Page 49 of A Love Song for Dreamers

I take a last look in the mirror at my stage getup, the makeup, the hair—all done by professionals to craft a man who looks like me but isn’tquite.

“Tell me yesterday wasn’t you trying to fuck your ex out of yourhead.”

My blunt words have her pausing. But there’s a cord of strength in her voice when she responds. “I think I needed to feel alive in a way I haven’t felt in a long time. I wanted to feel in control, which I know is a weird way to think of what happened, but it’strue.”

Maybe I haven’t been alive these past two years despite the crowds and the music and pressing past every challenge that’s been leveled atme.

Maybe I didn’t feel in control until I had her heated skin under my lips, her hot breath on my hand, her tight body squeezing me when she brokeapart.

When I answered her call, I wanted to prove my heart doesn’t beat forher.

But now, it’s hammering harder thanever.

“You are the most alive person I’ve ever met,” I say. “I saw your show in New York four times. I couldn’t see opening night off-Broadway because we had a gig in Colorado. But the second night, I flew in. And your first night on Broadway. I even saw it once without you in it, because there was something I suspected but wanted to know forsure.”

I block out the noises from the backstage crew, the chatter and footsteps in the hall, until all I hear is her soft breathing. “What’sthat?”

“It was better withyou.”

Everything’s better withyou.

11

This morning,there’s no alarm to wake me to startworking.

There’s no screaming from downstairs, no sound of Sophie shrieking, nodaycare.

But I’m awake and warm anditchy.

I’ve been at Dad and Haley’s for four days. The first couple of nights, I slept through without waking. Since Tyler left for LA, though, I’ve been restless and turnedon.

I still haven’t found the breakthrough I need with my final song, and I know Ian’s breathing down my neck. Soon Miranda will be,too.

So, this morning, I give myself this onething.

I slide a hand down the front of my pajamas, where I’m alreadywet.

It’s a bad idea to fantasize about a man you can’thave.

I didn’t let myself do it when we were apart, save for a couple of times when I gave myself a pass on account of being too tipsy to regulate my fantasizing or having a really brutal day of rehearsing or, once, when he did a spread for this magazine where I swear he was looking right at me and seeing every dirty thought I’ve ever had about him—when we were together andsince.

A few sweaty minutes in the studio—no matter how earth-shattering—doesn’t changeanything.

What about you calling him before hisshow?

I did it to prove that all the months he was on the road, I hadn’t held him at a distance because I wanted him out of mylife.

But it didn’t play out the way Iexpected.

It was better withyou.

It sounded as if he didn’t only mean the show. I wanted him to meanthat.

But I can’t fall for Tyler Adamsagain.

My heart wouldn’t surviveit.

When he comes back later today, there’ll be no more longing looks, no more flirty winks, and definitely no more thinking about how the only thing terrible about having his tongue in me was that it wasn’t hiscock.

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