26
26
Ping.
Ping.
Ping.
I cover my eyes with my arm and groan, rolling over in bed to glance at my phone screen. It’s lit up on the pillow beside me, another stream of texts popping up from Mom, my sisters, Maya, Val, Jessie, and probably Kimi and Wayne too. I’m just not in the mood for any of it—talking, texting, pretending like everything’s fine. The painting I did while on the phone with Jessie almost a week ago stares at me from where it’s propped up against the wall on the other side of my room: the face of a blonde-haired girl with tears in her eyes, bruised and broken and pleading at me, one simple message painted in stark black around her.
you did this to yourself
I guess my emotions have gotten the best of me since I sent that final text to John a week ago. I didn’t get a reply, and that’s cool—I didn’t want one. But the thought of him quietly picking up his stuff and not having anything to say really bothers me.
That isn’t the only thing that has me feeling this way. It hurts, sure, but the whole damn situation is what I’m upset about, not some stupid fucking suitcase full of his stupid fucking stuff.
I’m so tired of feeling used and not good enough. I’m sick of investing in people and having them turn around and blindside me, dumping me like I never mattered in the first place. I’m sick of being vulnerable and having my trust destroyed over and over again. It makes me feel delusional—like am I crazy or are we not building real relationships? I’m exhausted. Sick of feeling like the butt of the joke when all I ever try to do is open my heart up to people and let them in.
Enough is enough. I am the priority. I’m letting calls go to voice mail and texts go unread. It’s just me in bed with my journal turning my thoughts into lyrics and my emotions into melodies.
I’ve written three versions of this song already, and I think this one is perfect. So perfect that I recorded a rough version of it in my home studio—raw, acoustic, but exactly how I wanted it to sound. It’s simply me and my emotions in their purest form.
I’m reading through the lyrics again, singing under my breath, when the familiar ding of my elevator sounds from my entrance hallway and then the sound of heels click-clacking on the marble floor has me scrambling to hide my notebook. Whoever the fuck is intruding, I don’t want to share this with anyone. It’s too raw. Too real. Too—
“Princess, I swear to fucking god, you are infuriating!”
I hold my breath as Maya barges into my room, red in the face and almost spilling the two large iced coffees she’s holding, one in each hand. She marches over to my bed and slams both down on the nightstand before standing tall with her hands on her hips.
“What the fuck?”
“What the fuck right back at you!” I exclaim. “How did you even get in here?”
“How do you think? Your doorman knows I practically live here, and even if he didn’t, he sure as hell wasn’t going to say no to me coming up here to check you’re even still alive. Four days he hasn’t seen you! Four fucking days, Princess! You really think he’s going to argue with that?” She lifts her hands in the air as if to say, Duh?
“I—”
“Honestly,” she cuts me off, kicking off her heels and getting into bed beside me, pulling the covers up and making my pulse jump as I discreetly shift to move the notebook out of her reach. “I know he was your first serious boyfriend here in LA and all, but really? All this over John? He’s a fucking sleazebag. You’re goddamn Princess, for fuck’s sake. You’re so much better than this.”
“All right, enough!” I cut her off, slumping down under the covers with a scowl. “It’s not even about him. I mean, it is, but it isn’t just that, Maya.”
“Then what the fuck else is it? Seriously, Princess, I’m so upset you feel you can’t talk to me about this. I got you, through everything, and you know that. But one hundred and twenty-six missed calls and you still can’t even send me a text to let me know I shouldn’t be writing your freaking obituary?”
“I’m sorry,” I groan, sinking down under the sheets even farther. “I just want to be alone.”
“Nuh-uh.” She shakes her head and reaches for her coffee, crossing her legs one over the other and reclining back against the headboard as she takes a sip. “You’ve done enough of that already. Now it’s time to talk it out.”
