Page 157

“Whole committee is.” He glances at the stage. “You actually playing?”

“That’s generally why they gave me a guitar.”

“Going to do the big one?”

I know exactly which song he means.

“Maybe.”

“You have to. It’s the only one anybody knows.”

Luca shifts beside me.

I give him the smallest shake of my head.

Jonny notices.

Of course, he does.

“Funny, though,” he continues. “You standing up there singing it. Whole room looking at you like you’re some kind of genius.”

His voice drops.

“When you didn’t write a single bar.”

My hand tightens around the neck of the guitar.

“Harrison wrote it,” Jonny says to Miles, as though sharing confidential information. “Cal just stood in front of the cameras and took the credit.”

It isn’t true.

Harrison wrote Sun on Glass. I’ve credited him in every interview where it comes up and corrected articles when they got it wrong. Jonny knows that.

He also knows how badly I wanted to prove myself as a songwriter. How many years I spent wondering whether I was only valuable when I was singing someone else’s words.

Old friends know where to put the knife.

Jonny leans closer.

“You’re not a musician, Cal. You’re a fucking logo.”

For one ugly second, I’m seventeen again.

Standing in a garage while Jonny laughs at lyrics I stayed up all night writing. Hearing my father explain that charisma isn’t the same as talent.

My stomach turns.

Then I look beyond Jonny.

Bea has arrived.

She’s near the front with Sydney and Gianna, wearing a dark-green dress I’ve never seen before. Her hair falls loose over her shoulders. She’s listening to Sydney, but her eyes are on me.

Steady. Direct.

The noise in my head quiets.

I look back at Jonny.