Chapter 8
June, Now
All night I dream of him, and when I wake, there are lyrics on my tongue.
Found you in a crowd without trying
Did you search faces, or did you just find me?
Blearily, I push out of bed—still in last night’s outfit, which is also yesterday’s work uniform—and hum it under my breath. Stumbling to my knees on the carpeted floor, I crawl to where I’d propped my acoustic in the corner and fingerpick a tune.
It’s not even new lyrics to an existing song.
It’s a new song.
Soon, a pad of paper and pen join me and I’m scribbling lyrics as fast as I can.
Exhilarated, but also petrified this rush of inspiration is temporary.
I’ve experienced the high of songwriting enough times to know.
When everything’s working, when you feel you have something extraordinary in your grasp, you can’t let distractions in until the foundation has been laid.
In forty minutes, I have the first verse, then the chorus, then a bit of the second verse.
I’m losing steam, getting stuck on the rest. The words aren’t coming as fast as they were when I woke up. I need coffee, need to pee, maybe need a different color felt-tip pen.
When I glance at my phone, it’s 8:55. Liam is supposed to pick me up in five minutes.
Drunk on my own creative sprint, I take the fastest shower of my life, scrubbing down my skin and washing my hair while I hum the new song some more.
It needs a faster-paced bridge. It needs a final verse that feels like the last word of a prologue.
I throw on a T-shirt and jean shorts and grab my bag, whipping open the door to my bedroom to find Folly and Liam, together.
Chatting.
“Eventually, I started teaching surfing lessons,” Folly is telling him. “In a city called Todos Santos. I’d do that in the mornings, then water plants and walk dogs in the afternoons.”
“Sounds incredible,” Liam says.
“It was. I’m going back just as soon as the little one’s born.” She rubs her belly fondly. “They’re going to grow up by the ocean.”
Liam’s seated on our blue velvet couch looking perfectly at home, one ankle propped on his opposite knee and a cappuccino cupped in his palm. Folly’s standing by the espresso machine in a literal onesie. When she hears me, her eyes cut over and she smirks.
“Sorry!” I say, a blanket statement.
Liam puts the clay mug on our coffee table and stands. His eyes cut from my damp hair to my Birkenstocks. He comes to me and grabs my hand, flipping my palm up. The skin-to-skin contact feels like an appetite being whetted.
“It’s already working,” he mumbles, his thumb tracing over my raw fingertips. The rub of the guitar strings is still pressed into my skin.
It is working. The plan is working, and we’ve hardly set it into motion. The time span was basically negligible—a single night’s sleep—between when I saw him again and when a song came to me, begging to be heard.
But now that the rush from my brainstorm session has faded, why do I feel … humiliated?
Can I only be a good artist if Liam is involved? If he’s part of the making of my art?
Today is about establishing our boundaries, defining the terms of this arrangement. But if Liam is only doing this because I suggested he owes me based on one fight that blew us up four years ago, I need to check myself.
He drops my hand. Pushes his fingers through his dark, messy hair, peering at me, all but mind reading. Behind him, Folly is mouthing hottie! and pointing at Liam in case I’m confused which third person in the room she could possibly be referencing.
“Liam was telling me about Penelope Parker’s tour?” Folly leans against the counter, pursing her lips over the rim of her mug. “Two and a half months, twenty cities, forty-two shows?”
My gaze snaps back to Liam. He’s watching for my reaction. “Wow,” I say.
“It’s a lot, I know.” His tone is an apology, like his current occupation is putting me out, and guilt twists my core into an even tighter knot. “Are you ready?”
I nod, walking toward the door.
“See you later!” Folly winks at me, a silent encouragement.
Outside, foggy heat rises off the pavement and heavy sunshine beats down on us.
“Where are you living these days?” I ask.
“An extended-stay Airbnb.” Liam unlocks his truck. “It’s subsidized by Live Nation. That’s where we’re heading now.”
We climb inside and Liam drives off.
“Because you move around so often?” I ask.
He hums as we turn onto the main drag of Hillsboro Village.
“What’s the new song about?” he asks.
“You.”
Even from his side profile, I can see him fighting with his expression, instinctual pleasure melting into pensive worry. He can’t decide how to feel.
We pull into the parking lot of a refurbished loft building three minutes later, and Liam leads me to a side door, then inside his temporary home.
I’m expecting the same calm neutrals of most rental homes, but this one is eclectic.
Victorian frames with pictures of old Broadway, mismatched vases with dried, spray-painted flowers.
