Chapter 28
“I do miss it,” Miles quietly admits, a hesitation because he still believes it’s what tore us apart. “As long as you’re cool with it, Daze, I’d love to give it a try.”
I want to cheer out loud, scream it from the rooftops. The excitement I feel for Miles is beyond words, and knowing he’s going to do what he loves, in a place that he loves, makes it all the better.
When he came back after things went sour with the band, there were whispers of whether he’d play here on the island again, but he shut people down time after time.
It felt like he said no because everything was too new and too raw, but he’s had time to heal. We’ve had time to heal. We’re different people than we were back then, learning from our mistakes and realizing our dreams are important.
Not just to ourselves, but to each other.
“Ready to pack the place?” Lisa asks, smiling at Miles. “It’ll probably be the most business I’ve seen since…”
She trails off. The band basically got their start in Lisa’s bar, with her letting them play even when they were underage, and people would flock to see them. The last time they played on the island before leaving for their tour was here.
“It’s cool. You can say it,” I tell Lisa. “We’ve made peace with it all. It’s part of our past, but it’s not a past we want to forget.”
“You two have really come a long way,” she says, slipping her arms around our waists. She pulls us in for a group hug. “I’m so glad you’re back together.”
“Fuck, so are we,” Miles says, laughing. “Worst year of our lives.”
We sit down with Lisa and map out a schedule since she does already have bands booked. She pencils Miles in for next week on Thursday and the following week for Friday, able to fill an opening from a band that canceled.
“I’ll get it all up on the bar’s Instagram page and put up a few flyers. Sally Sinclair has some space that she lets me use at her concierge desk at the Orchid Bay,” Lisa says, almost mindlessly running through a list.
“I’ll hang some signs up in the bakery windows. We’ve had people walking by, peeking in on the progress,” I add, and when I look over at Miles, he’s deep in thought.
Watching him, I can tell this is a lot, but I won’t call it out here in front of Lisa. It’s something we need to talk about in the privacy of our home because we both said we wouldn’t keep things from each other.
He can change his mind if he wants. I would never want to pressure him into doing something he isn’t fully comfortable with, and I know Lisa would agree.
“Why don’t Miles and I head home, and we’ll get back to you to finalize everything?” I say, and I watch as Lisa scans Miles’s face, giving me a nod and a wink.
Maybe I jumped into something too quickly.
“Sounds good,” Lisa replies, and as we stand up to leave, she adds, “And Miles…” He turns, looking over his shoulder. “There will never be a time that I say no to you. If you change your mind and come back a year later, the answer will always be yes.”
“Thanks, Lisa.”
We walk back home, hand in hand, both of us quiet, and I know Miles is processing it all. Singing is what he loves, but it also holds a lot of bad memories, and I don’t just mean for the two of us.
The guys in the band were thick as thieves, basically growing up together and adding Isaac later. But the original guys—Sutton, Dean, and Lacey—along with Miles became a band with practice and hard work and growth.
They logged the hours: bloody fingers and broken drumsticks, arguments and celebrations. It was beautiful and poetic, scary and exciting, and these were just my feelings. I wasn’t even part of the band, but we all knew they were bound for something bigger than Maui.
We watched them go from a shitty garage band to playing in local bars and then getting the opportunity to showcase their talent at the Maui Songwriters Festival.
It felt like the whole community saw them grow up and become something, so when they were approached by a producer who wanted to make an album with them, it was the logical next step.
Logical but risky, and I’m sure a little scary.
And then there was the tour, a tour with the opportunity to go worldwide, but it never got that far.
The second we step in the door of our house, I look at him, a mix of sadness and apprehension washing over his face. His eyes speak to me, telling me all the things he’s afraid to say out loud.
I can feel the space change, but I can also feel the comfort we share, and Miles lets out a hard sigh, his arms wrapping around me.
“What’s going on?” I whisper, my fingers sliding over the buzzed hair at the nape of his neck, holding him close. My lips trail along his neck, leaving soft kisses in their wake.
The beating of our hearts match, the rhythm calming me, and I close my eyes. Waiting for Miles to tell me what he’s feeling, waiting for the raw honesty that we both need.
“I have a ton of guilt,” Miles admits, his arms tightening around me. He holds me close, not letting me look at him.
“Why?” The word comes out soft and sweet, and I walk him over to the couch. Sitting down, he follows suit, but instead of sitting, he lays his head in my lap.
“They’re not just my songs, Daisy. They belong to the band,” he explains, pausing to let it sink in. “And as much as things suck between us, I think I owe it to them to ask permission to use them.”
“Or you could just do some new original stuff,” I suggest, smiling down at him. “You wrote that song for me, remember?”
“While I love your enthusiasm, babe, it’s not that easy. I have one new song, and I know people coming to see me are going to want…”
He doesn’t finish his thought, but I know what he was going to say.
