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  “Look, it’s not even just that he’s not who I want to be with,” I explained. “He’s not someone I ever could be with. I could never trust him. And I trust you more than anyone.”

  “More than Molly and Ellie?”

  “They don’t count.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Back at Home

  The trip home had done all of the things I needed it to. I had been suffocated with love by people who still wanted to hug me even though they had known me forever and had lots of reasons to do otherwise. I got to eat at Friendly’s (California, forget the Dunkin Donuts crusade…get me my BBQ chicken super melt). I spent enough time in the cold to remember how much I hate it, and when we landed at LAX, I appreciated the sunshine I had come to take for granted. It rained three times in the four days we spent in Connecticut. I actually got choked up the first time I saw the drops coming down; it had been a long time since rain had been a part of my life. Five minutes later my eyes were dry and my outside was not, and I was cursing the skies because I had to change my shoes, which led to changing my whole outfit—a problem that does not plague Californians very often.

  It also made me realize I would probably always miss my old life some. It would’ve been nice if someone had explained that when you grow up sure, you’re out on your own, you don’t have a curfew, you can drink beer, you go out on dates and you can eat ice cream and guacamole for breakfast if you want. But you’ll miss living in a house with your siblings. You’ll be sad that you all only spend the night under one roof for Christmas, and that’s if you’re even lucky enough to get that time before you have a family of your own. You’ll miss seeing your friends every day because you have to—school is good for that if nothing else. You’ll miss your mom, and then you’ll see your mom, and she’ll ask you why you haven’t given her grandkids yet or why you haven’t been promoted yet, and the missing will stop. But only until you’re away from her again for longer than a day.

  The step from “adolescent” to “grown up living on her own” is the biggest one. It’s the one that waves the most goodbyes and doesn’t let you turn around for one last look. And it didn’t mean I didn’t love California or my new life on a different coast or this budding career. It just meant my life wasn’t what it had been before, and if you’re as fortunate as I had been growing up, you will miss that for the rest of your life. It’s a quiet missing; it doesn’t stand up and demand attention. It’s one broken light on a string of twinkles—the total glow isn’t really corrupted, but there’s still a gap in the shine that your eyes find every once in awhile on a dark night.

  So it was back to working in the land of sunshine and kale smoothies. Carter and I were set to finish up our EP, a track list of eight songs that I would never think were ready, and that Carter would never stop telling me were. We had some small gigs lined up at local venues and radio interviews to promote it all. I was really just a background piece, a gimmick for Carter’s comeback. That was fine with me because hey, this wasn’t really my dream. I lucked into it, sure, and it was going to be something that my grandkids are going to love hearing about when I’m wrinkly and blind and needing to prove to them that I really was cool once. But I was just fine taking the backseat.

  “We need to think of a title for the EP,” Carter said, reclining on a couch in the recording studio and strumming his guitar. He looked very rock and roll and very hot.

  Instead of paying any attention to his comment, I sat down on top of him. What? The producers had all gone out to get coffees and whatever. A girl can be spontaneous, can’t she?

  “We need to maybe deal with the girl straddling you on the couch first,” I purred into his neck.

  “They’ll be back any second,” Carter protested, but I could hear his smile. The last thing he wanted was for them to be back any second.

  “It doesn’t normally take longer than that.” I laughed. He grabbed my butt a little rough, a little playful (the perfect mix), and lifted me off of him. “You’re no fun.” I pouted. He ran his fingers over the guitar strings, already thinking about music again.

  “Do you know the word redamancy?” He asked.

  “Nope. It’s pretty, what’s it mean?”

  “Loving someone who loves you back. A love returned in full.”

  “That’s nice,” I said slowly, not thinking much of it.

  “It might be a good title.”

  “The songs are mostly about heartbreak though.”

  “Yeah, sure. But they led us to loving someone who loves us back.” Carter put his guitar down, grabbed my hand and brought it to his lips to kiss my palm. I didn’t know why, but my body tensed right up. I had the urge to pull my hand back, hold it close to me again as if, right now, it wasn’t really my hand, and like, right now, I just didn’t want it to be his hand.

