Page 6 of One More Made Up Love Song
How am I supposed to write about love when I have no idea what it feels like?
“Come on,” Ivy says. “Sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
I let her tug me to my feet and guide me toward the back of the bus. We shuffle past a set of bunks where Ivy, Seth, and Wayne will sleep tonight. My band and the rest of the crew are on another bus somewhere up ahead, but I like to have Ivy and Seth close, and I’ve had enough run-ins with fans to know it’s best to have securityonmy bus at all times.
Ivy reaches around me and opens my bedroom door. Even months into the tour, I still feel twitchy about having a private bedroom when everyone else has to sleep in the bunks. Seth keeps saying it’s my right, since I’m the one paying the bills—including everyone’s salaries. And Ivy insists the bunks are comfortable.
But I still don’t like it.
“Dude. Why are you dragging your feet?” Ivy whispers. “Your bed is right there. You can literally just collapse into it.”
She tugs the bag of Starburst out of my hands and gives me a gentle shove toward the bed before turning away.
“Ivy, wait.”
She pauses and looks back, brown eyes wide. “What?”
“Nothing. Just—thanks for tonight. Sorry I made things hard on you.”
Her expression softens, her lips ticking up into a subtle smile. “Don’t worry about it. I’m used to it. And everything turned out okay in the end.”
I push my hands into the pockets of my hoodie. “Do you really think I’m insufferable?”
She breathes out a sigh like me asking the question only builds her case against me. “Yes,” she says. “But it’s actually kind of endearing.”
“Endearing?”
She leans against the wall. “The way you always assume that everyone already loves you. Or you trust that everything willalwayswork out. I envy it, honestly. I tend to plan my way into feeling confident, which requires a lot more stress.”
“So…when you say I’m insufferable, you actually mean…I’m amazing?”
She rolls her eyes, then reaches out and pats me on the chest. “Sure, Freddie,” she says with a grin. “That’s exactly what I mean.”
“For real though,” I say, not wanting her to walk away just yet. “I probably wouldn’tbe so confident that everything will always work out if I didn’t have you planning for me. So maybe the right conclusion here is that we make a really good team.”
Something flickers behind Ivy’s expression that I can’tquite read. “Yeah, I guess we do,” she says. “Now go to bed. Seth already took off his boots. That means it’s time to sleep.”
“I thought I smelled something,” I say.
“I heard that,” Seth calls, his voice muffled by the privacy curtain in front of his bunk.
I watch from my bedroom door as Ivy walks to her bunk. She reaches in and pulls out a small zippered pouch, then crosses to the bathroom. When she turns and sees me still standing there, she shakes her head, giving me an exasperated look before she picks up her hand, using two fingers to mime walking as she tilts her head toward my room.
As tired as I am, I don’t know why I’m so restless—why I’m resisting going to bed in the first place. If I were smart, I would have been asleep an hour ago. But after what happened in CVS, or maybe just after the conversation we had, I’m craving validation like I haven’t before.
From Ivy, specifically.
She was so quick to say that we would never work.
Why does that bother me so much?
When Ivy disappears into the bathroom, I finally turn and shut my bedroom door, sighing before I kick off my shoes and collapse onto my bed.
I tug my phone out of my back pocket, then scroll through a dozen new text messages. I pull up the group chat with my former Midnight Rush bandmates, where several new messages are waiting for me. We were only a boyband for just shy of three years, and that was over eight years ago. But we recently reconnected for a one-time reunion show just before my tour, and we’ve been talking on a more regular basis ever since.
The first message is from Adam, a picture of him with hisarms full of what look like golden retriever puppies. The message under the picture reads,One for each of you.
It’s exactly the kind of dog I would want if I could have a dog, but something like that feels a long way off. Like a thing that will happen when my real life starts.
