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“Why?”
“Because I’m driving.”
He shook his head. “No way. You drive slower than a funeral procession.”
“And you drive like you’re trying to qualify for the Indianapolis 500.”
Harper climbed into the driver’s seat and said, “Good. Then we won’t miss our flight.”
Since I couldn’t physically drag him out from behind the wheel, I sighed and got in the passenger seat, buckled my seatbelt, and double-checked to make sure it was latched. “Don’t forget to swing by my place so I can pack a bag,” I said, as he fired up the engine.
“Are you still in that same boring-ass apartment?”
I asked, “What’s boring about it?”
“Uh, everything? Have you put any pictures on the walls yet?”
“No, because it’s only temporary.”
“You’ve lived there for seven or eight years, Phee. What’s temporary about it?”
“I don’t know. I just never intended to stay that long.”
“In that building, or in L.A.?”
“Both.”
We reached my apartment alarmingly fast, since he really did drive like a maniac. After he parked out front, we both started to get out of the Cadillac, and I asked, “Why are you coming with me?”
“What am I supposed to do, wait in the car like a cocker spaniel? Actually, you’re not even supposed to leave dogs in cars because it’s inhumane.”
I frowned at him and said, “I’m pretty sure you know how to work the air conditioning to keep yourself from smothering.”
“Come on, just let me go with you. It’ll be boring to wait out here.”
When I muttered, “Fine,” he followed me inside. Okay, so he was right about it being on the plain side. In fact, the compact one-bedroom apartment was about as impersonal as a hotel room. But I spent very little time here, so what did it matter?
While he circled my living room examining what little I had sitting out, I hurried to the coffee table and gathered up the notes for some songs I’d been working on. Once they were hidden away in a drawer, I went into the bedroom and packed a bag.
After that, I retrieved my toiletry kit from the adjoining bathroom. By the time I returned, not thirty seconds later, Harper was sitting on my bed and bouncing just enough to be annoying. “I worry about you,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because a monk’s bedroom is sexier than this place. Look at this tiny mattress. This is the bed of someone who’s not getting laid enough.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and asked, “Do you want me to quit? Because I’m more than happy to do that, right now. All you have to do is keep talkin’ about my sex life like it’s any of your goddamn business.”
A wide smile spread across his face, and he said, “There it is.”
“There what is?”
“The Tennessee in you. I love it when your drawl slips out. It’s so damn cute.”
“Get out of my apartment.”
He looked worried as he asked, “Are you still coming with me?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, then.”
I shoved the toiletry kit in my bag and followed him out the door, and as I locked up behind us I muttered, “It’s not a Tennessee accent.”
“But you grew up in Nashville.”
“Actually, I grew up on the coast of South Carolina. My parents moved us to Nashville when we were sixteen for my brother’s and my career, and the accent was already a done deal by that point.”
Harper mused, “It’s interesting that you hide the accent, while your brother lays it on thick. Or is that why you’ve gotten rid of yours, to differentiate yourself from your famous twin?”
“My brother’s accent is an affectation. He plays it up as part of his whole southern charm schtick. No one in our family talks like that. And if my accent’s gotten diluted, that’s just a result of spending the last decade in California.” While all of that was true, he was actually right that I’d made a conscious effort to drop my southern drawl, so Dallas and I would be slightly less identical. I didn’t feel like going into my strained relationship with my twin, though.
Maybe an hour later, we arrived at LAX. As soon as we entered the terminal, Harper drew a crowd. It was all I could do to pry him away from his adoring fans long enough to check in for our flight.
Once we’d gone through security and found our gate, a pair of women in their sixties came up and asked Harper for an autograph. He turned on the charm, chatting with them and offering to pose for a photo. That encouraged a few more fans to approach him, and he greeted everyone he met with unwavering enthusiasm. His need to be liked by absolutely everyone he met was almost pathological.
While he flashed his dimples, shook hands, and posed for photos, I took a seat and pulled out my laptop, with the thought of trying to put a dent in his two thousand emails. But it was tough to focus with so much going on around me, so I ended up watching Harper as he worked the crowd.
