Chapter 11
July, Now
The hotel is an unassuming tower half a mile from the venue. Liam leads me straight from the starlit parking lot up to the tenth floor.
It doesn’t occur to me to worry about the bed situation until I’m staring at the single, king-sized cloud of luxury in the center of the room.
“Only one bed,” I say. Then: “Is that a mirror on the ceiling?”
Liam smirks at me, setting my guitar case in the corner by the window. Beyond it, the city glows. “We’ve done it before.”
“Shared a bed, or fallen asleep to our own reflections?”
He strolls back toward me, eyes like a hunter. “The bed part.”
His dorm room. My apartment. His truck bed. My shower.
I’m getting off track.
“Liam,” I say. “There’s a mirror on the ceiling.”
He grins and shrugs. “I have no say in the hotels we book.”
“Hang on. Is this not your first rodeo with ceiling-mirror hotel rooms?”
“Far from it. Also, I get randomly upgraded to honeymoon suites sometimes. One of them had a heart-shaped whirlpool tub and no shower. Just you wait.”
There’s an MLB game playing on TV that Liam must have left on when he came to get me. He follows my line of sight, turning to face the screen, where a Kansas City Royals batter is stepping up to home plate.
“It’s not summer without baseball,” I say, quoting him.
He crosses his arms over his chest, eyes on the screen. “That was then.”
“You still love it.”
He half turns to answer. “I still have an unhealthy relationship with it.”
“Don’t we all, with our passions?”
Another half turn, so he can flick his eyes up and down my body. “Definitely.”
Despite the heat blooming in my core, my mouth forms an untamed yawn.
Liam’s lips twitch. “Let’s go to bed.”
“And stare at ourselves?”
His laugh turns into a matching yawn. I’m too tired to protest further, even though every move I make is done with hyperawareness.
I unzip my suitcase and fish out my pajamas while Liam strips everything but his T-shirt and boxers.
I grab my toiletries kit and scurry off to the bathroom to change, brush my teeth, and wash my face.
When I emerge, the curtains have been closed, the lights have been dimmed, and Liam is on his preferred side of the bed plugging in his phone to charge. When he turns back toward me, his expression changes.
“Fuck,” he says.
Immediately, I go on the defensive. “They’re modest!”
I’m in loose drawstring pajama shorts and a matching short-sleeve collared top. Cotton.
With baseballs on them.
Happy Birthday, Bristol baby. Now I’m in your bed even when I’m not.
Liam opens his mouth, closes it. Opens it again. “You still have those?”
“I can put on a T-shirt and sweatpants instead—”
“No,” he says. “I—like it.” His jaw works, and his arms stretch up, settling behind his head. He laughs weakly, but it’s halfway a sigh. “In those, you truly look like my girlfriend.” He says it as if he’d been unconvinced until this moment.
I gulp down the heat in my throat and crawl under the covers.
“How often do you wear them?” he asks, looking down at me.
“Every night.”
There’s a pause. His voice is gruff. “Every night,” he repeats.
“They’re comfortable,” I say.
And they’ve always reminded me you were real.
Liam points his head at the ceiling. I meet his gaze in the mirror above us. Seeing us together, in bed—it feels like a surrealist work of art.
“Folly would love this mirror,” I say. “She’s been really into the Kama Sutra lately. Something about being pregnant has her horny all the time.”
“Please don’t use ‘Folly’ and ‘horny’ in the same sentence in my presence ever again.”
I smile at him in the mirror. “She’s been fucking the oyster guy.”
“Or ‘fucking’ and ‘oyster,’ for that matter.”
“It was nice, seeing you two catching up over coffee.”
Liam shifts to look at the real me, sliding his upper body down the pillows. “How did Folly react when you told her you were going to college?”
I sift through my memories, recalling each of my sisters’ reactions to the news. Maren had always wanted to be the first person in our family to go to college. Even when I was young, I remember her saying it, like a mantra.
I’m going to college after high school. I’m leaving Bristol, but I’m not leaving our family. You can always count on me, Paige. Even when I’m not here.
Dad loved her for it. Maren was bright, well-liked, well-spoken.
She was the embodiment of an oldest child.
She picked up our parents’ slack, acted strict when Dad wouldn’t, mothered us to the point of acquiescent annoyance.
Once she was gone, she called home every two weeks on the dot to remind us all that she wasn’t like our mom.
College was a no-brainer for Maren, and when law school came along after that, no one batted an eye.
All while Candice—in the habit of many second children—decided to do the exact opposite.
She’s the most soft-spoken of the Lancaster girls.
