Chapter 16
Bailey
Rhett hits that high note as well as Adam Duritz when singing the song lyrics to “Mr. Jones.” It’s supposed to be “Mr. Jones” instead of Bailey Jones by the Counting Crows, but in true Rhett form, he’s changed the chorus to be all about me.
Rhett’s voice has always made my toes curl in a good way. Raspy, deep, but somehow with a range that makes my insides feel like mush. Some guys can carry a tune, but Rhett makes every song sound like it has a soul, and it will never get old.
Nudging the dark sunglasses up the bridge of his nose, he shifts gears and revs the engine before taking off.
The road we’re on is long and empty, a far cry from the jam of traffic we hit leaving town.
We swapped the first town car we rented for a stick shift Mustang once we were out past city limits, and I’m happy to have his singing to distract me from all the gear shifting, backward hat-wearing, sleeve-rolling ridiculousness sitting right beside me.
Because the second I start noticing the way his forearm tightens with each adjusted gear, his sleeves rolled up high enough to show the lower edge of his bicep tattoos, and that backward black ballcap he keeps raising one arm to adjust while his elbow brushes up against me each time he does, is the second I start losing the level headedness I need to get through this trip without doing or saying anything I might regret.
I roll down my window, drawing the air in from outside the car. Everything is serene around us, bathed in the late afternoon sun, except the sound of our engine and Rhett singing at the top of his lungs. Trees fly past the windows, looking more like a watercolor painting, all blurred together.
He keeps the beat, drumming on the steering wheel with his thumbs, then pauses dramatically to grab my knee, shaking it to the beat before tapping it out with one finger as he continues to really belt this next part out.
I shift my eyes from my bare knee with his hand just below the hem of my shorts, to the road, mostly to give myself something to do other than stare at his profile, or the way he’s using the gear shift right next to me, grabbing and pulling it back as if it might be a woman’s hip instead of a car part.
God help me.
Five more hours to go. Some of which we’ll do tomorrow.
Periodically, the music pauses, or we take a quick stop, and I remember all over again what happened earlier this morning.
The swarm of cops.
The horrible, red letters painted across my windows — with lipstick, it turns out.
The note they found on the floor.
He kept me on my toes, but I couldn’t imagine life any other way. Constantly guessing what might happen next, while knowing I was all he ever wanted in the end.
Another line I’d written and published in one of my earlier books.
I hate the way he’s using my words to torment me.
Besides being creepy and unfair, these messages are giving me the worst creative block of my life. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to write another book when every line, every story, already feels clouded by what-ifs and questions of whether he might use my future stories against me, too.
My career is starting to feel like it could be the next casualty of all this, just like my nerves, if it doesn’t end soon. How long can this really go on?
“Who would be this mad at you?” Hollis had asked while I was packing before we left.
She’d insisted on leaving London, offering to help us deal with it after I’d told her about the break-in.
But I told her there was nothing she could do from New York that she couldn’t do from London, and had convinced her to stay there.
She doesn’t need to put herself in this mess.
I told my parents the same thing when they invited me to stay with them for a while.
“I don’t think this guy was mad at the beginning. Those first messages were more about feelings he might have for me. It turned aggressive the night of the party. Considering what he wrote on my window . . .”
“You think he’s jealous now.”
“He mentioned a love triangle and today he used the word whore. Yeah, I think something about Rhett turned on a major jealousy complex in his mind. Do you think your brother should go back to Boston?” I’d asked her in a hushed tone while tossing a swimsuit into my bag.
I could hear Rhett talking quietly on the phone, too, just down the hall.
But Hollis acted like I was unhinged for even suggesting it.
“Now? And leave you all alone? Absolutely not. This creep seems pissed at both of you, based on that video, and now what’s happened today.
I agree with you. You seem to have a jealous superfan on your hands who’s seen Rhett by your side nonstop since the party. Why else would he have written whore?”
“And the lipstick tubes he used to write on the windows were also cleaned out, just like the one he left on my counter before the party,” I told her, shuddering.
