Page 56 of Sounds Like Love

He pursed his lips. A muscle in his clenched jaw twitched. He took a deep breath and pushed himself off the bench. “Right. I’m just a spoiled rich kid with a famous father. I got everything handed to me because of mydad.” He said the word sarcastically, drawling it out. “And you’re the only hardworking, earnest artist in the entire world.”

“I’m not saying that—”

“Everyone takes photosofme and talksatme and gossipsaboutme like I’m not even a persontothem, but a—astory. I’m not real. My feelings aren’t real. My experiences. My burnout. Myself.”

“That’s—” My mouth had gone dry. There was a stone in my stomach. “That’s not what I meant.”

I sounded like an echo of him.

“I thought she’d understand,”I heard him think.

“Sebastian—”

“I think I’ll go,” he said, his voice returning to that soft neutral that I’d first heard that night in the private box. A tone I now realized was reserved for people he kept at arm’s length. He took his wallet and cold coffee from the edge of the piano and left via the side exit of the Revelry, stepping out into the sharp afternoon sun.

Chapter21If I Had $1,000,000 (Well, I’d Buy You a Green Dress)

WHERE DID Agirl go when she was in need of advice for a thing so private (and in all honesty, embarrassing in the “Am I the Asshole?” way, knowing full well that she was) that it couldn’t get out no matter what?

She went shopping with her best friend.

“Hold on, hold on,” Gigi said, raising a hand as she pulled away from my parents’ house and onto the main road. She needed new hose because Buckley chewed through hers, and rumor had it the new boutique in town had her favorite kind. “Are you saying thatSebastian Fellcame to the Revelry last night and you didn’t immediately tell me? Are we even friends? This is betrayal.”

I sighed. “I was alittlepreoccupied.”

“I mean, he did fly all the way out here to work with you. I feel like that’s dedication,” Gigi said. I’d told her the bare bones of it all: that an artist wanted to write a song with me and our first session went badly. I told my parents the same thing last night when they wondered why I was in such a crappy mood.“I’m sure emotions were high. He was probably nervous.”

“I was nervous, too,” I admitted.

I had messed up, and now I was afraid to even reach out in our heads. He certainly hadn’t. If I concentrated hard enough, I could hear his thoughts, but he was so much better at thinking quietly, and it felt like an intrusion to lean too far in. I didn’t want to upset him even more than I already had.

Gigi reached for her phone to turn on a playlist. “Jo, I love you, but just tell him that you’re sorry.”

“I hate this,” I decided. Because if he was just a disembodied voice named Sasha in my head, this would be easy—but Sebastian Fell? “I don’t really know how to talk to him.”

She rolled her eyes. “Like any normal guy.”

Except he could read my mind, which wasn’t very normal guy of him.

“You know, the rumors on Reddit say that he volunteers at an after-school music program under a fake name, but maybe now with his dad retiring he wants to get back into music again. But he doesn’t know how to. So maybe he wantsyouto help him.”

I thought back on all the little asides about Roman Fell and the Boulevard while I knew him as Sasha, and then his outburst yesterday. “How does he get along with his dad?”

“Notoriously badly,” she replied, and then leaned toward me. “So, do you …”

“Do I what?”

She quirked an eyebrow. Tapped a song on her phone. Suddenly,High School Musical’s “Start of Something New” blasted from the speakers.

“No,no,I donot!” I squawked emphatically and slammed my hand on the volume knob to turn it off.“HowdareyouHigh School Musicalme!”

“I sure asHigh School Musicaldid. Because you do—you have a crush!”

“Even if Idid—which I don’t—could you imagine how messy that would be? Writing a song togetherwhilecrushing on him? That sounds like hell.”

“Oh, come on, isn’t that the kind of drama great songs are made of?”

I thought about what kind of song that would sound like: what kinds of secrets I could weave into lyrics, what kind of fun house mirror I could hold up to the world, the intricate ways to describe the artistry he used when he laced his fingers into my hair—

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