glory, was in the studio trying to find yet another new writing partner to help them finish the last three songs for the new album. The process had been tedious, mind-numbing torture so far. Maybe they should just release what they had. Would anyone notice three fewer songs?

Finally, the reply text chimed.More trouble than it’s worth.

“Seriously?” Adam rolled his eyes, shoved his phone in his back pocket, and went into the studio. “Who the hell doesn’t like a pool?”

“Everybody likes pools.” Cooper Peady, Adam’s best friend since grade school and the cofounder of the band, looked up from the soundboard and grinned. He usually played lead guitar and provided backup vocals, but he also had a passion for technology and made an excellent wingman at parties. “Especially if there’s ladies in bikinis around it.”

“Don’t need a pool when you got the ocean right there,” Lucas Austerberry, their manager, said. He was almost fifty, with graying hair and the greedy smile of aused car salesman, but he’d been instrumental in taking Delusions of Glory from good local band to international sensation.

They now had four platinum albums and three Grammys on their resumes, along with merchandising, endorsement deals, and a video game, thanks in large part to the way Lucas helped them make the most of every opportunity. The man had found ways to turn one song from an unknown high school band into a franchise and he’d done it in under three years. If he seemed pushy and aggressive, well, it was helpful to have a shark on your side, especially in the music business, and Lucas had always done right by them.

Drummer Flynn Mackie, with spiked blond hair and arms covered with tattoos, tapped out a rhythm on the back of a chair. “Can we get on with this? I got a date later. Me and that girl I met at the bar are going to see the new Bond movie. She had a bit part as a maid or something.”

Flynn had been Brandon’s best friend since they were in diapers. Adam hadn’t been so sure about including him in the band at the beginning, but he’d come to respect the man’s skill with the sticks, and he’d grown fond of his wild and crazy ways over the years. Flynn always brought life to any party and reason to any argument, and he was always,always, on time. It was a quality Adam wished would rub off on Brandon.

Adam gestured at the soundboard. “Queue it up. I’m listening.” He settled down on the couch next to LT Sullivan, their bassist.

---