In high school, she had such an eye for thrifting that she opened a pop-up tent outside a coffee shop and made a killing off secondhand clothes.
After graduation, Candice moved to Illinois with her girlfriend and eventually went to cosmetology school.
She now works as a hairstylist, saving up for her own studio space.
But even compared to me, Folly was the most aimless after high school.
She bummed around Bristol for a few years, moving in and out of our family house every time she got dumped by a boyfriend and subsequently started a new relationship.
She slept late, got fired from a few of the local businesses for missing work, got in little tiffs with Dad and Zara (and Maren, through the phone), cried sometimes.
Then, right after I graduated, Folly started seeing this new guy.
He wanted her to move to Portland with him, and she agreed, especially since Dad was thinking of selling the Bristol house.
I didn’t think much of it at first, but once she got out there, something in her changed.
Folly stopped responding to me, to all of us, and eventually group-texted our whole family saying she needed space and to please leave her alone.
Just like Mom.
I didn’t talk to her for two years. Which Liam knows, because he was there when Folly reappeared in my life.
“Folly was happy for me,” I tell him. “Especially once I told her I was starting to feel good about Belmont. She wanted me to have a purpose even when she couldn’t figure hers out.”
“I think it’s awesome that you guys are living together these days,” he says.
“Yeah, well. I’ve never kept many friends I’m not blood related to.”
Neither of us brings up Maisy.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we get through this entire summer without bringing up Maisy.
“I’ve always admired the relationship you and your sisters have with each other,” Liam says, sinking his cheek against the pillow.
“Even though I’ve never met Maren or Candice, I remember the way you and Zara would talk about them on the Wednesday nights the three of us would hang out.
How Maren would create schedules for who got picked up or dropped off from which activity and what time.
And Candice explaining what heteronormativity was around a bonfire in your backyard with a flashlight under her chin. ”
I snort at that one. Liam chuckles.
“I’m nervous for you to meet them,” I admit. “But I guess I should start by asking if you’d even want to.”
“I want to,” he says quickly, watching me in the half-light. “You don’t think they’ll like me for you?”
“I think they’ll like you too much.”
Liam clears his throat. “Why would that be a problem, Paige?”
Frustration flares across his face. Outside of the bubble we’re blowing, unsaid words are threatening to burst through.
He doesn’t trust your intentions, I remind myself.
Which is still true, but an unfair reaction to why I said what I said.
“I’m worried they won’t like me for you,” I explain quickly. “I’m worried they’ll secretly wonder why you’re interested in me.”
Though maybe the truth is I’m worried my two oldest sisters will disapprove of what we’re doing.
His eyes soften into a warm, endless brown. “I thought you and I decided a long time ago that we could be different than what we were told to be.”
“I’m trying,” I whisper.
“Then you’re already doing more than enough.”
I smile, my cheek pinching up against the pillow. I wonder if Liam has thought of telling his family that I’m back in his life. If maybe he already has.
But I doubt it.
The tour isn’t stopping in Savannah, and even if it were, I wouldn’t be surprised if Liam didn’t want to involve his family in this. Us. Me. The girl who was there and then gone, and might follow the same pattern, again.
“I’m nervous to meet Candice and Maren too,” Liam says.
“Don’t be. They’re going to love you, just like Zara and Folly already do.”
“What about you?” Liam asks. He grabs a lock of my hair that had fallen between us. The only part of me he seems willing to touch. “How much do you love me today?”
I think about it, pulling an arbitrary number from my head. “Fifteen percent?”
He smiles crookedly. “That thing you were humming under your breath while you brushed your teeth only gets me plus seven from last time I asked?”
“God, I should have known you’d turn this into a sports betting thing.”
“I’ve got an over-under in mind every day.”
“I don’t want to know.”
“Good.” Liam lies flat on his back, and I do the same. We go back to conversing through the ceiling mirror. “You don’t get to know.”
An inflammatory cocktail of curiosity and knowing, discovery and familiarity, swirls between us.
“If your melody can wait,” he murmurs, “I thought you could come to work with me tomorrow. Meet everyone. See how things are going to operate with the band and crew.”
I nod, my head rocking against my pillow. “See you in action?”
Liam’s hair splays across his. “Something like that.”
“I’d love to.”
He gives me one last look and shifts away. I plug in my phone and write down a few lyrics in my notes app before he turns off the light.
I wonder, on bad days, if you breathe for my body
If you sleep for me when I’m in a rush
Pick dreams for me you know I’ll love
Here I am disarmed, now scared, once scarred