Chapter Twenty-Four. Mackenzie
chapter twenty-four
MACKENZIE
One glimpse of the door to the Hole is all it takes for me to feel sad, horny, and spooked all at the same time.
The ominously named broom closet remains perfectly preserved in the back of Lightning Strike, along with everything in it—two rickety folding chairs, a flickering lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, some dusty shelves holding bar glasses that are older than I am.
The Hole was a catchall kind of place. You went in to either squabble or hook up with someone or cry.
In a city where we’d get recognized on every corner, it was the perfect place to hide.
Which is why it’s only fitting that Sam and I are meeting here after the circus of this week.
When I open the door, Sam is already waiting in the dim yellow light. He gathers me up so easily that it feels like coming home after a long trip. I breathe in that smoky sunshine smell of him, pressing my cheek into the soft cotton of his shirt.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
He kisses the top of my head. “Better now,” he says. His voice is rough in that way it was when we were getting ping-ponged all over Europe at the height of a tour.
I lift my chin to get a better look at him, but he kisses me, slow and deep.
I can’t help but savor it. I’ve missed him more in these past two days than I did in the two years we weren’t speaking.
Now that I’m not hiding from the way I feel about him, it’s all-encompassing.
Like a seed inside me that’s been waiting for years to fully bloom.
Sam’s eyes are on mine as we pull apart, bruised with exhaustion. I reach for his jaw and he leans his head into my touch.
“Caspar went back home?” I ask.
Sam nods against my hand, then puts his own hand on top of it, grazing his lips across my knuckles.
We’ve been talking on the phone and texting, mostly to check in on Ben or do our best to stay on the label’s time frame.
It’s how I know Caspar dropped in this morning, and that he and Sam had something closer to the talk Sam had expected in Boston.
And how we know that the label wants our last song by the end of the weekend. Hence, the Hole. The place where we accidentally wrote our first song all those years ago will be the place we write the album’s last.
“He’s lucky you handled it well,” I say.
Sam hums, letting my hand go. “Speaking of,” he says, “seems like you and Serena are good.”
Thunder Hearts made headlines of our own yesterday.
Hannah and I took to social media to call out Tick Tune with Serena, and even revived the old Thunder Hearts accounts to do it there, too.
And just in case that didn’t give the posts enough momentum, a fan filmed the three of us walking on the street.
We were only meeting up with Rocket, who is putting his freelancing skills to the test helping us generate a new website, and Grayson, who’s been so diligent about looking into class action options for artists affected by the sale that he’s with Hannah nearly every time I call.
But by the way fans lost it seeing the three of us side by side in our signature colors—me in pink, Serena in yellow, and Hannah in blue—you’d think we’d been photographed walking without helmets on the moon.
“Yeah,” I say. “Things are better, at least.”
Serena’s still got her guard up. But the more we work together on this, the more glimpses of the old Serena I start to see. The one who lets me in. The one who lets me help .
The plan for now is that if Tick Tune doesn’t fold, I’ll upload one last “song” as Seven—one directing listeners to a website where anonymous artists can preserve their old Tick Tune stats and songs, while still keeping their identities private.
Unlike Tick Tune, the stats will be public, so artists who do want to come forward have a much better shot of pitching themselves.
It’s not foolproof. There’s a good chance people will start digging about Seven, and it’ll only be a matter of time before they trace it to me.
But Grayson thinks we might kick up enough of a stir threatening legal action before then that it might not even come to that.
The app is still “glitching.” At this point they must be too scared of what artists will do if they push it live again.
“Seven’s probably pissed,” says Sam, smirking. “No way in hell she doesn’t try and crush us now.”
I swallow hard. Now that Sam’s standing in front of me, so weary and relieved, I’m glad I haven’t said anything to him about this mess. The last thing I want to do is give him another what if to worry about.
Sam must catch the flicker in my expression. I make sure it’s gone by the time I meet his eye.
“Well then,” I say. “I guess we’re going to have to write a song good enough to kick her ass.”
Sam eases his guitar off himself. I pull out my notepad, using my phone light to see better.
“Aw,” I say, pressing my thumb to the doorframe. My handiwork is still on the wall in metallic silver ink: crappy shard was here. Sam’s black Sharpie ink is crossed over it, writing blunder hearts below it instead.
“I’ll chalk that up to one too many drinks,” I say wryly.
