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Hale frowned. “That isn’t—are you joking? That isn’t something I would do.”
I was starting to get a read on this guy. He had brains and all of that outward success, but he was actually awkward. Introverted. Maybe even shy. He thought we were cool. We had our moments, but every one of us had been beat up by the jocks at school, just like he had. Guys who fit in don’t join rock bands. Only the misfits do.
“Relax,” I said to him. “We’re not screwing with you. We have some good ideas, and I think you’ll want to hear us out.”
William Hale—or Will, or Billy as we liked to call him in our text group—looked at us, and his shoulders relaxed. He’d been nervous about this meeting for some reason. He could buy and sell us a dozen times over, but he’d been nervous.
“Okay, Miss Miller-Gold,” he said to Angie. “Lay it out for me. I’m listening.”
THIRTY-TWO
Brit
Even though it was September, L.A. was having a heat wave. I sat in a coffee shop in the dress I’d hastily bought at a boutique, sweat running down the back of my neck as I sipped an iced coffee and talked to Sienna on the phone. Outside the window, a woman wearing nothing but short-shorts and a bikini top walked by, as if to taunt me with her flat abs and size-zero butt. I couldn’t believe I’d lived here for so long. I missed the cool damp of Portland with every fiber of my being.
I missed my room at Aunt Ellen’s house. Ellen herself. The view out of my window. Cool morning walks with Axel.
Axel.
“So it’s going well?” Sienna asked me. “Do you think you’re gonna nail your ex?”
Over the course of our friendship, I’d told her everything about my situation with Pierre. I’d told her about that awful relationship, and how I got out, and about Natasha Davis the lawyer. I’d told her the truth about Axel and me. Sienna and I spent a lot of hours on the road together, and I had lost the presumption that she’d write about anything I told her. Journalism was her job, not her entire personality. The truth was that she was smart, determined, passionate about the music business, and a great friend.
“Please don’t use the phrase ‘nail your ex’ with me ever again,” I told her. “You’re a writer. Use different words.”
“Okay, fine. You’re going tolegallynail him, right?”
“It looks like it.” I stirred my drink. I’d had a series of meetings with Natasha, and I’d provided her with every piece of documentation I had. She’d talked a lot of legalese at me, but the short version was that Pierre and I had a legal business partnership, which meant that he couldn’t just fire me and shut me out. One business partner can’t just do that to the other.
He either had to buy out my half of the business, or we could shut the business down, sell the assets, and split the money. But by shutting me out and keeping all of the profits, Pierre had been stealing from me. He’d not only destroyed my confidence and crashed my life, he’d stolen my money.
Part of me—the old Brit, the woman who was frightened whenever she remembered Pierre—wanted to walk away and leave all of this behind, money be damned. But Ellen, Natasha, and now Sienna all had a different opinion. They thought that Pierre shouldn’t get away with all of my money and no consequences. And logically, I knew they were right.
Axel had thought that, too. He’d offered to come to L.A. and do all of this for me. It was a setup that would never have worked in real life, but the fact that he offered at all made my chest hurt. Just like every thought of Axel made my chest hurt.
Had he read my letter? What did he think? In the letter, I’d asked him not to contact me for a little while, to let me do this on my own. I’d thought I was being so strong when I’d asked him that, but now I saw the truth. Icouldn’tdo this alone, I didn’t want to, and there was no reason I had to.
Regret is a bitch.
Meredith, my therapist—who I still saw over FaceTime—called this one of my learned behaviors.You never had support from your parents growing up, so you’ve learned not to ask for it,she’d said with her cool logic. Apparently, I’d be unpacking my shit until I was a hundred years old.
“Well, I think this is amazing,” Sienna was saying on the phone. “He’ll have to pay up, and you get the money you earned to start over. What will you do with it?”
“I don’t know yet. I can’t really plan that. I just want to go home to Ellen’s house. I want to stay there, at least for a while. I don’t care that it’s weird to enjoy living with a woman in her seventies, but I do. We get along, and it makes me feel useful.”
“It isn’t weird. It’s like the most awesome version of aGolden Girlssetup. I’m stuck living with my parents, so I’m jealous. Axel visits Ellen and says she’s fine,” Sienna said.
My heart lurched in my chest. “You talk to him?”
“You know I do.” Sienna’s voice was gentle, considerate. “I talk to all of them. Brit, there’s a lot going on with the Road Kings. Things are moving fast, and I might get my chance to be part of it. It’s really exciting. You should come back as soon as you can and see for yourself.”
Sienna had told me only a few details of what was going on with the Road Kings’ future, but she was vague about most of it. I thought she was doing it on purpose so I’d be curious enough to come home. It was working.
I stared through the window at the glaring sunshine, remembering all of my bad memories, and thought,I wouldn’t stay here for all of the money in the world.
“What else does Axel say?” I asked Sienna, because I couldn’t help it. “Does he talk about me? Does he seem okay to you?”
“You mean, is he sober?”
