Our Song Read online

  “I know his success is impressive, but I still don’t want to work with him. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’d rather be in a real life version of one of the Saw movies,” I said with a sigh.

  “You’re being a little dramatic, don’t you think?” Finn asked with raised brows.

  “Me? Dramatic? Nope. Not at all.” I shook my head firmly. Maybe a tad.

  “Well, just think of it this way. It could be worse.”

  I glanced over at him, entirely unconvinced. “How do you figure?”

  “Well, you could be collaborating with Jake.”

  “I guess.” Truthfully, I wasn’t sure which would be worse: working with my ex who I’d written an entire album about and who was the very reason I needed to work with someone in the first place, or the guy who I’d randomly hooked up with. Both situations would’ve been equally as awkward, just in two different ways.

  “So, when do you two start making music?” Finn asked as he began to dissect the chocolate chips from his cupcake.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. We’re doing it at my place, so I think that means I get to call the shots. Maybe.”

  “Are you doing it at your place or are you doing it at your place?” Finn asked suggestively.

  “Ugh, no way. Trust me. That was a one-time occurrence and will never happen again,” I said, wrinkling my nose.

  “Are you sure about that?” He stared back at me, not at all convinced.

  I rolled my eyes. “You’re being ridiculous. This is entirely business-oriented. I’m pretty sure your mind is just stuck in matchmaking mode. How’s that venture going for you, by the way?”

  Finn owned a matchmaking business in L.A. Due to the non-disclosure agreements he had with his clients, he wasn’t allowed to tell me many of the details, but I knew most of the people he worked with were pretty high profile. Apparently, some of his clients included a famous country singer, an actress, and one of last season’s new investors on Shark Tank.

  Anyway, I was excited for Finn. He’d always been my one straight guy friend who actually volunteered to go see Nicholas Sparks’ movies with me. If that didn’t tell you what a hopeless romantic he was, I don’t know what did. But it made me sad sometimes that he had yet to meet the right girl. I hoped a successful business was just the start of a happier Finn.

  “It’s going pretty great. So great, in fact, that I need to get back to the office soon.” He shot me an apologetic glance.

  “Oh.” I tried not to let my disappointment show. It had been a while since the two of us had hung out, mostly because he was so busy building his business and I was overly consumed with writing depressing love songs to try to guilt my douchebag of an ex-boyfriend into taking me back. Not only had those songs landed my career in jeopardy, but I hadn’t ended up winning Jake back in the process, either. “You weren’t even here for that long. All work and no play makes for a boring Finn.”

  “I could never be boring. But, speaking of boring, how has your apartment been lately?” he asked.

  I raised an eyebrow at him. Was he trying to point out that, up until yesterday, my TV had been getting more action than I had?

  “I’m just saying, it must be lonely to live in that big place of yours, all alone.” There was a pointedness behind his voice.

  “Are you trying to invite yourself to live with me?”

  He shook his head. “No, but just hear me out before you shut me down.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “I feel like I need to spill the real reason why I wanted you to meet up with me tonight,” he said.

  “And here I thought you just wanted to hang out with me.”

  “I do want to hang out with you. And so does someone else.” He glanced at the door. “And here she is now. I’ll let you two catch up, since I have a few phone calls to make anyway.”

  As he headed for the door, I saw who he was talking about.

  Skylar.

  Her light, honey brown eyes glanced up from her cell phone to meet mine and a warm smile touched her lips as she headed for me. To my surprise, she wrapped her arms around me in a loose hug. “Hey, Vi!”

  “Hey. I’m so surprised to see you. I’ve tried getting in touch with you, but your phone was always disconnected.” Clearly, that was no longer the case, since I’d seen her texting on it just a moment ago. Why hadn’t she gotten in touch with me before now?

  “I know. I’m sorry. I just got this phone turned on, like, last night,” she explained. “I was going to call you, but then I ran into Finn and we thought it would be better for me to just talk to you in person.”

  “I see.” It would’ve been nice if Finn had warned me ahead of time that he was going to ditch me in the cupcake shop just as my lifelong best friend, Skylar Ray, re-entered my life three whole years after not getting in touch with me even once. The last time we’d spoken had been when she’d left for Nashville, and I hadn’t heard a word from her since. To say I was slightly bitter about it all would’ve been an understatement.

  “I was nervous about seeing you. I figured you’d probably hate me by now, but Finn said it would be okay,” she explained.

  “Why would I hate you?” I asked.

  “You know.” Her eyes darted away from mine. I knew her well enough to know she felt guilty about not getting in touch with me.

  “I don’t hate you,” I said quietly.

  “Really?” She glanced at me, a look of disbelief in her eyes.

  “Really,” I assured her. It was the truth. I didn’t hate her; she’d been my best friend for as long as I could remember. It just hurt to know she’d somehow been okay with not talking to me for three years. Those were three years we could never get back, and so much had changed.

  “I’m glad.” Skylar breathed a sigh of relief. “There’s something I need to ask you… a favor.”

  “What is it?”

