Bree #2
“I don’t remember that, but it was sometime in the 1800s.”
“And the school?”
“Same thing. 1800s.”
We circle the property to stand in front of the church. I spin, taking in the entire surrounding land. Trees cover the hills on the other side of the valley and cows graze, most of them finding refuge in the shade from the heat.
“You think this will work for your video?”
“Only if you think it’s a good idea.”
He nods, coming to stand directly beside me.
He’s so close I can smell his cologne. It’s obvious he showered after brunch, because he’s in different shorts and an Armstrong Redwoods T-shirt, his hair no longer sticking up in the back like it was at breakfast. When I glance down, I see black Vans—the exact shoes he used to wear ten years ago—and they make my stomach flip.
Why these shoes? Why today of all days? He’s been in sandals for the most part, even boots on occasion. But Vans?
Is he trying to send me back to memories of our time together? If so, it’s working.
Fate or the universe or plain good luck has handed me Benny on a gilded platter, and it’s about time I quit worrying about what this means, or what it could mean, when I eventually go home. I only have the rental for two and a half more weeks, but I can’t let myself think about that.
My shoulders square up. “Why did you get all weird earlier?”
“What do you mean?”
“Right before you left, I told you I liked being domestic, and you didn’t seem to like that answer.”
Benny’s blue eyes are steely as they peer down at me. He takes his time formulating his response. “I guess I didn’t like the reminder that this is all temporary.”
My pulse jumps. He doesn’t break eye contact. “Why would that bother you?”
“Come on, Bree,” he says, taking a step closer, his eyes narrowing by degree. “Don’t pretend you don’t know.”
I need to hear it from him. He has more confidence in my knowledge than he should.
My silence spurs him to speak again. “Question for a question then?”
“That’s fair.”
Benny sits on the top step, so I sit beside him. The large church doors are right behind us, and from this vantage point we can see all of Bodega and the surrounding fields. The sun beats down on us, but we’re both in sunglasses and the warmth is welcome.
“I really enjoy having you around.” He shrugs. “I’ll be sad when you leave again.”
That answer feels like a bit of a copout, but I don’t know what more I expected.
For him to express his undying love? To put aside his quiet life and jump back into my crazy one?
He’s carefully crafted a pleasant existence, and adding me to it would do nothing but toss a match into a barrel of firecrackers… doused in kerosene.
“What’s your question?” I finally ask, unable to dwell on it anymore.
“What happened with Jaida?”
My head whips toward him. Now that’s going straight for the jugular. He’s playing dirty. “I feel like you owe me two questions for that one.”
“You agreed.”
I groan. He’s right, and it’s not even an exciting story. “She betrayed me.”
“I picked up that much from the song.”
This isn’t a moment I want to relive, mostly because there are a million things I wish I could go back and do differently. I can feel my nose wrinkling in distaste, so I smooth it out and inhale the clean air.
He’s waiting patiently, so I don’t rush.
I tell him the events as unaffected as I can.
“We had the same label. We ended up in LA at the same time, had meetings at our label on the same day. I don’t know why both of us were asked to meet in person.
They do most of these meetings through Zoom these days, so part of me wonders now if that was orchestrated to get us in the building together—but I realize that’s reaching into paranoia. ”
Given my behavior after the movie last night, though, I bet Benny’s on board with that line of reasoning.
I pick at the seam on my shorts. “Jaida and I don’t get along.
That’s not a secret. But we ran into her in the lobby, and both got the news that our meetings had been pushed to the afternoon.
Our rep was stuck on a plane and wasn’t in LA yet.
Again, feels a little orchestrated, but I don’t know how she could have controlled anyone’s flight status, so I have to let that slide.
It probably was a crazy coincidence, but it ended up ruining everything. ”
I glance at Benny, and he’s watching me patiently, his blue eyes soaking in every word.
“Jaida invited my team to join her for lunch. We thought it was a reconciliation effort, maybe a collaboration pitch.”
“I’m guessing it wasn’t,” he says dryly.
“Far from it. She was super nice. The whole thing went well. She asked what I was working on, and I told her bits of it. I was trying to be polite but keep the important things close to the chest, you know? It wasn’t really a shocker that my music was skewing more and more toward country.
I had planned to do something heavily countryfied on my next album.
My mom was chatting with Jaida’s PR guy about how it’s a good shot at a Grammy. ”
“You have Grammys.”
“She wasn’t satisfied.” My limbs get jittery, remembering how that entire day went down. I stare into the distance, but not before I notice Benny sit taller, like maybe he’s put together the rest of the story on his own. The rest is public knowledge, anyway.
Well, not how it went down. But the aftermath.
I curl my fingers around the wooden step we’re sitting on. “I told Jaida that country music is where my heart is, that it’s the sound I’ve wanted to do from the beginning, that I’ve slowly gained the label’s trust enough that I think it’s time they’ll let me transition fully away from pop.”
Benny has probably heard my last album, which means he knows how not country it sounded.
“Jaida got there first,” I tell him. “Her meeting was before mine. She told the label she thought she had a shot at winning country album of the year if she could try once, and that she already had an entire catalog of sixteen songs written to get started. Or so I’ve heard.
All I know is that my meeting directly followed hers, and it was a train wreck.
They shot my idea down because they didn’t want us competing for the same thing.
They told me to go hard on pop this time, and I can do what I want in the future. ”
Silence buzzes between us for a moment before Benny scoffs. “She stole your idea, your Grammy—”
“And two of my songs.”
“How?”
“Jacob Freeman had been writing them for me because I had told him my plan months before that. He’d been sending me clips of ideas. The label rerouted them to Jaida once her album was set in motion.”
“What a snake.”
“That’s a nice word for it.”
“Ah, Medusa,” he says. “Judas.”
“It felt that way. I was furious. She played nice, pretending to reconcile so she could pump us for information, and immediately used it to further her career. Within an hour she was pitching my idea and taking my career path for herself. I was wary the entire time but my mom bought into the whole thing. Everyone did.”
“Can you blame them? Jaida has the whole innocent act down.”
I glance at him, my elbows leaning on my bent knees while the breeze rustles my fake blonde hair. “How do you know that?”
“You can tell. She’s overkill. I’ve had a few interactions with her in the last few years, anyway. She’s not the same person behind the scenes that she lets the public think she is.”
“That’s what I wanted to expose with my song, but it backfired. It only made me look bad and made her look like a poor, mistreated angel.” I drop my forehead onto my knees and groan. Benny rubs my back, and I lean toward him.
“It’ll blow over. In the meantime, I get to have you for a while. Things could be worse.”
My laugh is hollow. His words would mean more if they didn’t sound so accepting of me being a blip in his life, here for a moment and gone again quickly. The idea makes my shoulders want to slump, but I heroically keep them up.
“True,” I say, trying to smile. “What do you mean you’ve had interactions with her?”
He looks startled, like he didn’t expect the question. Before he can respond, the sound of a car starting behind the church steals our attention, followed shortly by wheels crunching over the gravel lane that meets up with the road. Cold nerves wash through me. I exchange a look with Benny.
He shakes his head. “There’s no way anyone overheard us.”
I swallow. I hope he’s right.