Benny
Bree is a natural. I don’t know why her parents ever wasted time on reality shows or all that modeling.
I know she didn’t love doing it as much as she has a natural gift for it.
Maybe she liked the money. But they should have gotten her a record deal right out the gate, and they should have gone straight to Nashville for it.
She has a beautiful, unique tone, and she’s a perfect voice for country music.
Editing this song is going to be a breeze.
Now I need to convince her to let me hand it off to Justin so he can put the song up to release right when we want it to.
He can bypass the time-intensive quality control checks and things like that.
He’s done it before. I don’t know who his contacts are at Apple and Spotify, but they’ve saved me in the past.
I don’t know how to explain all of this to her without also telling her I’ve been writing half of her songs for the last few years.
It doesn’t necessarily need to be a secret anymore, but if she tells anyone, my cover’s blown, and I can kiss my sweet anonymity goodbye. Besides, I’m sure she’ll feel like it’s a betrayal. I know her.
“Time to wrap it up?” Olive asks from the long sofa behind me. “I think she’s good now.”
“That was definitely the best take yet. I think she has it.”
“Have you recorded all the instruments, Benny?” Olive asks.
I swivel on my chair to see her. “I took care of them when you guys went out to pick up dinner. We can cut and take this home now.”
“Fantastic.” Olive rises, stretching.
“What’s Dash doing while you’re here?” Colby asks, his computer on his lap as he pieces together the video. He’s been working on it the entire time I’ve been producing Bree’s song.
“Hanging out on a beach. He has an audition coming up he’s been working on.” She narrows her eyes at him. “Why do you care?”
Colby looks surprised by this. “Why do I care what your boyfriend, one of the most famous men in our country, is doing while you’re here away from him? I’m weirdly curious, I guess.”
Zoey chuckles, but she doesn’t take her eyes off her phone.
Olive scowls.
Bree pushes the door open and joins us. “Time to head out?”
“I need to close this out.”
“Should we take dinner to Nancy?” Bree asks.
Colby glances at her when she says this, then back to his computer. “She probably ate. It’s after nine.”
Bree swears. “Sorry, guys. You should have gone home.”
“This is nothing.” Olive stretches. “The night is young. What do you guys do for fun around here, anyway?”
“Bonfire on the beach,” Colby says. “Hike the dunes. Surf.”
“Anything not wet or cold?” she asks.
“We could finish the video and song production so Benny’s team has them in plenty of time. That’s always an option.”
“Wait…” Bree’s face wrinkles in confusion. “What team?”
My stomach drops. Colby flashes me an oops look. I don’t know how to explain my way out of this one. “You remember Justin,” I finally say.
“Your agent?”
“Yeah. He, uh…we’ve kept in contact.”
That’s one way of putting it.
Bree’s not buying it. “He’s not a team, though. What did Colby mean?” She turns her frown on my cousin. “What was that?”
He shuts his computer, then his hands go up in surrender. “I’m staying out of this.”
“Come on. Let’s go.” Zoey stands up.
Olive joins her, but Bree isn’t ready to let it drop. She watches me close out everything and power down the system. I’m not being forthcoming, but not for the reasons she’s probably coming up with. I don’t want her sisters to know about my other job. I can’t have people knowing.
“You do this, don’t you?” Bree asks, looking from the recording studio to my cousin.
“You still put music out there. Are you hiding behind a giant marshmallow head or a black and white wig? Those things worked for Marshmello and Sia…for a while. People eventually figure it out. They take the masks off.”
“I don’t sing with a mask,” I tell her, fighting both amusement and exasperation.
“But you do something. You knew how to work all this equipment.” She sweeps her hand over the room. “You’ve got music contacts in a place you’ve only lived for a few years. Your cousin mentioned sending my song to your team for a faster upload. What am I missing here?”
I stand and face her, searching for the right words. The room is so quiet, I can hear someone breathing. Maybe it’s me.
Bree’s growing frustrated.
“I still write songs.”
