Page 127 of Loaded

“I’m not kidding.” She sighs so heavily that it makes her hair blow back on her head. “You are now my favorite artist.”

“Well, we’re a package deal, girlfriend, so pat yourself on the back.” I’m not going to lie to myself though. Hearing that from her feels pretty good. “Besides. You can’t tell whether they’re good by looking at them.”

“Most people couldn’t,” she says. “But I can.”

When I finish rolling my eyes, twenty minutes later, I start thinking about what’s about to happen. “Do you really think we’ll get an album?” I whisper. “Because that’s wild.”

“You should be thinking about what kind of people you’d be willing to work with,” Jake says.

“Why would we work with anyone else?” I ask.

“Your sound is balanced, clear, and well articulated,” Adam says. “But it’s not full enough. They’ll bring in a bass, a drummer, and probably a guitar to supplement the piano, at least, if you insist on keeping it?”

I nod vigorously. “I can strum a banjo, but if we nix the piano, I’m out.”

“Keyboard, probably,” Adam says.

I shake my head. “Piano.”

“We’ll talk about it,” he says, which is not very promising. Isn’t that what people say when they intend to totally ignore you?

I text Easton the second we land. Things were so hectic with the last-minute packing that I didn’t even tell him I was leaving. JUST LANDED IN L.A. JAKEGOT US A MEETING WITH A RECORD LABEL—HE WANTS TO USE OUR SONG FOR HIS MOVIE.

THAT’S AMAZING, Easton texts back right away. GOOD LUCK.

MEETING IS TOMORROW, I say, BUT WE ARE EXCITED.

Jake offers to put us up at his L.A. apartment, which he assures me is way nicer than ours, but Octavia and I both refuse. “We’ll share a hotel room,” Octavia says. “We have some work to do in case they want to hear more than just a song or two.”

“Where are you going to find a hotel with a piano?” Jake asks.

“Does your apartment have a piano?”

He shakes his head.

We have to call nineteen places, but we finally find one that has a piano in a conference room they say we can use as late as we’d like. And we do. We don’t go to bed until almost two-thirty in the morning.

“At least I feel more prepared,” Octavia says.

“Do you think we’re only getting this meeting because of Jake?” The idea makes me a little uncomfortable.

“We got the last meeting because of him,” she says. “The one where that Adam guy made us play a dozen things. We’re getting this meeting because the last one went well. If you’d just been some kind of mediocre scribbler, he’d have told Jake to shove it.”

I guess so. “That makes me feel a little better.”

I’ve brushed my teeth and climbed into bed—lights are out—when Octavia whispers. “You would already have an album if it weren’t for me.”

It’s the first time she’s talked about it.

“Not a good one,” I say. “I wrote those songs for you.”

“Yeah, but there are other singers,” she says. “Loads and loads of them. Talented ones.”

“There are,” I say. “And there are loads and loads of songwriters, too. You think I’m special, so why can’t I think the same thing about you?”

She doesn’t ask anything else, but I know she’s still thinking it. That she’s the liability. That she’s the weak link.

I know, because I’ve felt like that most of my life.

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