Chapter Five #2
Esra sighed. “Well…he’s not released a song in years and he only played a gig as a favor to you. He didn’t even get paid, right? He’s basically jobless.”
“Yes, a bajillionaire Grammy-winning superstar being able to comfortably retire at thirty-eight is going to make me feel better about scrubbing Heather’s red lipstick off her wineglasses every week.”
“I’m sorry,” Esra said, and I knew that she meant it, too.
She knew that I hadn’t chosen to step away from music to work here.
I’d hinted at how my career had gone downhill, but I hadn’t even given her all the details.
She was one of my best friends and I still hadn’t allowed her that close to me.
She sighed. “Want me to check if he’s gone? ”
I must have looked miserable.
“Okay, give me a minute.” Esra turned on her heel, and I went back to smushing my face against the fridge to cool the hot sting of embarrassment.
Was it embarrassment? I didn’t actually mind bartending.
It wasn’t a dream job, but it wasn’t something I usually hid from people.
Brooks was different though. He’d supported me in my actual dream job, and the second he’d stopped holding my hand, I hadn’t been able to keep myself afloat.
“All right.” Esra came back and pulled me off the fridge again.
“He’s sitting downstairs at the bar. The one that’s like diagonally…
” She gestured from her eyes to the floor.
I worked the bar on the upstairs balcony, the staff section.
If Brooks sat at the bar downstairs, he was in direct eyeline to my bar, but he was also in a very public space.
He was chancing a bunch of selfie hunters by sitting there.
Surely he couldn’t just be waiting to see when I’d come back out…
“Have you ever bartended?” I asked.
“What? No,” Esra laughed.
“Do you want to start? Free drinks for the rest of the year if you cover my shift.” I could just disappear through the back. Jump in my car, race home, and hide under my covers.
“Wow, you’re a total coward.”
“Am not,” I protested even though I’d just considered hiding under my blankies like a kid.
“Yes, you are.” She snorted. “I know you don’t like talking about feelings and all that, but there’s a bajillionaire Emmy-winning superstar waiting to have a conversation with you, and you’re trying to turn yourself into a fridge magnet.”
“Grammy, not Emmy.” I groaned and ran my hands down my face. “You suck.”
“Not as much as going back out there is going to suck for you,” she trilled and swiveled for the door. “I’d like another Manhattan, please.”
“I hate you.”
“I love you, too.”
Despite sitting at the bar all night, Brooks didn’t come to talk to me.
We made eye contact from a distance. When I was serving customers, his gaze burned on my skin.
When he was cheesing and posing with fans, I watched with one eye on the security guard just in case things escalated.
At last call, Brooks put his hat back on, tipped it in my direction with a small unrehearsed smile, and left.
I hated myself a little bit for staring at the swinging saloon doors just to see if he would come back. He didn’t.
When I got home that night—dry and on four wheels—I peeled my uniform off right by the door and stomped across the living room in my underwear.
Past my record player, past the wall of photographs from my glory days, to the corner where I’d stuffed the old black guitar case.
I yanked it out from between the sofa and the wall.
It sent little specks of dust flurrying through the air.
After dumping the case in the middle of the fluffy living room rug, I plopped down in front of it and unsnapped the buckles.
I was not a total coward.
I didn’t need to hide under my blankets.
The inside of the guitar case was lined in red velvet.
Pin buttons from the venues I’d played over the years fastened Polaroid pictures to the inside of the lid.
Brooks’s face was there a number of times.
I ignored the photographs. My fingers trailed over the smooth finish of the instrument.
The strings had gone a little slack. Other than that, the guitar was in pristine condition.
The record deal money had been enough to buy myself this cottage and the one next door for my mother, and I’d been content with that.
The label had covered most of my expenses.
They’d set me up with a hairdresser. They’d arranged brand deals for my clothes.
They’d even paid for the small bump on my nose to be smoothed out.
And because my old thrift store guitar didn’t cut it in the big leagues, I’d been gifted this beautiful Gibson Hummingbird.
At nineteen years old, I hadn’t realized that these people never truly gave you anything for free.
Every gift came with strings attached—and not the kind that made music.
My fingernail caught on the little hummingbird etched into the wood.
I doubted Marble Audio gave their male artists guitars covered in white-and-green floral decorations that they then matched their entire wardrobe to.
I doubted Peter Doyle, the label head, made them loosen the shoulder straps, so the guitar wouldn’t cover even a fraction of their chest, completely ignoring that it made playing a lot harder.
My insides tightened, bile squeezing up my throat as I plucked a single string on the guitar. It echoed in my ears like sirens.
This thing wasn’t a musical instrument, but an instrument of control.
I scrambled to my feet. My balance swayed. Not again, not again, not again. Heaving shallow breaths, I forced one foot in front of the other. The corners of my vision blurred. The wire around my lungs tightened.
This was stupid. I was stupid. I should have left well enough alone.
But no, Adriana always had to prove that she was a big girl.
I should have left the guitar in the case tonight.
And I never should have tried to prove that I was the exception.
The lucky one. The one who got out of her stupid little hometown just because a man in a suit said I’d be a star.
I climbed into my shower on all fours and turned the cold water on before the panic attack could fully seize me.
The icy spray shocked my nerves enough to let me take one deep breath. Then another one.
“Fuck,” I whispered and dropped my forehead on my knees. This must have been the worst one in at least six months. That’s what I got for thinking I could handle my guitar. And for what? To prove to myself that I still had even a fraction of the potential Brooks had once seen in me?
Screw that.
I tugged my bracelets off and ran a fingertip over the tattoo on my left wrist. It was a reminder to myself.
I had nothing to prove. I was filling my life with friends and good food and a beautiful home, and that could be enough for now.
I wouldn’t let music dictate my entire life again. That had ended in disaster last time.