The only thing in here I can attribute to Liam is a baseball mitt and two novels sitting on a rattan chair near the front door.
“Coffee?” he asks, glancing back at me.
I nod, and Liam pulls a gallon of cold brew out of his fridge alongside some eggs and a package of bacon. Without thinking, I go to the counter beside him and sift through the drawers for a skillet. When I find one and pull it out, he grabs it from my hand and sets it on the burner.
“Nice try. I didn’t invite you over so you could make me floppy bacon.”
“I didn’t come over to eat your burnt bacon,” I counter.
Liam’s eyes narrow. “I’ll take your pieces out early.”
“Great.” I cross my arms over my chest. “I’ll stand here and watch.”
He glowers at me somewhat fondly for a moment before getting to work. I hover so well that eventually he procures me the loaf of sourdough and a bread knife so I can cut up slices for toast. Then he makes me an iced coffee with cream and sets it beside my cutting board.
“The tour. Penelope’s tour.” I glance over, but Liam has his eyes glued to the eggs he’s cracking into a bowl. “I’m the lead on this one. So, I can’t get out of it.”
Pride balloons inside me. “You’re going to be in charge of the whole thing?”
He shakes his head. “No, not even close. Just the logistics of it all once our whole crew gets to each location.”
“Still. That sounds really important.”
He nods, biting the inside of his cheek. “Yeah. And it’s my first time leading.”
I frown. Beneath my fingers, the knife stills. “I would be a distraction. If you had to deal with me at the same time.”
His reaction is instantaneous. Liam stops what he’s doing, pushes his hands against the countertop, leans forward, sighs low.
“You have never not,” he says, “been a distraction for me. Not a single day of the last four years. I’m pretty certain it can only go up from here, where my productivity is concerned.”
“What do you mean?” I whisper.
“I mean”—he blinks hard—“I mean it felt like everything was blurry. I’ve been meandering my way into the future, Paige.
One day at a time. With half of my head still stuck in the past. My second injury.
Our breakup. The way I lost your trust. I play it on a ruthless loop and just wonder what I could’ve done or said or been differently and still have been me through it. ”
My immediate instinct is to tell Liam his shoulder injury was outside of his control, but I know he doesn’t feel that way about it and won’t listen.
“But last night.” His head tilts up to mine. “When I saw you. It was like everything came into focus. Like I can finally see the catcher’s glove again and know where I’m supposed to aim.”
“Aim?” I ask. “I need your help parsing baseball analogies.”
He smiles. “This is my chance to earn your confidence back. Which is as much a benefit for me as my presence in your creative process might be for you. So no, you won’t be a distraction if you come on tour with me.”
“Come on tour?” I balk. “I figured I could maybe visit you in a few places, but—”
“I think it would be better,” he interrupts, “if you were with me the whole time.”
I swallow thickly to push off my immediate rebuttal, then divert. “Hang on. If everything’s in focus now, does that mean I’m your contact lenses?”
Liam rumbles a laugh, turning to face me, one hip to the counter. “You aren’t the lenses. You’re the baseball.”
“Something to hurl away from your body at ninety miles per hour?”
His eyes flash. “Something that used to belong in my hands.”
Used to.
My memory skitters back to the origin of us. It was nonsensical, the way we were drawn to each other. It’s nonsensical still.
“I don’t know if we’ve thought this through,” I whisper, gently setting the knife down. I turn to face him.
His face divots in confusion. “Which part?”
I shake my head. “Actually, not us. Me. I don’t know if I have thought this through. I’m actually positive I haven’t.”
“You mean to tell me, before you electric scootered to my concert in a mad dash the same day you got your first offer, and then climbed the VIP fence to find me, you hadn’t thought your plan through?” His lips twist. “I sort of figured, Paige.”
“And then I said you owe me your participation in my songwriting, which is like, basically me calling you my muse in captivity.”
“I don’t mind being your muse in captivity,” Liam murmurs, still halfway smiling. “But only if you be my contact lenses.”
“Liam.”
“Sorry, you’re right, you’re right,” he says through his laughter. “You’re not the contact lenses, you’re the baseball.”
“Can you be serious right now?”
His smile broadens. “Five more minutes.”
It’s blinding, the way that joyful, pleased smile pulls me back to the past. The two of us, lounging in the sunshine, reading on a blanket, Wild Love baked goods in a greasy cardboard box between us while Liam laughed at a joke on his page.
Or when he’d grin at me right before he slipped the catcher’s helmet over my head on the baseball diamond.