Sam comes up behind me, chest grazing my shoulder. “I wasn’t drunk that night,” says Sam.
My ears burn. “Me neither,” I say.
Not for lack of trying. I was attempting my third shot of Fireball at the old dive bar when Sam reached over my head, plucked it out of my hand, and took the shot himself. I pulled in a breath to tell him off, but Sam put a palm on my forehead like he was holding off an angry terrier.
“I don’t get paid enough to watch you vomit glitter onstage,” he said.
Hannah swiped whatever drink he just ordered from the bar and handed it to me. “She’s got booze immunity for the night. She and Cal broke up.”
Cal was the man who would become song number six. The one who didn’t just make promises, but stuck around long enough for me to believe them. Who didn’t even bother leaving when he let them fall apart, so I had to call it off myself.
It was hard to see much in the dim light of that bar, but impossible to miss the flicker of surprise in Sam’s eyes. He cleared his throat.
“Tough break, Sparkles,” he said.
I rolled my eyes, sipping his drink. “Oh, fuck off. You hated him.”
“Says who?” said Sam.
That’s when it hit me. Sam roasted my other exes like my love life was a damn barbecue, but in all the months I’d been dating Cal, he hadn’t said a word. There was nothing wrong with Cal, really, except that he didn’t care about me.
There was nothing wrong with him except for me.
I went straight to the Hole after that. I closed the door and waited for the tears to come. But there was just—nothing. Like I’d spent so long pretending everything was fine that I didn’t know how to feel it anymore. All I felt was numb.
Then the door opened, and there was Sam.
“Jesus, you move fast,” I said. “Make sure to lock the damn door this time.”
But there was no pretty girl lingering behind Sam as I pushed my way out. Instead, Sam caught me by the wrist.
“Hannah said you went home, but I didn’t see you leave.”
I stared down at his hand, bewildered. “Congratulations,” I said, shaking myself loose. “You won hide and seek.”
But Sam didn’t move. “You heading home?”
I didn’t want to. Home wasn’t home yet. I needed to strip the sheets. Needed to box up some records and ratty sweatpants and baseball caps. Needed to get rid of an extra toothbrush.
“No,” I said. “I’ve got shit to do.”
I walked back into the Hole and shut the door in Sam’s face. Or at least, I tried. He stopped it with his foot.
“My drink’s in there,” he said, nodding at the untouched glass.
I held it out to him. “Here.”
His eyes grazed the drink before settling back on me. “Could be poisoned, knowing you,” he said. “You take a sip first.”
I did. I meant to be a brat about it and drain the whole thing, but I didn’t hate myself enough.
“ Fuck , that’s awful.”
“Well, that’s no way to drink perfectly good sewer water.” He took it from me, his lanky, leather-clad form looming large as he eased himself onto one of the seats. “Stay put and I’ll show you how it’s done.”
I crossed my arms. “If you think I need a pity hookup right now, you’re out of luck. Go try the bar.”
“Can’t,” said Sam, knocking back half the drink. “Everyone cleared out. So you might as well tell me what the shit is that you’re doing.”
I did the fastest thing I could to get rid of him—I lied.
“I’m writing a song.”
Sam made a show of making himself comfortable. “Well, don’t let me get in your way.”
At that point I had no choice but to sit down, if I wanted to stake my claim on the space. “You’re the competition.”
Sam let out a laugh, leaning down to meet my eye. “We’re rivals, Sparkles. But you’re no competition.”
“True,” I said, without missing a beat. “You’re not much of anything when I write you under the table.”
His eyes flickered, a challenge in them. “You write shiny pop anthems.”
I was unused to having Sam’s full attention offstage. I didn’t know if I liked it, but I couldn’t help wanting to keep it. Having his eyes on me felt like catching a firefly in my hand.
“Oh, and your sad emo songs are the height of taste,” I said right back.
Sam abruptly leaned in closer. “Say what you want, but you couldn’t write one if you tried. You’re all glitz and no grit.”
“You’re all punk and no damn fun,” I countered.
Sam skimmed his tongue over his teeth, and said two words that changed the course of our lives forever. “Wanna bet?”
We wrote “Play You by Heart” in under an hour, but stayed in the Hole until the sun came up.
We talked more in that night than we had since we first met.
Me about my exes, Sam about his dad. Things we’d done and things we’d hope to do.
Things I hadn’t told anyone, because I’d just never thought to say them out loud.