Page 5 of One More Made Up Love Song
She lifts her eyebrows, giving me a pointed look, and I grimace.
“Okay, bad timing. But you agreed to give me all the red and pink. If you want them, you can totally have them.”
Wayne chuckles. “You walked right into that one.”
I frown into my hand of color-sorted Starburst. An unfortunate side effect of my celebrity status is that most of the time, I don’t even have to ask to get what I want. People are lined up to give me things, to make my life easier, to smooth every wrinkle and eliminate every possible roadblock.
It’s probably good I have people in my life who bring me back down to earth when all that attention goes to my head.
But it still stings to hear Ivy’s assessment.
Even if I’m fully aware that we would be a very bad idea—because we would—for a split second in CVS tonight, holding Ivy in my arms felt…good. It’s not like I expect her to be as moved by all the friendly touching as I was, but she could at least not be repulsed by it.
My tour manager appears from the back of the bus looking tired to the bone, the bags under his eyes framed by deep creases in his sun-worn skin. Even though Sethlookslike a retired cattle rancher who spent his days on horseback, baking himself under an Arizona sky, that’s not anywhere close to the truth.
Seth grew up in Beverly Hills with parents who both worked in show business. The Wranglers and cowboy boots he wears are more fashion accessories than practical choices, but man, can he sell the look.
Last time I was in LA to film a couple of talk shows, we lost Seth for almost three hours because someone mistookhim for an extra on a Western filming nearby and shuttled him to thewrongsound stage.
We still like to tease him about that one.
“You should get some sleep,” Seth says, using a fatherly tone that only he can get away with. “We all should.”
Ivy yawns beside me. “He’s right. You have an early start tomorrow.” She glances at her watch. “Or, today, really. In just a few hours.”
“Do I? What am I doing early?”
“A radio interview,” she says. “But you’ll be done by nine if you want to sleep a little more before soundcheck.”
I breathe out a sigh. Soundcheck, thenanotherconcert.
I love what I do, but this late in the tour, back-to-back shows are pretty draining.
Ivy nudges my knee. “Ten more days,” she says, reading me as well as she always does. “Then you’ll get a break.”
I run a hand through my hair. “Hardly a break,” I say, though that’s not entirely true.
In ten days, I’ll be back home in Nashville for two months.
No tour bus.
No traveling at all.
At the end of the break, we’ll kick off the second leg of the tour with a show in Nashville before hitting seventeen more cities in the eastern half of the United States. Then we’ll head to Europe for ten more concerts there. I’m looking forward to the Nashville show—I love performing to a home crowd. Well,sort ofhome crowd. I grew up in Seattle, but my roots feel a lot deeper in Nashville than they do in Washington, even with my family still living there.
The point is, I’m supposed to use the two months wearen’t traveling to record my next album. And that’s the last thing I feel like doing.
Mostly because I don’t have a single new song I like singing. I have dozens Icouldrecord. But none that feel like what Iwantto record right now.
Ivy keeps telling me to trust the process. I’ve been in this position before, and inspiration has always found me. But something is missing this time.
I can sense it, even if I can’t quite put my finger on what it is.
Maybe I’m just tired.
Tired of gas station candy and tour buses.
Tired of made-up songs about made-up emotions.
