Chapter Sixteen
I ask Jake Moody if the boy band stereotype ever bothers him.
He hesitates for just a moment before answering, “I think people tend to put you in a box, whether you’re famous or not.
Like, there are high school cliques and yearbook superlatives.
Celebrities aren’t an exception to that.
There are lots of people out there who can’t really see the person right next to them.
” Intrigued, I ask him if he wants to tell the world who he really is.
Enigmatic as ever, Jake answers, “The people I want to know me are the ones who can see past all the media and stereotypes themselves. They don’t need me to tell them. ”
—“Behind the Band,” an interview with Emma Cardiff
When we got back to Somerset, I parked in front of the Jackson Motel, and Leon took Phillip and Aspen inside to get settled.
I got out of the car and stood, stretching my legs. A summer breeze swept over the empty lot, causing the dandelion puffs in the overgrown grass dividers to scatter like fairy dust under the darkening sky.
Jake stood beside me, not following the others in just yet.
“Getting a minute of quiet before you dive back in?” I asked knowingly.
His lips curved up just a touch. “I love them. But they’re—”
“Loud?” I supplied without any hint of malice. “Like they should come with their own background music and confetti cannons?”
The other three band members made me think of all things bright and fun and chaotic.
Like when you’re juggling and can’t stop the motion or else everything will fall, or when you have high energy humming in your blood at two in the morning after a party and you know you should sleep but you’re just too wired.
But calming? That they weren’t.
“They’d all die two seconds into A Quiet Place,” Jake commented with a laugh.
“I live for how loud it all is, sometimes. There are these moments during a show where I can feel every single strum of a guitar and beat of a drum and note that’s being sung pulse through me and boom through the speakers and buzz in the stage under my feet.
It makes music feel like it’s not just something I can play, it’s something that’s part of me.
But sometimes . . .” Jake trailed off for a moment, watching the dandelion puffs slowly come undone bit by bit.
“Sometimes I just need the quiet too, to think.”
As Jake spoke, his fingers moved lightly against his leg, rising and falling in sequence, playing invisible piano keys.
I nodded down at his hand, wishing I could hear whatever he was playing. “You still do that.”
“Oh.” Jake stopped, surprised. “Yeah. Habit, I suppose.”
“You really do live and breathe music.”
He laughed softly at that. “I even dream in song, sometimes. I don’t really feel like me without a melody.”
Maybe this new Jake wasn’t so different from the old Jake after all. Maybe what I saw on TV was only one side of him.
After all, the drive home had been interesting.
Phillip—the supposed stuffy, high-brow one—delighted me by making several pop culture and geeky references.
Aspen didn’t sound a thing like he did on TV when he wasn’t relying on the teleprompter.
And Leon obviously had the uncanny ability to switch between an adorable, cuddly Gizmo to one of those evil, chain saw–wielding gremlins after you stupidly fed it after midnight.
“The guys aren’t how I thought they’d be,” I admitted.
Jake inclined his head slightly. “I don’t think any of us are.”
Sophisticated. The responsible one. Easygoing. The bad boy. They were all simply labels slapped onto the guys, boiling them down to one specific trait to be packaged and sold.
Maybe all the best qualities of the old Jake were still part of the new Jake.
The wind shifted and I shuddered, rubbing my arms in my thin shirt.
Before I knew what was happening, sudden warmth enveloped me, stopping me mid-shiver and smoothing over the goose bumps blossoming on my skin.
Jake had taken off his leather jacket and draped it over me.
My senses were hit with the scent of vanilla and spice, and my goose bumps reappeared, but for an entirely different reason.
To my credit, I did not bury my nose in it and take a huge whiff.
Tipping my head back, I looked up at Jake where he stood behind me. “Thanks.”
His hands rested on the slope of my shoulders for a breath before their comforting heat fell away.
“No problem,” he said, stepping back to where he’d been before.
He didn’t act like the boy I’d seen on the news: careless, fake, and full of cocky bravado.
This was someone real. Someone I wanted to know.
Someone I already knew.
