I put my arm around her shoulder and look down at her. “Do you want to get up there? We can make room for you.”
“Only if you come with me.”
There’s a click, and I look up to see that Colby took our photo. He’s smiling, looking at the image on his camera’s screen.
Old, familiar anxiety edges into my limbs. “We’ve never practiced it.”
“It wouldn’t be hard. We can both sing the melody.”
I try to read her brown eyes. Is she serious? Is this something she wants?
Bree shakes her head. “I wasn’t thinking. You’d be totally outed.”
I turn her to face me. This is the moment Grandma was talking about. I can’t put my life off because I’m worried about what it would do to her heart. She would be happy about us being together, that much is true.
I can’t live in fear.
It’s true I don’t want to be in the spotlight, but putting everything out there and choosing Bree is worth it. Love is worth it. If I want Bree to stay here in Bodega Bay with me, there will be no keeping the paps out of it. We’ll be found. So why hold on to the dregs of anonymity like this? If I let go, maybe the anxiety around keeping myself hidden will go away, too.
I try to hold Bree’s gaze so she understands that I mean every word. “We’dbe outed, which I’m okay with if you are.”
“Really?”
“Yes.” I try to read her eyes, but all I see in them is warmth. “Peter can announce a surprise guest. Does that work?”
“Great idea!” Olive says. “I’ll get a video for your socials.”
“I’ll record too,” Colby says, making Olive roll her eyes.
Zoey claps her hands together. “I actually love this.”
“I’m still mad at you,” Bree says to her sister.
“Hey, Mom would have found you one way or another. I didn’t mean to leave Find My Friends on. Besides…it’s Olive’s boyfriend’s plane that really gave us away.”
“Maybe,” Bree concedes, “but once you found out she was coming, you could have warned me.”
Zoey looks like she has no good argument for that, so she keeps quiet.
“I’ll talk to Peter,” Colby says, heading off.
“Let’s go somewhere and run through the song once,” I suggest.
Bree nods. “Okay.”
Our attendancehere must have really gotten around, because when Peter announces the surprise guest, the crowd goes insane. There are shouts of Bree’s name all through the festival. People are screaming for her, and there’s a specific demographic that rushes the stage. Mostly women, but there are men in the mix, too.
“They can’t see us, can they?” Bree asks, looking up at me in the dark wing of the outdoor stage. She’s lost the wig and her makeup artist only took a few minutes wiping her thick makeup and giving her a natural look and a red lip. She’s the Bree I fell for all those years ago, then fell for again over the last month.
“I’m sure they all know you’re here by now.”
“Thanks, Mom,” she mutters.
“Hey, aren’t you kind of glad to have that over? You don’t have to hide anymore, and your mom knows how you feel now.”
“Yeah, but I wish she would have stayed to hang out with us. Not everything has to be a business move.” She sighs. “It tracks though. Honestly, I’m surprised they sound happy to see me.”
“No one’s as angry at you about that diss track as you are. You need to let it go.”
