Rock & Roll Nights: The Lila and Rivers Edit

23. Lila

23

LILA

I turned over, grabbed my phone, and stared at it for the third time in ten minutes.

Newsflash: It was still only 5 in the morning. The room was still dark. And no one had called me—or texted, or anything else—in the thirty seconds since I’d last looked.

Which wasn’t actually news, considering I would have heard the phone vibrate if they had. I’d been listening hard enough for it.

Honestly, I didn’t know what I’d expected. This wasn’t the first morning I’d woken up feeling like someone had reached into my chest and crushed my heart, then left it somehow magically still powering my body in its newly broken state. It wasn’t the first morning I’d jumped into being awake with my thoughts all over the place... and then grabbed for my phone to see if someone had been trying to get in touch with me. The feeling was the same, of his touch on my skin and his aura in my mind. I could hear the echoes of his voice like we’d just been talking. Feel the brush of his gaze along my cheeks.

I’d been doing this for a week, and nothing had changed.

The phone still wasn’t ringing.

I closed my eyes, breathed out, and tried to get a handle on what I knew and didn’t know. Things I knew: Rivers had seen me trying to leave the tour and stopped me. Not just stopped me; he’d jumped off the stage and come running, shoving his way through the crowd to get to me before I could make it to the door and then promising a whole lot of shit to try to get back on my good side.

I’d told him he had a deal, and I’d stayed—for the contract, sure, but also with the secret hope in my heart that Rivers Shine had somehow figured it all out. After a week of him being so hot and cold that it gave me burns of both the scalding and freezing variety, and then a morning where I’d caught him leaning over some girl and smiling at her—after having walked out on me—I’d thought that maybe he’d figured it out. Maybe he’d realized that he was throwing off more mixed signals than anyone in the history of man and confusing the hell out of me.

Maybe he’d grown enough self-awareness to see that he was undermining himself by keeping me at arm’s length—and breaking my heart in the process—and had decided to stop.

Unfortunately, that hadn’t exactly materialized. I’d agreed to stay on the tour and went right into a meeting with Taylor James, the agent who was offering me and my best friend a contract. There, I’d agreed to continue masquerading as Rivers Shine’s girlfriend. The girl who was turning him around and making him see the light. Curing all the late-night booze fests and maybe even breaking him of all that brooding. I’d expected Rivers and I to go back to doing what we’d been doing up to that point: smiling for the cameras, holding hands when we knew other people were looking, pretending to be completely in love...

While spending our nights in dark restaurants writing music and our afternoons on insane road trips, making love to each other under cloudy Kentucky skies. Discussing the pros and cons of chocolate chips in pancakes and the question of whether breakfast really was the best genre of food. Looking for shapes in the clouds and sharing our secrets with each other.

Instead, Rivers had barely said two words to me since I’d agreed to stay. Sure, he smiled and waved at the cameras when Taylor told him he had to, but aside from that? There had been no late-night writing sessions. No chats in fields. No staring up at the clouds telling each other what we saw.

Hell, we hadn’t even stolen another car together.

Put that whole ‘what is he doing’ thing under the heading of Things I Didn’t Know. Not that it was anything new. I’d thought I had a good handle on who he actually was right from the start, but I’d realized since then that I was wrong. I didn’t know who he was, and I sure as hell didn’t know his motivations for doing any of the things he did.

Back to things I did know, then. He was drinking more than he had been before. Every time I saw him he was at least a couple drinks in, and since I only saw him during the day, I was guessing that was a mild estimation. I had no idea what he got up to at night. He was getting broodier every day and several of his band’s shows had ended early because he hadn’t been able—or willing—to finish the set.

He was definitely going through something . I just didn’t know what the hell it was. He evidently wasn’t interested in having me involved or even seeking me out for a word of advice. Or a laugh. Or some late-night blueberry pie.

He’d cut me out.

And Taylor was noticing.

She’d said things to me several times about his behavior and how it wasn’t what he’d agreed to, and I’d just shrugged and told her I didn’t know anything. I mean, what did she expect me to do? I couldn’t force him to talk to me, and I definitely couldn’t force him to let me back in. If I’d ever been ‘in’ in the first place.

At one point, I’d thought I was.

Now I knew better.

And that was the part that I couldn’t stand. Because I might not have known what we were or where we were going, but I’d thought we were something. The idea that we weren’t—that I was nothing more than another girl he’d seduced and then dropped—had me not eating and barely sleeping. I was jumping every time my phone dinged with a message, and having trouble getting involved in anything. I couldn’t write and I could barely think. Getting out of bed every day would have been a struggle except that it meant I didn’t have to lay around thinking anymore. At least if I was up, there was a chance someone or something else could distract me from all the thoughts rolling around in my brain. I felt like I’d been pushed to the ground, and I didn’t know if I could get back up again.

That’s right, the sunshine girl had turned all dark and broody.

I missed the version of me that had known how to laugh and flirt. I missed the part of me that had felt like nothing could take us down. Hell, I was on the edge of a music contract! I should be ecstatic! Not broken and damaged and wondering whether any of it was worthwhile.

Even worse was the fact that we had another month of the tour left and I had things to accomplish. I wanted that contract for Anna and me, and I wanted it badly. To do that, I needed to get out there and perform my ass off. Get onstage every time I had the chance to do it. Charm the pants off the audience. I knew at this point that no one else had really turned out for this so-called contest. There hadn’t been much publicity around it and evidently no one else had thought it worthwhile.

No one except Anna and me, at least.

In a way, that should have made it easier. We weren’t actually competing for the contract the way we’d thought we would be, so there were no grand performances or anything like that. If they’d actually had a contract to hand out, Taylor had already awarded it to me, courtesy of the little deal I’d made with her.

I didn’t really like that answer, though. I didn’t want to be handed a contract. I wanted to prove that we deserved it, and not just because I’d agreed to this fake girlfriend scheme. I was yearning to be so bright and shiny that they couldn’t help but give us the contract.

I mean I also wanted Rivers, but I was thinking he was no longer something I could get.

Which meant I’d go after the things I could get.

I’d just finished that thought when Anna appeared at my bedside, all smooth brown hair and big eyes. She hit the lamp next to my bed and grinned—though I could barely see her mouth through my hands, which were now covering my eyes.

“Anna,” I griped. “It’s like 5 in the morning. And it’s dark. Did you really have to come over here and turn the light on like I’m ready for that sort of action?”

“Course I did,” she piped, sounding like she’d somehow been awake for an hour already.

Actually, she probably had. Anna had always been an early riser. Though this level of excitement at 5 in the morning seemed out of line, even for her.

“Why are you so excited?” I asked.

She huffed. “Because it’s time to get up, rock star. It’s time for breakfast. Taylor texted and said she wants to meet with us.”

That got me up to the sitting position. I might not want to get out of bed—or face the real world, or another day where Rivers ignored me. But if Taylor wanted to meet with us, it meant she had news. And that was worth getting up for.