Page 33 of Dear Rockstar (Dear Rockstar 1)

“Hey now…!” I protested, but I was laughing, something I couldn’t have imagined doing just a day or so ago. I took my Tyler Vincent obsession very seriously! “Why would you dis a rock star, if you want to be one?”

He was quiet for a minute and I heard him strumming his guitar again, something familiar but I couldn’t quite place it. “Because if I don’t, I’ll have to graduate from the academy and go to Rutgers and get a real job and wear a suit and tie. Who wants that?”

“You have a point,” I agreed. The life of a rock star seemed far more exciting and glamorous than some corporate hack—even a millionaire corporate hack. I didn’t know any girl who went bananas over Bill Gates the way they did over Tyler Vincent. “So you think you’ll win the Battle of the Bands?”

“I don’t know.” He sounded a little less confident but his guitar didn’t lie. He was playing around, strumming chords, and just that made me feel all dreamy-eyed and star struck. “Right now, I’ve set my sights on making the semi-finals. One round at a time.”

“I’d like to hear you,” I confessed.

Everywhere I looked around my room was Tyler Vincent, yet I wasn’t thinking about him, for the first time in I didn’t even know how long. I closed my eyes and all I could see was Dale, head cocked, half-smile on his face, that bit of hair hanging over one eye as he played.

“Now? Over the phone?”

“Put the phone down so I can hear you.”

“All right, hang on.”

The sound of his voice receded as he asked, “Can you still hear me?”

“Yes!” I spoke up, although I was afraid the stepbeast might hear. I waited for him to pick up the phone again, but he didn’t.

“Good.” Dale strummed idly, the sound of the guitar more prominent than his voice. “Hmm, let’s see. Well, this is what I was playing before I called you.”

It was familiar but I couldn’t place it at first, and then I did. It was Sting’s Every Breath You Take. Aimee called it the “stalker song,” and she teased me every time it came on the radio or we saw the video—the one with Sting and all the candles—on MTV, “Sara! Isn’t this your song for Tyler Vincent?”

And then Dale began to sing and everything else in the world went away. My dismal first week at the academy, the stepbeast, even Tyler Vincent, they all faded away, lost in the crowd, because Dale was in the spotlight and he was all I could focus on. Even if he resembled Tyler Vincent, he didn’t sound a thing like him. His voice was deeper, more rough around the edges, and this song, in his voice, was like listening to a husky lullaby.

I felt myself floating on his words, every sound another cloud that sent me drifting away, caught up in the music, his voice. I didn’t know how honored I would feel to be given such an intimate show. He was playing, and it was beautiful, but he wasn’t playing for just anyone. It wasn’t like listening to a record or a song on the radio, because he was playing just for me.

When the song ended, there was a brief silence. I couldn’t move or open my eyes or breathe. I was far away, and yet closer to anyone than I think I’d ever been when he picked up the phone and said my name.

“Wow.” It was all I could manage. “Wow.”

“See, that’s how I felt when I saw your sketch.”

I blushed. “Subject aside, of course.”

“I’m just jealous,” he admitted in a soft tone that stole all my breath.

“Of Tyler Vincent? Because he’s a rock star?”

He paused. “No, because you like him more than me.”

“Don’t be so sure about that,” I murmured, my heart soaring in my chest. I refused to open my eyes to look at Tyler Vincent papering my walls, staring back at me. All I could think about was Dale. No, worse… at the moment, he was all I wanted to think about. “So do you play electric guitar too?”

“Hell yeah.” I heard him grinning. “But my amp sucks. I use Terry’s old one when we practice and it sounds awful. I sold the amp last year to buy a car and I sold the car to buy my new electric guitar.”

“Oh the irony.”

“Tell me about it. So…” He was strumming again, every pass of his fingers over the strings resonating in my body like I was a tuning fork. “So what are your plans this evening?”

“Not a thing.” There was no Tyler Vincent, no painting to finish, no contest to enter, no stepbeast lurking outside my door.

There was nothing but Dale Diamond.

“Good, because I want to talk to you for a long time.”

And we did.

---