Page 77 of Sounds Like Love

“WellI’mnot going to sing it,” I teased. “Besides, it might be terrible.”

“It won’t be.”

I studied his face, the determination in his bright blue eyes. There was something just so lovely about the confidence he had in me, and I knew without a doubt that whatever song I gave him, he knew how to sing it. He would be able to understand every lyric, every note, down to its core.

And I wanted to know why that was—

I wanted to know everything about him, really. I wanted to know all the things even tabloids weren’t privy to—the things they ignored.I wanted to know the mundane things, whether he liked top sheets and if he wore his socks inside out because the seam bothered him. All the things that people took for granted.

It surprised me and terrified me.

“Who’s playing tonight at the Rev?” he asked.

I tried to recall who Dad said was playing tonight over coffee and crosswords this morning. “I think it’s a local Jimmy Buffett tribute band.”

He tilted his head. “I could go for a cheeseburger in paradise. You?”

This was a terrible idea. I should just tell him goodbye. Walk home. Because if I brought him into the Rev, even though no one had come up to him today in his tourist getup, I was sure he’d attract another crowd like he had the first night, and I didn’t want to subject him to that if he wasn’t up for it. There was no way I could take him in the front door. But … no one said I had tousethe front door. I did have the keys, after all.

And I really didn’t want today to end yet, either.

Chapter27I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)

JOLLY MON SING,the Jimmy Buffett tribute band, bobbed back and forth happily as they sang about lost shakers of salt and bad decisions. Sasha and I sat in the tiny balcony, sharing a cheeseburger basket and fries from the local fast-food joint. It was my favorite kind of night at the Revelry, especially after a day in the sun, beach sand and salt still crusted to my edges, my hair smelling like sunscreen. It wasn’t the most glamorous look for me—if I was in LA, I’d never be caughtdeadwith sand between my toes. But here, in the Revelry, which had seen me at my worst, I felt safe with my hair falling out of its braid, my cheeks and shoulders rosy with sun.

That surprised Sasha. “I thought you’d like the headbangers more. This place packed from wall to wall.”

“I like those nights, too,” I conceded, “but this?” And I leaned forward against the railing and watched the crowd below. There weren’t many people here tonight—maybe fifty, drinking and singing along with their beach friends they hadn’t seen all year,and there at the corner of the bar were Mom and Dad, slow dancing to “Come Monday.”

This is what I miss when I get homesick, I told him, a secret between us.

He leaned forward, too, his chin on his hands, and watched the crowd below us. “I don’t think I’ve ever been homesick for a place. Mom and I switched apartments so often, I never really got attached to the one in the Valley. She always said that places weren’t what mattered, but the people in them. So wherever my mom was, that was home. After she died, I never really called a place home again. They were just that, places. One interchangeable with another.”

I looked over at him, trying to make out his expression in the darkness of the balcony, but the lights were low, shifting from blue to green to teal as Jolly Mon Sing sang on about finding your way home. “How about now?”

“They’re all still places,” he admitted. “The closest thing that was …”

“Is the stage,”he finished in our heads.“Those big concerts—the music so loud you can hear your own brain in your skull vibrate with the bass. I miss that. But I think I miss it because with all those people singing along to us, I finally felt like I belonged somewhere again.”

He pushed himself away from the railing then and leaned back in his chair. “Then I remember that sounds too much like my dad, and I hate it.”

Whenever he talked about his dad, his face pinched. I remembered joking with Gigi about how tropey it was, for a bad boy musician to have daddy issues.

“Please don’t call him daddy,”he said with a sigh.

I winced. “Sorry.”

Then he leaned a little closer to me, his mouth twisting a little into a smirk.“Me, on the other hand …”

I rolled my eyes and tugged at his collar. “Oh-kay, Vacation Dad.”

“Admit it, the Hawaiian shirts turn you on.”

“Terribly,” I deadpanned.

He barked a laugh. “Come Monday” morphed into another song, and the blues melted to soft pinks and yellows. He sat and listened, his foot tapping with the music.

“Sometimes I wonder who I would’ve been if I’d never met my dad,”he said after a while.“Never did the whole boy band thing. Never frosted my tips. Never cut a record. Never learned how much I could hate a song.”

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