More Than Maybe - Erin Hahn Page 0,59
zillion people speculate about who the song was about in the first place.
And your ex-girlfriends hate you.
And you’re nominated for the prom court even though you weren’t planning on going unless …
Unless the one girl—the girl who the song is about and who is the only one not speculating so clearly she doesn’t care—unless maybe she wants to go to the prom. But she probably doesn’t, and how the hell do you ask someone you secretly (and very creepily, let’s face it) wrote a viral love song about after watching her dance (again, so creepy, God)?
“Oh, hey, sorry about the stalker vibes, but I really do actually like you, and now that I’m low-key locked into this prom thing, do you wanna go with me?”
So, you do the only thing you can, and you deny, deny, deny.
There’s a knock at the door, and I don’t bother to look up from the geo trig homework I’m not finishing. “Yeah.”
“Can I come in?” Cullen says.
“Nah,” I say into my textbook.
My twin releases a long, dramatic sigh that lasts about thirty seconds longer than it should. I feel my bed compress with his weight. Wanker.
“You can’t ignore me forever.”
“Four hundred seventy thousand hits says I can.”
He flops back. “Look, I said I’m sorry.”
“Somehow this feels bigger than ‘I’m sorry.’”
“What else can I say?”
“It’s not about what you can say, Cull. There’s nothing you can say now. It’s about what you shouldn’t have done in the first place.”
“My intentions were honorable.”
I sit up, tossing my pencil down on the comforter and chucking my graphing calculator at his head. He ducks easily. “They weren’t your intentions to have, honorable as you think they were. It was never my intention for that song to be heard by anyone, ever. Christ, Cullen, it was a rough draft at best!”
“So, that’s the problem? That it wasn’t a clean cut?”
“Among other very major, far more important things, such as my pride and my private business, yeah! You don’t even like Zack seeing you without showering first.”
“So, this is about a girl.”
I throw my hands in the air and lift up my heavy textbook, ready to throw it.
“This stopped being about a girl the second you uploaded it to the internet. You don’t tell a girl you have a crush on her with four hundred and seventy thousand likes.” I fully intend on throwing the numbers in his face every chance I get.
“But you would have with a song?”
I slump, the book falling with a bounce on my mattress. “I don’t know. Maybe I would have eventually. With the right girl. But now I can’t. I can’t tell her that song was for her. No girl in her right mind wants that kind of pressure.”
“But you said yourself, the right girl might be okay with it.”
I shake my head. “I’ll never know. This isn’t anything I wanted. I’m not like you and Dad. I don’t want to sing. I don’t want to perform. I don’t care about the media attention, and I’m not playing that song ever again.”
“That’s so stupid. What a waste.”
“Fortunately for me, I’m too busy worrying about what four hundred and seventy thousand other people are saying about me to care if I’m not meeting the expectations of my twin brother.”
“If you’d just play your music instead of hoarding it and building it up like something precious, this never would have happened.”
I get up and walk to the door, opening it, suddenly exhausted. “No. If you’d respected my privacy, this never would have happened. Please leave.”
* * *
Things are worse by dinner. Much worse.
Apparently, my dad’s bored with his retirement and decided to venture into real estate. He’d been approached ages ago about opening a nightclub in downtown Ann Arbor. At the time, he turned it down, saying he was happy to be a house husband.
It seems home reno shows and upcycling wood pallets have lost their luster.
While this is the first Cull and I are hearing about it, I’m getting the sense things have been in the works for a while. At least, long enough that the so-called partners have acquired an interest in dad’s quasi-fame. And mine.
“They only mentioned that since you two have had quite a lot of recent success with The Grass Is Greenly, maybe you could talk up the club? Like a regular marketing spot,” Dad is saying. Cull mutters under his breath something that sounds like, “Only a daft idiot…”
“I had no idea you were even into that kind of thing