Benny
When I need help with anything career related, I call my agent, Justin.
When I want juicy gossip, I call my only other connection to the industry, Chip Paxton, my bass guitarist who went on to become a singer in his own right after I left the industry.
He’s connected in all the ways Justin is, but on a less dignified level.
I wouldn’t be shocked to learn he’s a dragon-riding mind reader. The man knows everything.
Which is why I call him immediately after leaving Bree’s house under the guise of fetching a writing notebook and my guitar. I took Grandma home first, of course. She was much too eager to leave us alone together.
Anyway, Chip is good for the gossip. In the space of two minutes, I learn all about Bree’s fight with her label, and how she allegedly tried to stop the song from being released but couldn’t once the train left the studio’s station, so to speak.
I’m not surprised to learn that, of course, but it’s also something of a relief.
The song shocked me. Bree is a good woman with a good heart, so it feels icky knowing that came from her.
Her regret doesn’t remove her actions, but it makes me feel like maybe she’s still the same Bree I knew all those years ago.
“Career suicide,” Chip says. “I don’t know why she’d do something like this. That whole Belacourt family is astute in business. You’d think her mom or publicist or someone would have talked her out of it.”
A flash of memory sneaks into my mind of the time we ran away from our bodyguards and spent a day in Disneyland.
Bree left the park with bags of souvenirs for her siblings and nothing for herself.
Every time she’d find something for one of them, she’d find something for the other two to keep things even.
It snowballed until we were walking around with more bags than we had arms for. She has always been fair and just.
If there’s one thing I learned from listening to her diss track twenty-five times before Grandma dragged me over to Colby’s house, it’s how unjust Jaida must have been toward Bree.
I would be more angry on Jaida’s behalf, except that I have the hunch she did something terrible to earn Bree’s ire.
Maybe that’s why it’s so easy to forgive her, and why my inclination was to jump in and help.
Bree must have felt she was alone in facing this, or she would have stayed in contact with her family. I can’t abandon her.
Too bad the whole thing makes a victim out of Jaida and the world is rallying to her defense online.
“It’s done now.”
“Are you okay?” Chip asks. “I remember how tight you and Bree used to be.”
“Yeah, I’m not…I feel bad for her. I doubt she meant for the song to become what it is right now.”
“I don’t know, man. It’s pretty overt. You can’t sing like that without intention.”
It’s a fair point, so I have no argument. “I better run. Let me know if you hear anything else? I’m invested.”
“You got it.”
I hang up and slide my phone into my pocket. This is a mess. I agree with Grandma that Bree needs a killer song to fix this, but writing with her feels like a bad idea. Everything with Bree feels like a bad idea, yet I can’t stay away from her.
“Let’s try that again,” Bree says, chewing a pen cap and pushing her toes against the grass to move the chair swing. I’m beside her, guitar on my lap, and we’ve been at this for two hours with no progress.
I lean forward, forcing the swing to quit moving.
Colby’s house is as old as mine, but he hasn’t updated it yet.
After inheriting it from his mom, he sort of moved in, but left a lot of things as is inside.
The backyard, though? He’s put a lot of work into making it a bit of an oasis.
Next to my yard, Colby’s should be winning awards.
Rock beds and sand beds are artfully arranged around plants and trees that can withstand the north bay wind and fog atmosphere.
With the sun glinting off the ocean in front of us and the beach stretching below the cliff on the other side of the road, it’s a stunning view.
I should really put more of an effort into my outdoor spaces.
“For-give me,” Bree sings. “I didn’t mean to…to…toooooo…” She groans. “It sounds forced, Benny.”
“Probably because it is.”
“That doesn’t help.” She drops her head in her hands and rubs her temples. “Should we see how badly America hates me right now? Maybe this isn’t worth the effort.”
I strum a few times, watching her spiral. “So let’s talk about effort. You wrote a song in anger, gave it to your label, sang, produced it, prepared the album art and media splash, and then…ran away?”
