Not Another Love Song

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  To all the young dreamers who dare to want something out of reach.

  A-Side Ten

  1

  One Strange Cookie

  A short stranger will come into your life this year.

  “That’s specific.” I wave the paper at my mother, who’s sitting across the table from me in our favorite Chinese haunt.

  Golden Dragon is not the best or trendiest restaurant in Nashville, but we’ve been going to it since before I could wield chopsticks. I’m still not a pro. Half the time my dumplings slither out and plop into the sauce bowl, spraying the salmon-colored tablecloth with brown spots.

  Mom tucks a short strand of blonde hair behind her ear. Her pixie cut makes her look like a rock star, but decorating houses for people in the music industry and paying for my music classes are as far as her involvement in that world goes. She prays I’ll grow out of my aspirations, but music is my life.

  “You don’t have any plans to make me a grandma, right?”

  “Ew.” I wrinkle my nose. “Definitely not. Besides, I want a career.”

  With or without my mom’s blessing, I’m going to be the next Mona Stone. Sometimes I think Mom doesn’t want me to become a musician because Dad was a musician, and even though she must’ve loved him at some point—the point when I was conceived—she no longer harbors fuzzy feelings for him. Anytime I listen to one of his songs, her lips thin. He’s not even alive anymore, but whatever went wrong between them has endured beyond the grave.

  “What does yours say?” I ask.

  She cracks her fortune cookie open and extricates the tiny white scroll. “Your shoes will make you happy today.”

  “No way.” I snatch the paper from her fingers. Sure enough, that’s the message. “So? Do they make you happy?”

  She stretches out one of her legs and scrutinizes her brown suede bootie. “You know what? I am feelin’ mighty happy right now.”

  “And here I thought sharing spring rolls with your lovely daughter was the source of your happiness.”

  “Nah.” She winks. “It’s the shoes.”

  I fake pout.

  Although she smiles, it doesn’t reach her eyes. “I’m gonna miss these weekly dinners next year.”

  “Mom—”

  “I want you to get out of this town and see more of the world.” In other words, she wants to send me away from the music scene. It’s funny that she thinks my passion is geographically induced. I simply take advantage of what my town has to offer.

  Sometimes—especially when Mom wants to shove me out of Nashville—I wish I’d been born to Mona Stone. Like Mom, my idol’s self-made, but where Mom contented herself with settling among the stars, Mona conquered the freaking moon.

  I want the moon, too.

  Mom signals for the check and digs out her wallet. “I got one of my customers to write you a recommendation letter for Cornell. I’ll email it to you when we get home.”

  I sit on my hands. “Not all singers become train wrecks.”

  Her mouth flattens, then: “Angie…”

  “Look at Mona Stone. She never got into drugs or alcohol, and she started at eighteen.”

  “Mona Stone shouldn’t be your idol.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because.”

  “Because what?”

  Miss Ting slides a plastic tray with our bill over one of the brown sauce spots. When I was younger, Mom and I played a game: if I could eat a meal at Golden Dragon without dirtying the table linen, I got to play DJ in her car the entire week. If I lost—which was the usual outcome—I was stuck listening to Mom’s favorite satellite preset: Classic FM. I don’t dislike Vivaldi, but I have a preference for songs with lyrics.

  Mom drops two twenties in the small tray, then stands and hoists her fringe bag over her shoulder.

  I stand up and follow her to the glass door. “Why do you dislike her so much?”

  “Because she chose her career over her family!” Mom’s voice booms out of her and rings through the parking lot.

  I clench my fingers around my phone. “The choice wasn’t hers!”

  Mom folds her arms. “Really? Whose choice was it, then?”

  “Her husband’s. He left her.”

  Mom shakes her head, and her dangling gold coin earrings jingle and gleam. “Angie, I’m glad you’re driven and stubborn, but don’t be naive. Mona’s husband left her because the woman cared more about her fans than she cared about their kids.” Her grip on her biceps turns white-knuckled. “Same way your daddy cared more about his guitar than he did about us.” She adds this in such a low voice it barely registers.

  But it does.

  It’s never been a secret that Dad was passionate about music, but this is the first time I realize how wildly jealous my mother was of his passion. Maybe Mona reminds her of Dad. Maybe that’s the fatal flaw in my trajectory to stardom—idolizing someone who hits too close to home. Maybe if I worshipped a singer with a stable family life, she’d be supportive.

  “I’ll never do that, Mom. I’ll never abandon you.”

  “Me?” Mom croaks. “Oh, baby, I’m not worried about you abandoning me, ’cause that’s simply impossible. You couldn’t get rid of me if you tried. I love you too darn much. But I really want you to see what else is out there. You’re only seventeen. Gosh, at seventeen, I had no clue what I wanted to do.”

  But I do. I’ve known since I was a kid.

