Chapter Thirty
Jake: When it comes to talking, I’ve always been bad at getting the words out, but I like studying songwriting and hearing people’s favorite songs. I think songs can tell you what someone’s really trying to say.
Interviewer: And what are you trying to say with “Lovely, Aren’t Ya”?
Jake: [Pause] Can we cut to commercial?
—Morning Glory Talk Show transcript
I watched Jake’s car pull away through the window. For some reason, I kept watching as he got farther and farther from me, until the car turned into a little black dot in the distance I could no longer follow. I stayed there for a beat longer anyway.
Then I banged my head against the wall and let out a muffled scream.
Things were not supposed to go like that.
After all this time, I finally realized Jake’s the one. It took me so long to understand that this new Jake was just as wonderful as the old Jake, and that he’d be there for me. All for him to basically tell me he’s not interested and friend zone me before I could even get the words out.
All to the beginning notes of “Lovely, Aren’t Ya.”
Had I imagined everything going on between Jake and me this week? I could’ve sworn he felt our connection too, the pull between us that’s persisted, like a song stuck in the back of our minds.
I couldn’t have been wrong.
I replayed today in my mind. Something had to have happened to make Jake back off so quickly.
But what?
“Hey, Lucy,” Aspen said, entering the café area. “Did—”
He paused, staring at me.
Oh. Right. My head was still pressed against the wall where I’d been banging it.
He eyed me weirdly. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Totally,” I lied, slowly leaning away from the wall and wiping my palms on my apron, before pulling out a stick of gum. “I just figured we had the money to expand now, so I was trying to knock down this wall over here.”
“With your skull?”
“I’ve always been hardheaded.”
He let out a laugh. “You know, you really are like the song.”
“What do you mean?” I shook my head in confusion. “What song?”
“‘Lovely, Aren’t Ya,’” Aspen said, in the same tone one might say duh in. “The one all about you, obviously.”
My lips parted. What?
“Come on, don’t be embarrassed,” Aspen admonished, misinterpreting the reason I was frozen in place.
“That particular cat’s been out of the bag for a while.
We all know it’s about you. Jake wrote it, and the original title was ‘Luciana,’ before the label made him change it since they said it was better for marketing or whatever.
It didn’t take long to put two and two together. ”
Lovely, Aren’t Ya. Luciana. Four syllables. Same rhyme.
“The song,” I began, my voice sounding like a windup doll’s, with sentences that came out in short, mechanical spurts. “Is about . . . me?”
“Well, yeah. The entire thing’s describing you. That’s the whole point of it.”
I went speechless and dazed in the best way.
It was an entire declaration of love set to a melody. The moonstruck, lyrical praise Jake sang was written with me in mind.
I’d heard the song nearly every week of my life since it debuted. I could never shake the idea it followed me around. The lyrics were always somewhere in the background or in the corner of my mind—meant for me all along.
“Everyone knew the original title of Jake’s song,” Aspen continued, wiggling his fingers at Bubbles on the other side of the glass, not noticing how I was going through twelve stages of shock three feet away from him. “That’s why me and the guys had to meet you.”
It all made sense now. Aspen lighting up as soon as he heard my full name. Leon telling me I was musically inspirational. Phillip nosily asking if Lucy was a nickname before smiling deviously.
Jake had always said my name would fit a melody.
Smiling, Aspen turned away from the cat, only for his expression to drop the second he saw my stunned face.
“Aw, man.” His eyes widened. “You didn’t know?” He stared at me a beat longer. “You didn’t know,” he repeated, his questioning inflection turning flat.
Jake liked me. Jake liked me. Jake liked me. The thought boomed over and over again in my head like little bursts of fireworks, glittery and bright.
Jake liked me!
But why didn’t he tell me?
“Why would he keep it a secret?” I demanded. “How could he write such a gorgeous love song like that and never—”
I wanted to tell you . . . that, he said. I thought he’d been stuttering or cutting himself off mid-sentence. He’d really been referring to the song when he blurted the last word out.
Hadn’t Jake always said that it was hard for him to tell people how he felt? That he said everything through song?
He probably thought I felt the same too, considering how I loved to listen to everyone’s requests on the radio.
Jake only stopped and switched gears when he thought I shut off his original confession because I didn’t reciprocate his feelings.
Oh no, no, no, no, no.
Phillip and Leon appeared through the doorway.
Leon took one glance at me, and then turned to the increasingly guilty-looking Aspen. “What’s wrong with Lucy?”
Aspen squirmed uncomfortably. “She just learned Jake wrote ‘Lovely, Aren’t Ya’ for her.”
