Rock & Roll Nights: The Lila and Rivers Edit

11. Lila

11

LILA

T he words weren’t coming out right.

I wrinkled my nose and scratched out yet another line of lyrics, frustrated beyond belief. I never had trouble with lyrics. They were my thing. Sure, I could write music with the best of them. I’d never had any trouble coming up with a tune and making it dance to my needs. But lyrics were something altogether different. Those were like magic for me. I’d have a thought that needed something—some line or emotion—and that something would just appear in my head, like someone else had written it and sent it right into my brain. The words would come flowing out like I’d always known what they were and just had to reach out and grab them to make a song. The hard part had always been deciding which tune to fit them into.

But right now, I couldn’t write anything. I couldn’t come up with good emotion, or words that fit together the way they should. Everything I wrote felt like I was back in the sixth grade trying to compose my first love song when I didn’t even know how being in love felt.

Something was wrong.

I pushed back from the table and pulled my guitar into my lap. Maybe if I worked on some music instead, the language part of my brain would free itself up.

I strummed the strings and closed my eyes, letting myself sink into the chords that had been my home for years, and started plucking out a tune. It wasn’t complicated and it definitely wasn’t original—it belonged to Olivia, actually—but as I played, I felt the music work its way into my blood, and then into my imagination. And I was able to start thinking in what I’d labeled ‘lyrics language.’ I started seeing the world and everything in it in music and lyrics rather than just visions. Everything became note-colored.

The emotions, and the words that described them, started coming back.

There it was, I thought, relief flowing through me. There was the piece of me that understood this sort of thing. I hadn’t seen her in days—not since we’d started following this tour—and I’d been worried that she’d decided to fuck off and take a break when I needed her most. And the more I’d struggled with lyrics, the more I’d worried. She’d never disappeared on me before, and I hadn’t known how to call her back.

Until now.

I sighed and felt a smile growing on my mouth, both relieved and entranced by the ideas that flowed through my brain. New notes and combinations. Lines I’d never thought of before. A bridge for a song that didn’t yet exist.

“What are you doing?”

My eyes snapped open, the spell broken, and I looked up to see someone standing in front of me. Not just any someone, either. The someone I was pretending to date—and who had been studiously avoiding me for the most part, except for when some handy photographer was around.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He dropped into the seat across from me and sighed. “Can’t sleep.”

Then he took in my guitar, the half-eaten blueberry pie in front of me, and the sheet of paper next to that. His eyes traveled over my body, and I remembered—belatedly—that I was dressed in my pajamas. Plaid pajama pants and a T-shirt that was at least a size too small.

Things I almost never let anyone else see.

I felt the flush start at my chest and rise rapidly up my neck and into my face, and I watched as he watched me blush.

Which just made the blush even worse.

God damn him and those stupid, brooding eyes of his. I was sitting here trying to write music and he, what, thought he’d come in and stare at me like he wanted to eat me up? After teasing me for days with walks that lasted ten minutes and always included someone else? Kisses that someone else was watching?

Words that brushed against me and burrowed under my skin, but obviously didn’t mean anything to him?

Where the fuck did he get off?

“What do you want?” I asked, injecting as much ice into my voice as I could manage. “There aren’t any photographers in here to take pictures of us, you know. It’s just you and me.”

He leaned forward on his elbows, let his eyes rake up and down my body once more, and whispered, “That’s what you think, sunshine girl. But you never know where the reporters might turn up.”

He reached out, grabbed my fork, and took a bite of my blueberry pie.

“That’s mine,” I said quietly.

He shrugged. “I figured. Mind if I have a bite?”

“Little late to ask for permission, isn’t it?” My eyes flicked down to his mouth, which was currently savoring my blueberry pie, and the heat in my face spread rapidly to the rest of my body.

A man eating blueberry pie should not make you feel like you were about to burst into flames. Eating blueberry pie like it was the sexiest thing you’d ever tasted should be illegal.

Rivers’ mouth curled up like he knew exactly what I was thinking, and he leaned back, releasing me from the hold he’d had on me. “I can order my own if you like. Is there anyone even left in the kitchen?”

I gazed out over the hotel’s small café—empty at this hour—and nodded to the kitchen. “The chef’s still back there. He’s the one who brought me the pie.”

Rivers followed my gaze, then got up and strolled in that direction, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched like he didn’t expect to have any luck with his request. I tipped my head, wondering at that. He was walking like a kid who expected trouble—or one who was used to being told he didn’t belong here. But he was the biggest star on this tour. Someone who got whatever he wanted, and asked for everything.

So why did he look like a lost little boy in need of a friend?

He got to the kitchen before I could figure out what was bothering me, though, and moments later he was back with his own slice of pie. He cut the tip off and slid it onto my plate, then gave me a quick flash of a smile.

“To pay you back.”

“Oh,” I said, surprised. “Right. I mean... I wasn’t worried about it.”

“But I wouldn’t want you getting the wrong idea. I’m not the kind of guy who eats someone else’s pie and doesn’t pay them back.”

That statement left me with a number of questions. I wondered if I was allowed to ask any of them. We hadn’t talked, not really, since that first night, when we’d told each other a bunch of secrets in what now felt like an incredibly childish game. Since then, we’d been too busy satisfying the terms of the deal we’d essentially signed in blood. Playing a couple in love for the cameras when they were around. Getting too close to each other and then refusing to look at one another afterwards.

Each of us playing our part, and for good reason.

A spot on the tour for him.

A contract for me.

It wasn’t exactly a situation rife with romance. It wasn’t even full of laughter or real connection. But maybe it was time to stop pouting about that, put my pride away, and actually try to build something. Hadn’t I just been thinking that he looked like a boy who needed a friend? Hadn’t I thought right from the start that he looked sad and that I’d try to fix him if I could?

Well, here I was. If I wanted to be his friend—maybe hear him in a way no one else ever had—this was my chance.

I picked up my fork and took another bite of his pie. When he raised an eyebrow, I shrugged. “You take a bite of my pie; I take a bite of yours. What are you doing down here, Rivers?”

He tipped his head at me. “I already gave you a payment piece, which means you’re already cheating. And I couldn’t sleep. I always have trouble when we’re on the road. I get so riled up for the shows themselves and then can’t settle back down. And by the time I realize I’m lonely and want someone to talk to, everyone else is in bed.”

Okay, I hadn’t been expecting so much honesty. But now that I was looking at him, I realized that the mask he usually wore—that cocky, uncaring expression he turned on the world—had fallen.

Leaving the lonely boy I’d seen that first night.

I reached out to take another bite of pie, but he blocked me with his fork.

“My turn,” he said. He reached for my pie, took a small bite, and put it in his mouth, chewing thoughtfully as he watched me. When he spoke, it was a question. “Why are you down here, sitting in a mostly dark restaurant that I suspect the chef kept open just for you, with nothing but a guitar to keep you company?”

“Are we playing this game again?” I asked. “A question for a question? With blueberry pie this time?”

A soft shrug from Rivers. “Unless you’re going to run away.”

Unless I was going to run away.

Not likely.

Because I wasn’t sure I could run from this guy. I didn’t know if I could get away from the magnetic hold he had over me. I also didn’t know if I wanted to—despite the fact that he’d spent most of the last three days acting like I was somehow dangerous.

“I’m not the one running,” I said, wondering if he’d see through that statement. “And I’m game if you are.”