  “Well, Finn mentioned that you might have an empty room,” she said. “I’m really broke right now. I only have eight dollars to my name,” she admitted. “I really need somewhere to crash right now, just until I get back on my feet again. Do you think that maybe—”

  I cut her off. “Of course. You can stay with me for as long as you need to.” We might not have spoken in three years, but I couldn’t just turn her away, not after all the times she’d been there for me when I needed her the most.

  “Awesome. Thank you so much.” Skylar beamed at me. “Finn footed the bill for a hotel room for me last night and tonight, but if you write down your address, I can bring everything over tomorrow.”

  “Actually, why don’t you just write down the name of the hotel you’re staying at? I’ll have my driver, Eddie, pick you up,” I told her.

  Her eyes widened. “You have your own driver?”

  I nodded.

  “Wow. You’ve come such a long way. I’m really proud of you,” Skylar said. “I was just telling Finn last night that I hear your songs, like, all the time. It’s crazy.” She pulled a pen out of her purse and grabbed a napkin. She scribbled something down and then handed it to me.

  “There’s the name of the hotel and the address, and that’s my new number. Shoot me a text message before you send your driver.”

  “Okay, I will,” I promised as she rose to her feet.

  “I’m really tired, so I’m going to head back to the hotel room now. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, see you tomorrow.” Once she was gone, I glanced down at my half-eaten cupcake. My stomach churned. Food was the last thing on my mind at the moment, but since Emma’s cupcakes were a-freaking-mazing, there was no way in hell I was about to let the rest of it go to waste, so I asked for a box.

  Stepping back outside into the warm night, I walked back to the limo, careful not to trip again.

  I vowed to toss my shoes in the garbage as soon as I got home. I didn’t even want to donate them to charity. The last thing I wanted to do was cast their bad luck on someone else. I didn’t want bad karma.

>   *

  I wasn’t kidding about the shoes. The second I was back in my apartment, I tossed them into the garbage can. Then, because I’d watched one too many scary movies, I tied the bag so they couldn’t get back out on their own. Better safe than sorry.

  Just kidding. I didn’t think they were actually haunted, but what if I accidentally grabbed them to wear one day? I wasn’t about to risk another disaster day. What if I ended up with two guys in bed next time?

  Actually, that didn’t sound like the worst idea in the world.

  I planted myself on the couch with a glass of wine before I could consider digging through the garbage.

  I flipped through the TV channels for a few moments before settling on a re-run of The Nanny, which I’d probably seen a hundred times.

  As I took a sip of wine, I glanced around the room. Finn was right. My apartment felt empty. I would’ve been better off with a studio apartment or maybe a one bedroom so that there would’ve been less space, but no, I had to go for the three bedroom.

  You’d think I would’ve gotten used to being lonely by now. I’d pretty much spent my entire life alone. My parents split when I was little. Even though my dad had hung around until I was three, I never had any real memories of him—only what I was told and what I remembered of the pictures I’d burned one day when I’d gotten angry at him for abandoning Mom and me. To say my mother hadn’t dealt well with him leaving would’ve been an understatement. It had destroyed her.

  We were fortunate, because everything had always been taken care of financially. My mom had a huge trust fund. Her parents, who had died in a car accident when I was just a baby, had both been Los Angeles real estate investors, and my mom had been an only child. So the bills had always been paid, there had always been food on the table, and when I was younger, I’d even had nannies to take care of me. But none of that could ever make up for my mom being absent from my life. Sure, she may have been there in physical form, but she’d always been too busy snorting coke and popping pills to take part in my life.

  Mom passed away from an overdose a few days after my eighteenth birthday. As terrible as it was for me to admit, the news hadn’t even come as a shock to me. I’d always suspected it would happen one day, but I’d always figured it would be an intentional overdose. Since there hadn’t been a suicide note, I was convinced her O.D. had been entirely accidental.

  Losing her had been hard on me, but it was also part of what had encouraged me to pursue my career in music. It had been a reminder that life is short, so you need to live it to the fullest, with no regrets. Even though I left my mom’s death out of my first album (mostly because I knew there was no way I could perform a song about it in front of an audience without breaking down), the album itself was an ode to her. I’d decided to name it YOLO. A lot of people thought it was just me trying to be trendy or cliché or whatever, but it was a saying I wholeheartedly believed in.

  Aside from Finn, the only real friend I’d had while growing up was Skylar. I’d spent a lot of time at her family’s house when my mom was too doped up to actually give a shit about me.

  After The Nanny went off, I went upstairs to my room and crawled into bed. Curling into a ball beneath my white down comforter, I grabbed my cell phone and opened a new text message to Jake.

  I miss you.

  Staring down at the screen for a few moments, I tried to decide whether I should send it to him or not. It was the same inner debate I’d had with myself every night since he’d left me. Of course, the foolish, pathetic side of me won out—the same way it always did. I hit the ‘Send’ button.

  Old habits die hard. And sometimes, they just don’t die at all.

  Chapter 4

  When the sun streamed through my window and onto my face the next morning, I scrambled to grab my phone and saw that Jake hadn’t replied to my desperate-sounding text message.

  Of course he hadn’t. He never did.

