Page 72 of On the Beat

Paulo lets me talk, the only sound of the dishes clattering as he puts them away.

“I… What has you so worried about me, anyway?” It’s a genuinely curious question, not one born of defensiveness or deflection. “Do I look okay?”

“You look the same as you always do. It’s more the fact that you seem to have come here when your life is falling apart, and I’m worried that you’re going to try and use a girl to piece yourself back together.”

His words ring in my ears, each syllable chasing each other in circles around the inside of my skull. “What?”

“Ryder, I saw how you were with Skye in college. You wanted her to get you a career in Hollywood when you found out she had those connections. I know you cared about her, too, but you were with her originally because you knew who her dad was. When it turned out that she didn’t really care about her family that much, you kept dating her because she was best friends with Poppy. You can tell yourself you really loved her, but I’m not sure you ever did. It was just convenient for you guys to be together until it wasn’t.”

I haven’t thought about Skye since I left the money for her in her house, seeing her with that ring on her finger and that smile on her face when she looked up at Leo Perez. She never used to look at me that way. Maybe she knew I never loved her, too. Maybe we both knew all along, and we were just using each other, in a way.

“I know I didn’t love her,” I say. “With Skye, everything felt easy. Notright, but easy. Predictable. I could see the rest of our lives together, and I knew it wouldn’t be hard to get married her and have kids with her. But none of it feltright. It felt like the thing that everyone expected us to do, like sliding down a slope because it’s the path of least resistance. I didn’t want that. I wanted…”

I shake my head. Am I crazy? What am I even saying?

“I don’t want easy. I want the path of most resistance. I want someone who challenges me to be better, who makes mewantto be better. Being with Skye didn’t make me worse, but it was stagnant. We weren’t going anywhere; we were just standing still.” I rinse a cup and pass it to Paulo. “It’s not like that with Isla. We’re not using each other.”

“Okay, maybe you’re not using her,” Paulo says, swatting the dish towel against my shoulder.

“What was that for?”

“I want you to think about whether she’s usingyou.”

* * *

The ding from my phone makes me panic far more than it should.

Still on a sugar high from Paulo’s birthday party, and some other kind of high from Isla’s presence, I nearly drop my phone on my face when I see the message notification pop up.

Who has texted me in the past few months that I’ve been here? Absolutely no one, and it’s been complete bliss.

Now, this one innocuous sound, this one tiny ringtone–barely a ringtone, really, since no one even called–is about to ruin all my hard-won peace.

I open the text, sitting up. Maybe it’s Poppy. Maybe it’s work. Maybe it’s my family. Maybe it’s someone far worse.

George Hugh:You need to come home.

I write out,why? Though I usually prefer to send voice texts or dictate instead of typing, saying the words out loud will cement the truth. It’ll cement that reality is always driving on, always rolling along the tracks and ready to crush my dreams. And no one will untie me from the railroad tracks any time soon.

George Hugh: The Grammy’s are coming up. Don’t you have any music to put out before then? This might be one of the only years you aren’t nominated, and do you really want that to happen?

I hesitate, uncertain of my response. The Grammy’s. I’d completely forgotten about them.Wouldn’t they have decided on the nominations already anyways?

George Hugh:It doesn’t matter. You’re going to the Grammy’s. It’s bad publicity–or lack thereof–otherwise. I want you on the next private jet out of that little tropical paradise that you’re calling life. I’ve seen the paparazzi pics. Just because you hooked up with some girl there doesn’t mean you have to stay in the Philippines.

With that, all my next texts lie unsent.

That little tropical paradise you’re calling life.

What the heck is that supposed to mean? Am I not living? This is the most alive I’ve felt in months, and he wants to take it away from me. He thinks life is in L.A., in recording studios and planning tour set lists and choreography for performances. Maybe it is all those things, but isn’t life also spending time with my friends? Falling for a beautiful girl?

Life is more than music. I need a life to write music about.

And damn it, I don’t want to leave Isla. Not like this. Not over a text from my manager, no matter how right he may be.

The Grammy’s are coming up.

It would be bad publicity for me not to show up, even if I don’t put get nominated for an award.

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