Chapter 2
2
Caleb
When you used to be famous, people recognize you in the most inconvenient places.
It would be worse if I was still in LA. My appearance has changed a lot since I stopped wearing all the leather and eyeliner and cut my hair, but the superfans are too smart to fall for my Clark Kent act. I mean, I’m not nearly as recognizable as my former bandmates these days, but I still have my own Wikipedia page.
Wikipedia is forever.
“Oh my god, you’re Caleb Sloane, aren’t you?”
I smile politely at the barista handing over my iced matcha. She’s tall, white, and lanky with dyed red hair in two long braids and a name tag that reads “Betty.” Closer to my age than some of the usual staff—which is probably how she recognized me—she looks every bit our fan base with ripped jeans, heavy makeup, and black nails.
My mouth goes dry with panic, and all I want to do is forget my order and run like hell out the door. But I don’t want to be a jerk, and I can’t afford to alienate the only dog-friendly coffee shop in town. I’ll go anywhere I’m allowed to bring Sebastian Bark, the pit bull I adopted after I finished school, who sits impatiently at my side for one of the treats on the counter.
So even though it kills me, I lean on the thick slab of butcher block that makes up the espresso bar for strength and confirm Betty’s suspicions with a small smile.
“Yup, that’s me.” Since the ticket to a record deal for my old band was a viral video, fans tend to recognize my face. I square my shoulders, resisting the urge to duck my head. Sensing my discomfort, Sebastian Bark licks my free hand. I scratch his warm, silky ears in silent gratitude.
Betty’s eyes go wide. “I knew it! Are you still in touch with the rest of the band?”
My heart hammers—I’ve never been good at answering questions like this, especially since I know the truth just lets our fans down. The fans were the best part of my Glitter Bats days. They were so kind and supportive, and they did amazing things like draw incredible art inspired by our music and tattoo lyrics I wrote on their skin. They even wrote fan fiction, which I swore to never read again after the first one made me blush.
I owe every moment of success to people who were so inspired by my art. But I don’t have anything to offer anymore.
Suddenly, this quiet, spacious coffee shop I usually find so much comfort in, with its bare warehouse ceilings and walls bedecked with cheerful local art, feels stiflingly claustrophobic. Fortunately, I’m not alone this Saturday morning, so I don’t have to navigate the awkwardness by myself.
“Caleb is late for an appointment, but we love fans!” Leah, my sister-in-law, says. Somehow she manages to wrap an arm around my shoulders with a cold brew in one hand and the leash for Strawberry, her bouncy red border collie, in another. Sebastian Bark huffs for good measure as Leah steers all of us out of the shop.
“Thank you,” I say.
“Anytime,” Leah says, brushing her ponytail over her shoulder. She’s Korean, with almost-black hair and freckles across her face, and even though she’s fairly petite, she can easily sling an arm around my shoulder since I’m only five seven. As a PE teacher and track coach, she’s used to wrangling people—and teenagers are a much bigger challenge than harmless fans.
“I don’t know why I always freeze up,” I mutter as I squint against the late-spring sunlight.
“You don’t like letting people down. It’s cool, I’m happy to help.” My older sister, Cameron, is an ER nurse with intense work hours, so Leah’s kind of adopted me in her spare time, including for regular Sunday hikes like the one we’re coming back from. I’m only five years younger than Cam and Leah, but it’s enough that they both think they have to take care of me.
To be fair, I had a lot of growing up to do after becoming a rock star at eighteen. And now that Leah and I teach at the same school, we get to work together a bit—as much as PE and choir cross paths. (It’s more than you’d think.)
“We should have gotten drinks before the mountain. I’m parched!” she says as we open the rear doors of my Subaru for the dogs. It was a cool enough morning that Licorice Mountain wasn’t too hot, but I hum in agreement as I sip my own drink. Once everyone is situated—us with drinks and the dogs with treats—I pull out onto the road.
Leah plugs in my phone and turns on the stereo, and I try to just ignore my feelings and drive. My entire music library starts to shuffle.
“Taylor Swift?” Leah asks as something from 1989 (Taylor’s Version) plays.
“Taylor Swift is an incredible lyricist and I will not invite any slander in this car.”
She raises her hands, chuckling. “I wasn’t going to slander her. It’s only that your collection always surprises me.”
“I wish I could write songs the way she does,” I admit, clenching the soft leather of my steering wheel. It’s the closest I’ll get to confessing I’ve still got a notebook full of verses I’ll never record.
