Chapter Four
By the end, the meeting felt like eight hours had passed and also no time at all, both like they covered a lot of ground and like the whole thing could’ve been an email.
Micah was exhausted and looking forward to getting to her hotel room and falling into bed before catching an early-morning flight out of there.
She could sense that Ryder was waiting for her, wanting to grab a private moment after everyone else had cleared out, so she went to the bathroom and stayed long enough that she felt confident he’d given up.
She tried to refresh her makeup in the mirror, only to smudge it worse than before.
In the end, she washed it all off so she could apply it again.
She’d dressed for the meeting very deliberately, like she was preparing to go into battle.
Just enough of the pop star glamour that she could feel a little powerful, like she could hide behind the stagecraft of winged eyeliner and platform boots.
Just enough no-nonsense styling—her long hair in a bun, her clothing modest enough to cover most of her tattoos—that she made it clear she knew this was a business venture first and foremost.
Except her bun had gotten a little messed up on the car ride over, and now she winced when she considered herself in the mirror. Had that been how she’d looked the entire time?
She snagged the elastic out of her hair, letting the strands hang loose around her shoulders.
Somehow, over the years, her hair had become more than just hair —it was a lightning rod for other people’s attitudes toward her, the ultimate expression of her emotional state, one more way that she felt controlled and one more way that she asserted control.
She couldn’t help a twisted smile, even remembering the time she’d hacked it all off to her chin and dyed it black, just before touring had begun for ElectricOh!
’s doomed second album. The record label had actually threatened legal action.
Something about a clause in the contract with an amorphous reference to anything that lost “audience goodwill.” Over fucking hair.
She ran her fingers through it now, pulling it up into a ponytail and giving herself one last look over before venturing out of the bathroom. The receptionist gave Micah a smile as she made her way to the front door.
“You know, I was a big fan of So Much Promise ,” the receptionist said, referring to Micah’s solo record.
A terrible choice for a title, because it had made the bad reviews all riff off how Micah had had so much promise , and what happened?
Which the receptionist undoubtedly knew, judging from the slight emphasis on the I in that sentence.
I was a big fan. An acknowledgment that she knew she was in a select group of people who felt that way.
Hell, Micah hadn’t been a fan of that fucking record.
“Thanks,” she said, reaching into her bag for her sunglasses. “Appreciate it.”
A quick scan of the parking lot showed that everyone seemed to have left, and Micah felt her shoulders relax as she pulled out her phone to order a rideshare.
But then she noticed John, standing at the edge of the parking lot, his own phone pressed to his ear as he laughed at something someone said. Laughed.
He’d been so serious in the meeting. She remembered that side of John, the quiet one that took a while to crack.
But she remembered this other side, too, the one that had been slyly funny and quick to break with one goofy look from her across the room.
She wondered who was making him laugh like that now, who’d earned the right to his inside jokes and his most private smiles.
She felt suddenly so alone. So obviously, stupidly, pathetically alone , hiding out in bathrooms and in her apartment and in all these rules she’d created for herself around her life where she never let anyone get too close.
Her last somewhat serious relationship had been with a woman who’d worked a high-powered job in tech, and she’d never understood why Micah had walked away from a career that seemed like a dream.
Because I kept failing , Micah had said, and Liz had looked at her like she was defective.
“Failure is a mindset,” she’d said. “I don’t believe in failure. Only in opportunities to innovate.”
In a perfect world, Micah would’ve delivered her exit line then, something about how maybe they should innovate their way right into breaking up.
But instead she’d just kept dating Liz for another two months, feeling increasingly bad about herself.
And then after that relationship had ended, she’d gone on a series of self-destructive dates with anyone who said they wanted to meet up and weren’t looking for anything serious, almost like she was challenging them to treat her like she was something disposable, then turning around and feeling hurt when they did.
And now here she was, standing alone in this parking lot, her phone in her hand, and John was over there laughing with someone. It made her angry, and she didn’t know why.
She slid her phone back in her bag, heading across the parking lot toward John.
She caught only a snippet of his conversation—“don’t worry about it, it’s fine”—before he turned.
She tried not to take it personally, the way his face tightened up the moment he saw her, the way his mouth went back to a straight line. But damn.
She took it personally.
“All right,” John said into the phone. “I’ll let you go.
” His gaze swept over Micah, from the top of her head where the ponytail was pulled tight down to the tattoo at her neck.
Then he looked down at his own shoes, kicking a piece of gravel out of the way.
“Yup. I’ll see you at home. No, no, don’t watch without me. Couple hours, tops.”
No I love you to end the conversation, but there had been an easy familiarity that still spoke of someone he knew well, and cared about. Someone he lived with, who he shared TV shows with. I’ll see you at home.
“You live here?” she asked, not meaning the question to come out so snotty but landing somewhere in that vicinity anyway.
“Yeah.”
“Convenient.”
He just looked at her, and she immediately saw how stupid that had been to say, too.
What, like she thought he’d stayed in the same city as their record label just on the off chance that over a decade later, they might schedule a meeting and he’d be able to roll right out of bed and drive a couple blocks over?
