Don’t You Want Me (A Music City Rom-Com #1)

One

ONE

MAD ABOUT brAD

My duffle bag stuffed with t-shirts, bras, and socks slips off my shoulder onto the ceramic tile floor of Cass’s entryway. I stare down at it, shoulders drooped.

“The final remnants of my relationship with Brad the Bass Player.”

“I think you mean, ‘Yay, I’m finally free of that loser,’” Cass says.

I considered leaving everything behind with a dramatic door slam but some of my vintage t-shirts are irreplaceable. Brad probably would have given them to Shelley, the sexy little minx who teaches his spin class. Or was it Sherry? Shelby? Doesn’t matter. I’m moving in with my best friend and her geriatric great aunt while Shelley/Sherry/Shelby is moving into my boyfriend’s downtown loft.

Ex-boyfriend, I mean.

Cass sets my guitar case down next to my duffle bag, everything I own stacked into little piles in the entryway.

“How sad is it my entire life fits into two suitcases, two duffle bags, one laundry basket and three boxes I stole from behind the liquor store.”

“And your guitar,” Cass says .

I push out my bottom lip and blow a stray strand of hair out of my eyes, the same strand I wrangled back into my topknot five minutes ago.

“I am never dating a musician again.” I say it emphatically, like a decree. If I had a gavel, I’d bang it.

“Mind if I record you saying that so I can play it back in a month?” Cass says with a knowing grin.

“I’m serious this time.”

“As serious as the last time or the last, last time?”

I count down on my fingers. “No singers, no guitar players, no bass players, no keyboard players, no drummers.” I close my eyes and sigh. “ Especially drummers.”

Cass’s dog, an ancient French bulldog named Chop, toddles into the entryway and sniffs the contents of my life. When he doesn’t find anything worthy of his attention, he wanders back into the living room. Much like the male population of Nashville, he is bored with me.

“I dated a drummer once,” Cass says. “She had the most incredible shoulders.”

“Right? Drummers and swimmers.” I pick up one of the boxes and follow Cass down the hall to my new room.

It’s technically her great aunt’s house, the exact opposite of the palatial Hollywood Hills house my sister bought but never truly lives in. She and my mother travel so much I mostly grew up there alone with the house staff and empty rooms full of designer furniture.

Granny G’s house is warm and inviting, painted a bright garden green on the outside and all the other colors on the inside. The kitchen is wallpapered in tropical birds and there’s zebra print wallpaper in the hallway bathroom. The living room is a mismatch of fabrics, shag rainbow rug under a plaid couch next to a floral overstuffed chair. The walls, painted in varying shades of the rainbow, are barely visible underneath layers and layers of framed photos and memorabilia and random art pieces Granny’s collected over the years .

“Things you love should be on display,” she’s always said, and she loves a lot of things.

“On second thought,” I say, passing a metal sculpture of a roaring tiger on the wall, “I might make an exception for a drummer. But definitely no lead singers. There’s always three of us in the relationship—me, him, and his massive ego.”

“What about a producer?”

I shudder. “They always want you to ‘come out to their car’ to listen to a ‘sweet track’ they just recorded.”

“But you’d think they’d be good with their hands. All those little buttons and knobs they have to turn on the mixing board.”

Cass opens the door to my new room. It’s small but nice. And free. There’s a queen bed with white fluffy bedding and Cass cleared out the closet for me. Granny G’s sewing machine is set up in the corner and the walls are covered in dozens of framed photographs and colorful art on canvas. Over the bed hangs a giant oil painting of Granny G, nude, from when she lived in Paris in her twenties. I’ve seen it before, but seeing it now, over the bed I’ll be sleeping in, is a lot.

My life must really be in shambles if I’d rather sleep under Granny G’s nude than ever date a musician again.

“Maybe this break-up with Brad is a good thing,” I say, dropping the box onto the closet floor. “In fact, maybe I’ll just be celibate for the rest of my life. Way less drama that way.”

Cass pulls her phone from her back pocket and points it at my face. “Say it into the microphone.”

I lean forward and loudly declare, “This is Mari Gold reporting live from my last and final break-up. I am done with men. Forever.”

“I think you’ll need to use your real name to make it legally binding.”

I push out a loud breath and flop down onto the bed. “Pass.”

Since I moved to Nashville from L.A., I’ve been burning through guys at an alarming pace. I didn’t come here with the intention to conquer the men of Music City, but the thrill of being somewhat anonymous has been intoxicating. Nashville is rich with hot, young musicians looking for a good time not a long time. Most of them could care less who I really am or who my family is. But the few who do care have made things…complicated. Men, at least the men I’m attracted to, continue to be painfully predictable.

The mattress dips as Cass falls next to me. “Are you ready to talk about it?”

“No.” She waits, knowing I’ll tell her anyway. “I overheard Brad on the phone to his friend.” I look over at her. “He was talking about my sister.”

“Oh no,” Cass says. We’ve had this conversation before.