“You told her?” Leon screeched, before pausing and looking over at me, just as accusingly. “Hold up, you didn’t know?”
He made it sound like it was common knowledge. Did everyone know before me, the actual person the song was about?
I bit down on my chewing gum hard. “I can’t believe you all did.”
“Of course we knew,” Phillip replied, like he was offended I thought they wouldn’t know. “Jake was completely lovesick over you. I used to call him Jake Mooney instead of Jake Moody.” He rolled his eyes. “And based on his working title, it was pretty hard not to know.”
“Well, ‘Luciana’ is not the title now! All this time I’ve thought the song was about that girlfriend of his,” I moaned. “The timing checks out. Plus all the articles and message boards claimed it was about her too.”
Aspen blinked cluelessly. “Girlfriend?”
“Oh, she means Livie,” Leon said, hitting himself on his forehead with the heel of his palm.
“No way was the song about her, no matter what she says. It was just a PR relationship made up by Livie’s manager and Marie.
Livie got to claim she was dating a pop star and Jake got to establish his reputation as a bad boy heartbreaker without actually having to hurt anyone. ”
I blinked at him. “It was all fake?”
“Yeah, she’s a reality TV star. Ninety percent of what they do is staged. I saw she even rehashed their ‘relationship’ recently, probably because she has a new season coming out and the song’s still everywhere.”
The girl I’d been wondering about all these years wasn’t Livie after all. It was me.
The irony.
I leaned against the counter, propping my elbows up against the cold marble. “Why didn’t Jake tell me before he left?”
“Wait, he left already?” Phillip looked shocked.
“This is not how it happens at the end of our music videos,” Leon said, sounding upset.
“But we can tell you like him,” Aspen argued. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I-I—” I stuttered for a minute. “Why didn’t he say anything?”
“She’s right,” Phillip agreed, nodding sagely. “They’re both idiots.”
“That is not what I said,” I protested, though he may have had a point.
What should I do? I knew the truth, that Jake liked me. Even when he thought I was purposely ignoring him, he sat down and wrote a song, hoping it’d find me.
Hoping I’d hear what he really wished he could say.
My eyes snapped to the boys. “How fast do you think I can make it to the airport?”
Together, they whooped excitedly, surprisingly invested.
Jake was less than ten minutes ahead of me. If I rushed, maybe I could catch him before he made it through security.
I grabbed my keys, starting for the door, then whirled back around to the guys. “Wait, can one of you tell me what airline Jake’s on?”
“I can come with you and show you,” Aspen exclaimed. “And I can drive too, so you don’t have to worry about parking!” He snatched the car keys out of my hand. “Don’t worry about not making it in time, I took driving lessons from Sir Lewis Hamilton.”
“Sir Lew—” I broke off. “The Formula One driver?”
“Yeah. Lewis is great. He’s reached over two hundred and twenty miles per hour.”
“I appreciate the enthusiasm, but no.” When I mentioned a race to the airport, I meant race as in complying with local traffic laws and going the speed limit, not getting on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.
I plucked the keys out of Aspen’s hands only to dodge another bandmate grabbing for them.
“I will come with you, then,” Phillip chimed in. “I can drive too.”
I spared him a glance. “On the correct side of the road?”
“Uh . . . most of the time,” he said. “I mean, it depends on what you consider the ‘correct’ side of the road. I am—”
“British,” Aspen said dryly. “Yes, you’ve mentioned that.”
I turned to Leon. “How about you? You want to get your offer to drive in?”
“Nah, I’m good,” he told me cheerfully. “I am coming with you, though.”
All three boys moved toward the door.
“Guys, this is sweet,” I said, “but I don’t need all of you to come with me. I just need one of you to tell me what flight—”
“That’s me,” Leon piped up. “I know where it is. Take me.”
“No way are you getting to be the one to see how this plays out,” Aspen said, shoving himself in between Leon and me. “If it wasn’t for me spilling the beans, she wouldn’t even be on her way to the airport right now. I’m going with Lucy.”
“Maybe Lucy doesn’t want to go with two excitable knuckleheads,” Phillip said, shocking me as he flanked my other side. “Which is why I should be the one who gets to go.”
“Actually,” said Amber, who’d entered the room while we were all arguing, “I think I should also come.”
“Amber?” I asked in shock. “Not you too?”
“Of course. We already decided I’d always be your getaway car driver, remember?
” She gave me a wink and plucked the keys from my hand, before turning toward the lost and found box and gleefully tossing a few stray hats and scarves at the band.
“Put on some disguises, boys. We’ve got an airport to get to. ”