“I can’t believe he’s been in here before today.
Imagine what would have happened if I’d been inside alone when he picked the lock any of these times. ”
“Pretty sure Rhett’s never leaving your side again.”
“I’m so sorry your brother’s involved. I hope you’re not upset that he’s been dragged into this.”
“I’m the one that called him in,” she insisted. “There’s no one else I’d want there with you, except, obviously, Axel. Even though he’s a bonehead.”
Rhett pulls my thoughts back into the car, using the steering wheel to tap out the legendary drum solo from “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins. Except now, he’s changing the lyrics each time Phil sounds like he’s praying to be my name coming out of Rhett’s mouth, over and over.
He’s oddly relaxed, considering what happened earlier, and something about his singing while speeding away from the city is helping me feel lighter with every mile we get between us and my apartment.
By tomorrow afternoon, Rhett and I will be sitting in our old cabins beside the lake, which feels completely surreal.
It’s been six months since I went on a road trip, but that was to help my parents take a load of their stuff down to Florida, and I’d flown back after the trip was done. Listening to my mom belt out show tunes is hardly comparable to what I have sitting next to me on this drive.
Rhett insisted on what he called the Three S’s to make our road trip a success.
Snacks.
Speed.
And songs.
We slow down to roll through one of the small towns I haven’t seen since I last came out to the lake, and I don’t know if a single paint color on any of the buildings has been changed since then.
Maybe a few buildings have been painted but otherwise the whole town is identical.
Right down to the clown cut-out with the faded ice cream cone on the window of the candy parlor at the edge of town — more creepy than charming now.
We’re planning to stop in one more town to swap cars again, and I’ve promised not to call it overkill, but truthfully, I’m grateful that he’s thought of every way to deter someone from following us.
Then we’ll stay somewhere for the night, before arriving tomorrow.
We could have flown, but he thought a drive might be safer than putting ourselves on a closed-off plane that may or may not have the guy on it with us.
“I’m excited to see it again,” I tell him, taking in a gulp of that non-city air pouring in the window.
“It’s been nearly ten years for me,” he says, turning the music down. “Summer after I graduated from high school. Right before basic training.”
It’s not as if I need the reminder.
And that summer hadn’t just been about how it ended.
About how it was Rhett’s last. Hollis and I were entering our senior year.
We were both aware that the hours we spent lying in the sun pretending we were concerned about getting the perfect tan were directly correlated to watching each other’s brothers condition for training. We didn’t discuss it. But we both knew.
Both of them were leaving at the end of August, and both put in hours upon hours of conditioning every day outside, going for long runs, coming back sweaty, then jumping in the water to swim laps.
Climbing on the dock after doing endless sets of pushups.
All were to get themselves ready for the grueling training programs they were entering at the end.
I’ll never forget watching him.
Better eye candy than any teenage girl could hope for.
A running back for the high school football team before coming, Rhett was already built like a car, and that particular summer, his skin was deeply tanned and constantly oiled up in sunscreen and sweat, while I swear he grew at least two more inches before that August came.
Considering the mixture of muscles and raging hormones, it’s a near miracle that neither Hollis nor I ended that summer with a boyfriend.
But it wasn’t just a physical change. Rhett’s whole demeanor shifted whenever he talked about his plans for that upcoming fall.
By the time I watched him drive away, I knew one thing for certain: he wasn’t a kid anymore.
Girls? We sprout hips and boobs as we grow into women, but boys are much more subtle when it happens. Voices deepen, stubble suddenly forms by nightfall, and hair in all sorts of new places. Eyebrows are fuller, jawlines more filled out, sure.
But it was more than that.
Rhett’s cheeks went from soft to sharp, and it was there in the way he talked.
Going from outspoken and borderline obnoxious to mysteriously quiet more often than not.
Showing an introspective side I’d never expected when it came to Hollis’ older brother.
The transformation was intimidating. And the whole thing fascinated me.