Page 7 of Guitars and Mistakes
I looked over my shoulder, wondering if he was still sitting at that same table, and found him staring at me, his face still and quiet like he was afraid to let anything show. He looked more lost than I’d ever seen him, there by himself with a big stack of pancakes and way too much syrup, the other people in the restaurant avoiding him like he was a plague victim or something.
He’d opened up to me. He’d let me in and maybe—maybe—started counting on me to see who he really was and give him a safe place to land. He’d shared blueberry pie with me and forced me to help him steal a car and seen dragons in the clouds.
And now he was shutting me out and Taylor wanted me to step in front of him and take the glory for myself.
“Your contract depends on you doing this, Lila,” Taylor said, like she could hear what I was thinking. “I can’t sign artists who won’t do the work I give them.”
I swung back to her, my heart in my mouth. I’d known that was coming. It wasn’t a surprise.
And luckily, I already knew what I was going to say.
I stuck my hand out and grinned at her. “Then it’s a good thing you’ve got a deal, Taylor. When do we start?”
She began talking again, laying out plan after plan for what she wanted me to do, and I prayed that Anna was listening and taking mental notes. Getting it all organized so she could tell me about it later. I hoped Taylor also had it all written down somewhere so she could email it to me.
Because I’d already stopped paying attention.
I was too busy building a plan for how I was going to save Rivers Shine from himself, and worm my way back into his life while I was doing it.
RIVERS
My Sunshine Girl didn’t look like she was enjoying her breakfast very much.
I watched as her face went from red-hot—she’d been looking at me like she was trying to shoot flames right at me before Taylor caught her—to pale, to... something that looked like it was carved from stone.
Whatever Taylor was saying wasn’t sitting well with her, and I could see her expression reflected on Anna’s face. True, I didn’t know Anna as well and doubted she thought very much of me, but she was also Lila’s best friend. The girl who watched out for my girl. And she’d gone nearly as still and stony as Lila herself.
Taylor’s face, on the other hand, was all business, and she was talking a mile a minute. She’d obviously gone to that meeting already knowing what she was going to say and how she was going to say it. She’d been prepared to do whatever it took to talk Lila and Anna into her newest scheme. And if I knew Taylor, she’d presented it so clearly that there was almost no argument to be made. Then, once she’d had her say, she’d put the cherry on the top.
Lila and Anna were on this tour to try to win a contract, and Taylor had promised them one if Lila pretended to date me. The dating thing…
Well, it was still going on, but it didn’t take a genius to guess that Taylor didn’t think it was going well. Lila and I had been in front of the cameras but I’d been having more and more trouble summoning a smile for those flashes, and before long our story was going to go from ‘young and in love’ to ‘she couldn’t fix what was wrong with him.’
That didn’t suit Taylor’s plans at all.
I was betting that the meeting they were having now had a whole lot to do with that problem, and whatever Taylor had come up with as a solution. And I was also betting that Taylor was letting them both know that the contract she’d promised them was now on the line unless Lila did exactly what she wanted.
My eyes shot back to Lila and I took in the too-pale skin and eyes that had grown several sizes larger. Right. Taylor was definitely demanding more of her, then, and I could guess what that was, too. The girl was incredibly talented and beautiful and charming, and she was wasted if she was just standing around in the audience. Taylor had already marked her out for a contract, after only hearing her sing once, and she had to be telling her now that she wanted Lila and Anna up on stage more often, playing to the crowd and building their fan base. Earning that contract she’d been dangling in front of them.
She was probably also telling them that she even knew when they could get on stage. Lila had performed with my band once before and the guys adored her. They’d immediately taken her under their wing and started treating her like the little sister none of them actually had. No leap to think Taylor was suggesting Lila and Anna play with The Authors when we were on stage. She might even be offering them time with Olivia and Connor and their band.
She was almost inevitably telling them that I was a waste of time and could no longer throw around the weight I once had. That Lila would be better off forgetting about me. Maybe she was even pulling the whole fake dating scheme off the table, telling Lila that she had better things for her to do with her time.
And if shewastelling her that I was a waste of time and that Lila would be better off without me?
Well, would she be so wrong?
Hadn’t I been thinking the same thing about myself for the past week? For the past few years?
For my entire life?
The last week, of course, had been even worse. I couldn’t seem to get it together, couldn’t get myself back on track. My focus had left me and any momentum I’d had coming into this tour had flown right out the window. True, I’d had a flare of it for a bit, when Lila had first entered my life and I’d had a taste of hope for the first time in... well, ever.
And then I’d come to my senses and pulled away. Given up on something that could have pulled me out of the hole, and sent myself right back into that darkness.
The thing was, this wasn’t the first time I’d gone through something like this. There were too many spirals to count over the years, too many almost-made-it moments, and too many times when I’d intentionally turned back into the darkness.
But this was the first time I could pinpoint the specific thing that had almost pulled me up, and then sent me spiraling back into the shadows.