“We’d been dating six months,” I say. “We were living together. Yes, it was more about the cost of rent than true love, but still. I thought I could trust him. I thought he’d be cool about my sister being a pop superstar. The second he found out he began plotting how to dump me and meet Polly. I’m two thousand miles away from L.A. and have, once again, been bypassed in favor of my sister. How does this keep happening?”

“You do know the fact that you’re LOVEJOY’s sister is the worst kept secret in Nashville.”

“Maybe. But at least I don’t lead with it.”

Introducing myself as Penny Lovejoy is like saying my last name is Grohl or Cyrus or Parton. The second people learn I’m a Lovejoy they form an immediate assumption about me, about my songs, about my reasons for being an artist. That, or they want an automatic in with my famous sister.

That’s why I left L.A., to get away from the Lovejoy circus and make my own way as an artist in Nashville. In L.A. I was only ever LOVEJOY’s sister or John Lovejoy’s daughter or Candy Lovejoy’s nuisance. A few years after my father died, my mother got into management, namely turning my older sister, Polly, into LOVEJOY. (My mother’s a stickler about the capitalization. It’s essential to the brand .) When she remembers I exist, my mother waxes poetic about turning me into a pop superstar like my sister and, in her words, “make so much money we’ll be swimming in it.” I keep telling her I’d rather dig ditches than be anything like my sister.

Nashville’s a fresh start away from my family, away from the assumptions that I’m anything like them when I couldn’t be more different. I’m here to become something else, something closer to the truth of who I am. I just need to figure out who that is.

My mother, loudly disappointed that I “abandoned the family,” cut me off in every way she could. I’ve been working three different jobs but it still doesn’t cover an apartment on my own.

“Brad was an empty-headed know-it-all,” Cass says. “Good riddance, honestly.”

“Do you really think that or are you just being nice.”

“Both.”

The bedroom door creaks open and Granny G swirls into the room. She’s in a toucan-themed caftan, bright red lipstick, dangly gold earrings peeking out from her silver curls.

“Hello, little flower. I’m so happy you’ve come to make a home in our garden.”

I hop off the bed and lean down to hug her. She kisses me on the cheek, leaving a lip print. Chop comes in, his chunky butt wagging in approval.

“I can’t thank you enough for letting me crash here until I can get my life together.”

“Stay as long as you need,” Cass says. “We’re family.”

“I love you, but I don’t think my mother’s ex-husband’s aunt’s great niece truly counts as family.”

“In Tennessee it does,” Granny G says with a wink. “Our home is your home, sweet Mari. We’re so glad you’re here.”

“Thanks, Granny. You two are truly lifesavers.”

Cass’s phone buzzes in her back pocket. She checks it and cocks her head to the side like here we go .

“It’s Jackson. ”

“I’ll leave you girls to it,” Granny says, backing out of the room with Chop and shutting the door.

Cass swipes open the call and we sit next to each other on the bed so we can both see him.

“My two favorite ladies,” Jackson says with a giant grin. He’s in a Hawaiian shirt, unbuttoned, his blonde hair slicked back like an investment banker. “I’m having a little get together and I need you here.”

“How little,” I ask because Jackson Lord’s get togethers are always over-the-top events. He’s the unofficial Nashville host. He knows everyone, is friends with every kind of friend group. His house is always crowded and fun, but I don’t know if I have it in me tonight.

“Just a few friends plus my two favorite ladies who are on their way right now,” he says. “Right? You’re on your way?”

Cass and I exchange a knowing look.

“We can see all the people behind you,” Cass says with a laugh. “It looks like more than a few friends.”

“I’ve been moving out of Brad’s all day,” I say, hoping he’ll catch the hint. “Put us down as a maybe.”

“Screw Brad. He’s a terrible bass player and, coincidentally, not invited.” When Cass and I don’t heartily agree he adds, “There’s food.”

“Food?” I say, suddenly remembering I never ate lunch and it’s now past dinner.

“I’ll see you in thirty,” Jackson says and ends the call.

“What do you think,” Cass says. “You wanna go?”

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I figured tonight would be about taking a very long shower and getting into bed to watch hydraulic press videos until my eyes burn.”

She hops off the bed and claps her hands together. “Or, option B, we go eat Jackson’s free food. Then you can come home and watch all the hydraulic press videos you want.”

The last place I want to be is at a party. But I am hungry. And Jackson’s parties always have the best food .

“Fine. But I’m going just like this.”

Damp tendrils of my dark wavy hair are falling out of my sweaty topknot. I’m braless in my oversized Spice Girls t-shirt with the arms cut out and my denim shorts are too short for public consumption, part of my strategy to show Brad what he’s missing out on.

Cass unzips my duffle and roots around until she finds a pink lace bra and tosses it to me. “At least put this on.”

“Don’t tell me you, a gold star gay, are scared of a little boob flash.”

She shrugs. “Fine by me. But if you’re gonna fly free, at least flash the good one.”

“How do you know I have a good one?”

Cass laughs and pulls me out into the hallway. “Everybody’s got a good one.”