  “Hmm.” I bit my lip.

  “You don’t like it?”

  “No, I – I do. But I’m not sure it really…fits. Maybe we just take some more time to think about it. Or other names. Titles, I mean. It’s good, I like it.” I Rain-Man’d out.

  “So?” He quirked an eyebrow at me. “It’s good and you like it, but you want to think of other names?”

  Before I could respond, Jeff and Mack our producers came back in (thank the LORD JESUS), cutting the conversation short. For whatever reason, that word curled up inside me and couldn’t find a place to fit, like a puzzle piece soaked with water that seems like it might fit when mushed into a spot, but looks out of place once it dries and becomes itself again.

  ***

  “I need you to do KC 104 LA tomorrow…alone.” Carter sprang this on me one night at dinner.

  “An interview by myself? Carter, you know as well as I do that these people don’t really want to talk to me.”

  “That’s not true…People called you last week. In Touch, too.” He pushed out his bottom lip, the sympathy lip.

  “To talk to them about being your girlfriend. They couldn’t care less about my involvement with your music, they just want to know if our pre-bedtime routine is sexier than Mila and Ashton’s.” I was in my sweatpants and braless, having just shared a pint of Ben & Jerry’s with my boyfriend and in the midst of wiping the chocolate lip-liner off my mouth, I could safely say it was not. Mila probably has chocolate-resistant skin—that is until Ashton slathers her for their nightly human-sundae sex.

  “Max called to tell me I have to go to an appearance I scheduled almost a year ago. It has to do with the From The Boys anniversary, and I’m under contract. And my flight is right when we’d have to get to the radio station.” He puppy-dog-eyed me. “And I don’t think we can really afford to miss any good promo opportunities with the EP coming out soon. And KCLA is such a big station, and…”

  “Fine, fine, fine. I’ll do it. But you owe me. Because forcing me into fame and fortune and being the reason People magazine calls me is just not going to cut it.” I pinched his arm softly, sitting up out of my chair to get more wine. Carter pinched my butt in return.

  Yeah, yeah, cute couple stuff (yes, I’m blushing. QUIT IT).

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Where Everything Went Horribly Upside Down

  “You’re here with Krazy Kelly and Froggy on your commute! This morning, we have an exciting guest with us—Carter Coleman’s new partner in music. And…I’m sorry, ladies…in life. Josie Morris! Thanks for being here, Josie!” Krazy Kelly cackled into her mic. The woman had a great radio voice, but it was clear why her media career never launched her in front of any screens. Her hair was a tangled mess of curls the color of old rust. Her lipstick stained her already pretty-well-stained teeth. Her eyes bugged behind thick glasses. I wondered if Krazy was really just her radio name or if it was written on her birth certificate and this whole look was just a self-fulfilling prophecy. Froggy didn’t really look that froggy—he just had a baby face and pudgy figure that would never lend itself to his becoming GQ’s man of the year.

  Okay, sorry. I had to wake up extremely ear
ly for this, hence the grouchy tone of my thoughts.

  “No problem, thanks for having me!” Just classic enough to work, I hoped. The interview was pretty basic. How had I hooked up with Carter (not the dirty kind, though I’m sure that would have drawn a lot of listeners), what were we working on, when was it coming out? Blah blah blah. I had heard Carter get enough of these questions to know how to properly answer.

  “Okay! Listeners out there with questions for Josie, call us up and talk to Hollywood’s new It Girl! Up now is ten minutes of uninterrupted jams, and we’ve got Demi and Hozier and Taylor Swift coming your way!” Krazy Kelly spit the rapid-fire words into the airwaves, then took her headphones off and smacked Froggy for a stupid comment he’d made about Rihanna’s Grammy dress.

  “Uh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know there would be…listener questions?” I was less prepared to wing listener questions.

  “Oh yeah, yeah, don’t worry about it. These aren’t evil genius journalists we’re dealing with here. They’ll be pretty basic,” Froggy comforted me while Kelly reapplied her lip/toothstick for God knows what reason. I nodded, not that comforted, but I appreciated the effort.