While I loved sharing my music with the world, there was something so raw and vulnerable about putting it all out there for public consumption. When people hear your lyrics, they make assumptions about your personal life, and it’s hard to navigate what’s safe to share and what needs to be kept locked away in your chest. There’s no going back now, so I’ll stick to helping the next generation find their voice.
The sun is getting unseasonably warm, but it’s such a nice day that I roll down the windows instead of blasting the AC on the drive back into our part of town. The dogs like it when I do this, because it means they can smile out the windows, tongues lolling in the wind. Still, the heat makes sweat bead down my skin as I drop Leah and Strawberry off at their condo. When I pull into my own driveway, I decide to hose Sebastian Bark off in the yard. Since he thinks the water is a toy and goes squirrelly with the hose, I strip my shirt off and change from running shoes to slides before beckoning him over to the spigot.
The water is a cool, crisp respite from the warm weather, and my anxiety trickles away as I maneuver eighty pounds of wriggly muscle to rinse off the dust from the trail. But he behaves, and I spend a few minutes taking pics of him being a good bath-time pup to post tomorrow. After I left the industry, I swore off social media, but Sebastian Bark’s account (where I never show my face or reveal my name) has almost one hundred thousand followers. Maybe that means I’m still an entertainer, but dog videos make the world better.
I used to think our music made the world better too, but that’s in the past.
By the time Sebastian Bark is clean, I’m soaked but sweaty, so I dunk my own head under the water. It’s almost freezing, but after a long hike it feels amazing. I start to think through my afternoon plans as I curl up the hose when a familiar voice makes my mouth go dry.
“Hey, stranger.”
Every muscle in my body tenses—like I’m waiting on a particularly jazzy chord to resolve into a smoother sound. I never expected to hear from her again, and definitely not in my front yard in an Oregon suburb. She’s been haunting me for years, a steady presence in magazines and TV shows and on the back pages of my songwriting notebooks, reminding me of our unfinished business.
Now she’s here on my doorstep, so I turn around to face Valerie Quinn for the first time in six years.
Despite the years of zero contact, I have to fight the instinct to pull her into my arms. She’s as gorgeous as ever, standing here in a faded T-shirt and leggings with platinum hair piled into a haphazard bun on top of her head. There are dark circles under her ocean-blue eyes, the tentative smile on her lips betrayed by an obvious exhaustion that still makes my stomach twist with concern. Something about her unkemptness reminds me of late nights writing music until the sun started glowing on the horizon.
It’s unsettling.
“What are you doing here?” My words are so harsh I can feel her flinch, and I almost want to take it back. But what was she expecting—a hug? After so much time apart, my brain is short-circuiting in her presence.
“Would you believe me if I said I was in the neighborhood?” she asks.
Calling her on her bullshit isn’t my job anymore, but based on the very non-Valerie Toyota Corolla parked on the curb, she came straight from the airport rental lot. She’s obviously here to talk, and I don’t think I’m going to like whatever made her travel a thousand miles to get here.
“How’d you even find me?” I ask.
Valerie clears her throat. “I’m sorry if this is a bad time…”
“No, it’s fine.” I sigh, running a hand through my wet hair. As much as I want to tell her to get back in the car and leave forever, I don’t have the heart to do it, even after all the horrible things we said to each other that last night. Now that she’s here, I know there’s no getting rid of her until she tells me what she came for. “We’ll go inside.”
Sebastian Bark chooses that moment to bound over to Valerie, flopping his wet torso against her legs and begging for scratches with the kind of puppy-dog sweetness that can’t be denied. Valerie crouches down and gets flat pit bull kisses all over her hands for the effort, and I can’t help but soften a little at the sight.
In a different life, he might’ve been hers too.
“Oh my god,” she says, staring up at me with heart eyes. “What a sweetheart.” Valerie beams, like it’s love at first sight. It’s hard not to make the comparison—the last girl I dated, Morgan, was terrified of any dog bigger than a Pomeranian. Our relationship was brief and casual, but if I had to choose, I would have chosen the dog.
With Valerie, that wouldn’t be an issue. She’s always adored dogs.
I clear my throat. “Yeah, Sebastian Bark loves everyone.”
Her smile brightens, and damn it if it doesn’t make the ice in my heart thaw a bit. I’ve never been good at resisting this girl. “ Gilmore Girls or Skid Row?” she asks.
I bite back a chuckle. “Both.”