  No good has ever come of cornering Mom into conversations she doesn’t want to have, so I back away from it, from her. She might think I’m naive, but I’m not.

  I stare at the sun dipping on the horizon, swathing my hometown in pastels. “I promised Rae I’d stop by her place tonight.”

  It’s our ritual. Every year, on the eve of the new school year, I hang out with my best friend. We don’t braid each other’s hair or anything, but we make a list of things we want from the year to come, then stick our lists into her metallic-pink piggy bank and check them over on the last day of school to see how much we’ve accomplished.

  “You want me to drop you off?” Mom asks, beeping open her silver Volvo SUV.

  “No, I’ll bike there. And I promise, I’ll be home by nine.”

  Mom nods.

  As we drive away, I fiddle with the radio dial until I catch the tail end of a Lady Antebellum song. I’m about to tune in to another station when the radio host mentions Mona Stone’s sitting next to him and has an announcement.

  I side-eye Mom, wait for her to tell me to change the station, but I don’t think she’s even listening.

  “Hi, Mona.”

  “Hi, Ned. Thanks for having me on your set.”

  “So I heard you had some big news for your fans.”

  “I certainly do.” Her speaking voice is honeyed and melodic, exactly like her singing voice. “First off, I’d like to thank y’all for the outpouring of kindness for my latest album. I’m so
honored by your love and devotion.”

  “It’s a fantastic album.”

  “Aw, Ned, you’re sweet.” She laughs. She has such a great laugh. “Anyway, I was invited here today so I could speak about a little contest I’m hostin’.”

  I sit up and sneak a glance at Mom again. She still hasn’t looked my way or changed the station, which is a miracle.

  “This is for every aspiring songwriter out there. If you’ve written a song, send it my way. It could become the title track on my next album. All the details are up on my websi—”

  Drake’s voice blasts out of the radio.

  “Mom—”

  She keeps spinning the dial, as though trying to find the bandwidth furthest from the one Mona spoke on. “Don’t even think about it.”

  I plant my elbow on the armrest and glare out my window.

  “I can hear you thinkin’ about it, Angie.”

  Finally Mom turns the radio off, and the silence is so loud I wish she’d just tune in to her classical station already.

  “Don’t you see this is a calculated move to get her hands on other people’s talent?”

  I don’t retort that maybe Mona genuinely wants to help a person, because Mom won’t hear me. She’s deaf and blind to all of Mona’s good qualities.

  In complete silence, we drive past the Belle Meade Plantation, take a couple of turns, then veer down a road lined with massive houses.

  “Mom, I told you I’ll bike over to Rae’s.”

  “I’m not dropping you off.” Her tone is slightly more supple than earlier. There’s still an edge to it, but I can tell she’s fighting to calm down. She’ll probably go into cleaning mode the second we get home. That’s her favorite pastime when she has steam to blow off. Dust bunnies, beware.

  “Okay.” I sigh. “So where are we going?”

  “I wanted to show you my new project.”

  She glides the car in front of a mammoth wrought-iron gate, then powers my window down and leans over me.

  “This?” I gape at the gray stone mansion with its white-framed bow windows overlooking a sloping, manicured lawn planted with cedars and sharp hedges. “Whoa. It’s huge.”

  I shouldn’t be surprised, really. Since the feature she landed in Architectural Digest last spring, everyone with money and four big walls calls to hire her.

  “Who bought it?”

  “A man called Jeff Dylan.”

  “What does he do?”

  “He’s an entertainment lawyer.”

  I gather my wavy shoulder-length hair and lift it off my neck, then coil it into a topknot. Even without an elastic, it holds. “Is he, by any chance, hot and single?”

  “This is a job, Angie, not a first date. Besides, I’m not looking for a boyfriend.”

  This is one of the reasons I believe she must’ve loved Dad … she’s never replaced him.

  After a couple more seconds of ogling her new project, she pulls the car back into the street. “I saw Jasper the other night.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You two used to be such good friends.”

  My hackles rise, because I sense what she’s getting at. Mom and Jasper’s mom are best friends and they secretly—okay, they’re totally not subtle about it—wish that Jasper and I get together someday. That’ll never happen, though. He’s a jock. I don’t date jocks. I don’t date anyone, for that matter. I don’t need any distractions.

  “Is he still at the top of your ‘Hot List’?”

  I whip my neck to the left so fast it cracks. “Mom!”

  “What?” she asks, all innocent.

  “How do you know about that list? Did you go through my things?”

  “My biggest pet peeve is a messy room. You want to keep me out? Clean it up.”

  “It’s my bedroom. Mine. Not yours. Besides, I like my mess.” I hook my finger into the switch to power up my window. I tug so hard I half expect it to pop right off. “And it’s not that messy.”

  It sort of is. I call it organized chaos.

