Page 81 of Once Upon a Boyband
“Okay, that’s fair,” Laney says.
“I promise we won’t make fun of you,” Freddie says. “What else do you remember?”
She purses her lips to the side. “Okay, I remember that Leo’s full name is Leonardo Emile LeClair.”
“Emile!” Freddie says. “I forgot about that.”
“And that Jace’s first kiss was behind the bleachers at a middle school soccer game.”
Jace lifts his beer in acknowledgement, but he doesn’t say anything. He hasn’t said much tonight at all. His eyes look distant, and he’s frowned at his phone at least a dozen times.
“Then there’s all the things I remember aboutyou,” Laney says. Her hand moves to the crook of my arm, where it’s still wrapped around her waist, and she slides her fingers over the curve of my bicep, her touch feather soft.
If she’s trying to distract me, she’s doing an incredible job.
“Like what?” I ask, forcing myself to focus on her words and not just the shape of her full bottom lip as she says them.
“Like how much you love pineapple on your pizza even though it’s totally gross. And that your favorite book—at least when you were sixteen—wasThe Way of Kings.”
“Still is,” I say. “It’s a great book.”
“Laney, what’s your favorite Midnight Rush song?” Freddie asks from across the fire. He has his acoustic guitar in his hands and he’s tuning the instrument with practiced ease.
“‘The Start of Forever,’” she says without hesitation.
“Makes sense,” Jace says. “That’s the only one your man wrote himself.”
Laney turns and looks at me. “You wrote that song? How did I not know that?”
“Because we never sang it,” I say. “It wasn’t very good.”
“Only because it was overproduced,” Leo says. “The song itself was great.”
Freddie stands and moves around the fire and holds out his guitar. “Come on,” he says. “Take us through it.”
“Nah. You go ahead. You know it too.”
He gives the guitar a little shake. “But it’s your song.”
Laney hops up, moving to the empty chair next to me, and I take Freddie’s guitar. I strum a few chords and let the familiar notes wash over me, calm me, like they always do right before I start to sing.
“Leo’s right. It was overproduced,” I say. “And we sang it too fast. It’s better slower. Stripped down.”
The fire crackles and pops as I start to play, and an owl hoots overhead. Across the firepit, Ivy stands behind Freddie, phone in hand like she’s already filming. Keeping my eyes down, I glance over at Laney, letting the warmth in her eyes ground me as I start to sing.
The lyrics are simple enough. First love, first touches, that first moment when you look at someone and wonder if they’re the start of your forever. I didn’t have any clue what I was talking about when I wrote it. Just vague ideas of what I thought love might feel like. But I’ve had a few moments like those this week, and I can’t keep myself from looking at Laney when I sing about a “first kiss that leaves your heart in her hands.”
The rest of the guys join in on the chorus, their voices blending as well as they always did. It’s my song, so I’m biased, but we sound good.Really good.Good enough that at least while I’m singing, I forget this isn’t what I want to do with my life.
At the end of the song, Ivy and Laney start to clap, but there areothersclapping too. We turn to see two couplesstanding just beyond the fire. Flint Hawthorne has a woman I assume is his wife tucked under his arm. His brother, Perry, the one who runs the farm, is also there with his wife and their son, Jack, who designated himself as our assistant this week and has been constantly bringing water bottles and snacks into rehearsal.
“That was amazing,” one of the women says.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Flint says. “We were here visiting our parents, but I’m heading out of town tomorrow and wanted to say goodbye before I go.”
Freddie gets up and moves toward Flint, but he pauses on his way there and looks at me across the fire.
“That was brilliant, man. We’re recording it tomorrow,” he says. Then he turns to give Flint a hug.
