Chapter Nineteen #2
For a moment, I wish we could trade places, Solas and me.
That I could be the one playing for a packed house and he was here in the crowd, having his worst self put on parade in front of a thousand fans.
Maybe then he’d know how it felt to be a cautionary tale, a parable of what not to do if you wanted to make it as a musician in this city.
But I know I was never cut out to be onstage, and that’s why he’s up there and I’m out here.
Everything I practiced, everything I wanted to say, falls apart on my tongue.
I won’t get the chance to say it; even if I did, I know now that I wouldn’t be heard.
“So this next one’s for Alice Pierce.” Solas plunks the microphone back in the stand. He finds my eyes in the crowd, cracks open a stage beer, and raises it high. “If you see her, maybe get that girl a drink.”
The second the spotlight shuts off, I’m gone.
Pushing through the crowd. Elbowing my way out.
I hear the faintest shred of “Alice, wait” from Renee, but I can’t look back.
I have to keep pushing. I have to get out of here.
I stumble down the stairs and out the door onto the rain-slick sidewalk, pulling out my phone to call a car.
I don’t know if it’s rain or tears on my cheeks, but I have to get home.
I hear the door swing open behind me, and Renee rushes through, straight to my side. “Alice, hey.” She’s breathless, eyes sad and sorry. “Are we leaving?”
“I’m leaving. You can stay if you want.” I don’t really mean it. I can’t bear the thought of riding home without her, trying to cry softly enough that the driver doesn’t ask me what’s wrong.
Renee opens her umbrella, shielding us from the rain. When I look up from my phone, she holds me in her gaze, soft and sweet and blue.
“I don’t want to be anywhere that’s not with you right now.” Renee’s voice barely hovers above a whisper, so small that it might wash away with the rain, but she stays with me. With her, I’m okay.
It’s a short ride home, and neither of us says much until we’re both safe and dry inside my apartment. The moment my door closes behind her, Renee announces, “Solas Callaghan is a fucking douchebag.”
I sit on the floor to tug off my boots, then tip back and starfish across the hardwood, blinking up at the ceiling.
“He’s not a douchebag.” I sigh.
“Well, he sure had me fooled considering the stunt he just pulled.”
“It wasn’t a stunt,” I grumble. “He was just doing crowd work.”
“Crowd work? Humiliating you in front of a thousand people is crowd work?”
I don’t react. I feel impossibly heavy, like I may never move again. Renee lies down beside me on the floor. She rests her head in the crook of my arm, and I fold her into me. I need her close.
“That drink-ticket thing really happened,” I murmur into her hair. “And that was, like, the least of the shit I put them through.”
“But that’s not you anymore,” Renee says.
“It doesn’t matter. It’s too late.” My voice starts to break, the cracks in my confidence splitting me into two distinct pieces—the person I was and the one I’d like to be—while I slip through the fault in between.
Renee wriggles free of my arms and sits up enough to really see me, her cool blue eyes studying mine more closely than I’d like to be seen. “Too late? You’re only twenty-nine.”
“And already a legend. You heard them. They call stealing someone’s drink ‘pulling an Alice.’ ”
“So that’s one person. One band.”
“One band speaking in front of a thousand people. Word travels fast, and not to be like this, but I’m not nobody, you know?
You think the rumor mill hasn’t gone crazy with the fodder that Ricky Pierce’s daughter is a drunk who can’t be trusted?
” Even though I’m the one who said it, my chest aches at the sound of Dad’s full name.
The weight of it holds me flat against the floor.
Renee trails her fingers up and down my arm, back and forth, smoothing my goose bumps. “I think you might be making a few too many assumptions.”
“They’re not assumptions,” I tell her. “I know. I’ve been the one spreading the rumors.
I’ve been the one drunk off her ass in the green room talking shit about other bands because it made me feel important.
It made people laugh. And now I’m the joke, and that shit Solas said was only what he’d say to my face. ”
I feel hollow, carved out like a pumpkin. It’s only when Renee wipes her thumb over my cheek that I realize I’ve finally begun to cry.
“You’re not a joke,” Renee whispers. “You weren’t a joke then either.
You were young and lonely and trying to cope and make friends the only way you knew how.
” She pauses to brush away another tear, this one off my upper lip.
