My Rockstar Crush
Carissa
This is the most insane, terrifying, horror movie shit show of a thing I’ve ever done.
I’m a shit liar, so I can’t just laugh this off. I’ve been imagining this moment for years, and it never played out like this.
“What is this?” Wilder's head snaps up from the journal too fast, and he blinks to clear away what are probably black spots. He keeps his breathing even, but grinds his teeth hard. His jaw clenches repeatedly.
I’ve never been so nervous. Ever.
His eyes drop to scan the page again, and then he turns it and reads the next one and the next. He knows what they are. “Songs,” he says with reverence.
They could be poems, I suppose, but when you give writing like that to a musician, they’re always going to be songs.
“I wrote them, but they never felt like they were meant to be just mine. I want you to have them.” Half of them are about him. Erm, actually, most of them are about him, but there’s no way he can ever know that.
“Why?” he asks. But it’s not a rude question. Not when his hand strokes the page reverently, tracing over my writing. “I write my own songs.”
Gah. The way he says that when he raises his eyes, like he’s open to changing his mind because he sees something he likes in the book, hits me hard.
In all the wrong places.
Well, right places, but they’re wrong for wrong reasons. Or right reasons?
“They’re for inspiration,” I mumble. “If you want them to be. Or for the future. In any capacity. Or none at all.”
“You told me that you don’t play any instruments.”
“That was quite a while ago.” I hope he doesn’t remember the rest of that conversation we had right after I was hired.
He didn’t like the idea of me being around, but he didn’t really get a say in it.
He asked me tersely if I played, and I said I didn’t.
It was true at the time. Then he asked me if I was a fan of his band, Wilder’s Peril.
I knew what he was really asking. He was asking why I was truly there and what motivated me to take the job.
I may have received the message about ulterior motives, and I might have said something along the lines of Wilder’s Peril not being the sort of band I enjoyed listening to.
I didn’t lie. I wasn’t a fan before I took the job.
A job was a job, and it was a great opportunity, and that was the sole reason I applied. I never thought I’d get hired.
I was between jobs. I’d worked privately caring for a sweet old man until he passed away. I was still pretty heartbroken when I came across this posting. I wasn’t even going to apply.
Now look at me.
Hopelessly in unrequited love.
His face is giving me a whole lot of I definitely remember how the rest of that conversation went, and I like you more for it.
“I learned how to play,” I explain, my face flushing. I can play, but not the way Wilder can. “I taught myself with online apps.”
“When?”
“When you weren’t touring. At home. When I wasn’t on the road with the band, I needed to be on call at all times for you, so it was not like I could go out and take another job.
I volunteered a lot, mostly at animal shelters, and hung out with my mom, our cats, and the dog.
I also gardened, did other hobby stuff, and learned to play guitar. ”
“And wrote me a whole notebook of songs.”
My face is like tea that’s left to brew for too long. Like hibiscus tea. Always delicious, but if steeped overnight for cold brew, it goes from pretty pink to bright red. That’s me. A mortifying shade of tea that’s ready for the addition of lemonade for the perfect drink.
“I didn’t… I wasn’t writing them for you. It only became clear later that you were meant to have them.” That’s partly true, if you count the play of words on for you instead of about you. I never meant for the notebook to see the light of day.
But since this might be the last time I'll be this close to him like this, I felt like I needed to give it to him.
“They should be heard,” he murmurs. His finger whispers down the page, tracing my writing again.
My stomach does something I’ve never felt it do before. It’s part crap, part butterflies, part sick feeling.
“Would you play one for me?” he asks.
I leap up abruptly. “No. Never.”
If I sing it, he'll know… he'll freaking know how I feel about him.