  “Ready?” That was all lipstick McGee had to offer, though she didn’t really care about the answer because she started back up again before I could say anything. “Krrrrraaazzzzy Kelly and Froggy,” ribbet, ribbet, “back again! Here with Josie Morris, of Carter and Josie, who’s taking your questions! Our first caller is from Connecticut! Say, Josie, isn’t that where you hail from?”

  “Sure is…go Huskies!” I shouted awkwardly into the mic, startling both Krazy and Froggy. “What’s your question?”

  “Hi, Josie.” The voice filled my headphones. A smooth, velvety male voice. Sexy as hell, if I did say so myself. I pictured a tall, silver fox on the other end of the line, dying to talk to me. “I have a question about your song, ‘Kiss Me On The Lips.”

  “Go ‘head, I don’t bite.”

  “Well…I was wondering what inspired it. Couldn’t be Carter, right? Because it’s uh…it’s a break up song, and you two…are together.” The words stumbled out into the headphones…um. Well, no, it isn’t about Carter. And it’s less about a break up than it is about a broken heart. About realizing some people will never be who you wanted them to be.” Krazy Kelly nodded at me. Good answer, I guess.

  “Okay, thanks, caller…” Froggy started in, but the caller cut him off.

  “And this guy who wasn’t who you wanted him to be. If he changed into the guy you wanted him to be, would you want to be with him?”

  I looked around at the DJs. Was I supposed to keep answering this guy? They nodded me on, like they were curious too.

  “Um, well. I don’t like to go backwards. And people don’t really change that much. Not that way. I’m very happy with Carter,” I responded cautiously. The voice…it was filling my head in a way that felt familiar.

  “But you don’t write songs about him. So how in love could you really be?” The voice kept going. The voice that felt connected to a long lost memory.

  “I…I’m sorry, this isn’t …” I shook my head, looking to the DJs, begging to be rescued.

  “Josie, I can be that guy. I am that guy,” the caller burst out.

  Kelly and Froggy laughed, thinking this was just an insane fan that was professing his love randomly, without consequence.

  I knew that it wasn’t.

  “Isaac. Since when are you that guy? Really. This is a joke.” I shook my head and was reaching to take my headphones off when Krazy Kelly grabbed my hand. She made a circle in the air with her finger—“keep going.” I looked through the glass wall, and the people behind there running the show were doing the same thing in wider, more violent circles. I’m not talking to him anymore,” I whisper-yelled, covering the mic.

  “You will if you want this radio station to promote your album. Play your songs. Pay you for this interview,” Kelly hissed back. To enhance her point, the guy behind the glass held up my contract. Reluctantly, I put my headphones back on.

  “Josie. Don’t you even want to hear what I have to say? That doesn’t make you curious at all? Before, would I ever have tracked you down on a radio show just to tell you that I love you?”

  “You know what, actually? I’m not curious. And I don’t want to know,” I just wanted him to leave me alone. I wanted to be able to know that he didn’t want me because that made everything easier. It made it impossible to feel confused. He had never wanted me, he had lied to me about who he was; these were truths I could cling to. These were the things that made me believe I had made the right choice when I left him behind. “Because that would mean entertaining the possibility that anything you have to say might be the truth. I have moved on, and being curious about your telling me you love me would stunt that growth.”

  The whole room stared at me as I ranted on. Sure, you all are getting your highest ratings to date at the cost of my emotional wellbeing—maybe at the cost of my relationship… Wait. Wait.

  I looked at the mic.

  What?

  “Wait. You said—you called to say…” I chewed on my words before they came out, so they came out mangled and wrong.

  “Yeah. I called to say I love you. That’s the guy you wanted me to be, isn’t it?”

  “See. That’s your problem. Right there. I don’t want you to tell me you love me because you know that’s what I want to hear for whatever purpose that serves you at the current moment. I never wanted that.”

