Page 168

“Maybe later. That would feel like too much right now. All I wanted to know was if we’re exclusive. We don’t need to label it any more yet. This feels safe; it doesn’t feel too committal.”

“Sure.”

He smiles. I smile. We sit there for a second, smiling at each other on a couch on a Tuesday evening like two people who have just clarified something they didn’t realize they were both holding their breath about. The room is, in some small invisible way, lighter.

“Also,” he says.

“Mm.”

“I’ve been writing some full songs.”

I sit up.

“Full songs?!”

“Yeah.”

“Cal.”

“Yeah.”

“How long?”

“A few weeks. Since—since the morning after the first time we hooked up, basically. I’ve written more than I wrote in the whole of last year. The guys are losing their minds over some of the demos.”

“Cal! That’s amazing!”

I hug him and breathe in his delicious man scent.

“I think you help,” he says, pushing me away to look at me.

“Me?” My heart drops.

“Yeah.”

“Psht, you don’t mean that, Cal. We don’t even talk about music.”

“You don’t have to. It’s just being with you. You’re my good luck charm.”

“Don’t call me that.” It comes out faster and flatter than I mean it to, and his face changes, and I have to decide in half a second how much to explain. “For years, every good song was because of her. Every opportunity was because she believed in him. Then things stopped going well, and suddenly, she wasn’t inspiring anymore. She was just in the way.”

His face tightens. “Bea.”

“It’s fine. Pick another phrase.”

“It clearly isn’t fine.”

I look down at my hands.

He doesn’t push. He just sits there, laptop forgotten on the coffee table, giving me enough silence to either talk or not.

Apparently, I choose talk.

“You know how I told you Dad spent years chasing the next break?”

“Yeah.”

“What I didn’t tell you was what that looked like for us.”