Let's Try This Again Page 8

  “Need some help?” Isaac called out from his steps above the driveway.

  “Not from you. All I need is my phone, and then I’m out of here.” I pranced up the steps, holding out my hand.

  “Just come inside, would you?” He tugged on my still phone-less hand.

  “I am so pissed off at you, no.” But I let him fucking pull me through the door. I could blame it on the alcohol, but really I still liked the way my hand felt wrapped in his.

  “Why would you be pissed at me?” Isaac smiled. He always had this way of twisting my anger into a joke – making himself seem so innocent and sweet that of course I couldn’t be right about being angry. He looked at me like I was the only girl in the world—he saw me the way I had been longing to be seen.

  He poked me in the ribs to make me smile.

  “Where’d your girls go?” I referenced the little wenches that had caught his attention at the bar. Sorry, I don’t know if they’re wenches. They could be lovely girls with PhDs and purity rings but right now, they were whores.

  “Don’t be all mad.” He skirted the question. Obviously, they were not there.

  Obviously, he hadn’t stolen their phones.

  “You know what your problem is?” My words somersaulted sloppily out of my mouth.

  “No, I don’t, but I’d love to know because I’m paying a crazy amount to a therapist that hasn’t gotten a clue so far,” Isaac joked.

  “No therapist would have you.” I wasn’t in a joking mood. “Your problem is that you can’t take the fact that I had the guts to actually leave you behind.”

  “What?” He snorted, but it felt defensive even through my alcoholic fog.

  “You’re so used to breaking up with girls and then having them follow you around to bars, hoping to see you. Text you ‘by mistake’ just to remind you they’re there. Hang out with mutual friends just in case you might show up, too. You eat that shit up even though you pretend to be annoyed by it. You relied on the fact that no matter how bad things ever got between us, we’d bump into each other and things would go however you wanted, depending on your mood that night. But guess what—I walked away. Three thousand miles away. And it drives you nuts that I didn’t stick around to drool over you. To wait for you to never change. So you have to be a total fucking dick to prove that it doesn’t bother you.”

  Isaac bent his thumbs to crack them out of nervous habit. In turn, I winced out of habit. I fucking hated it; the sound made me nauseous. He knew how much I hated it, and his face gave away that he hadn’t forgotten that. Taking the opportunity to shatter the tension, Isaac put his thumb right up to my ear and cracked it again.

  I squealed and swatted him away. He playfully chased me around the kitchen, cracking away.

  Isaac hooked his arms around my waist as I rounded the corner of his countertop, swinging me back in close to him.

  He hugged me. Like, really hugged me. Like maybe he had actually heard what I had said, and he was sorry about how he’d acted. It was the way it used to be. And every bone in my body ignited. For the first time in forever, I wanted love, not sex. He was giving it to me.

  I thought he was, anyway.

  Isaac lifted me and carried me to his bed, where he had sex with me.

  And it was disconnected, unemotional—so unlike every other time we had slept together. Every time he grabbed my thigh or brushed my arm, it felt forced. I was overwhelmed by the notion that he hadn’t missed me at all. Didn’t care at all. The worst part—he never kissed my lips.

  He called me a cab when it was over.

  Whatever we had had, it was gone now. And it wasn’t coming back. The night had felt like one of the arbitrary LA hook ups I’d been binging on, and that didn’t just break my heart—it broke my entire body. I had been a goddamn fucking fool for giving a shit. For letting myself believe again that maybe I had mattered.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Goin, Goin, Back, Back to Cali, Cali

  My whole plane ride home after Thanksgiving was the marathon of all my stupidity replaying in my head. I felt like I was in mourning. I had lost someone; I would never again know or talk to or be with or touch someone who had meant so much to me. It was almost worse than grieving a death because I had to know that he was still physically here, walking around, meeting new people, creating different memories that I would never be part of. Isaac had made me care about someone who had never even really existed. And I discovered in that moment that you can only truly feel hate for someone you have loved.

