Page 59 of August Lane
Luke grinned. “So I should stop singing, then. Next to you, I sound like a frog choking on a lily pad.”
“No. You sound like heartbreak.” He tried to meet her eyes, but she focused on his guitar. “You always did, no matter what you were singing. Rainbows only came at the end of a storm. Every love song was about how you lost it.” She reached over and strummed the first chords of “Another Love Song” but made it their version, slower and sadder. “People take a sweet thing for granted. But no one forgets what makes them cry.”
Luke touched the guitar, his fingers inches from hers. “I don’t want to make you cry, August.”
There was a scar on one of his fingers, barely visible beneath the letters tattooed on his knuckles. She knew where it came from, what it had looked like fresh and bleeding. She wanted to ask whether all his body art was camouflage, a way to hide his trauma.
August stood and grabbed her journal. “Maybe we could work on some of my false starts.” She flipped the pages and leaned back in her chair. “Tell me what you think.”
He read the page she showed him with a furrowed brow, which made her nervous. It had been years since anyone critiqued her work.
“Is this about Jojo?”
August glanced at the pages. The working title was “Bitter,” and the song opened with a poison metaphor.If I die tomorrow / blame the lies you fed me.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe?”
“Were y’all fighting when you wrote this?”
She tried to remember. She knew it had been after Birdie’s second nurse quit, and Jojo had been slow about hiring a replacement. Their texts had grown progressively hostile until August said Birdie would probably die before Jojo wrote another check. They didn’t speak for months.
“That’s what we do. Argue over bills. Avoid each other.” Only with Birdie gone, there was no reason to make peace anymore.
“Is that all she did to help you? Send money?”
“Yes.”
“No wonder you got so mad when I offered it to you.” Luke skimmed the lyrics again and said, “This is good.”
“Thank you.”
“Angry.”
“Good art often is.”
He flipped the pages, scanning different songs. “Anything else in here?”
She snatched the journal back. “If you don’t like it, just say so.”
“It feels unfocused. I don’t think you should launch your career with an improvised dis track.”
She read through it again, noting incoherent themes and structure. The song was a stream-of-consciousness rant. “Fine, you’re right. But don’t go digging around in my journal. Some of it’s personal.”
“Everything’s personal,” Luke said. “Trust me, being up onstage with thousands of people judging every word that comes out of your mouth is as personal as it gets. The real question is what you’re willing to give them. Because once you do, it’s gone. You don’t own it anymore.”
“Like ‘Another Love Song’?” She couldn’t help herself. Anytime he brought up ownership, she remembered what he stole.
He nodded curtly and leaned away from her. “Yeah. Exactly like that. I gave it up the minute I sang it onCountry Star.” He rubbed his palms against his jeans. “Gave up a lot of things.”
August was hit with a sudden, bone-deep weariness of the topic. Rehashing what he’d done wouldn’t help her write anything new. Based on her lack of progress, it was doing the opposite.
“I’m out of ideas,” she admitted. “I stayed up all night trying to think of something, but I think it’s been too long since I’ve done this.”
Luke leaned in, hands dangling between his knees. “Tell me a story.”
“That’s my trick.”
“It’s a good one. Never forgot it. No one wants to hear mine, but you?” He gazed at her. “I know you’ve got stories to tell.”