  Sometimes, I wasn’t sure why I even still bothered. It was obvious the two of us were done—I knew that. But there was also a part of me that secretly hoped he would send something back… anything. Even if the message was just him telling me to leave him alone, it would’ve meant he was at least acknowledging my existence. But he couldn’t even do that much for me. After a year of dating and what had felt like the realest romance ever, he wanted to pretend I didn’t exist and that killed me.

  Not that it should’ve surprised me, given the circumstances of our breakup. He’d completely disappeared from my life without a trace or a word of explanation, leaving me to wonder what the hell had gone wrong. Things between us had seemed so perfect, like we’d been waiting to drop from the world’s highest roller coaster but instead of getting that adrenaline rush, we never dropped; he’d just left me hanging there.

  Sighing, I climbed out of bed, knowing exactly what I needed. I headed for the kitchen cupboard. There it was, a forbidden treasure, hidden behind all of the healthy shit: a box of Lucky Charms. My trainer, Manny, wouldn’t have approved of my decision, but I didn’t even care. Today, I was going to eat my emotions away without giving a shit.

  As I grabbed a carton of chocolate milk from the fridge, I made a mental to-do list for the day. Eat Lucky Charms drenched in chocolate, skip my workout, and burn my songbook. Oh, and I supposed that having my assistant, Natalie, get ahold of Colton’s assistant so we could figure out a time to do this whole songwriting thing should’ve probably been in there somewhere, too, as much as I was seriously dreading it.

  The worst part about working with Colton was that the two of us would need to be alone in the same room together… except I knew we would never really be alone. There would always be this big secret hanging over our heads, and call me crazy, but I had a feeling our secret was going to be a big, fat obnoxious elephant that I wouldn’t be able to kick out of the room, even if I tried.

  As I carried my Lucky Charms into the living room and sat the bowl down on the coffee table, my cell phone vibrated with a new text message. My stomach tightened in a knot. It could be Jake. Maybe he’d just woken up, read my text message, and decided that, for some crazy reason, today was going to be the day he would respond.

  Even though I knew full well it was a long shot, my heart still sank when I read the name on the screen.

  It was Mads. Go freaking figure.

  Viola, whatever you do, DO NOT go to People.com!

  I rolled my eyes. What the hell was wrong with her? Didn’t she know that telling me not to do something was the best way to guarantee I would actually do it?

  I typed the URL into my browser, wondering what it was she didn’t want me to see. Had word gotten out that I’d slept with Colton? Or did people already know the two of us were collaborating together on my new album? I wasn’t sure, but I felt nauseous as I waited to see what I was about to read about myself. And of course, since I was so anxious to find out what it was, it seemed like the page was loading at a snail’s pace.

  Once the screen loaded, my eyes fell on the main highlighted news item. It wasn’t about me or Colton. It was worse.

  Meet Jake Palmer’s New Lady: Victoria’s Secret Model, Alyssa Morgan.

  With trembling hands, I clicked on the picture that was linked to the article, enlarging it. Alyssa’s short black dress showed off her killer legs and dipped low enough to reveal her cleavage (not that she had much cleavage to show off. +1 for me). Her light brown hair fell over her shoulders in long, bouncy waves, and she wore cherry red lipstick on her big pouty lips that complemented her fair skin tone well.

  Jake had his arm wrapped around her waist as he stared head-on at the camera. His light brown hair looked the same way it always did; brown eyes gleamed in the lighting, and his lips were curved into a smile. My eyes lingered on that smile for a moment. He was smiling the same way he used to smile with me.

  There was no doubt in my mind that he looked happy. I was pretty sure she was more than just arm candy for him. This was love.

  My lips quivered,
and I tried not to lose what little grip I still had on my cell phone. I blinked back the tears that had risen to my eyes. Now it all made sense why Jake hadn’t responded to my text message last night or to all of the text messages I’d sent to him before that. He’d probably been too busy screwing Ms. Victoria’s Secret model. Asshole.

  I pushed away the Lucky Charms, realizing I’d suddenly lost my appetite. But seeing this picture did give me the motivation I needed to knock another one of the items off of my to-do list—the item that had initially seemed like it was going to be the most difficult one of all but that now seemed effortless.

  Dropping my cell phone onto the sofa, I stormed into my office. My pink leather-bound book was exactly where I’d left it, piled on top of my guitar case on the floor.

  I brought it with me into the living room and turned the fireplace on. Opening the book, I ripped out the pages of songs I’d been working on for the past three months.

  I didn’t even bother to look at the lyrics. None of the words mattered anymore. They didn’t actually mean anything. They’d once felt like my golden ticket to winning Jake back, but I knew now that I’d already lost him.

  I shredded each page into tiny pieces and fed them to the flames, one by one. All I could think about was the fact that I needed to work on writing new, happier music. I didn’t need to do it only for my fans or to save my career. I needed to do it for myself, too.

  I couldn’t wait around for Jake or any other guy, for that matter, to complete me. I needed to find a way to get my own happy back.

  Releasing these songs—or any other sad songs—would’ve been a mistake. It would have meant letting Jake win. It would’ve given him the impression that I was like some sort of toy he’d already tossed aside but that he could just pick up and play with whenever he felt like it again.