Her hand rests on her hip. “That doesn’t explain any of the rest of it.”
“Justin is still my agent. He sells them for me. We use a pseudonym, and everyone’s happy.”
She relaxes. “Why didn’t you just tell me that?”
How do I inform her that a third of her songs came from me?
Bree shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter. I’m glad you’re still involved in music somehow. It explains a lot.”
My throat is dry. “Oh, yeah?”
“I mean, I know it’s summer, and you do something with real estate, but you never work.”
We gather up our things and head out to Colby’s Bronco, the only vehicle waiting in the parking lot. “Screamin’ Mimis, anyone?” he asks.
“Ice cream,” I tell them. It’s right down the main road in Sebastopol, though, so I don’t know how good an idea it is.
“We don’t have disguises,” Bree says.
“So a few people snap photos of the Belacourt Babes getting ice cream,” Colby says. “Why would that matter?”
“They already know Bree’s here, I guess,” Zoey concedes, ignoring his use of their nickname.
Olive sighs. “Ice cream sounds good. Let’s go.”
We pile in to the Bronco and Colby pulls out, heading down the winding road toward the center of town. People walk down the street together, the one streetlight on this road stopping us so a couple can cross the road holding hands.
Colby turns on the radio, and Bree’s song is halfway through.
“Hey!” Olive says, reaching over the seat to turn it up. “That’s my sister!”
Bree and Olive sing along, but Zoey doesn’t join in. I want to sink in my seat, thinking about the day I wrote these words. It feels like a lie for the first time, not telling her I’m the writer.
I look at Colby, and his eyebrows are up. Is he reading my mind?
We reach the end of the song and the radio hosts come on. “That’s ‘Forever for a Day’ by Bree Belacourt. I think it’s her best yet, but—”
“No way,” his co-host cuts in. “‘Hashtag Medusa’ is my favorite. All those layered references are deep. I still don’t think we know the full story.”
“No one does!”
“What do you think the odds are that there’s a juicy story behind the song?”
“One hundred and ten percent,” the man says. “Come on, Joan, you know Bree got angry about not getting invited to some party or something and had to clap back. That’s how all these celebrities are. Their world is a big game of high school politics all the time.”
Colby reaches to turn the radio off or change it or something, but Bree stops him. “No, I want to hear this.”
Joan laughs. “I’m Team Bree on this one, Hank. You won’t change my mind, either. You don’t write something that meaningful without feeling deep betrayal. Even if their world is a little bit high school, that makes me feel worse for her, because high school was hard for most of us.”
“Probably not for Bree Belacourt, though.”
They both laugh.
“We’re going to follow that up with a song by none other than Jaida. Here’s ‘On My Own,’” Hank says.
Colby changes the station as the first few notes begin to play. He pulls off the side of the road and parallel parks. “How about that ice cream?”
“She always puts me in a foul mood,” Bree mutters. “I hate how catchy that song is, too. It’s impossible to hate it.”
“I can hate it for all of us,” Olive says, climbing out of the truck.
We stop for ice cream and find the shop blessedly empty, so the only people who ask for selfies are the workers, who promise to post them once we’re gone so we can have a head start out of there.
“Hey, Bree,” the kid behind the counter calls. She has red hair and a bright white smile. “Does this mean you and Benny Rhodes are back together?”
Bree glances at me. I can’t read the expression in her eyes. She shakes her head. “We’re just friends.”
“Is he coming to Zoey’s wedding?”
“Good night!” Olive calls, pulling her sisters out the door. “Thanks for the ice cream!”
We make it around the corner to where the Bronco is parked. Colby takes up the rear of the group, eating his chocolate chunk one spoonful at a time. “Have you guys ever tried to get rid of the paparazzi by blasting music and lights at them?”
“Like they do in emotional warfare situations?” Zoey asks. “It’s better to ignore them.”