“Not exactly.” Bree slides her sunglasses on to fight the warm sun and leans back against the navy cushion, pushing us gently with her toes again.
“I wrote it in anger, yes. Jaida betrayed me. It hurt. I wrote to get my feelings out, and the song was good. When my label wanted it, I felt justified. Like, maybe now the world will see what she’s really like.
” She stops. “You don’t know her, Benny.
She’ll climb on anyone’s back to make herself taller.
I wanted to knock her down a peg. By the time I realized how bad the song really was, it was too late to stop it. ”
I nod along. I’d picked up this much already. “Why are you ignoring your family, then?”
“Because I’m embarrassed,” she says quietly.
It shouldn’t, maybe, but it squeezes my heart. She’s definitely in the wrong here, but she knows it. I find myself feeling forgiveness toward her again. “Maybe you should call your mom.”
“She approved the song,” Bree says.
“Your brother? Or Olive?”
She peers up at me. “I’m embarrassed, Benny. I’m surprised you are even speaking to me.”
“Well, I forgave you.”
“For being mean to Jaida?”
I hold her gaze for a beat. “For making a mistake.”
She blinks at me. “But it wasn’t against you.”
“So I can’t offer you grace?”
“You can,” she hedges.
Inspiration hits me in a sudden, overwhelming wave, like it often does when I’m thinking about Bree, or watching her TV show, or scrolling her Instagram feed like a lonely stalker. I know the song we need to write. It’s in my head like an anthem, so loud I don’t know how I didn’t hear it before.
“I’ve got it,” I say, strumming on my guitar, the words forming in my head like bright pops of fireworks. I hum along, forming the melody while the words find their proper order.
“That’s good,” she says quietly. “Catchy.”
Her voice gives me a burst of emotion, and the words come out. “You owe me nothing, but I was wrong. Grace comes along. I’ve done you wrong.”
I glance at her for approval, and she’s bobbing her head along, her brown eyes like deep pools of chocolate I want to swim in.
My fingers keep strumming, but we’re stuck in this heavy eye contact like a whirlpool.
We’re tethered, the music creating a soft cocoon, and I don’t want to lose the moment or the feelings or any of the words we’ve come up with.
But I’m frozen, my hand strumming the same thing over and over again.
Bree begins to hum, so I start over, singing the words again, tweaking the order, shifting the melody, moving all the pieces around like a puzzle in my head until I find the perfect combination.
We work together for the next few hours, each adding lines and moving parts while we’re vibing in our own little world.
Bree writes a killer bridge, and we create a harmony.
It sounds nothing like what we started with—it’s ten times better.
The song is great as a duet, but we can record Bree singing both parts and layer them, see if it works.
It’s one of those rare times when I can feel deep in the marrow of my bones that this song is going to be a hit.
Canceled or not, the world is going to eat it up.
This is collaboration vibe magic at work.
Sunlight fades until we’re forced to go inside and turn the lights on.
Colby’s home is a mix of old and new, the worn sofa and modern TV stand making the room comfortable and familiar and homey.
Lacey window coverings remind me of his mom, but the beautiful framed photographs on the walls remind me of him.
I’m deep in the euphoria of a successful writing session and utterly drained at the same time.
Judging by Bree’s slouched position on the sofa beside me, she feels the same. She leans back on the headrest. “I feel like I ran five miles.”
“All the exhaustion and none of the burned calories. Sounds unfair,” I say, reaching over to rub the knots from her shoulder. “Should we have dinner?”
“Yes.” She closes her eyes, leaning forward to give me better access. “My brain needs a break. Want cereal?”
“Maybe for dessert.” I put my guitar aside and go to the kitchen to see what I can scrounge up to eat.
Our options are pretty much fruit or cereal.
There are a few other things, but nothing that sounds like a filling dinner.
I can’t have salami and crackers and call that a meal.
“Come on. Put your shoes on, and we can go to my house.”
“If you’re sure.”