The thing about Maya is she doesn’t take no for an answer. She’d make a great interrogator. Without much argument, I tell her everything—well, most things. I deliberately leave out the part about the new song I wrote. She listens intently, adding her input at all the right moments, saying something funny when it seems like I’m about to cry and backing me up when I ask if I did the right thing. I cry some more and she consoles me, hugging me tight while I rest my head on her chest and sob it out. And when I’m done crying, she hands me my iced coffee and watches with a smug grin as I moan in pleasure at the taste of it.
“I feel awful for you, P., I really do,” she says sympathetically a few minutes later. “It’s like all this shit is going down in your life, and meanwhile I’m over here having one of my best years ever.”
“I’m so happy for you, Maya,” I say with a small, sad smile. It’s true. She’s on top of her game this year. Her modeling career has accelerated to a whole new level, her paychecks are more than double what they were this time last year, and she’s had none of this pathetic boy drama to deal with. She just lives in the moment and lets whatever will happen, happen. “God, I wish I was more like you.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true.”
“Princess.” She grabs both my hands and makes me stare directly into her eyes as she pins me with a stern look. “Let’s just think about that for a sec, shall we? Look at that phone over there.” She nods to my cell phone as it lights up with yet another call. “Full of people who care about you. You have the best family, and they check in on you 24-7. Me? I haven’t heard from my mom in maybe two weeks—actually, I think it’s three—and when we do talk the disconnect between us is so obvious. It’s basically impossible to have real and deep conversation. My family doesn’t know the real me, they don’t put the time in. They’re too preoccupied with their own lives, they wouldn’t understand even if I tried to explain. You don’t have to do that shit. You can talk to your family about everything. You’re lucky.”
“I guess.”
“And I get lonely, too, sometimes,” Maya continues, still searching my eyes as if she’s waiting for the light-bulb moment; the realization my life isn’t all that bad, actually. “We all fucking do. It’s what drives us to find new connections, right? It’s what makes us believe we need someone else by our side and so we go out falling in love and trusting people with so much of ourselves, and if they want to screw us over for that, fucking let them! That’s their issue. Fuck them.”
The corner of my mouth lifts in a small smile. “You make it sound so easy.”
“Oh, babe, it isn’t. It really isn’t. But that’s why it’s so freaking great when you see someone doing exactly that. Living their life and not caring what anyone thinks—that shit is brave! It takes a lot.”
“Well, you’ve mastered it.”
“Yeah, and look at all the things I haven’t mastered.” She shakes her head. “Princess, you don’t just top the charts with your songs—you also run a fucking business! Like, you’re beautiful and then you’re there coordinating beauty brand launches and collabs and talking finances with your managers and knowing your own worth. That’s incredible. I wish I could do that. I let my team handle everything and just do what I’m told, I can’t wrap my head around it all. Not like you. You’re in control in ways I’m just not.”
“Don’t do that,” I say insistently.
“Do what?”
“Lower yourself to make me feel good. Maya, you know we’re both in control, just in totally different ways, and that’s good. We shouldn’t all want to be the same.”
“See?” She lets go of my hands to clap her own. “See! You get it. Beneath all this moping bullshit you know you’re better than this.”
“Hey, I’m allowed to feel my feelings.”
“I’m not saying you aren’t. Just don’t cut everyone out while you’re doing it. You’re always here for us, let us be here for you, okay?”
“Okay, okay.”
“And, hey, let’s not forget you have a great relationship with Win to keep you nicely distracted.”
At the mention of his name, I cringe, and Maya narrows her eyes in suspicion.
“What?”
“You’re going to think I’m an idiot.”
She drums her fingers on her chin as she waits for me to continue, and I let out a sigh.
“I haven’t had the energy to deal with anything, Maya. I haven’t been replying to his texts.”
“Oh my god.” She hangs her head back. “You’ve been ignoring him, P.?”
“He’s only written a few times. And it’s not like they’ve been anything other than our normal conversations.”
“I don’t believe that for a second.”
“No, really.” I fall back onto the pillows again and bury my face. “God, it’s just all so confusing,” I growl.