People aren’t coming to hear Miles play new songs or covers. They want to hear the songs that made him, songs that made Silent Daydream famous. The same songs that still grace the airwaves of the radio and the ones people stream that keep bringing in money for Miles and the band.
In this moment, I couldn’t love Miles more. My heart is bursting, and the smile that crosses my lips has Miles looking up at me with confusion.
“I think I have to reach out to them,” he says, and all I can do is nod, the tears welling in my eyes.
We go to bed with so much floating around in our heads, and it’s still there when we wake up. With heavy eyes, I wrap myself around Miles, the warmth of his body one of the greatest feelings in the world. The contented sigh that falls from my lips matches the rhythm of Miles’s soft breaths.
“Did you do it last night after I fell asleep?” I ask him, but he just shakes his head.
“I’m struggling,” he admits, the honesty becoming part of who we are now, no longer bottling things up.
“I know. When you split, things weren’t good. It’s scary to reach out to them, but maybe the time has done everyone some good.”
“Yeah, maybe,” he says, his fingers tracing absentminded circles on my bare skin.
“It worked for us,” I reply, hopeful and smiling. “But I don’t ever want to pressure you into doing something you don’t want to do, and I understand that anything to do with the band can be triggering.”
“Yeah,” he says again, and I know very little about what happened when they were on tour.
I only know what I saw on the band’s social media and then when the news media picked up the story of canceled shows, a fight with the band they were supporting, and a rift between the members.
The tabloids had a field day with it all, and what was said could have all been lies for all I know. I learned a lot about people during Miles’s tour and how they love to attach themselves to fame and gossip, especially when it’s going down in flames.
But we don’t talk about any of that, and among our group of friends, it was an unspoken rule that we didn’t talk about Miles or the band when the media came knocking.
So, any story that ran was half-truths or straight-up lies because journalists don’t always write the truth.
The truth is boring.
The truth doesn’t sell like salacious scandals and fights within a band that was once labeled as close as family.
“Just give me some time, and if I do reach out to them and they say no, then I think it’s for the best that I don’t perform,” he says, and now it’s me nodding in agreement.
“I’ll tell Lisa to hold off.”
“But we can still use my name to bring customers to the bakery,” Miles jokes, rolling me over so he’s now straddling my hips. “Might as well get some use out of it, right?”
He leans down, kissing me and letting his forehead rest against mine. We let the silence pass between us, comforting and calming.
“Thanks for helping me navigate this,” he now says. “I do want to play. I miss the fuck out of it, but it’s also super fucked up because of all the bullshit.”
“You’re always welcome to play for an audience of one,” I reply. “And I won’t even ask you to play The Simple Truth.”
This comment makes Miles let out a chuckle. Pinning my arms above my head, he buries his face in my neck, biting and sucking till I’m squirming around and laughing.
“I don’t think I’ll ever play that song again,” he admits, pulling back from where I’m sure he’s left a mark on my neck. Rolling his eyes, he laughs again. “That fucking song. You know I forgot the lyrics one night, and the audience was legit like, what the fuck?”
“I can’t believe anyone could forget the lyrics. It was played so often that even I got sick of hearing it.”
“Oh,” Miles says, a hand resting over his heart, a pained expression on his face, all exaggerated and over the top. “That hurts, Daze. It really hurts.”
“Stop it,” I quip, swatting at his ass as he climbs off me. “I’m going to take a shower and then head over to the bakery.”
“Sounds good. I’ll meet you over there in a bit. Just need to…” Trailing off, he slowly nods his head.
The floral garland is hanging outside the window of the bakery, all perfectly placed daisies among greenery and pinks and golds. It matches the painted wooden shaker siding and the gold trim, and then there are the words “Coming Soon” painted on the window by Nate’s expert hand.
“Do you think people will get the play on words?” I ask Miles, and he lets out a hearty laugh.
“Seriously, Daze?”
“Yes, seriously.”
“What? You think people will think it’s a garden center? If they don’t know what a homophone is, then they probably don’t know that cupcakes are delicious,” Miles chides, giving my side a pinch.
“A homophone, huh? Guess that island public school education wasn’t so bad,” I reply, both of us beaming.
It’s so fucking crazy that this dream is about to come true. It was made even more real when Nate came by with a gorgeous hand-painted A-frame sign for out front. Something he did as a surprise, taking Sloane’s design, replicating it and adding our opening date to it.
“Wanna get started on those last little details inside?” Miles asks, and just as we’re about to walk in, his phone starts to ring.
Freezing instantly, his eyes go wide. No one calls around here. We are all so close that walking over or shooting off a quick text works.
Miles didn’t tell me whether or not he reached out to the band members when he met me out front to hang the garland.
But his ringing phone and the look on his face say it all.
“I gotta take this,” he tells me, disappearing around the corner, heading toward our house.
Fuck.