  I sped through the stages of grief only to repeat the cycle over and over for the six-hour trip. He had treated me like a vagina and nothing more. As if not one shred of what he used to feel for me was still there, as if he didn’t even know me. Like I was some random girl he had picked up at Hogans that night. I didn’t want to remember him like that, not after all of the other things we had shared together. I didn’t want to remember feeling like a stranger in his bed.

  WHAT THE FUCK.

  Twenty minutes before I landed, and at the anger stage of maybe my seventh grief cycle, I resolved something. I would land and this would be done. It wouldn’t be thought about anymore. The only person I had wanted didn’t exist anyway, so what was the point of hanging on to my feelings for him if I lived 3,000 miles away? This is it, bitch, I told myself. You’re not sad anymore.

  It’s like that quote that people will Instagram you, the one with birds flying over water dyed orange by the sunset: You have to wake up every day and make the decision to be happy. So I just…decided.

  And I’m fucking awesome, and he should be mourning me, not the other way around.

  I got off the plane and wore my sunglasses through LAX (like a Boss) strutting like I had just eaten the souls of every man on the east coast. Then I saw a truck like Isaac’s driving around outside and almost let my heart skip that beat. But I sucked it up and told my heart, “You better keep beating at your normal pace, you little bitch.”

  Fake it ‘til you make it, baby.

  ***

  Going back to work was the easiest transition I’ve ever had after a break. Not only was I grateful to be distracted from any stray thoughts that might threaten to disrupt my —I’ve moved on” pact with myself, but Carter’s music was picking up, so there was a lot of cool stuff going on.

  I got to hear him play all his new material, and I got to give him input on what I thought he should keep working on and what I didn’t think was as good. We hung out a lot, and I got paid for it.

  It just didn’t seem real.

  He never sang though, saying only that he hadn’t thought up lyrics for his melodies yet. “We always had people writing for us in the band days,” he’d say, making fun of himself. “I never had to actually think.” It was funny because every time he played something new, I’d come up with little rhymes in my head. It was fun, and it just kind of happened without my even really trying.

  His melodies were gorgeous; they ebbed and flowed in such a lovely way.

  Carter would stop his fingers for just a moment before starting the next phrase, and it was almost painful to wait for what would come next. They deserved words just as lovely.

  When I told Carter that, a few weeks after being back and hearing song after wordless song, he said, “It’s like when you’re friends with a girl and she starts dating a guy that isn’t good enough for her. And it drives you crazy because you love her, and she deserves the best.” He loved his music so much that he’d rather his songs be lonely than filled with undeserving words.

  ***

  Driving home one night, Carter turned the radio on and, thankfully, the newest Beyoncé song was playing, so I sang along quietly. I wasn’t trying to pull out my best car dancing moves because that could have resulted in an injury for the man paying my bills, but I can’t not sing when Bey is on.

  He turned the radio down, and I felt him peering at me through my perifs. “What? Not a Queen Bey fan?” I asked, hoping he wouldn’t say he wasn’t because I migh
t swerve out of shock and kill us both. I wanted fame, just not the “girl who killed one of the 90s most prominent boy band members” type of fame.

  “Whenever people have the opportunity to sing around me, they kind of blow my ears off. Like they think I’m going to be so impressed that I’ll give them a record deal on the spot,” Carter said.

  “That’s so incredibly weird,” I responded.

  “I just mean that people don’t usually hum around me.”

  “I don’t usually hum Beyoncé, so this is new for both of us.”

  When we got back to Carter’s house, I figured I was just going to be dropping him off since he had nothing lined up for the rest of the day.

  “Come on. Come in.” He barely spat the words out before he jumped out of the car and went into his house. Inside, he pulled out a different guitar than the one he had been playing at the studio and started strumming. I recognized the music as an acoustic version of “Hit Me Baby (One More Time).”

  “How did you know I’d be a Britney fan?”