“Jake,” I started slowly, his name making his eyes flicker right to mine. “The fountain thing, and all your other stunts—the graffiti, the rooftop jaunts, the joyrides—they were just for publicity, weren’t they?”
I knew the answer even before he nodded.
“Staged. The hotel and police officers were in the know and approved of everything,” he admitted.
“All those incidents were planned ahead of time by Marie and the publicity team. Well, actually, the rooftops were my idea.” He paused, a sly, crooked smile spreading across his face.
“And definitely not approved by Marie. But everything else usually is. When the band was put together, Marie said it needed a token bad boy. Honestly? It’s kind of great. ”
“Really?” I asked, intrigued. “How?”
“Well, I love being in the band, don’t get me wrong, but ever since I joined, I’ve been expected to do a lot of grown-up stuff too that I didn’t really think about before,” he said with a shrug.
“Go to official meetings and act professional, even when I’m exhausted after dance rehearsal and have algebra homework, because it’s still an official job.
Or always being onstage and in front of cameras, and not being able to slack off or mess up like a normal teenager.
So getting to blow off some steam and enjoy myself without worrying because it’s Marie-approved is pretty fun. ”
I hadn’t thought of it that way before. Feeling too much pressure and needing to let loose made sense too.
I grew up studying as hard as I could for a scholarship and feeling like I couldn’t mess up. And despite wanting to be there for Mom and run the café, I still felt like I’d crack under stress at any minute. If I knew I could splash around in a fountain and not get in trouble, I would jump right in.
Actually, I’d probably backflip into it.
“Besides,” Jake continued, just a bit sheepishly as he rubbed the back of his neck, “I’ve always wanted to see what playing around in a fountain felt like ever since I read From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler in middle school.”
Now that sounded exactly like the old Jake I knew.
The old Jake wasn’t really in the past after all. Because all the best parts of him were still there, mixed in with all the good parts of this new person he’d become.
I liked this new Jake too, I realized.
Really liked him.
“The persona’s freeing,” Jake admitted. “You know I was a shy kid when it came to everything offstage. I’m still that way.
I love performing, but talking to the cameras and telling total strangers about myself?
Not so much.” That explained why he hardly spoke on camera, and the whole broody effect it gave off.
“This way, I get to keep a side of myself to myself.”
“But does it ever bother you?” I asked curiously, and when he glanced at me questioningly, I added, “That people get things wrong? And don’t really know you?”
Jake considered this. “I think all that matters is that the right people know the real you. Everyone else is just noise.”
Quietly, I asked, “What about me? Am I one of those people? Do I matter?”
He stared at me in surprise. “Lucy, you’ve always mattered.”
For a moment, neither of us moved; we were just two still figures in the field as the dandelion puffs surrounded us like stardust. Then Jake reached out, slow and purposeful. Ever so gently, his thumb brushed between the tender curve of my temple and the curtain of my hair, before pulling away.
“Dandelion seed,” he said, holding up the tiny white plume he’d taken from my hair between his fingers. He released it, and we watched it lift up on the summer breeze. “Make a wish.”
“I’m not sure I believe in those anymore.”
“I’ll make one then,” he said, and I waited, curious.
What would Jake Moody personally wish for?
A break from people telling him what to do?
Success in writing his own songs? But instead, as we watched the puff float away in the wind, he surprised me by saying, “I wish that you get everything you want.”
Standing there with Jake, it was hard to remember I gave up my crush long ago.
I never told Jake I liked him. But what would happen now? If I let myself feel that way again and acknowledged it out loud? If I moved closer, so we were toe to toe?
What would Jake do?
What would I do?
I started to lean into him, closing the distance. Carefully. Just a fraction, no more than three piano keys. Jake’s gaze drifted down. My own moved up to his mouth—
But then my brain caught up with my body.
What was I doing? He was just going to leave again in a few days.
I pulled away from Jake so fast he nearly fell over, like he’d been using me as his sole center of gravity, and the thought nearly made me dizzy.
“I’ve got to go,” I said.
Without waiting for a reply, I got back in my car and peeled away, wondering if I drove fast enough, I could outrun the old feelings trying to catch up to me.
It was only when I got home that I realized I was still wearing Jake’s jacket.