The Thief
He slings his guitar over his shoulder. It’s been a while since he’s performed at the open mic in town, and it’s the dead of winter, so no one who matters will be there, but he has a plan, and this is its next step.
He’s been patient, watching her work for weeks now, coaxing every lyric out of her mouth and onto the page.
After the incident with Joni Jewell—splashed across every tabloid cover, impossible to miss—he told his mother that she was their chance. Rehabilitate the baddest bitch in rock and roll, and the whole world—well, the right people within the world—would flock to Rush’s Recovery.
He doesn’t care—he’s never cared—which of his parents get the center in the divorce.
They’ve been at each other’s throat for months, like the center is their baby, like King fucking Solomon needs to come along and cut it in half.
He wonders—if he were under eighteen, would they fight for custody of him with quite the same fervor?
He doubts it. He’s always been a disappointment: didn’t get into the college they wanted, didn’t pursue the career they approved of, in trouble through elementary school and high school.
They’d been too distracted he thinks, all his life, by their own ambitions and their patients’ struggles—complaints, really—to pay much attention to their son’s.
None of it matters now that he’s turned their precious center into a means to an end.
He just had to stay on Evelyn’s good side, persuade her to let him have the most menial of jobs—a cook for a woman who doesn’t eat anything but candy, a fucking chipmunk could do it.
He got the tattoo—Never Settle—as soon as he was certain she was coming.
He pushed up his sleeve that first day to make sure she would see it.
It was his idea for his mom and the rest of the staff to call her Florence. Take her down a notch from the moment she arrived, make her vulnerable by calling her the name she’d probably barely heard since she was a child.
His parents went to school for years to get their degrees, but he understood what all their training never taught them: Baby someone enough, flirt with them so they feel important, praise them until they feel talented, and they’ll give you anything you want.
Give an addict alcohol while she’s in rehab, and she’ll love you forever, too grateful (and too loaded) to be suspicious.
He’d been planning to hit her up for connections and contacts, but it quickly became apparent she wasn’t well-connected anymore, if she ever had been.
So he shifted course—he’s nothing if not adaptable—and now it’s worked out better than he’d imagined.
The song is more valuable than a handful of phone numbers and email addresses could ever be.
He knows the words by heart, better even than she does.
Months from now, if she tries to release the song as her own, he’ll have a roomful of witnesses who saw him perform it first. No one will believe her—even her own manager was quick to turn on her for a few bucks—and if there’s a scandal, it will only help his rising star.
Joni Jewell’s simpering “Get Her Back” never would’ve hit number one if people didn’t know it was about Georgia Blue.
And now look at Joni: touring the world, sold-out shows, riding the wave of Georgia’s infamy for all it’s worth.
Later, the police will ask about the altercation at the bar, but no one will accuse him of wrongdoing. She’s the crazy one, everyone knows, even people like his parents who disapprove of the word crazy.
In the months to come, he’ll wonder if it might have been better if she’d lived. Without a scandal over who really wrote the song, he won’t get the boost Joni Jewell got. His mother will know the truth, but she’ll never tell. And if she does… well, he’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it.
He’ll keep the notebook, but its contents will be useless to him: songs about motherhood and daughterhood; songs about him; unfinished snippets of songs he can’t pretend he wrote.
He’ll reread the pages sometimes, hoping inspiration might strike, but it never does.
The record execs who embraced him for “Imposter Syndrome” will be quick to drop him when his sophomore efforts fall flat.
One-hit wonder, they’ll say, happens all the time. He’ll have to adapt all over again.
But right now, tonight, none of that has come to pass.
He knows only that he’s about to hit the stage with a surefire hit.
And who can blame him for taking what he needs?
He’s not like the no-talent brats who spend their summers on the island, born with connections and silver spoons.
They can barely drive the hundred-thousand-dollar cars they were given on their sixteenth birthdays, and they have the sort of parents who would finance a move to LA or Nashville if they asked, pay to put them in rooms with vocal coaches and stylists.
They’d pick up their Grammys with tears in their eyes, thanking their mommies and daddies for so much support.
When he wins, he’s not gonna thank anyone.
He has the syringe in his pocket. Gotta be prepared. Whatever it takes.
Georgia who? they’ll say. Play that Andrew Rush song again.