Truth

Another show down, and I was thankful to admit, once again, that I did not get yelled at by any crazy women wearing all black with a headset perched on their head. It seemed that Reid telling off the one at the first show I went to spread around like wildfire, and everyone had left me alone.

Reid and I had gotten into a semi-normal routine. We hadn’t made a whole lot of headway on songwriting, but I would say that we were moving from acquaintances who gave each other dirty looks and bantered constantly to acquaintances that were actually collaborating. I mean, the man had seen me naked, so that definitely meant we were closer than we were before… right?

Each night that he was not doing sound check, or rehearsing, or better yet, actually performing, we kind of went into our own little world—wherever that may have been: a hotel room, the back room on the bus, his dressing room, wherever. The only problem was that we truly went into our own world. We started off talking about music, or verses, or tunes, and then ended up getting totally off topic and acting as if we were old buddies from high school. There were some nights that I could tell he needed a break, like when the angry lines formed on his forehead from frustration. So I would typically leave him alone and end our “lesson” for the night. That was usually when I hung out in the front of the bus with either Rod and Kent or the guys. And by “hung out,” I meant whipping their butts at rummy.

Reid groaned from beside me and crumpled up yet another piece of paper and threw it at the wall. “This isn’t working. I’m done.”

I rolled my eyes. “That’s what quitters say.”

“Fine, then I’m a quitter.”

I laughed out loud. Reid was acting like a child, pouting with his arms crossed over his chest. “You are worse than my youngest student, Reid. My God. I’ve never seen a grown man pout like you.”

He jutted out his lip. My eyes flashed to it for a brief second before I quickly turned my head. “Fine, let’s just work on some tuning. How’s that? Maybe get a tune going first and worry about the verses later?”

“That’s not how I usually do it.”

“Well, bucko,” I said, standing up and walking over to the corner of the room to snag his acoustic guitar. “My dad always said that if something isn’t working, change it and try again. And I hate to break it to you, but you sitting there pouting like a three-year-old—for the millionth night in a row, I might add—because you can’t get the words down, isn’t working. So…let’s go.”

Reid angled those dark eyes up to mine, his light lips forming a scowl. “You’re so bossy.”

I lifted a shoulder. “Only with you.”

He eyed me for a few more seconds before smirking. Reid smirking wasn’t as unusual as it was a couple weeks ago when I’d first started to collaborate with him. In fact, he’d even laughed a few times over the last couple of days, and once, he came out of his dungeon (the room we were currently in) and watched me smoke Finn and Jackson in a game of rummy. But it still sent a jolt of excitement through my body. I told myself that the only reason it made me excited was because it was one step closer to breaking Reid and putting him back together so he’d finally get over the writer’s block he was enduring, but it most definitely wasn’t the only reason.

My parents and sister still thought I was in Cali on a teacher’s retreat. I’d managed to avoid FaceTime calls and only talked on the phone to Cara. That way, I didn’t have to pretend I was in some random closet again. And each time we talked, the pit in my stomach grew larger, because no matter how badly I wanted to push away the topic of our family’s financial issues, they always came up. Her voice always dropped when she’d start up, as if it were a warning. “I don’t know, Brooklyn. No matter how much I beg Mom and Dad to stop throwing around the idea of selling their house, they keep mentioning it. I threw a fit when I saw a realtor’s card on their counter the other day. I know they’re trying to help, but I just…” And then silence would encase us both. The only thing phone calls with my family did was (1) make me homesick, and (2) make me realize that I needed to stop getting caught up in Reid’s good looks and our simple, in-our-own-world conversations and get down to work. The sooner Reid and I worked together and he pulled his head out of his ass, the sooner I’d get paid and all our problems would disappear.

Jane had checked in occasionally but only to make our plans for meeting up soon, which I so desperately needed in order to get away from all the testosterone I was currently knee-deep in. Rod had kept Carissa up to date and had pulled me aside only a couple times to tell

me that he truly saw a change in Reid, but he wanted us to get working on a verse or two, as the record label was all but salivating at the mouth for something. A verse. A line. Anything, really. And I was right there with him. I knew we needed to throw them a bone; otherwise, they’d be breathing down Reid’s neck… again.

Reid’s voice startled me out of my thoughts. “I’ll only tune if you’ll tune, too.”

I slowly brought my eyes up from my lap and landed them on him. “Why do you always make this about me?”

“I know you have your own guitar. I’ve seen it.”

I hitched an eyebrow and cocked my head to the side. “Creepin’ around my stuff at night or…”

“It’s only fair that I hear my music teacher play music. You’ve heard me play music.”

I narrowed my eyes and gripped his guitar tighter in my hands. “You play music for a living.”

“And you teach music for a living.”

I sighed, irritated. “That’s right. I teach. Don’t you know that saying? Those who can’t, teach.”

He smashed his lips together to hide a grin, grabbing his guitar from me. “I don’t believe that for a second.”

“What don’t you believe?”

“That you can’t play.”

Fidgeting on my feet, I intoned, “I’m here to collaborate with you, not to play you my own songs.”

Reid’s head tilted to the side, that dark hair moving effortlessly on his head. “What? Are you afraid or something?”

I chuckled sarcastically, looking up to the ceiling with my finger on my chin. “Hmm, let’s see… am I afraid to play a song in front of Reid King, the King of Music? Um. Yeah.”