11. Chapter Eleven
Chapter Eleven
Lila
"Just got back on the bus," Evan would say. "I miss you, my sweet girl."
My sweet girl. Pathetic, honestly, the way those three words could rearrange my organs.
"I miss you too." I'd curl under my blankets, phone pressed to my ear, pretending my room didn't feel too still without him in it. "How was the show?"
"Good. Amazing. Loud." A pause, the soft scrape of him shifting around in his bunk. "Wish I could do this with you."
"I'm still here."
"I know."
"Always," I'd say, needing him to believe it. Needing to believe it myself.
"I love you," he'd say.
"I love you too."
Sometimes it ended there. Not because we wanted it to, but because tour had rules. Bus call, early lobby time, interviews at godforsaken hours, some city waiting to swallow him before spitting him into the next one.
Other times the pause on the line stretched, not awkward, not empty. It held the low hum of the bus, the muffled voices of his band somewhere beyond the curtain, the little creak of the narrow bunk when he shifted onto his side. It held the question he didn't ask outright because he didn't have to.
I'd smile into the dark like an idiot. "I'm lying here in your band's T-shirt," I'd say. "And nothing else."
His breath would catch, tiny and barely there. But I heard it. That little break in control did unholy things to me, because for all his swagger onstage, this was where Evan was honest. Alone, tired, wanting me from a hundred miles away with a bus full of people just outside the curtain.
"Send me the picture," he'd say. "Right now."
And of course, I did. No makeup, hair a mess, bare legs stretched across rumpled sheets, tired eyes full of wanting, his logo clinging to the rise of my chest like a secret I could wear.
My thumb would hover over send for one ridiculous second. Not because I didn't trust him. Because it wasn't just a photo. It was proof, a tether, me saying I was still his even when the world didn't know I existed.
Then I'd send it and wait. Those seconds always felt too long.
Then his message would come through.
Lila.
Just my name, nothing else. Somehow worse. Or better. Both, probably.
Use your words, Mr. Rockstar,
I’d tease, cheeks burning already.
You're killing me.
Good.
I'm serious.
So am I.
Sometimes he laughed. Sometimes he didn't. Sometimes his voice went low enough that I had to press the phone tighter to my ear and check that my bedroom door was locked, even though no one in my house would ever walk in without knocking.
Well, except Sam. Sam had no idea what the word boundaries meant The concept existed somewhere, but not in her daily life.
Those moments were ours. The last little locked room in the world.
Then, because I apparently hated peace, I would ruin it.
"Hey," I'd say, failing at casual. "Don't let your tour girls get all your attention."
Silence, the kind where he was deciding how close to the truth he wanted to stand.
"I saw those shipping videos," I'd add.
There it was. The thing I'd promised myself I wouldn't bring up. The pop star. The opening slot. The glitter-tear girl with the perfect stomach and the kind of stage chemistry people turned into edits before the song even ended.
"You and Marissa Vale, huh?"
The first time I said it, my voice sounded casual. I'd practiced casual in the mirror. That should have been my first clue that I was not, in fact, casual.
I had watched the edits. The slow-motion clips, the zooms on their hands, the way she threw an arm around him during the encore and he laughed like the whole room belonged to them. Captions written like prophecy.
EVAN + MARISSA = ENDGAME??? Tell me they're not secretly dating. He looks at her like THAT.
He didn't laugh, didn't brush it off. That made it worse for half a second. Then he exhaled.
"It gets loud," he said. "But it doesn't get real. Not like this."
My hand tightened around the edge of my blanket. "Never?"
"Never."
"That's what any man surrounded by hot girls would say."
His laugh came then, rough and tired. "You calling me a man now? Last week I was a haunted guitar god."
"You contain multitudes."
"So do you."
"Don't flirt your way out of answering."
"I'm not." The bus noise dipped behind him; maybe he'd pulled the curtain tighter, maybe he'd turned his face into the pillow. "None of them are you, Lila."
