Page 17 of Shattered Chords

“Okay.” I gave Harper a nod. “But I’m buying you a Frappuccino.”

“Sure,” he agreed.

“Venti.”

“You want to send me into a sugar coma?”

“I want to see you smile.”

As if on cue, Harper’s mouth stretched into a grin, all his perfect white teeth on display.

“Now we’re talking.”

We moved to the office and he went over a few boutique-related things while I powered up my laptop. My gaze flicked over to my phone that sat on the desk. Ally never texted me anymore unless she needed something, and I wasn’t certain why I expected to see a message from her.

Our fight was bothering me.

Harper picked up on my frustration just as quickly as I’d picked up on his. “What did my goddaughter do this time?” He hovered as I filled out the online order form.

Friends for nearly twenty years, we could read each other with ease. He’d even joked once that if he were straight, we would’ve been married by now with three kids.

“She’s fifteen.” I glanced up at him. “Hot mocha for Renn?”

“Definitely.”

I hit the Submit button.

“Back to Ally,” Harper said. “She break curfew again? Want me to talk to her?”

I shook my head and leaned back in my chair.

“Spill,” Harper insisted.

As much as I didn’t want to get into the specifics of yesterday’s guitar shop meeting this early in the day out of fear of losing my work mojo, I needed to talk to someone. I needed to hear words that would solidify the stupid decision I’d made. The decision I’d been seduced into by a charming smile of a rich, handsome man. “She’s upset I don’t let her date,” I began.

“You know you’re going to have to let her go out with boys eventually, right?”

“I know.”

“Or girls,” Harper whispered. He straightened and walked around the desk to face me. “Have you considered it? Maybe that’s what’s eating her.”

“I have.” I heaved out a heavy sigh. “And honestly, this may make me a horrible mother, but I would have been glad—”Because girls couldn’t get her pregnant. “But she did say ‘boyfriend,’ and I think there’s someone specific.”

“You can’t keep her locked up until she’s thirty.”

“Last night, she told me she wasn’t like me and knew to use a condom.” I couldn’t fathom my fifteen-year-old daughter having sex. We’d had the talk when she was twelve and agreed she’d wait until she was eighteen, but this summer, something had changed and I struggled to understand what exactly had triggered her outbursts.

Harper smiled at me sympathetically. “Oh, sweets, I’m sorry. Why don’t I come by this week and chat with her?”

“She’s become a spoiled brat.” Deep in my heart, I hated myself for thinking of Ally like that, but I called things as they were, and my daughter had turned into exactly that—a whiny, ungrateful stranger who lived in my house. “Yesterday, while I was getting my nails done, she snuck out to that shop on Mulholland where she always hangs out with Pauline, and some guy, who’s apparently a big deal rock musician, bought her a six-thousand-dollar guitar.”

Harper’s eyes widened.

I could feel my emotions starting to get the best of me. “And you know what?” Exasperated, I tossed my hands in the air. “I let him. I let a random man buy her an expensive gift because I felt bad for her.”And because he charmed me into it with his sweet words and brooding looks.“I felt bad that she doesn’t have a father. I agree to her demands every single time. It’s the only way I know. Depriving her of more things when she doesn’t already have what almost every child has seems unfair.” My mind spun in thousands of different directions. “I thought it was going to make her happy. But instead, she’s giving me the silent treatment.”

“You’re putting too much pressure on yourself, sweets. Few women could do what you’ve done. Ally is an amazing kid. I think she’s just going through a phase most girls her age go through and she might feel a little too self-conscious talking about it to her mother.”

“But we’ve always talked about everything.”

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