Good Girl (Love Unexpectedly 2)

“You’ve got to shake it off, babe,” Amber says. “You’re a musician first and foremost. People shouldn’t care if you have hooves and a wart for a face if you can sing great music.”

She’s right. Of course she’s right.

I eat another chocolate chip, but it doesn’t taste good anymore. I toss the bag on the coffee table and flop back against the couch cushions.

When did I turn into this person?

When did Jenny Dawson, small-town daughter of a CPA and a seventh-grade science teacher, start caring about a bunch of jerks with big cameras and petty celebrity bloggers?

Since when did I start eating kale?

It’s like one minute all I needed to be really, truly happy was my guitar, and the next I was shoved onto a pedestal as America’s sweetheart and was living in daily terror of falling off.

“It’ll pass, you know that,” Amber is saying around what sounds like a mouthful of very dry salad. “Everybody loves you. Heck, even the ones that did think you were pregnant started calling your offspring ‘America’s baby’ and began knitting baby booties.”

“That’s just creepy,” I say, running a hand over Dolly as she begins squeaking incessantly on her chipmunk.

“Okay, no more moping,” Amber says. “I’m pulling up my fave site right now so you understand that they’ve already moved on, and tomorrow nobody will remember that you were supposedly preggo.”

I want to tell her not to bother, and that I don’t care. But I do care. I don’t know when I started caring, but I do, and I hate it.

Here’s the thing: do you ever feel like a stranger in your own skin?

I used to think that was the sort of crap they only said in those Academy Award–nominated coming-of-age films, but lately that’s how I feel: like a stranger in my own skin.

I have everything I wanted: a career in music. People pay me money—a lot of money, if we want to get crass about it—to do my dream job. I should be thrilled, and I am. Or at least I pretend I am.

But it came with all this other stuff that I just wasn’t expecting. Or maybe I was expecting it, but I wasn’t planning on how icky it would make me feel.

Stuff like being told that a move to Los Angeles would make me more palatable to the mainstream.

Yes, those are the words that were used.

Stuff like being told that highlights and eyelash extensions and a freaking juice cleanse were nonnegotiable if I wanted to “make it,” and yes, I’m using air quotes right now.

Let’s just say that publicist isn’t around anymore—I haven’t completely sold out.

Don’t be too impressed with me, though.

I mean, I did let my agent talk me into taking a bit part in a movie, although admittedly, I sort of had fun with that.

But then I let my agent convince me that a temporary relocation to Los Angeles might freshen up my sound and save me from the dreaded sophomore slump.

The funny thing is, the album I’m working on now—correction, the album I’m supposed to be working on now—isn’t my sophomore album.

The one that went double platinum, the one that won record of the year, the one that had six number-one singles—that was my sophomore album.

It’s just that nobody remembers the first.

I know twenty-two is probably too young to say this, and ask me again when my albums are numbering as many as Madonna’s or Dolly Parton’s or Garth Brooks’s. But I’m saying it anyway, because it’s my reality: I don’t have favorites among my albums. And while I’m not resentful that the second did better than the first, I am resentful of the fact that people pretend like Just for Now never happened.

Anyway, point is, I think we can safely say I escaped the sophomore slump. It’s the third-album slump I should be worried about.

And worried I am.

Secret time: I’ve been living a lie for the past three months.

Everyone thinks I came to Los Angeles to write my next album, and that’s true.