Fix It Up - Mary Calmes Page 0,31

was right about something.”

“What was that?” I asked absently, seeing the car coming our way up the driveway.

“I didn’t like you thinking he was good.”

When the Toyota Sequoia was parked in front of us, I opened the passenger side door and put him in, engaging the lock and closing the door before I went around the back of the SUV, passed the valet a twenty, which he thanked me for, loudly—I was guessing not many people tipped them—and then slid in behind the wheel and got us out of there. The seat belt alarm chimed relentlessly, but I didn’t pull it over my shoulder until we were far enough away.

“Are you okay?” Nick asked, hesitating for a moment before he reached out and put his hand on my thigh.

“I am now,” I replied, taking a breath. “Next time, one of the guys comes with us. I don’t care whose house we’re at.”

“No, it’s fine,” he assured me. “Somebody always gets in my face once the alcohol starts to flow.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Oh my God,” he explained, making a gagging sound in the back of his throat. “Last time I was at a big party in Beverly Hills, a girl went off on me about my song ‘August Moon’ because, she said, singing about witches was going to send me right to hell.”

I chuckled. “And what did you say?”

“I didn’t get a chance. She, like, hose-barfed all over me.”

“Jesus,” I groaned, taking a quick turn, then another. “What’d you do?”

“I had to borrow clothes from my friend Angel, and that was one of the nights the paparazzi decided to take pictures. I wasn’t even drunk. I was a victim.”

I snorted.

“I love Angel, but man, he plays ball for the Clippers, right, so he’s so much taller than me and I—”

“Wait,” I said, turning to grin at him. “You mean Angel Lancaster, the power forward who used to play for Wisconsin?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, honey, how big was his shirt on you?”

Nothing.

I waited a second, looked away from the road and found him staring out the window, arms crossed like he had completely withdrawn. It was apparently too much familiarity for one night. I shut up then and didn’t say another word.

“Huge,” he said, out of the blue, and when I checked, he was staring at me. The way I was being looked at, hopefully, longingly, made my mouth go dry. “I looked ridiculous, like I was a toddler or something, and of course, those are the pictures that interviewers splash up on the screen whenever I say I want to be a serious songwriter.”

“I’m sorry,” I told him, acting as though there had been no lull. “It’s always the worst when something goes viral. It never goes away. It’s there forever.”

“It is,” he agreed.

We were quiet the rest of the trip home, and when we reached the house, he went directly to his room. I went out on the patio and stood in the space that I had come, ridiculously, to think of as belonging to me. I felt content there now that it was safe and secure. And as I stood there, still, my mind went back to something Nick had said. He didn’t like me thinking that Tanner Ward was good. What the hell was that supposed to mean?

Two weeks after the party at Stig’s, after the cover of “Helplessly Hoping” did, in fact, go viral, with everyone wondering what Nick’s next album would sound like, and the excitement ramping up for its release, I was getting ready to go on a date, back, again, to living with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I had thought we’d turned a corner, but I had been dead wrong.

“Why do you get to go out alone, and I can’t?” Nick asked, in my room for no fathomable reason, standing in the doorway of my bathroom, watching me as I brushed my teeth.

I spit into the sink. “You can go wherever you like, events, parties, whatever,” I reiterated, as I had for what felt like the billionth time, bending over to suck down water, rinse, and spit again. “I just have to go with you.”

“Like I want that,” he said, watching me, his eyes, whether he realized it or not, looking me up and down. “I don’t want an old man following along behind me,” he said caustically.

We were back to him taking jabs at me because, three nights before, he announced that he needed to get laid, and I said he didn’t need my permission to do