Songs For You (The Herring Girls #3)

Chapter 1

Chapter one

Olive

There are two things in this life of mine that I know to be one hundred percent true.

The first is I’m surrounded by love in every corner I look.

The second is that I’ve never felt lonelier than I do right now.

Both of my sisters are sitting on either side of me with baby Willow resting on Cassandra’s chest, a throw blanket splayed over the four of us, and a bowl of popcorn resting on my lap.

Still, still, I have this raging feeling deep in my chest that I’m undeserving of the love they all hand my way.

Growing up the way I did, with the parents we have, my sisters and I were taught what it meant to build a foundation around you.

To be respectful, but never beg for respect in return.

To never go to bed angry, but to not expect others to do the same.

And lastly, to apologize if we’re ever in the wrong.

No matter what.

Our mom always told us the best thing a man can do is love his wife unconditionally and publicly. We saw that from our dad every single day.

But while Cassandra and Lizzie absorbed that information and ingrained it into every relationship they ever had, I never really had the chance to.

I’m a lone wolf. I always have been.

In school, I never felt the pressure to date, fall in love, or force myself to be with somebody I didn’t genuinely care for.

Hurting people for the sake of maintaining friendships, to keep up appearances with the popular kids to make them like me, just didn’t seem like something I could do.

Instead, I focused on writing songs, perfecting my pitch, and learning how to play guitar, so much so that nobody really cared to know anything about me.

They looked at me as boring and innocent.

I preferred it that way.

But it’s hard to admit you’re lonely, when your whole life, you’ve begged to be alone.

There are very few people in the universe I would drop everything for, and very few people would do the same for me.

Does it make me a loser to know without a doubt that my two best friends are the girls beside me? The two girls who, at one point in my life, I didn’t want to even let in my bedroom until night came, and I pretended to be scared of the dark, just so they would comfort me?

It worked most of the time, but I think Lizzie caught on quickly. She noticed how my behavior during the day and my attitude at night were vastly different.

I guess I was happy to be invisible, and fly under the radar. But shit still happened to me that nobody really noticed, and I wanted to decompress with my best friends, just like any other teenage girl.

While I didn’t do a lot of the talking, it still helped to know that they were there. It eased my mind a little.

"Earth to Olive," Lizzie, my twin sister, says, waving her hand in front of my face.

I blink away the memories that cloud my vision and force the tears to remain in the back of my throat instead of falling down my cheeks.

"Sorry, I was mentally running through my checklist for the tour," I tell them with complete and utter confidence, knowing full well that I went through that list a million times yesterday.

And the day before.

Everything is ready, but I just couldn’t bring myself to admit that I could feel the world shifting beneath my feet.

Knowing that by tomorrow night, I’ll be in a completely new city.

Alone.

And, in two days, I’m going to get a phone call that will change my life forever.

Above all of that, I haven’t told a single soul what I’m going through.

I just don’t feel like I can. Because while I am surrounded by people who love me unconditionally, I don’t want to burden them, and stress them out when it could all amount to just…

nothing. That my fear of being sick is all in my head.

But I’m too in tune with my body to know that I’m not overreacting, to know that the doctor was wrong when he told me I had nothing to worry about. In the pit of my stomach, I knew I needed a second opinion.

And I’ve been waiting for those results for a little over three months.

Countless tests, visits to doctors, and what seems like an endless amount of waiting.

"What’s left to do?" Cassandra whispers, careful not to wake the sleeping baby on her chest. Nodding her head to the remote control, Lizzie picks it up and pauses the movie. "Tell me again how much bigger this tour is compared to the one you went on seven months ago."

I have all of her attention, that much is clear. Even when Willow grunts at the sound of her mom’s voice, Cassandra remains calm.

"The last tour was…" a lot for me. Mentally and physically, it probably was too much, in hindsight. But when they offered for me to go on the road with Akira Rain again, I couldn’t say no.

My body was screaming at me to do so, to wait until I was in the all clear, but my words ran off on their own, agreeing to a five-month-long stint, playing in arenas across the country, with crowds of up to twenty thousand people.

Akira Rain’s Comeback Tour.

"…Smaller. It was to gauge how the crowd would react to Akira going back on tour for the first time in over a decade, to test out the response to her new music. But, I guess it was enough." I shrug, shoveling up a handful of popcorn into my mouth.

"How many people were at those shows?" It’s Lizzie who asks this time, but I know she’s asking for Cassandra, who's trying to minimize her bodily movements.

"Two hundred." I swallow hard.

"Don’t you get nervous? I don’t know how you can sing in front of so many people and act like it’s no big deal.

When you’d play at Bridie’s, it would sell out every single time.

But that capacity would be like, what? Eighty, ninety people?

" Cassandra whispers, her eyes floating freely between Lizzie and me.

