Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
PATTY
T he thing about giving in is how good it feels. I’ve been fighting myself and what I want for weeks on end, and now that she’s basically forced my hand, I’m done fighting.
Even if I shouldn’t be.
“Are you sure I don’t look too much like myself?” Lou asks. “Or too much like me trying not to look like me?”
I look her over in the bathroom mirror. Like the rest of the suite, the bathroom is gaudy and overwhelmingly pink. Edison lights line the entire mirror, illuminating her from every angle.
I don’t know much about makeup and even less about contouring, but Lou has a makeup bag full of tools she’s used to good effect. With just a few subtle shading tricks, she’s managed to change the shape of her face and jaw, slim down her nose, and even make her eyes look smaller. Instead of looking like Lou or Lucy Jane, she looks exactly like a Winona Williams impersonator. And when she puts her hair up into the same spiky bun her mom so often wore and pulls two wisps of hair out to frame her face, the effect is uncanny.
“You look exactly like someone trying to look like your mom.”
She examines herself from multiple angles and even sends a picture to the Janes and another to her sisters. A moment later, all of the women in her life respond in unanimous agreement. She shows me the texts.
Her sisters:
JUNE
Whoa!! That is seriously creepy.
NORA
Who are you, and why are you wearing Mom’s face?
And her friends:
ASH
THE Y2K HAIR. Are you joining a Winona Williams tribute band?
MILLIE
Whaaaat? I never thought you looked that much like your mom until right now.
PARKER
You look exactly like your mom, for realzzz.
LOU
Someone take Parker’s phone away, will you? Her 2000s Frat Boy is coming out.
JANE
That’s not her 2000s Frat Boy. That’s her natural state. Parker has texting bro face.
ASH
HAHAHA
MILLIE
BAHAHAQHA
BAHAHAHA, sorry.
PARKER
You guyzzzz are just jealous of my mad texting skillzzzzzzz.
LOU
Make it stop! My eyes are bleeding!
JANE
You look as incognito as someone could be. Go! Enjoy the night out in Branson!
PARKER
Enjoyzzzzzz!
LOU
Why are you still adding z’s??
PARKER
Becauzzzz I canzzzz.
LOU
I’m blocking Parker.
JANE
Join the club.
LOU
Love you, ladies. Ladiezzz
Oh no! It’s catching!
MILLIE
NOT YOU TOO!
ASH
Oh, sweet Lou. What have they done to you?
PARKER
Welcome to the dark zzzide.
JANE
Now you’re just being ridiculous.
LOU
Ridiculouzzz
I hate who I’ve become.
PARKER
We’ll get the rezzzt of themzzz.
LOU
I takez it backzzz: I lovezzz it.
ASH
I’m gonna text Patty. I think Parker broke Lou.
LOU
*smooches* BYE!
She looks so happy as she texts her friends. I wonder if she knows that this is the first time she’s smiled like that since we left them in South Carolina. No … this is the happiest I’ve seen her since we played in her parents’ barn. Like now, that happiness seemed to reach her soul. In those ten, fifteen minutes, she seemed lighter and freer than I’ve ever seen her.
Until now.
Is that … is it because of me?
“My sisters and the Janes have given me the final stamp of approval. Looks like I’m good to go,” Lou says, giving herself one final look before she turns to me. “But before we head out, we need to settle something.”
“Yes?” I ask.
She bites her lip. She doesn’t look like she’s playing coy or being flirtatious; she looks nervous. Her fingers tighten around the hem of her shirt like she’s bracing herself. She stands tall and takes a deep breath.
“I don’t do flings. If that’s what you see happening here, you’re free to go out, and I’ll stay in the room.”
Her words hit like a slap.
“You think I’m here for a fling?” I ask, incredulous. And hurt. A slow ache blooms behind my ribs, and I take a slow step toward her. “You think I somehow lured you up into a honeymoon suite so I could, what, take advantage of you? You’ve never even kissed someone. The natural progression doesn’t go from first kiss to sleeping with someone. The natural progression from a first kiss is a second kiss.” I pause, letting the weight of my words settle between us. Then I lower my voice. “And that, I intend to give you.”
