Page 151 of Love Felt Like This

“And what if that was my diary?” Beverly asks.

“Well of course I wouldn’t read it then,” I say, tabbing through each page, filled with messy drawings of puppets and chaotic scribbles. Blueprints and ideas and characters and even some of my lyrics.

“You’re writing down my songs?” I ask.

“Yeah. So I have them for the pitch.”

“What about our recording sessions?”

“Oh, that helps too. But the recordings also have all of our conversations. You go off on these cute little musical tangents.”

“I didn’t know you needed a song recorded,” I say. “Let’s do that tomorrow.”

“No,” she says. “You’re working on your own album lately. I can figure it out.”

“Hey, don’t do that.” I set the notebook on her side table. “If recording some of our songs would help, then let’s do it.”

She blinks at me slowly.

“You’re so…accommodating,” she observes, giving a laughing smile. “And it comes so easily to you. You must do this for everyone.”

“No.”

“Yes, you do,” she counters. She kicks off her boots and lifts both her socked feet onto the bed, pulling her knees up to her chin. Her dress rides up just slightly, and I have to avert my eyes. “I saw how you were with the guys and Jimmy.” I cross my arms over my chest, and Beverly mocks my same sentence from earlier: “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Try to pretend you’re this big selfish guy.”

“I am, though. Whatever I choose to do, everyone else has to do too. My bandmates. Jimmy. Ava.”

“But you don’t want that.”

“But it’s how things are. I write songs for a living.”

She nods toward the notebook on the side table, then to me. “Tell me more about these songs. These perfectly unselfish songs you’ve written for a living.” I scoff and she smiles. “And they are about…?”

I huff out a laugh. “Everything.”

“How mysterious. I bet you were so swoony in high school.”

I snort. “I was not. Every girl I liked never liked me back.”

She leans her cheek on her knees. “I find that hard to believe. You could have written them poetry.” She waves her hand to the ceiling as if reciting a sonnet.

“I don’t write songs about just anyone.”

“Only ridiculous puppeteers?”

That kicks my lips up into a smile. “Only ridiculous puppeteers.”

She laughs. “Funny.”

“What is?”

“You writing songs for me. A couple months ago, you wouldn’t have noticed me in a crowd.”

“Yes, I would have.”