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She kissed me seductively, softly. “You make me want to do bad things all the time just to be punished. Is it really naughty? It was actually my mom who gave me the idea.”
I drew back, almost involuntarily. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
I ran my fingers through my hair. “No… Damn. That’s not naughty. It’s… actually nice.”
Could it be true that Dixie had finally come around to thinking I wasn’t a total asshole responsible for her husband’s flight through the earth’s atmosphere? Maybe one day there’d be a chance for us to be friends? Or civil. I’d have settled for civil.
Maeve cuddled underneath my arm. “So you need to let me help. Hunter’s an idiot as we both know, and if I help you prepare evidence before it goes to him, we can get this all done and dusted a lot sooner. If you don’t want me dragging you to the doctor’s office, we need to accelerate this process.”
She lifted slightly to gaze into my eyes. “I want my old Drake back.”
Fuck. It sucked that my fatigue or anxiety or whatever this was had become a thing. But it was a thing I knew we could get over, and Maeve was probably right, the sooner the lawsuit was behind us, the sooner I could untie myself from the past and run into the future with Maeve.
But what motivated me more than getting sleep again was being able to make music and get back to that mission of buying a house for me and Maeve. Malibu Bay Colony was no longer on the list due to never wanting to see Quinn Hartley again, but I’d always thought Venice Beach was more our vibe anyway.
I had to get this all sorted. I had to move us into the positive space we both deserved. I had to get my ass out of bed.
We’d finisheda morning painting session, and my mom ran out to get some groceries as I’d asked her to make Maeve her signature lasagne. It was the perfect time to screw around again, but Maeve was ready to work. In fact, she’d been quiet a lot of the time we’d painted. I imagined she had her mind on the case.
I hadn’t lived with my mom for years. But when I’d moved to LA, not knowing what kind of housemate Alex really was or how safe our apartment would be, I’d left my most important items in some boxes under my mom’s guest bed. When I bent over to grasp one of them, Maeve grabbed my hips and thrust into me.
“Sucks we have to work now,” she purred.
“Ha, I don’t roll like that anyway.”
“What? You wouldn’t let me dominate you?”
I slid a plastic box on wheels out from under the bed. “Being on top is the closest you’ll ever get, my love.” I kneeled on the floor, opened the lid, and examined the contents. “But we both know you’re perfectly satisfied with the arrangement.”
She sat on the bed and let herself bounce. She seemed so full of life right now. Meanwhile, even after eleven hours of sleep, I was shattered.
She peered into the box. “Damn. You’re organized. I think I could orgasm just searching through your storage boxes. You really are my perfect man.”
I threw a black spiral-bound notebook labeled “Lyrics Snoqualmie” onto the bed. Then another on top of that. “Lyrics Uyu.” And another, “Lyrics Snoqualmie—high school.”
Maeve peered into the box, full of nothing but black spiral-bound notebooks. All the same size. All the same brand. They were my lucky notebooks.
“Don’t tell me these are all handwritten lyrics?”
I joined her on the bed. “Not all lyrics exactly. Poetry, prose, thoughts, almost like a diary sometimes… but I just labeled them lyrics. Wishful thinking.”
She lifted one of the notebooks. “May I?”
I nodded.
She opened it, turning the pages like she handled the Gutenberg Bible. Gently, in awe. “Drake…” She stopped on one page to take in the words. “This is precious stuff. Not what we’re looking for, but…” she glanced up, smiled, “…you’re prolific. And so fucking talented,” she oozed.
“Sadly, nothing in those notebooks was written before I met Jay. But I don’t even know if this matters or if my mom watches too many courtroom dramas… She thought if we ever went to court, I might be able to use these notebooks as character evidence or something.”
Maeve read one of the pages carefully so all she responded with was an, “Mmm.” Her gaze met mine. “This is beautiful. It’s funny, though, because you come across so sad…”
“There were a lot of sad times before I met El and went to Uyu. I wasn’t always such a good guy with my act together. In high school, I was caught up in the popular crowd but didn’t have any respect for most of the people I had to be around. After high school, I was trying to maintain an image of a shit-hot rock star, but my best friend was an addict, so half the time I was desperate to peel away from the darkness of the scene. Anyway, when I met El, he made me believe that being yourself and cutting people loose if required was the only way to be happy. It took another year after that to even realize who I was. Fuck, don’t we all spend a lot of time pretending? And so little time being?”
She nodded. “I definitely have. Not the same way you have exactly. More hiding than pretending, but in some ways, it’s very similar. In both regards you aren’t living your truth.”
I tapped the notebook. “What do you think? Do we take this stuff back or not?”
