Page 78 of Sounds Like Love

I was stuck on the first thing. “You didn’t always know your dad?”

“Nope.” He scrunched his nose a little, thinking. “I met him when my mom died. I was—what—thirteen? My mom had no living relatives or anything, so the state didn’t know what to do with me. I was about to head into foster care when the bank told me my mom had a box there. So I got it, and inside was her Social Security card, a few of my baby photos, and my birth certificate. I’d never seen it before—Mom always said she’d lost it in a move when I was a baby.” He was quiet for a long moment. He picked up a fry, about to eat it, but then tossed it back into the basket, and wiped his fingers off on his jeans. “She’d always told me that he was a one-night stand. Someone she didn’t even remember. But on the birth certificate it said Robert Fellows.”

“I knew Roman was too cool a name to be his real one.”

He snorted a laugh despite himself. “I assure you, my name isactuallySebastian.”

“Mmh, I like Sasha better.”

That made him smile. “And I like when you say it. You’re the only one who does.”

“What does your dad call you?”

“I’m lucky if he calls me at all,” he replied, his voice aloof. “I found out Mom used to tour in the Boulevard. That’s how they met. I don’t think she ever told him about me, so he didn’t know what the fuck to do once social services showed up at his door with me in tow. He just knew work, and that was it. Hell, he hadn’t even known she’ddied.” The words were darker and clipped. A muscle in his jaw twitched again. “I was so angry. Here was this guy who could have everything—whohaseverything—when all the while my mom made ends meet by working two jobs. He never cared about her. But he had no choice with me. So I decided to make sure that every time he looked at me …”

And in my head, he finished,“He’d never forget her again.”

There was certainty in those words. The kind that told me that he’d already given up so much to make sure, that he would give up everything else, too. He’d ruin himself to make sure of it—and he had. I was front row to most of it, thanks to Gigi and her LiveJournal gossip group way back when. He joined Renegade at sixteen, and had his face on merch a year later, and toured the world long before he could even vote. And while he was onstage, relishing music so loud it rattled his brain in his skull, he started drinking a little too much and made a name for himself with one too many one-night stands with other celebrities who often found themselves on Page Six.

We were so wildly different. While he was off dating every Taylor and Olivia and Sabrina in Hollywood, I was staying up too late learning about music theory and talking with Van on the phone until we both fell asleep, and having movie nights with Gigi on the weekends.

“I also kept studying piano,” he noted. “My mom worked two jobs just so that we could have money for rent, food, and my music lessons. So I kept it up. I didn’t want it to go to waste. It did anyway.” His mouth twisted a little,like he tasted something sour. “I think I got caught up in … chasing things that made me feel. After a while, everything just began to feel numb. Then I had the wreck. I was all over the news. All the time. So, my dad did what he did best. He came for a photo op and then left on the longest world tour on record. And that was it. He was running, again. He was good at that. And I realized that it didn’t matter how much I tried to get him to see me—it was pointless.”

“The tabloids claimed Renegade kicked you out after that,” I said, remembering that night, just after the senior prom. Gigi had been almost inconsolable. She knew it was the beginning of the end for the band.

“I quit,” he corrected me. “No one wanted to deal with the fallout ofme. I didn’t even want to deal with me.”

“So what did you do?”

“Pretended like I didn’t fuck up my entire life,”he thought. Aloud, he said, “Went to rehab. Tried a solo career.”

“You did? I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, I know. No one did. The entire album bombed. Label pulled it. You can find a CD or two on eBay on a good day, but it goes for peanuts. Turns out, people cared more about the fact that I’m the son of Roman Fell than about my own talents, and that was a sobering realization. After everything I went through, trying to make my dad remember me—remember my mom—it was the opposite. My dad was the reason anyone rememberedme.”

Guilt ate at my stomach—because I was the same. I didn’t know much of anything about Sebastian Fell, except his dad. That was all I thought I needed to know.

“It’s not on you,”he replied, and reached down to run his thumb across the back of my hand, lost in thought. “I just messed up, bird.I’d made it—I played in the biggest venues in the world. It was my mom’s dream, she wanted to be a singer all her life. I should’ve held on to it tighter. Done it the right way. For her.”

This was my mom’s dream, too, I admitted, turning my hand over, folding my fingers into his.She used to sing—in your dad’s band, too, actually.

“A lot of people did,”he replied absently. It was sort of a running joke in the Boulevard—Roman Fell was a hard person to get along with. Sasha rubbed his thumb against mine soothingly. “It’s a good dream,” he admitted.

But at what point, I wondered, was the dream too much? What if it stopped fulfilling you? What if … what if it made a deep, empty hole inside of you instead? I began to wonder. Was songwriting still my dream, or was I just too afraid of giving up something I’d already sacrificed so much for?

I didn’t know.

No one told you what to do after you made it to the top, after you accomplished what you set out for—no one told you that the grass wasn’t greener, that you didn’t feel any more whole, that whatever you were chasing and finally caught didn’t fill you with the permanent kind of happiness you expected.

The things that did bring me joy were so much simpler than that—like Sasha had said. I felt happiest when I was making melodies.

“What’s your dream?” I asked him.

He picked up my hand and gently planted a kiss on my knuckles. “It’s simple. I want to start over. Try something new.”

But in his head, his thoughts slipped into the truth.“Reinvent myself again and escape his shadow. I’ll be bigger. Louder. So he won’t be able to ignore me anymore. So he can’t forget her.”

There was a burnt and sour taste on the back of my tongue, like cheap diner coffee. And for the first time, I think I saw him—reallysaw him—the angry teen and the sour adult, tied together with a hopeful kind of love that I was sure was his mom’s doing. Someone who kept creating, kept looking for something more, in all the bitter places. What would happen when the song was done?

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