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My fingers began itching, and even though I still needed to dry my hair before I met Mia and Renee, I ran downstairs to get my guitar. The melody unfolded as gracefully as the lyrics, and the two intertwined and lifted each other up. I played it through twice, then recorded it on my phone so I wouldn’t forget anything before I could get into a studio.
I left the house ten minutes later than I should have, and I had to fight the urge to speed across town in the car that could go from zero to sixty in less than three seconds. It almost didn’t seem right to coax it gradually up to the speed limit and then to only let it go five miles over, but I wouldn’t risk getting in a car accident for anything. Not in Callum’s car. Not with Callum’s history.
Mia and Renee were their typical selves when I showed up ten minutes late with my hair still damp.
“Rub it in, girl,” Mia said, looking me over from head to toe.
Renee looked at the sky. “Do not,” she said, casting the prayer up to whatever deity might be up there.
“Ididnot,” I reassured her. “I got caught up writing a song. I think maybe you’ll like it. It’s different.” Suddenly, I could hear it in my head as played by a four-piece band. A light backbeat from Joanne. A heavy influence of Renee’s keys. Mia’s scratchier voice taking some of the saccharine sweetness out of the lyrics, her bass giving it gravity. It wasn’t anything likeThe Belleshad ever written or played, but it would work. I knew it would.
We were late to meet Jimmy. I could see him inside his bar, head cocked, wondering why the hell the three of us were juststanding out here on the sidewalk. But I couldn’t help myself. I had to play them the song right now.
“Oh,” Mia said startled as I whipped out my phone. “This is happening?”
“It’s happening.” I turned the phone’s volume up to max volume and handed it to Renee. “Imagine it as aBellessong.”
She had been looking away, still skeeved about the very plausible possibility I’d been late because I’d been screwing around with her brother. Now, though, her gaze snapped to mine, intense and unwavering. “ABellessong?” she repeated, a thin note of something that I didn’t recognize in her voice.
“Yeah, like, here’s how I imagine it.” I walked her through what had just popped into my head. I couldn’t tell if she was pissed or intrigued or what. Her eyes stayed locked on mine, something like wariness dancing behind the veil that had inexplicably come down.
Mia was more forthright, which was unusual. “Quinn, do you see this as a song we record asThe Belles,or a song the four of us play and then you ultimately put it on your next album with a bunch of randoms in the background?”
Through the glass, I sensed Jimmy’s growing bewilderment. Why weren’t we coming in? Why was Renee’s body language so stiff, practically swaying away from us. I was bewildered, too. “I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far ahead. I mean–it’s not necessarily just up to me.”
Their faces hardened simultaneously. “It might be up to Jason?”
“No, it’s up to all of us, right?” I looked at them harder. I was finally seeing what I had expected to see seven years ago,when Jason Cain offered me a contract and no one else. Hurt. Betrayal. Pain. It wasn’t fresh either. It had moldered, crusted over with time. It was an abscess that had settled deep within the skin of our friendship, practically unnoticeable, until you looked hard enough.
I tried to remember eighteen-year-old Quinn. How hard had she looked? The answer came easily. She hadn’t looked hard at all. She had said defiantly that she wouldn’t take the deal. It was all of them or none of them, and then she’d refused to look at their faces for fear they’d see the pain on her own. She’d let them reassure her that it was okay, that she should absolutely take it. And then she’d left them behind.
“It’s up to us,” I repeated quietly, as shame wrapped itself around my throat like a tourniquet. It was hard to keep looking at my friends, but I managed. Slowly, Renee looked back at me. Mia had her head tilted, like she was trying to assess whether I was telling the truth this time, or whether I was waiting for another invitation to do what I wanted, even if it didn’t include them.
Suddenly, I wanted to record this song asThe Bellesmore than I’d wanted to record anything in a long time. A surge of energy went through me that reminded me of how I felt when I was recording my first album, back when Jason seemed to think that whatever I had to offer was going to be good. Before the success of thatonesingle brought the guardrails crashing down, and Jason decided thatthatwas what I needed to offer. More of that. Less of the rest of me.
“Well if it’s up to us,” Mia said in that scratchy voice I knew would sound so right on this track, “I say it belongs to us.”
“All of us,” Renee murmured.
I knew sharing the song with three other people would mean it wasn’t mine anymore. They would claim parts of it. Change bits and rearrange others. I’d have to argue with three very formidable women to keep the parts of it that mattered most to me the same. But instead of making me balk, I felt another surge of energy. I was up for the challenge. It would be uncomfortable and contentious at times, but everything we did was better together. Jason had somehow convinced me that wasn’t true, and I’d spent several long years living the lie. Trying to recapture the magic that hadn’t escaped. It had just stayed here, where it belonged.
“All of us,” I agreed.
“Well shit,” Mia laughed. “I guess someone needs to tell Joanne the band is back together.
“It’ll be her birthday present,” Renee said with a faint smirk. “Because she’s hard as hell to buy for.”
“Should we make another promo poster?” I wondered as we finally turned to go into Jimmy’s.
“Yeah, unless you want to pretend to be eighteen forever.”
I shook my head. Once, I thought young and dumb and free was the only way to live. Now I wouldn’t trade the trappings of my friends for anything.
For the first time, there was a faint light in the murkiness that was mine and Callum’s future.
For the first time, I thought maybe,maybe, we weren’t so doomed after all.
CHAPTER 24