“You’d think you’d be able to make the meeting on time, then,” she added, suddenly considering that side of things.
He’d been the only one of them who hadn’t had to catch a flight for this thing, and he’d been the one to arrive way past fashionably late.
“What happened to putting the punk in punctuality ?”
“What?”
“That’s what you used to say, when—” She sighed. “Never mind.”
He put his hands in his pockets, rocking back a little on his heels.
“Where are you living now?” he asked. “L.A.?”
There was no real curiosity in his tone, which rankled her. Just a neutral politeness, like he was going through the motions of small talk at a dinner party.
“Still L.A.,” she said. “We can’t all make big changes, I guess.”
His brow furrowed, like he didn’t get that, and she gestured toward him. “Orlando,” she said. “The white shirt. I’m pretty sure you’re taller.”
“The white—” He glanced down at himself, like he was only just realizing what he was wearing. She wished she hadn’t mentioned it. It felt too revealing, that she’d even noticed. “I doubt I’m taller. You’re taller.”
“It’s the shoes,” she said, and then before she had time to think how strange it would be to do, she leaned down to unzip the sides, stepping out of them until she was standing in her socked feet on the pavement.
She took a step toward John, to where her toes almost touched the fronts of his Converse, the top of her head at his eye level.
Micah had always been tall, for a woman—with the shoes they’d been almost exactly the same height, but now he had a couple inches on her five-ten frame.
He didn’t smell like sweat. He smelled like…John. She didn’t even know how to describe it, but it was instantly familiar to her, from all those times they’d sat next to each other on a couch, all the times he’d leaned over her, crossing a song off the set list and writing another one in its place.
All the times they’d slept together. Literally slept —Micah had always struggled with insomnia, but for whatever reason she’d had an easier time on the nights when John had opened his hotel room door and let her slide into bed with him.
Occasional naps on the bus, curled onto the same tiny bunk.
That had all ended, of course, once she’d started dating Ryder.
Then she’d always had someone to share a bed with, and yet it had never felt quite the same.
There’d been a time when she could’ve buried her hands in his hair to mess it up, to brush it out, just because she felt like it.
She had the strongest urge to do it now, just to reach up and tousle his already tousled curls, to stretch one out and see it spring back into place.
She had the strongest urge to run her hands along his broad shoulders, like she was an aunt marveling at how much her nephew had grown since last Christmas, like she was a wife checking the fit of a suit before a big presentation at work.
She wanted to know if she could still get him to giggle if she found the spot right under his ear.
She wanted to know if he ever let himself cry, the way she’d only seen him do once when they were thirteen and then never again after.
“What else?” John said.
Her mouth was suddenly dry, and she sucked in her bottom lip, running her tongue over it. John tracked the movement, and when his gaze lifted back up his brown eyes looked darker somehow, closer to black. Had he been reading her mind?
“What else what?”
“You still live in L.A., you’re still just as tall,” he said. “What else hasn’t changed? Give me one more.”
Micah felt like her life had been stagnant for so long, but put on the spot she couldn’t think of a single thing to say. “I still like pineapple on my pizza.”
That caused a sudden grin to flash across his face, gone so fast she could’ve blinked and missed it. But she knew if she closed her eyes she’d see the afterimage, would feel the warm glow of triumph in her chest later.
“I do, too, now,” he said. “My—yeah, I came around.”
What had he been about to say? His girlfriend?
His wife ? She couldn’t help but notice that he didn’t wear a ring—she’d fixated a lot on people’s hands during the meeting, watching them flip through the papers, gesture while the person was speaking, tap impatiently on the table (that was Steve, so to be fair, maybe less impatience than the fact that he was always tapping on something ).
Steve was the only one of them who seemed to have gotten married in the intervening years, although Micah supposed there was a possibility that some people had gotten divorced, or just didn’t wear a ring.
She almost asked John outright, but of course it wasn’t any business of hers. So what if he was dating someone. They had never been that to each other, anyway, and for over a decade they hadn’t been anything.
“What else?” she asked instead.
“Orlando, white shirt, pineapple,” he said, counting them off on his fingers. “Those are my three things.”
“Give me three that haven’t changed.”
“My height,” he said, which made her roll her eyes. Yes, they’d covered that. “I still play a mean guitar, if I do say so myself.”
She smiled. “I bet you do.” And truthfully, she’d never doubted it. If there was one person she trusted implicitly to keep it all together on the cruise, to stand exactly where he was supposed to and play every note pitch perfect, it was John.
“And I still…” He trailed off, staring down at her.
His expression had barely changed, and yet she felt like something had shifted, but she didn’t know what.
His lips were slightly parted, his eyes so close she could see the flecks of gold in his irises.
She wanted him to say something real , something that would crack them wide open, that mattered more than just preferred pizza toppings or where they were living now.
He let out a breath. “I still don’t get it,” he said. “The thing with Elvis.”
She tried to smile at that one, too, but it felt a little twisted and false. “Well,” she said. “No accounting for taste.”