I reply with a stiff nod. Bridie’s is the only pub in Grangewood Creek. I’ve performed there a lot over the last few years.

"And your first show is at Madison Square Garden," Lizzie says, shaking her head wide-eyed in disbelief.

"Our sister. The superstar." The three of us chuckle quietly as Lizzie nudges me with her shoulder, resting her head comfortably against the side of mine.

"Do you think things will get awkward between you and Akira, considering the last time you saw her, you and her… "

"No." I cut Lizzie off mid-sentence. Unfortunately for me, my two sisters know more about my personal life than I care to admit.

Once I got home from the tour, they pressed and pressed and pressed me to know if I’d met anybody while traveling.

This small-town girl didn’t like to leave Grangewood Creek, which meant my chances of meeting anybody were slim. Regardless of whether I wanted to or not.

When they saw my phone background—a picture of Akira and me, looking a little too comfortable to be just friends—the questions started rolling in.

"Are you guys dating?" No.

"Well, did you hook up?" Yes.

"Are there feelings involved?" No.

"Were there ever?" No again. It was a one-time thing that we both agreed to, but we became friends. She set the photo as my background, and I just forgot to change it back.

I forced myself to give more than a one word response to their final question in the hopes it would be enough for them to back off.

Thankfully, it worked.

"I’m going to miss you, you know." Cassandra sighs, but she doesn’t attempt to hide the tears that flow freely down her face.

"And this little girl will know all about her rock-star aunt, who took the world by storm while she was busy sleeping twenty hours a day." She smiles up at me, big, hazel eyes savoring every inch of my face. It feels as though she’s trying to etch it into her memory, as though we’re never going to see each other again.

Sadness overshadows every other emotion she could possibly feel. I just want to wrap my arms around her and tell her that everything will be okay.

That time will fly, and I’ll be back home whenever I can, for however long I can be, until I’m back for good.

Because I will be.

Grangewood Creek is my home, no matter what.

But I hate affection, and my older sister knows that.

So, instead of forcing me into something I suddenly want from her, she threads her arm through mine and rests her head on my other shoulder, before Lizzie presses 'play' on the movie.

Not another word is spoken for the rest of it, until Willow cries out, reminding us that it’s time for a feed.

***

It’s my last day in Grangewood Creek before I fly out later this afternoon to New York City, the first stop on the tour I’ve been entrusted to open. And something in the pit of my stomach tells me the phone call I’m scheduled to get tomorrow will change my life forever.

Will it change the course of my career? Or will it change the quality of my life moving forward? These are questions I don’t have the answer to.

I wish I could go back to my apartment, look into a crystal ball, and see exactly where my life will be six months from now.

Will I be thriving?

Will I be home?

Will I be happy?

All answers I need to know, but I have to hold out for.

Finding a bench in an empty open park, I pull a notebook and a pen out of my backpack, and watch as cars pass me by.

The sun has barely risen, still hiding behind some clouds, and I take it all in.

I watch Mr. and Mrs. Bishop walk past me, deep in conversation. She's no doubt telling him the latest gossip in town, and going by the look on his face, he hasn’t heard a word of it.

I send a silent 'thank you' to the parting clouds that the Bishops didn’t stop to hound me about what’s going on in my life.

I watch a couple stroll through Grangewood Botanical Park, hand in hand, both with smiles on their faces, and my chest aches a little.

Not with jealousy or longing, but with dread.

What if that’s something I never get to experience?

I close my eyes, draw a deep, steady breath, and look down at the plain paper in front of me.

Words flow out of me so seamlessly that I don’t even have to think about it. If they make sense, I don’t know, but it doesn’t stop me.

I have a lot that I want to say, and even more people that I could tell it all to, and yet…

And yet, here I am, in an empty park, relaying the words to myself.

Because there is nobody in the universe that I would want to burden with the fact that I woke up three months ago thinking I was dying. Tomorrow, I’ll find out if I was being dramatic, or if I was right.

Not a single person needs to know until absolutely necessary, and that’s how I intend to keep it.

My phone vibrates beside my notebook, and my eyes flash to the screen to see Akira’s name pop up.

I removed the heart emoji she put next to it almost immediately, not liking the feeling it gave me.

It just didn’t feel…right, to see that sort of declaration beside her name, no matter how meaningless and superficial.

Sighing a heavy breath, I open the text from her and release a steady exhale when I see her message has nothing to do with us.

All it says is:

Akira Rain

There’s a game tonight at MSG. I have a spare ticket, front row, if you’re down.

I don’t even know what game she’s talking about, though I presume it’s a sport that can be played indoors.

While my hands tremble as they hold my phone, I remind myself about the promise I made: I would try new things.

So, without dwelling too heavily on my response, I tap the screen and send my message back quickly.

I’m down.