She watches me carefully, her expression unreadable.
“I know we haven’t known each other long,” she finally says, “but I really like this version of you.”
A muscle jumps in my jaw as something hot and raw swells in my chest.
A heavy sound rumbles in my throat. “I don’t like you sayin’ that.”
“Saying what?”
“How you don’t know me or don’t know me well or haven’t known me long. How long do you have to hear a song before it can cut you to your soul? Before it can become a part of you?”
Her lips spread into a secret smile, slow and knowing.
“Are you saying I’m a part of you?”
Yes. The word burns on my tongue, but I swallow it down, rolling my lips together like I can physically stop myself from saying it. My fingers twitch at my sides, aching to reach for her, to hold onto this moment before I ruin it. Should I say it? Should I let her see the weight of everything I haven’t said? How vulnerable can I let myself be before I break?
“You’ve ruined me for any other music,” I admit in a thick voice I can’t quite clear.
She exhales, soft and shaky, and lifts her chin just slightly, like she’s daring me to say more.
I reach up, dragging a slow knuckle along her jaw, and she leans—just the tiniest bit—into my touch.
“That’s the kind of compliment a girl could get used to,” she murmurs. Then her smile falters, hesitation briefly clouding the light in her eyes. “I guess I keep saying things like that because you … scare me. Since the moment I met you, I’ve tried to convince myself that I don’t need or want anything, but when I’m with you?—”
Her voice catches, and my stomach tightens.
“You what?” I ask, leaning closer, so close her breath skates against my collarbone.
She swallows. Her lips part, but she hesitates.
I slip a finger beneath her chin and tilt her face up to mine.
“Tell me,” I say, my voice no longer just thick—it’s nearly breaking.
“I want more when I’m with you. But I think that starts with you filling in some blanks.”
I take a breath, letting her words sink in, letting the possibility of her—of us —take up residence in my chest.
“Let me ask you something: if you have a piece of sheet music and some measures are missing, does that mean you don’t know the song?”
“Not perfectly, I don’t,” she says.
“Does anyone know another person perfectly?”
She exhales, a quiet note of frustration in the sound. “Maybe I’ll never master the tune, but I can’t even play it if I’m missing measures. And I’m not just missing measures—I worry I’m missing entire pages and that when I start trying to play, I’ll look like an idiot.”
Her words hit like a sharp chord struck too hard—a little off-key, a little painful, because I know exactly what she means.
I pause, searching for the right words, for something true and fair. I twist a strand of hair between my fingers, slow and deliberate, like I’m committing the texture of it to memory. Then I cup her cheeks and look at her, willing her to understand what I can and can’t give her.
“What if those missing measures aren’t missing on purpose? What if they’re being revised? What if the melody’s changing into something better?”
A gentle smile spreads across her face. “Sounds like you need a co-writer.”
Something tightens around my lungs—hope, fear, the terrifying realization that I want this so much more than I should.
But the thing about revisions is that some drafts are too messy to even show another person. Some pages are smudged, torn, nearly illegible. Part of me aches to let her see them, but what if she doesn’t like the melody anymore? As much as she may want to see that ugly first draft, some of those missing measures are too discordant, too raw, too risky to share before I’ve had a chance to smooth them out.
But I don’t tell her that.
All I say is, “Okay.”
Her expression doesn’t change right away, like she’s waiting for me to add something. To say more.
Maybe I should. Maybe “okay” isn’t enough.
I drop my hands from her face and take a half-step back, dragging a hand through my hair as I try to find the right words. “I don’t want you thinking I’m keeping things from you because I don’t trust you. Or because you don’t deserve to know.” I drop my head. “It’s just—I’m not ready for you to see my messy first draft. I know that means asking you to trust me, me keeping something back, but I need time to figure out what I’m looking at before I hand it over. Can you work with that?”
Her eyes soften. “I can work with that,” she says. “As long as you don’t expect me to stop asking.”
I snort. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”