Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 93936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 313(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 313(@300wpm)
This is exactly what I needed.
No cameras. No pressure. Just noise low enough to ignore and cold beer on tap that comes in a pitcher.
I’m shredding a napkin when Justine slides onto the empty bench across from me. Her lavender hair is pulled into a messy, twisted-looking knot, her eyeliner is smudged, and she’s wearing a leather jacket. She looks like someone who belongs in music—wild and grounded.
While I look homeless.
I adjust my beanie, bringing it lower and wishing I had a ball cap on to hide my face now that she’s on the other side of the table.
Her hand reaches for my glass and pulls my beer to her, taking a sip. Her face scrunches, and she makes a gagging sound. “This is disgusting.”
“It’ll taste different when you turn twenty-one,” I tell her as I take the glass back and take a sip, not really caring that she took a drink. “How’d you find me?”
Justine laughs. “Elle has your location. She needed a volunteer to come over and see what’s what.”
“And you volunteered?”
She sighs. “Well, not exactly. Ajay has his kids here, so he didn’t want to come. Keane has Chandler. Dana’s getting her hair dyed. Elle thought if she sent Hendrix in, neither of you would come out.”
“Winner, winner by process of elimination.”
She shrugs. “I don’t mind.”
“Good to know.” I take a drink and watch the TV out of the corner of my eye. I was hoping to catch some news on Noah’s football team.
“Are you always this broody?”
“You sound like Ajay. I don’t brood,” I deadpan.
She arches a brow. “Quinn, you literally walked out of rehearsal today like a haunted poet who forgot how to sleep.”
I almost laugh. Almost.
“You’re not wrong.”
She leans forward, resting her elbows on the table. “So . . . Nola.”
I stiffen. The name lands like a shot I didn’t ask for.
“I don’t want to talk about her,” I say, my voice low.
Justine nods. “Fair. But for the record, I wasn’t bringing her up to talk about the elephant in the room. I was just . . . acknowledging that I’m not the only one who sees it. Just the one willing to say something.”
“Did my sister pay you to come over here?”
Justine smiles widely. “No, process of elimination, remember.”
“I’m fine. Everything is fine.” I scrub my hand over my face. “What happened earlier won’t happen again.”
She shrugs. “You wear your pain like a backstage pass. Doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing.”
I stare down at my drink. “I’ve never heard that euphemism. I sort of like it.”
Another smile. I kind of like her smile.
“I really like singing with you,” she says, changing the subject.
“Once we release the song, it’s going to be a massive hit. Are you ready for it?”
“Elle says the same thing. I think the girls are jealous, though.”
I nod, understanding. “You haven’t known each other very long?”
Justine shakes her head. “Not at all. I joined their band, and now here we are, on this tour, and I’m singing with you. They’re still nice, but I’ve noticed some cold shoulder stuff.”
“It happens,” I tell her. “Especially when one has more talent than others.”
There’s a silence between us, with the bar noises filling the space.
She looks at me with a warm, sweet gaze. For the first time, I feel something in the center of my chest, and it’s not the ache of the ring.
“Do you ever think maybe music is where your truth lives now?”
Her question is out of the blue and catches me off guard. I don’t know what to say to that. If I’m singing about heartache and Nola no longer being in my life, am I predicting my future?
“Maybe,” I say because I’m not sure.
Justine picks up a napkin and pulls a pen out of her pocket. She starts writing words down and then passes it to me, along with the pen. For the next hour, we write words down until we’ve covered a half dozen napkins and have a full song.
Now we just need a melody.
TWELVE
The napkin lyrics from last night are smoothed out on the three stools in front of me, ink smudged from the weight of two hands scribbling something honest, and edges curled from the humidity and being stuffed into a pocket.
As a musician, one prone to writing his own songs, you’d think I’d carry remember to put my notebook in my pocket before I leave the house or the bus in this case. But nope.
I haven't stopped thinking about the words on the somewhat dirty napkin, covered in mine and Justine’s handwriting. Hers is loopy and flowery, while mine is messy and jagged.
These lyrics, the making of a new song—they’re not about Nola—not entirely. And that’s how I know they matter. How this song will be different. It’s something Justine and I created together, through our own experiences, heartache, and whatever else we have going on inside of ourselves.