  He gave me a look that literally said “Are you fucking kidding me?” “Sing?” he asked shyly. His eyes were much more excited than his tone. Like he was trying not to scare off a bird that he wanted to land on the palm of his hand. His face couldn’t hide it, but anything too loud might scare it away.

  So I sang. “My loneliness is killing me,” I started.

  “And I.” it was the first time I had heard him sing live. I had these tickets to go to a From the Boys concert once, but it snowed so bad that my mom wouldn’t bring me. If I had known that, years later, I would not only be hearing Carter Coleman singing right in goddamn front of me, but singing BRITNEY FUCKING SPEARS with him I wouldn’t have told my mom I wished our neighbor who made rain hats out of saran wrap was my mom instead.

  “I must confess, I still believe…”

  “Still believe…”

  He kept singing but motioned for me to join in. “When I’m not with you, I lose my mind. Give me a sign.” His playing slowed and we paused for a moment before he nodded his head and I came back in—“hit me baby, one more time.”

  Carter hit a final strum to signal the end of our little duet, then gave me such an intense look I thought that maybe my nipple had popped out or something.

  “What?” I asked, checking myself out.

  “You’re really good,” is all he said.

  “Thanks. I mean, I was in chorus in school.”

  We sat for a few more minutes. He strummed lightly here and there on the strings. I thought he had completely forgotten I was there, and I was about to try and creep out until he said, “Can you come over a little earlier tomorrow morning? I’m just going to record some basic stuff in my studio here. But I’ll need some help with something.”

  ***

  “You sang…WITH CARTER COLEMAN?! ARE YOU LIKE A HIDDEN STAR OR SOMETHING AND YOU NEVER TOLD US, BITCH?!” Trevor screeched after I filled them in on my afternoon. Skylar, Trev, and I hopped around in a circle screaming and slapping the air, basically being as obnoxious as possible.

  “If anything, I’m maybe a hidden Avril Lavigne. No real talent there. But still, how cool? Like, what a day,” I said as I attempted to calm down.

  “Let’s go get some drinks, girl! Celebrate how LA you are.” Skylar smiled.

  Trevor had already started putting his coat on, ready to go and anticipating a resounding yes since he had rarely heard me say no. For the first time in a while, I had no impulse to drink. The high I was riding was good enough. I felt good for something more than a Schmo drunk hook up at the bar that night. “I think I’m just gonna stay in, actually. I have to be up early tomorrow.” And for the first time in way too fucking long (despite my attempts to just push the IDGAF button), I didn’t fall asleep thinking of Isaac.

  I fell asleep with Britney Spears playing in my head.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Day After

  I woke up early, and when I got to Carter’s, I honestly assumed I would have to wake him up. But as I walked through the door I heard the voice (albeit slightly deeper, way sexier) I used to listen to in my bedroom as a twelve year old who, by the fucking way, would have killed to know she would grow up to be in this position one day.

  I actually fucking pinched myself.

  “You said you’d wake me ‘fore you left/ Promised you’d wake me up from sleeping/ Kiss my lips and touch my chest/I never thought I’d stop believing…” He crooned it. There really is no other way to describe the way his voice sounded. It was a smooth croon, and I don’t even fully know what that means. His sound washed over me, covering my body in velvet. I felt hypnotized.

  “But then the days came with you gone/And everything just felt so wrong/ And I thought/A time will come and you’ll be here/Your lips again against my ear.” He stopped, strumming some broken notes as if he was trying to figure out a next move.

  My trance shattered. “Hey,” I mumbled taking a step towards him.

  His spell snapped, too. “Oh, hey, I didn’t realize you were here yet.” Carter seemed embarrassed.

  “That was so good,” I offered. “I love it.”

  “I can’t decide where to go next. It took me all night to come up with that much, and I can’t think of any way to wrap it up. It should be…hopeful? I think? Maybe?”

  No, I thought. Life’s not always tied up in a cute little bow of hope; love’s definitely not. The melody he had played sounded like the bittersweet moment of getting ice cream on a night in August right before school starts again. You know the end is near, but you still cherish that last sugary moment.

