Chapter 34
August, Now
I could work through this next part on my own, but I’d rather do it with him. Especially when I see his text—come back to me now?—a little while after Maisy walks on.
I kept Liam at bay, just out of reach, while I was in school because I was afraid my music was tied to him, and I wanted to prove to myself it wasn’t. Then I pulled him back in at the start of the summer because I convinced myself I couldn’t write good songs without him.
But that’s not it at all.
Because I also wasn’t writing about Evan. I wasn’t writing about my sisters. Or Maisy, or my hometown, or my parents, or anything I ever gave a shit about.
I wasn’t writing about loneliness, even though “Lonely House” is still up there in my head, waiting to show me its final form.
After “I prefer shadows,” I didn’t just cut myself off from writing about Liam.
I cut myself off from every piece of inspiration in my arsenal.
I focused on the technicalities of my education and starved the honesty that had brought me to it.
Good music doesn’t have to hurt, but some of it will. I was trying not to hurt and numbing myself instead. And now, I’m trying to avoid recording so I can hide the evidence of my exposed nerves. I’m scared to show the world my soft parts.
But I think the point is actually that once you let a song leave you, you’re sharing the pain, splitting the burden of it. Somebody else accepts a piece of it, and then you’re not in a lonely house anymore.
When I make it back to our room, Liam’s pacing on the phone, fresh out of the shower, a towel wrapped low around his waist. He catches my eye when he hears the door. That raw pain is still there in his eyes, sending a frisson of tenderness through my veins.
He hums into the receiver, then mouths to me, Kayla. His sister.
The entire time we’ve been on this tour, I’ve never seen or heard evidence of Liam keeping in touch with Kayla, or Heather, or his mom.
Something’s going on.
I point to the bathroom and mouth shower, and Liam nods, then says into the phone, “Does Charlotte understand what’s happening?”
Charlotte: Liam’s niece.
My inner turmoil quiets as I scrub the grassy heat and sweat from my body, listening to the low cadence of Liam’s voice in the next room through the steady drip of water. It’s not that I think he’d mind me listening; I’d mind, given how rare it is for him to talk to his family.
He’s off the phone by the time I’m done. I towel off slowly as fog washes into the main room, and then Liam steps through it, walking toward me with a T-shirt in hand, his own towel swapped out for boxers.
“Will you put it on?” he asks in a murmur. It’s one of his. An oversized gray band shirt from another tour he worked on a few years back.
I nod silently, dropping my towel. Liam slips the shirt over my head, and I siphon my arms through the sleeves. He pulls my hair out from the collar and then palms at my nape, resting my head against his bare chest.
“I thought it might make it easier,” he admits, voice low, “for you to be wearing my clothes while we keep fighting.”
We should have fought more. For days. Weeks.
“Should I give you something of mine?” I ask.
“I am something of yours,” Liam whispers.
I grab a ponytail holder off the counter and slip it over his wrist. Liam hooks his fingers into the T-shirt and pulls me toward our room.
“Are we about to start fighting again?” I whisper.
His mouth curves. He sits on the edge of the bed and pulls me over his lap. “I think so.”
“It feels more like we’re about to have sex.”
“I just want to feel close to you,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to my forehead, “while we do this, instead of feeling far away.”
I nod as Liam’s hands settle on my waist. Our eyes lock, and I say, “Ready?”
One corner of his mouth quirks. “Ready.”
Deep breath. “I ran into Maisy in the park.”
His brow lifts. “Wow. That’s…”
“Cosmic?”
“If you think so,” he says, thumbs brushing over my thighs, “then sure.”
“She’s doing well. It was good to see her.
She made me realize that even the most specific, the most detailed of my songs can be reinterpreted.
And it sort of cracked open this understanding that once something is out there, it stops being only yours.
Which actually makes the vulnerability of it less, not more. ”
“That makes sense.” He waits for me to go on.
I say, so softly, “I want to try recording.”
His head shakes. “I got to thinking while you were gone, and I realized if you record even one song, there’s a chance someone’s always going to want something else from you.
And I could just”—he blinks—“see it playing out in my mind. You giving and giving and giving. Just one more thing. Just one more request. I don’t want to push you into burnout or resentment. ”
“I promise, I won’t let that happen. And for the record, I don’t think you’d let it happen, either.
I am never going to morph into a person who is comfortable with attention.