“If you want your picture plastered everywhere, yeah. But if you’re trying to live a quiet life, it’s a major inconvenience.” There’s a sharp edge to the way he says this, which makes me look at him over my shoulder. “I’m just saying,” Colby continues, “not everyone wants the spotlight.”
“We know,” Bree says, looking at me. “I’m sorry I brought this all down on you.”
“We don’t know for sure—”
“It doesn’t matter how they found me. I’m the reason they’re here, and I’ll make sure they all leave with me when I go.” She opens the truck and climbs in the back, but I’m paralyzed, totally stuck in place on the sidewalk.
Because maybe I’ve been saying I needed privacy this entire time, but it’s starting to feel like I need Bree more.
The radio turns on with the truck, Hank and Joan still chatting about celebrity gossip and music.
“It’s a Grammy contender,” Joan says. “Absolutely! Who knew Jaida could pull off country music? I didn’t, but I’m glad she took a stab at it.”
“You might be the only one. It’s going to win a Grammy, but not because it’s the best. It’s Jaida and everyone loves her.”
“Don’t be salty, Hank! The fact is the songs are good. She had a team of writers behind her who knew what they were doing.”
“They have nothing on ‘On My Own,’ though. The writer for that song should have handled her newest album.”
“She wrote that song!” Joan croons.
“Not alone, she didn’t. If you expect me to believe she didn’t change a few words for song credit, you’re insane. Duncan Doran is credited too, and his songs are the best. They have consistently topped the charts for the last decade.”
Colby reaches for the radio, but Bree stops him again. “Wait, I want to hear this. Duncan Doran writes half of my music, too.”
My body grows cold. The blood that usually pumps through my veins with normal fluidity is now icily still, waiting to see how this conversation progresses.
“Ever notice how he used to sell his songs to anyone who wanted them, but now he pretty much only writes for Bree Belacourt?” Hank asks.
Joan laughs, a deep, feminine sound. “You can’t lay off the poor girl, can you?”
“I’m just saying it’s extra suspicious.”
“We all know your theory, Hank. You don’t have to spell it out for us again.”
“We don’t know it,” Bree says.
My stomach is in knots.
“Maybe there are some new listeners tonight, tuning in for the first time.”
“Okay, fine.” Joan sounds patient. “Why don’t you share it with us while I cue up our next song?”
“It’s Bree.”
“The next song?” Joan asks.
“No, the songwriter. Duncan Doran is a pseudonym for someone who wants to keep themselves anonymous, obviously. The person has collaborated with Jaida once, and now Bree has this insanely catchy diss track that matches the vibe of all of Duncan Doran’s songs.
That means they’re the same person, right? It makes sense.”
“Sure, Hank. Whatever you want. Now, coming at you is the latest from Bree Belacourt: ‘Hashtag Medusa’.”
The song begins, and Bree hits the radio button, throwing us into silence.
“I love when people get things so wrong,” Olive says. “You don’t know everything, Hank.”
Bree nods. Her eyes are trained out the window, and I want to know what she’s thinking. How much of that stuck in her head? What is she assuming right now?
“Is he wrong, though?” she finally asks, her tone quiet. “I mean, he’s right. Duncan wrote for everyone equally until I started singing, then I got priority. It felt like his songs were written for me.”
She won’t look at me, but deep inside, I have the feeling she knows.
The rest of the drive home is uncomfortable.
Colby turns on the radio again but finds a different station, and we pull over before we get home so we can all climb in the trunk and lay down.
Bree chooses to lay on the other side of Zoey, so I’m not anywhere near her.
That’s definitely a signal.
Colby pulls into his garage without issue and we climb out of the truck, but when Zoey and Olive head inside, Bree puts her hand on my wrist to keep me back. Colby shoots us a look but disappears inside with the girls, letting the garage door fall shut with a heavy thud.
Bree releases my arm. She looks like she’s heavily concentrating on something, but when her eyes turn on me, they’re fiery. “It’s you, isn’t it? You’re Duncan Doran?”
I inhale, the smell of Colby’s old garage filling my nose. “Yes.”