  “What? What are you thinking?” Carter asked.

  My first reaction was to tell him I hated that question because of a certain ex-boyfriend. But I looked up, and he was strumming on his guitar as he stared at me. His question felt more like he really wanted to know. Not like he was just asking because he wanted to pretend he was getting into some deep part of my psyche, to trick me into feeling like we were closer than any other two people on earth.

  “Well…honestly…” I hesitated. Was I really going to give Carter Coleman advice about a song? “I don’t think hopeful is the tone you want to go for. The melody has a melancholy, reflective quality to it that would get lost in a message about how love always works out.”

  His mouth tightened as he considered my thought. He nodded, starting the beginning again, singing through the parts I’d heard already.

  “And when I saw you once again/ After a month had passed or ten,” he continued. He played some more notes but couldn’t seem to formulate a thought to keep going with. His brow scrunched up, he backed up a little bit and sang the same phrase again. And got stuck again.

  “Once more you held me close,” I sang softly. “Your weight on my hips.” His eyes urged me on, he kept playing. “Finally you held me so close,” I stopped. I closed my eyes. I saw my last night with Isaac in my head. “But refused to kiss my lips.” Carter’s playing softened, slowed, but didn’t stop. I could sense something had shifted. “I learned your promises had always meant shit.”

  With my eyes closed, it felt like the notes had given up on me just like Isaac had. I had forgotten someone was playing them.

  “Wow,” Carter whispered. “That felt…”

  “Yeah, sorry, got a little PG13 on that one.” I tried to laugh off my discomfiture.

  “No. That was perfect, Josie. It’s exactly what the song was meant to be. I just hadn’t realized it. You were so right.” Carter jumped up off the couch, pacing around excitedly.

  “Oh, wow. Okay. Well good, I’m glad I could help. I was starting to feel like I was getting money just to hang out with a rock star.” I had to smile. “At least now I’ve maybe earned a little.”

  “I was just going to ask you to sing some harmonies on the song, but I think we should maybe…” his brain seemed to be moving much faster than his lips could follow. Then he, like, short circuited or something and collapsed onto the couch. “Let’s
do this.”

  Of course my dirty fucking mind thought “this” meant sex. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, uh…I don’t think that that’s a good idea, I mean…is that normally part of a personal assistant’s job? Not like I’m totally opposed or anything but…”

  His eyes popped confusedly for a second before he burst out laughing. “NO. No, no. I didn’t mean…no.”

  “Hey! The falling back onto the couch made that a little misleading!” I tried to laugh a little, but my humiliation had to be showing.

  “I think you should write some stuff with me. And sing on the album,” Carter said after he had calmed himself down. “Like, a kind of duo.”

  “What? Do you…are you on something?” I couldn’t believe this.

  WHAT THE FUCK? WAS THIS REAL LIFE?

  “I’ve been looking for a new direction for myself, and this could be perfect. Something totally different than I’ve ever done,” Carter looked right into my eyes.

  He was serious.

  “Carter, I am a nobody. I am an assistant. I am not a songwriter. And I am definitely not a singer,” I said while my brain screamed at me to shut the fuck up because you are about to become FAMOUS, girl.

  “You clearly are a songwriter. You came up with that on the spot. It took me all night to write those lines I had, and you changed the entire song with just a few words. And made it into something so much better.” He grabbed my hands. “Just…let’s try a few songs this week and see how it goes. No pressure. No guarantees either. Just play around.”

  I had absolutely no words. Nothing. I opened my mouth to try, and nothing came out. Not a good sign for the whole singing career thing.

  “I’m going to call Max, see what he thinks.” Carter sprang up. I just stared open-mouthed at him. Before he rounded the corner into the next room, he looked over his shoulder. “Not opposed though, huh?” He smiled and then laughed, shaking his head and leaving with a spring in his step, as if he was sixteen and had just gotten his first blowjob behind the bleachers at school.