Page 2 of No More Love Songs

Grayson clears his throat loudly like he’s trying not to choke on his last bite.

“Really? Andrew is the example you’re going with to represent my love life?” If Andrew is the extent of her argument, I think we’re done here. “That wasn’t love. That was a twisted game of control and mental destruction. And when he was done screwing with my head, he went out and started screwing other women.”

“I’m not denying he’s a piece of shit of astronomical proportions,” she agrees. “But you wrote ‘Love Me Still’ when you were with him. That album had seven number one hits and went double platinum its first year out.”

“That album is a crock of shit and the number one reason I need to stop writing such detrimental crap,” I scoff. “That wasn’t love. That was the delusional infatuation of a naïve girl too desperate to find a fairy tale to realize she was living in a nightmare.”

Janelle seems to accept her setback for a moment, but one falafel later and she’s coming at me again. “‘Secret Heart of Hearts’. You and Benson. That was love!”

“That was a game. And Benson and I were never actually together,” I remind her. “He was the guy I loved from a safe distance when Andrew messed me up too much to love someone for real.”

“What about Jackson. What you two had was definitely real.”

“Really? Jackson is the healthy love story you want me to refer to moving forward?” Maybe it was real. I certainly thought it was, but the truth is we were both too broken at the time to know one way or the other. And only one of us ever wanted to heal enough to find out for sure.

Janelle gets silent after that, and I know it’s because she only has one example left and she won’t dare use it.

“Face it, Janelle. I’m a fraud.” I sigh. “I weave the shit out of some tales depicting troubled men and wounded women destined to find each other even when it seems least likely. I start them broken and mend them as they go, leaving them whole by the end. I sell love, and I do it damn well. But...while I have poured my heart into my music, found love a thousand times over in these songs, I’ve never once found it for real.”

“But you’re such a believable fraud,” she half-whines, half-pleads. “Can’t we just keep lying to people?”

“They won’t believe me anymore,” I tell her flatly, leaning forward to reach my water bottle sitting at the center of the table.

“Of course, they will. They’ve believed you all this time, why would they stop now?”

I twist the cap off but stop short of having a sip. Instead, I look straight at Janelle. “Because I stopped believing me.”

“You don’t mean that.” But even as she says it, I can hear her conviction fading.

“I do mean it.” It was the most heartbreaking realization I think I’ve ever come to, but it’s true. And now that I’ve had some time to get comfortable with it, I’m numb to it. “I’m not saying love isn’t real, and that it isn’t a beautiful thing,” I add. “I’m just saying, I don’t believe it’s out there for me anymore. And that’s okay. I’m okay. But I can’t keep throwing myself into these fantasies with every passionate piece of my soul when it only leaves me feeling hollow at the end of it. Whatever my ideals on love and romance amount to, they’re not based in reality. And I don’t want to keep setting the rest of the world up for the same disappointment I’ve felt every time I let myself believe the crap I sing about is real, that the fantasy could actually come true.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Grayson start to open his mouth, but he thinks better of saying his thoughts out loud this time. We’ve been going round and round with this for weeks. He knows better than anyone how hard it was for me to get here, but that doesn’t mean he’s any more willing to accept it. Not yet.

“So that’s it.” Janelle drops into the cushions again, this time the movement screams of surrender. “No more love songs.”

“No more love songs.” I repeat the words I’ve made my mantra.

“What about lust songs?” She makes a half-assed effort to keep me skating on the edge of my genre.

“Please,” I laugh at the suggestion. “Unless you want to see me walk on stage naked, you’re not getting any sexy out of me.” Sexy’s never been part of my skillset. Mostly because I don’t believe being sexy qualifies as any sort of skill or talent, it’s a natural way of being we all stumble upon at one point or another, some more frequently than others.

“You laugh, but the label might have more faith in selling your naked body than the feminist power ballad you’re asking me to sell them.” She makes a face, and I can’t help but appreciate the irony of using the words feminist and power in the same statement as selling your naked body.

I opt not to respond and instead meet her gawking with a poignant stare.

She scoffs, rolling her eyes. “Yeah, I heard it.”

“Can I say something?” Grayson cuts in and I’m sure he knows I was about to take this way off topic.

“Is it going to support my stand on this?” I ask.

“Or are you siding with me and reality?” Janelle throws in right after me.

“Neither,” he says, shooting me a look before he glares at Janelle. I know he hates getting stuck in the middle and yet it seems to happen more often than not. Either at work with me and Janelle or at home between me and Brice, my brother and his husband. I get that being my best friend sucks sometimes, but no one forced him to be my producer or marry into my family. Though I’m hardly sorry he did either.

“If you’re not picking sides, I’m not sure I’m interested,” I grumble before I sip my water. All this arguing is giving me a dry throat.

“Yeah, might be better to keep a third perspective to yourself. We’re not doing so great with the two we already have,” Janelle agrees, and I can’t help thinking maybe this is the real reason he bothered to open his mouth, to put us back on the same side for something.

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