“What about Aidan? He doesn’t think you’re a joke.
No matter what Solas said, you still work there, right?
And those bands who have paid you to mix their albums. They don’t think you’re a joke. ”
“Yeah.” I sniff. “I guess. Or they just feel bad for me because of my dad.”
Renee’s eyes flutter closed as she shakes her head and breathes a shaky sigh. “It’s not just because of your dad. I promise.”
“You don’t know that.”
She holds out a hand and lifts me to a seat, both of us cross-legged with our knees touching. She takes my one hand in both of hers, trapping it there like it might run away, but there’s not a hair on my head that wants to be anywhere other than close to her.
“You wanna know how I know?” she says, voice thick.
“Because I thought you were a real piece of shit. I thought you were a drunk, destructive person who broke my friend Virginia’s heart, and even though she swore you had changed and you two were actually friends again, I didn’t believe it.
I figured she put you in her wedding because she felt bad about your dad.
But she asked me to give you a shot, and I did.
I had to actually spend time with you and get to know you, and thank God I did. ”
I look up at her through thick, wet lashes. I feel waterlogged with my own tears, but her smile is a lighthouse, bright and beaming and guiding me home. “Yeah?” I croak out.
“Yeah.” She grabs my other hand and laces our fingers together, resting our wrists on our knees and her forehead against mine.
We’re in our own little bubble, our own little world where nothing and no one can hurt us.
It’s just her and me and the warmth of her breath as she speaks, the smell of eucalyptus in her hair and mint on her breath.
“Everything is different with you, Alice,” she says.
“You’ve changed how I see myself. You got me excited about getting up in the mornings again because I feel like I have a purpose, like I’m working on something with you instead of sitting around moping that my dream job didn’t want me anymore.
You’ve got me thinking about whether or not I even want it back.
” Her voice splinters, and she squeezes my hands.
“With you, it’s like I want to slow down for once instead of just barreling ahead into my next step.
I want to sit and think and feel things with you.
I want to act and sing again, even if you’re my only audience.
And if I could go back to that engagement dinner, I would slap myself for being so rude to you because I thought you were Gin’s toxic ex with the dead rock star dad when who you actually are is the person changing my whole damn life. ”
I don’t have to think. I barely have to move.
All I have to do is lean in and let my lips catch hers, erasing the shred of air between us, and everything else slips away.
I forget about Solas and Cold Sweat and this whole mess of a night.
I forget that she ever said anything about us just being friends.
I forget how complicated it might get if we became anything more.
It’s all evicted from my memory, replaced with the cool rush of Renee’s gasp as she draws my breath into her lungs.
We stall here for one delicate moment, our lips just barely touching.
And I’m worried I’ve gone too far. Fear and doubt scratch inside me, and I almost pull away.
Then one soft hand lands on my cheek, holding me in place and deepening our kiss.
My head swims. Slowly, Renee draws back, her lips gently sucking on my bottom lip till the last possible second, and the only thought pulsing through me is her name.
Over and over, again and again, like a record skipping at my favorite part.
My entire body is singing along. Renee Renee Renee.
“Alice.” Renee hangs on to the hiss at the end of my name.
Just the sound frees up something inside me that I didn’t realize was caught.
Her eyes flutter open just long enough to remind me of their impossible shade of blue.
Everything about Renee feels so impossible, and yet here she is, brushing her thumb against my cheekbone, back and forth like a metronome.
“Was that okay?” I whisper.
“God, yes,” she breathes. It’s everything I’ve wanted despite fighting to convince myself otherwise.
There’s so much that I’ve tried not to feel toward Renee, but when she pulls me in and crushes her lips to mine, every bit of restraint inside me releases, and I’m flooded with want.
I want her. As much of her as she’ll give me.
I kiss Renee’s jaw. Her temple. The tail of her eyebrows.
I brush aside her soft blond hair, tracing the shadow beneath her collarbone with my tongue.
Her chest rumbles with a moan, and I do it again, losing myself in how she rumbles beneath me.
“Fuck,” Renee rasps when I nip at her neck, and it’s the sweetest sound. She’s so reactive, a sensitive, exposed nerve of a person. My lips skid up to the shell of her ear, and she sips the air, lips pursed and head tipped back as she eases into a shuddering breath.