When we were touring, it was hard to sleep on the bus, so we picked TV shows to binge until we fell asleep. Gilmore Girls was a particular Glitter Bats favorite because of the band, especially once Sebastian Bach showed up. I’m pretty proud of the terrible pun.
“Great name,” Valerie says. I call for Sebastian Bark again, and he bounds through my front door without further delay.
My jaw tightens as we head inside. The condo is small and bare, and all of my furniture is secondhand or straight from IKEA, obviously cheap. I live on a strict budget, and I can’t help but wonder what Valerie thinks as she takes in the space. It’s a stark contrast to the kind of places she’s used to staying.
At least the place is clean. My bare feet take comfort in the fresh vacuum tracks I laid down before our morning outing. Still, the carpet of my rental is as cheap as the rest of the place.
Most of my Glitter Bats money is long gone. After the first big paycheck, we bought designer clothes and paid for fancy hotel rooms and found the best instruments money could buy. Since I was still used to having a certain amount of (what I thought was) disposable income when I left the industry at twenty-two and went to college, I didn’t know how to manage my money. I blew through my remaining cash and couldn’t cover basic living expenses, which meant crashing on Cameron and Leah’s couch while I finished my degree.
If I could do anything over, it would have been putting all my Glitter Bats money in the bank. Maybe then our younger sister, Carrie, would have a college fund—because Mom sure as hell didn’t plan for her to be a piano prodigy. But there’s not much I can do to help on my teacher salary. Between the cost of rent and my staggering student loan payments, I live paycheck to paycheck, and it shows.
“Like what you’ve done with the place,” Valerie says, and I can’t tell what bothers me more—the fact that she can still read my mind, or the fact that she’s using it to get in a jab.
“It’s what I can afford.” Despite the tension coursing through my veins, I try not to sound super defensive. I don’t want her to know she can still hurt me. Desperate to do something , I walk over to the slider and let Sebastian Bark into the backyard to air-dry, keeping an eye on him through the windows. Then I realize I’m still shirtless. Neck heating, I scramble to tug on a T-shirt from the laundry basket I forgot at the base of the stairs last night.
Seemingly oblivious to my discomfort, Valerie wanders around my sparse living room, scrutinizing every inch. She pauses at the one personal item I have out—a photo of me and my sisters at Cameron and Leah’s wedding a few years ago. At the wistful look in her blue eyes, I can’t help but wonder if she wishes she’d been there.
Cameron was like her big sister too.
“You look happy here,” she says.
“I was.” It was a small wedding on the lake, but it was perfect for those two. Mom was actually mentally present for once, Carrie was happy-crying all day, and Strawberry was a very enthusiastic flower girl. It’s the best day I’ve had since I left the Glitter Bats behind.
Suddenly, I’m desperate to figure out what the hell Valerie wants and get her out of here, before I do something stupid like tell her how often I still think of her, or press her up against these godforsaken beige walls and kiss her into oblivion just to see if she still tastes the same. Instead of hovering around the living room like I’m doing, she drops her purse on the floor and sinks into my armchair, draping a knee over one side like she owns the place.
And in that moment, I know why she’s here: she wants something.
Perching on the edge of the couch against the other wall—as far away from her as I can get without being rude—I clear my throat. “So, Valerie…”
“I want to put together a Glitter Bats reunion,” she blurts.
My head swims as I try to register the words, but I feel like I’m hallucinating. She’s out of her mind. “You’re joking.”
“Please, just hear me out.”
Crossing my arms, I scramble to think of the fastest way to get her to leave. I can’t believe she would come here after all this time and ask me for this . “Nothing has changed. I said I was done.”
“I need this, Caleb. My reputation is a disaster. I don’t know if you’ve seen…” she trails off, face flushing.
“Whatever it is, I haven’t seen it.” I’ve muted everything Glitter Bats for years, anything I can do to keep these old feelings from stirring in my chest again. In Valerie’s presence, they come crashing back like a tidal wave. Suddenly, I can’t remember if I took my medication this morning, and I tap out a subtle rhythm on the cheap suede of the couch to ground myself.
Valerie shifts in the chair almost violently, tucking her feet under her and clasping her hands under her chin. “The Network won’t renew Epic Theme Song as long as I’m getting bad press. We can do a couple shows in LA, or just one night. Whatever it takes to get them to say something positive about me.” Even after all this time, I can tell when Valerie Quinn is trying to keep her voice steady. She’s fidgeting, agitated, clearly upset. It’s deeper than the press.