I am never going to have a desire to play for a crowd.
But I’m starting to realize I sometimes like the sound of my own voice. Especially when I’m singing about you.”
Liam’s smile is featherlight. “I want you to write love songs about me forever, Paige. I want you to write songs about whatever the fuck you want forever. I hope the act of it never stops being good for you. So do whatever you want with your music. But just know that making money off it won’t cheapen what we have.
And choosing not to record any of those love songs won’t make this relationship less real from my perspective. ”
Liam must read the distrust on my face because he asks, “Do you believe I mean that?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “That last part is opposite to what you thought only a few hours ago, and I need you to connect the dots for me.”
His hands move down over my thighs, and he rumbles out, “Before you left, you asked me if I thought my family bought how I presented myself to them.”
I wince, remembering. “That was harsh, implying you’re at all responsible for their thoughtless treatment of you. I’m really sorry for saying that, Liam.”
He shakes his head, some of the damper locks of his dark hair falling over his forehead.
“No, you were right. I mean, thank you for apologizing, but you were on the right track. A while after you left the hotel, I texted Kayla something like, Did I talk about baseball too much back then? She called me immediately.”
“What was the verdict?” I ask.
Liam’s eyes go soft. “She said I stopped acting like her little brother the day Dad died. And that’s what hurt her so much.”
I nod slow, getting Kayla’s perspective. Hadn’t I sometimes wished Maren would act more like a sister and less like a mom?
“How did you act?” I ask him. I only knew Liam after, not before.
Liam’s teeth tug at his bottom lip. “Back then, Kayla and Heather loved baseball, too. It was a family affair. Even my mom would sometimes go to Braves games in Atlanta, or a Thursday night game for the minor league team in Savannah.”
“The Savannah Bananas?” I ask. I know I’m right; I just wanted to say it.
Liam smiles gently. “Yes, Paige, the Savannah Bananas.”
“What do the Savannah Bananas have to do with how you acted when your dad died, and why Kayla was hurt by it?” I ask.
“She said—” He cuts himself off, dusts his nose over my shoulder.
“She said I was trying to act like him when I wasn’t him, when I couldn’t ever be him.
And Kayla wasn’t saying it to be hurtful, like I didn’t measure up to our dad.
She was saying it like … Like, I just wanted my baby brother, and he was trying to act like someone I was mourning. ”
He shakes his head, eyes distant. “I took something that had always been a source of joy for our whole family and tried to commodify it. We’ve never had a lot of money, but we’ve also never hungered after it, and I guess when I started talking about baseball like that—as a saving grace instead of a paternal memory—it set everybody on edge. ”
Wetness gathers in the corner of his eye. “I just wish I’d known that’s how she, or maybe all of them, felt. I wanted to be there for my family after he was gone and instead, I drove a wedge between us.”
“It was not all on you,” I say, voice firm.
“I know, I know,” Liam goes on, his mouth now on the collar of my—his—T-shirt, breath warm.
“Kayla said that, too. There’s a lot we unpacked.
Stuff about Mom—how she copes, and maybe how it’s not the healthiest. Kayla’s been going to therapy, figuring some stuff out.
It was intended to be couples therapy, but she’s getting a divorce, actually. ”
My spine stiffens. “Kayla’s pregnant, and she’s getting a divorce?” Liam nods. “Is this the first you’d heard of it?”
“She decided two weeks ago, but yeah,” Liam says, tone weary. “I told her as soon as the tour finishes, I’d come home to help however I could.”
“How do you feel about it?” I ask.
“Worried for her, with little Charlotte and the future newborn, but—part of me is relieved. I never warmed up to that guy.”
“You mean the guy who harped on you for using their wedding funds for a vital medical treatment? That guy?”
“Down,” Liam jokes, but he’s fighting a smile. In fact, there’s a whole new levity to him. Like that phone call was a balm for his bruised, mourning soul.
“Things will still be tough with my family,” Liam says low, but it sounds like he’s reminding himself more than informing me.
“Heather’s husband isn’t any warmer of a person, and they’re giving Kayla a hard time for initiating the divorce.
Plus, Mom has apparently checked out of the whole situation like she did when Dad died.
No help, no hindrance, just a passive participant in our family. ”
“That’s got to be hard for everyone,” I whisper.
Liam nods slowly, his nose and lips grazing my collarbone. “It is,” he admits.