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I let out a deep sigh and drop my head back in defeat.
“Can’t this moment just be about you?” I ask, trying to keep the tone happy and light. My tendency is always to avoid confrontation. I hate difficult conversations, I hate upsetting people, and even though I once called Emma a doormat because she let Justin walk all over her, I’m no different. I go with the flow instead of speaking my mind, and I know now, this place, this is where I need to do it.
“Nope. Talk,” he says, and I know it’s time. He does too, which is why he’s pushing. He takes a bite of the brownie and I say the words to him that I never thought I would say. I’m certain he thinks all of this is about Emma, but if I’m putting myself first, then this conversation with him has to come before we talk about her.
“I h-hate our name.” I pause to swallow because this is hard, and then I say it. “The Will Ashton Band.”
Ash stares at me in a contemplative way while he chews. His brows pull down briefly in confusion or maybe shock and then he nods his head. Leaning back on his rock to mirror me, he lays the brownie on his stomach and looks out over the river in front of us. A loon dips its head then pops back up with its spotted black and white back wings fluttering.
“I hate it too.” He lets out a deep sigh then sits back up and takes another bite of the brownie, as if I didn’t just insult the brand we’ve built over the last decade.
“Really? And that’s it, that’s all you have to say?” If he hated it, why didn’t he tell me? Then again, I guess he could be asking the same question.
“Not much more to say. I didn’t like it when we changed it, and I don’t like it now. You never said anything, so I just went with it. I think we were both just so excited to finally get ourbig break, but we control the narrative now, so if we want to change it, we can.”
“Change it to what?”
He glances over at me like I’m an idiot. “Blue Horizons, of course.”
Blue Horizons. My heart starts beating faster at the thought that this is a possibility. I loved who we were then and how the name represented where we came from and our dreams. Just at the mention of this change, something inside me that’s felt uneasy and disjointed starts to settle.
“It does go better with the new album, don’t you think? The music reminds me of who we used to be, when we loved it,” I say to him.
He glances at me and smirks. “There’s no need to convince me. I’m one hundred percent on board with this. Don’t forget, I’m the one who walked out of our tour and went into hiding. I hated the music, I hated the name, none of it felt like me or us.”
“But then you met Avery, and everything changed.”
I let that hang in the air, and he just watches me. Has he ever one time considered how his changes affected me? If he didn’t realize it then, does he now?
“Yes.” He nods. “And you met Emma.” Only the two of them falling in love had a completely different outcome than Emma and me.
Emma. Just hearing her name has me rubbing my chest. It’s funny, over the last year I’ve rubbed that spot because of the tattoo and how the reminder always made me feel better, but since Austin, I’m rubbing it because my heart belongs to her and it aches.
He sees what I’m doing, and he frowns.
“Talk to me about Emma.”
“I’m in love with her.”
He chuckles. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“I messed up.” Visions of her face, her crying before she left the room . . . I feel haunted by them.
“So fix it,” he says, as if it is just that simple.
A breeze blows down the river and pushes the chip bag. He reaches for it and hands it to me.
“I don’t know how,” I tell him, taking the bag.
“Bullshit.”
He’s back to looking at me as if I’m an idiot.Trust me, pal, I feel like one.
“She doesn’t want to live in Horizons Valley. She wants to stay in New York.”
“So go to New York,” he says matter-of-factly and takes another bite of his brownie.
I shake my head. “Even if I thought I could before, there’s no way I’m leaving you now. You know you’re a brother to me, and I don’t want to miss a thing.”