“What’s confusing? The fact he drove to fucking Coachella and back in the middle of the night to collect you for a sleepover at his place?”
“Maya, he hasn’t said a thing about that night since.”
Which is the truth. Since I left his house for the store opening last week, it’s as if that night with Win never happened. And it’s stupid because every time I frame it like that, it makes it sound as if something did happen, when really, all I did was sleep over at a friend’s house after he helped me out—in the most innocent sense, of course. So for the past week I’ve been in my head about how maybe I’m reading way too much into things and getting all muddled because I’m still sore over John. It’s yet another area of my life he’s butted into.
“Listen, I don’t want to think about men right now. Just, I don’t know, tell me something new and let’s forget about Coachella—please?”
“Well . . . hold on a minute.”
At the change in tone, I look up. Maya seems kind of apprehensive, and I frown. “What’s up?”
“It’s weird. And it’s about Coachella,” she says sheepishly.
“Maya, tell me.”
“You have to keep it a secret.”
My skin prickles as I realize she’s being serious. This must be bad news.
“I promise,” I say quickly.
Maya pulls out her phone. She doesn’t say anything for a few seconds as she scrolls to find something onscreen, and then she holds the phone out to me, gesturing for me to take it. “Here. Listen to this.”
I take the phone from her and hit Play on the voice message in Maya’s chat with Val. There’s the crackly noise of movement for a couple of seconds, and then Val’s slurred voice sounds out.
“Tripp, I don’t . . . know how to say—”
“Nope.” Before I can register what’s happening, Maya’s stolen the phone back from me and hit Pause on the voice message.
“What—?”
“Sorry, Princess, I just can’t. I actually don’t think I should play it for anyone.”
I shake my head, totally confused. “Maya, what are you talking about?”
“Ugh.” She scrapes her hair back and blows her cheeks out, clearly affected by the voice message, whatever it said. “All right, so it was late the last night of Coachella, and I thought Val was in with Tripp because they were clearly together, you know, the night after you left. We could hear it through the whole house. Seriously. Anyway, so we just assumed she was with him and they were together in her room for a second night, right?
“And then I have this voice message come through and it’s basically Val confessing everything to him, telling him it wasn’t just sex and that she really is in love with him. I don’t know, it sounded a lot to me like they’d been edging around this conversation already, like maybe he’d mentioned something to her before and she didn’t give the answer he wanted. So she tells him how emotionally fucked-up she is and how lonely and complicated her life is, and she goes into some really deep shit in this message. It’s definitely not something I was supposed to hear, so I don’t want to replay it even though I know you wouldn’t ever tell another soul because we both love her to death.”
“No, I get it.” I can see how distressed Maya is by the message, and it floods me with worry too. “But, Maya, is she okay? I mean, what happened after she sent it?”
“I don’t think so.” Maya chews her lip. “I’ve been debating whether to ask her about it since I first saw it, Princess. She put everything out there in this message. She’s so fucking upset, and there’s no way she knows she sent it to me. Truthfully, I’ve been hesitant to text her all week ’cause I don’t want her to scroll back and see it in our messages. She’d be mortified—I know she would.”
“Hmm, I’m not sure, she’s probably been so upset thinking he hasn’t responded,” I say warily. “That was meant for Tripp.”
“True. We need to figure out the right time to bring it up to her.” Maya heaves a sigh. “Shit, Princess, between your issues and Val’s, I haven’t known what the fuck to do this week.”
“Tell me about it,” I agree. “I’ll find a time to talk to her. They need to sort this out between the two of them, and that can’t happen until she knows he never got the message.”
I stare out the window over the skyline wondering what the hell to do. It all looks so peaceful out there, the clear blue sky uninterrupted by clouds and the buildings practically glittering under the sunlight, but, shit . . . on days like today it all seems to be just one pretty, shining distraction from some of the bleakest, scariest moments of our lives.