Still, I don’t know why she could possibly think this is the answer. My stomach knots. “So all of your reasons for doing this are what, some last-ditch effort to save your career?” At least she’s being up-front about wanting to use me this time.
The color drains from her face, and she straightens her shoulders, placing her palms on her thighs. “It’s not just about me. Ever since Glitter Bats broke up, the fans have begged us to do a reunion. The rest of the band is already in. They’re just waiting for you to say yes before they sign,” she says, pulling her phone out of her pocket. “You always said our fans were the reason for our success, and this would make them so happy. And the label is offering us all a huge check, so it’s not like you’d be doing this for nothing.”
“If I wanted the money, I’d have stayed in the industry,” I say. Of course the label is offering us a check—anything to get their hooks back in. Still, my resolve wavers, just enough to pique my curiosity.
“I know what you’re probably thinking—but it’s a good contract. My mom has nothing to do with this deal. Wade vetted everything, and so did Jane’s agent. Please at least read it before you say no,” Valerie says, crossing the room and thrusting her phone at me. It’s pulled up to a draft of a contract, and my eyes glaze over all the legalese until I find the payment.
It’s a big check. Big enough to pay off my student loans…or I could use it to start Carrie’s college fund so she doesn’t feel all that pressure to get a scholarship. That alone might sway my resolve to stay away from the industry forever. There’s even a bonus if tickets sell out.
But is the money really worth going back to everything I ran from? Saying yes feels like a deal with the devil.
I stare around my sparse apartment and think of the times I’ve had to tighten my own belt because my mom needed money. She’s not intentionally a bad parent, but Carrie is on her own too much—Mom’s lucky no one has ever called child services. When Mom finds a new boyfriend, she ignores all of her responsibilities, including work. She spends money on the strangest things to impress these guys, like three-hundred-dollar salon visits or a new set of golf clubs; but then she can’t always pay the bills that matter…because she can’t keep a job she won’t show up to.
Cam and Leah try to help too, but they’re paying off two sets of massive student loans from the private college where they met. I try to do as much as I can so they don’t have to, especially because if I hadn’t blown through all my Glitter Bats money on pointless bullshit, I’d have plenty to share.
Carrie called me a few months ago when the power was cut off and she couldn’t reach Mom. My baby sister was chillingly calm as she asked for help, the soft waver in her voice the only thing betraying her panic. No seventeen-year-old should have to worry about things like that. She acts like it’s no big deal, but when Dad left for the third time, I wasn’t there for her—I was too busy basking in the worship of the LA music scene. I didn’t notice Mom losing all sense of responsibility until it was too late.
I’m not sure if I can handle returning to the industry, but that check could change everything.
Valerie’s face softens, and for a heartbeat I glimpse the girl I fell in love with under all her posturing. “Look, the way things went down with the band wasn’t right,” she says. “This would be an opportunity to end things on our own terms. I know you don’t want to come back, but it’s just one summer. A month or so of rehearsals to polish the set, and then we do the gig.”
I run a hand over my hair. “Valerie—”
“Please, Caleb. I haven’t asked you for anything, and you know I wouldn’t be here unless this was really important.”
The thing is, I really do. If I hadn’t left after Valerie hurt me, the band might never have fallen apart. A small part of me still feels like I owe her something . And, well…I’ve never been good at saying no to Valerie Quinn, and she knows it.
When we were kids, I always went along with Valerie’s convoluted plans. She wanted to start a band, and I came on board without much thought to how it could change my life. At the time, it didn’t feel different. I was also there when she needed a cowriter for Avatar: The Last Airbender fan fiction (#Zutara for life), or a running buddy when she was training for soccer tryouts, or even a business partner for an Etsy shop to raise money for a theme park trip—turns out I’m pretty damn good at crocheting hats.
It would be so easy to go along with one more scheme. It’s not like I expected Valerie to show up on my doorstep, but if I did, it would never have been for a Glitter Bats reunion. This turn of events feels like a fever dream. For just a moment, I fantasize about shoving her out that door and going so off the grid that even Valerie Quinn can never find me again.
But then I think about what this money could do for Carrie’s future. I can’t fix Mom, but I can make it so my baby sister will never have to worry about paying for her dreams.
And maybe this will give me the closure I never got before.
“Fine. I’m in.”
Valerie jolts forward as if she’s about to hug me but stops herself.
“Thank you, Caleb.” She straightens her spine, as if bracing for impact. “One last summer, and then you’ll never hear from me again.”