  “You think I made up this whole person to trick you. And the truth is you are the only one who knows the person I really am. More so than even I knew at the time. I don’t want to be someone else for you; I am someone else. Because of you. You know I have always been in love with you, Josie. I may never have said it, but there was no way to misinterpret the way I felt about you.”

  “There were plenty of ways. The last time we were…together,” I tried to whisper the last word to get the implication across, as if whispering would make a difference playing out over car stereos. “It took you less than five minutes to kick me out afterwards. You never kissed me on the lips. You treated me like a one night stand. Do you know how much that hurt?” All of the pain from that memory flooded over me. I didn’t care what Isaac would come up with to explain that away. I had let him get away with so much, I had given him the benefit of the doubt always.

  But he knew me as a person, inside and out (pun intended).

  The fact that he even had the ability to treat me with that much indifference was not something I would ever understand. “I don’t know what it is about me, after all the time we spent together, that made you think I wasn’t someone who deserved respect. That I wasn’t someone who deserved to be taken seriously. I am a girl people get serious about.”

  Dead air.

  “Is he still there?” Froggy asked, his hand covering his mic. Kelly shrugged, looked to her producers.

  “Josie?” Isaac came back on.

  Everyone loudly exhaled with relief. Everyone but me.

  “From the very beginning. Of it all. I have taken you seriously. There is nothing I find more serious than you or how I feel about you. You knew me, you knew my history, you knew exactly who I was and how I handled relationships before we dated. And you still wanted me. I never could figure out if you really trusted me, if you really took me seriously, or if you just wanted to fall, wanted to be so damaged by me that you couldn’t imagine coming back. So the last time—when I didn’t kiss you—I thought letting you fall was the best way.”

  “The best way?” I was surprised the smoke alarms weren’t buzzing off the fucking wall from the amount I could feel spewing from my ears. The best way to have me get over him would have been, I don’t know, a rational conversation! The best way would have been for us to have maintained a friendly relationship when I left—not having to erase each other from our lives completely. But really, the best way for me to get over him would have been to never have gotten under him in
the very first place. “The best way to what? Make me go crazy wondering what I’d done, if I’d ever hear from you again, why you’d treat me so terribly?”

  “The best way to make you see you deserve so much more than me.”

  The room once again was loudly exhaling, this time in an “awwww” sort of way. I couldn’t let myself get swept up in this, could I? It was always the same thing.

  Was he right?

  Had I ever really trusted him or had I just wanted an excuse to destroy myself? I had known exactly who he was, and I fell in love with him anyway. And by going back to him, time and time again, I practically begged him to devastate me.

  That was over with now. I had moved on, I had grown up.

  Right?

  “Oh thank you then, my knight in shining armor, because guess what? I did finally realize that. And I’m happy and I love someone who does deserve me.” I had all the power in this conversation; I had the most reasons to be calm and reasonable. Because this was true. I had someone, I was doing well. On paper. But my brain was on fire, and my hair was vibrating, and my words were slicing my tongue as I spit them out too quickly. Not convincingly.

  “Well. I changed my mind,” he said.

  “Cool.” I yawned. Aggressively and loudly. Well, it’s radio, right? I’d done all this shit a million times. Check please. “I’ve seen this episode before, what else is on? You just fold me down like a page you’ll come back to when you’re bored. It’s bullshit, Isaac, and I’m done waiting around to be picked back up and read again when you feel like it. You only show up when it’s the hardest possible moment for this to work. For us to ever work. Why do we need to be miserable before you can see what you want? Why does it have to be so hard?”

  “Would you rather it was easy? No, if it were just easy for me to decide this is what I want forever, that wouldn’t mean as much. Telling you this now, when there is so much working against me, means I’m here. I am showing up. Nothing is going to make me give up. Not when it’s hard, not when it’s easy. I needed that kind of pressure to make me see that you’re it for me. I was so fucking scared of loving you. And I know that sounds stupid and like an excuse, and it is. I made excuses up so that I wouldn’t have to see how much I loved you. Because knowing that meant having to feel afraid that I could lose you, and that fear was way too much.