“I’m hungry. Let’s go.”
“Twist my arm,” she jokes, but she’s already slipping on her sandals and pulling on that baby blue sweatshirt again. It looks so cozy I want to wrap my arms around her. With the wind and the sun fully gone now, it’s cold outside. Bree shivers when she turns around to lock the front door.
I stand behind her, looking at Colby’s outdated front door that could definitely use a coat of paint. “The song is nearly there. Do you think your label will take it?”
She spins to face me, her eyes wide. “Nearly there? I don’t know if I can sing about Jaida offering me grace, Benny. It’s going to take some major swallowing of my pride to publicly say half of the things we wrote tonight.”
My gut twists. “You didn’t mean those things?”
Her brow pulls together. “That’s not…I always mean what I write.
But maybe not toward Jaida. I feel awful about what I did.
My platform was built on boosting self-esteem and empowering women.
I spit in the face of all that with this stupid song.
And for what? My pride? To expose a fake? A lot of good that did.”
I lean one shoulder against the wall and shake my head. “I won’t ask what happened between you to warrant that…attack. I’m guessing it was pretty bad.”
Bree’s cheeks go pink.
“In the public beef you guys have, though, she just became the victim,” I say, “and everyone loves an underdog.”
She shakes her head, pressing her fingers to her temples. “Where were you when I needed a reasonable sounding board?”
“Is your mom not…” I don’t even know how to finish that sentence, so it hangs between us.
“She loved the song,” Bree mutters.
The Belacourt matriarch probably knew it would cause an enormous stir and would put Bree’s name at the top of every headline. Anything to make a sale, right? She definitely wasn’t expecting her daughter to run away.
Bree’s eyes fall closed as a gentle breeze reaches us in the alcove of the doorway. “I want to keep pretending this isn’t happening.”
As we simultaneously write a song to fight the problem? She’s wanting to keep the world pushed away? I can help her do that. Bree came here to get away. This is meant to be a safe space. She’s choosing to spend time with me because I provide that for her.
That feels like an honor. I don’t know if I’ve fully processed what happened today and how I feel about Bree’s choices, but I know how much she regrets making some of them.
At the end of the day, I know she’s not a vindictive person, and I can offer her grace for being human and doing something she regrets. She is clearly remorseful.
Maybe she doesn’t regret the things she said, but she certainly wishes she hadn’t said them.
“We can pretend,” I finally say.
Her eyes lift to meet mine. The dark brown pools are warm and grateful. She sways toward me. “I don’t know what I did to deserve landing on your floor, but it’s the best thing that’s happened to me in ages.”
A chuckle rumbles from my chest. I can’t help the utter warmth filling my body. It’s not even real praise, but I feel like I won an award. “I’m not convinced you didn’t plan that.”
She wraps her arms around herself. “You are the reason I chose this town. I remember you saying it’s where you would choose to go if you ever needed witness protection. In my defense, I thought you lived in Montana.”
I lean closer. She looks so cold, and we should take this to my house so we can get warm and start dinner, but neither of us move.
I know why my feet are planted firmly on Colby’s front porch—this spell will break the moment we leave, and I really love talking to Bree with her guard down.
The energy buzzing between us is palpable.
I could run my fingers through it like sand on the beach and probably feel the individual grains.
Once we shift, the spell will break. She’s vulnerable and skittish, and I’m enjoying being the person she turns to more than I should.
She leans her shoulder against the wall so she faces me. A shiver shakes her shoulders briefly, but she still doesn’t make a move toward my house. “So why did you move here from Montana? I know it’s for your grandma, but that woman is spunky. She seems capable and independent.”
“She’s spunky, but she still needed me.”
“We need you, you mean,” a voice calls over my shoulder. Colby appears from the dark space between our houses and plants his feet on the porch beside me, his megawatt grin flashing at Bree. He sticks a hand out. “Hi, I’m Colby, the better-looking cousin. And you are Bree Belacourt.”