I wanted that to be enough. For a while, it was.
"It never gets hard?" I asked. The words came out smaller than I wanted. I hated that. Hated needing reassurance, hated that distance could plant doubt where trust should live, hated that some girl with a glitter tear drawn under one eye could make me feel like a shadow in my own relationship.
"With women throwing themselves at you?" I added, because apparently humiliation had layers and I intended to wear all of them.
"It gets tiring," he said. "It gets weird. Sometimes it gets lonely in a room full of people screaming my name."
That answer surprised me. It was not the easy one, not the prettiest. He let it sit for a second, then said, "But no. It doesn't get hard like that."
"Because you're noble?"
"Absolutely not."
"Good, because I would've hung up."
"Because I'm in love with a girl who sends me criminal photos in my own band shirt and then acts like I'm the problem."
I smiled despite myself. "There he is."
"Where?"
"My cocky haunted guitar God."
"Careful," he said. "I'm vulnerable right now."
"You're always vulnerable after midnight."
"It's 10:31."
"Emotionally midnight."
He laughed again, and the sound settled somewhere in my chest where it had no business renting space. Then his voice softened. "You have no idea what you do to me."
I looked at the dark screen of my laptop across the room. It reflected the faint shape of me in bed, curled under blankets, phone to my ear, wearing a shirt the world would recognize before it ever recognized me.
"Maybe I do."
"No," he said. "You don't."
A pause, soft this time. I could hear the smile he hadn't let into his voice yet.
"It's weird how we fit so well, isn't it?" I whispered.
"Not weird."
"No?"
"No." His answer was immediate, too sure. "This is what it's supposed to feel like."
And for a little while, I believed that. Until the call ended. Until the screen went dark. Until my room felt too still and too small because my life stayed in one place while his kept moving.
Evan went from city to city, stage to stage, scream to scream. I went to class, wrote songs in margins, ate cereal over the sink, watched my boyfriend become public property while I stayed locked in the private folder.
Then I'd do the thing I promised myself I wouldn't do. I'd scroll. Just to see the noise. Fan edits, thirst tweets, slowed reverb audio clips with captions that sliced too close.
I wish I was Evan Walker's girlfriend. Evan Walker's girlfriend will be the luckiest girl alive. I'd have his babies in a heartbeat. He's going to be so rich; his wife will never have to work again.
They made me proud. Proud of him, proud of what he'd built out of nothing, proud that the boy who once played sticky-floor bars was now filling venues and living in people's heads.
But they hit too. Because it reminded me of the way people used to talk about Molly's kid.
So lucky. She'll never have to work a day in her life. Her parents are living proof true love exists. Must be nice to be born into a happy ending.
It always came back to that word. Lucky. As if being adjacent to someone else's greatness was a blessing. As if standing next to a dream was the same as having one. As if my existence only mattered because of who loved me, who I belonged to.
I'd stare at my reflection in the dark phone screen, face lit by the glow, and feel that old pinch beneath my ribs.
The one that never quite went away when you were raised under a spotlight you didn't ask for.
The one that got worse when the boy you loved stepped into his own spotlight and held out his hand.
Because he did. That was the part I didn't always like admitting. Evan offered, again and again.
Come to the show. Stand in the wings. Let me post you. Let me say your name. Let me love you where people can hear it.
Each time I said, "not yet." Not because I didn't love him. I did, God, I did. But love didn't make the comments disappear, or the edits less sharp, or stop strangers from turning women into prizes and calling it devotion.
A notification lit up my phone. Another fan edit. Evan onstage, sweat shining under blue lights, Marissa Vale smiling beside him as confetti fell around them. The caption read:
Imagine being the girl he comes home to after this.
I stared at it until my eyes hurt.
I was the girl he called after this. The girl he missed. The girl wearing his shirt in a room nobody could see.
I should have felt chosen. Instead, I felt erased with better lighting.
Maybe that's when the seed started to grow. The one that whispered, be more than someone's dream girl. Be your own damn dream.