  “I didn’t mean to look at the list. It fell out when I was evening out the stack of LPs you use as your nightstand.”

  I glance at her, still irritated. “And you just had to read it?”

  “I like to know what’s going on in my little girl’s life. Would you rather us be Snapchat friends?”

  My eyes go vinyl-wide. “No way.”

  “You don’t have to tell me everything, Angie, but don’t shut me out either, okay?”

  I relax in my seat. “I wrote that list when I was a freshman. Jasper’s more in love with his biceps than he is with any girlfriend. Plus, he’s dated nearly every girl in our grade.”

  “Glad to know my daughter doesn’t date players.”

  Amusement trumps irritation. “According to Rae, my standards are too high.”

  “That, you got from me.”

  “So Aidan was exceptional?”

  I don’t bring up my father every day, but whenever I get an opening, I’ll throw in a question—or three—and hope she says something sweet about him. He couldn’t have been all bad.

  She grips the steering wheel tighter.

  Could he?

  2

  The Boy with the Princess Band-Aids

  After I pull on a pair of cutoffs and a white tank top, I holler to Mom, who’s vacuuming every surface of our two-story house, that I’m off. I power the garage door up and hop onto my electric bicycle. All my friends applied for driver’s licenses the second they turned sixteen; not me. Dad passed away in a head-on collision, which has made me petrified of operating large vehicles.

  I turn the motor on medium so I don’t arrive panting and sweating, and pedal to Rae’s with my earbuds blasting Mona Stone’s first album. Even though she’s released eight more, her first record remains my favorite.

  At a traffic light, I tap my fingers against the handlebar to the beat of the percussions and drums. When the light turns green, I swing onto Rae’s street. Adrenaline spikes through me when I come wheel to bumper with an enormous black SUV. The vehicle screeches to a halt, but still nicks my bike and sends me flying off the saddle. I yelp as my palms and knees connect with the asphalt. Thankfully the impact isn’t too violent, so my helmeted head is spared.

  Hazard lights flash, and then neon-blue sneakers race toward me. I press myself into a sitting position. Both of my knees are bleeding, and bits of gravel cling to my scraped palms.

  With trembling fingers, I unlatch my helmet and dust off the grit.

  “Shit.” The backlit driver squats down next to me.

  “I’m okay,” I say, even though I’m wobbling all over as though I were made of Jell-O.

  “Did your head—”

  “My head’s fine.” I blink, then squint to try and make out the still-crouched person.

  Although the stranger’s voice is deep and his jaw is coated in stubble, his face still has a boyish roundness. College-aged, I suspect.

  “I have water and Band-Aids in the car.” He walks back to his SUV and grabs a Walmart bag from the backseat, then crouches in front of me and squirts water over my knees. With a handful of tissues, he blots the watery blood.

  I notice his hands—I always notice people’s hands. His are large with long, elegant fingers—pianist hands.

  Pianist hands that are still all over my knees.

  Suddenly self-conscious, I shift my legs out of his reach. “Really. It’s okay. Just scratches.”

  His mouth twists as he lifts the pinked tissue and inspects my torn skin. My injuries are only skin deep, but they’ll probably still leave marks. Not that I’m worried about scars. Unlike Rae, whose plastic surgeon father made her so fearful of imperfect skin that she learned to apply sunscreen before she was even potty-trained.

  “I didn’t peg you for a Disney princess enthusiast,” I say, as the boy breaks out a pack of girlie Band-Aids from his shopping bag.

  “They’re my sister’s.”

  I frown at his lack of humor, then peer past hi
m into the car, but it’s empty. He peels the backs off two bandages, then tapes them to my skinned knees.

  Afterward, he tosses his arsenal back into the shopping bag and checks his bulky metal watch, which is so crammed with dials and arrows it’s a miracle he can read the time.

  I wonder if he’s on his way to meet a date. A boy this good-looking must have a girlfriend.

  He grabs my phone and earbuds, which still leak Mona Stone’s heady voice, and his lips contort. “Here.” He all but shoves them at me.

  Frowning at his sudden animosity—not that he was Mr. Sunshine before—I unglue my gaze from his face and transfer it to my phone. I grumble when I realize my screen is shattered. “Does your insurance cover phone repairs?”

  His eyebrows pop up. “How do I know it wasn’t broken before?”

  Jerk. I don’t say it out loud, but I must think it real loud, because he rises from his crouch and stalks back to his car. I presume he’s going to drive away, but instead he keeps the door open and leans over the armrest.

  A couple of seconds later, he trudges back, a store receipt flapping in his hand. “Here.”

  I blink as I take it from him. “You want me to pay you back for the Band-Aids and the water?”

  A nerve twitches in his jaw. “My phone number’s on the back. Check your bike, and tell me how much I owe you.”

  Although it looks painful for him, he offers me his hand. I don’t take it. Wouldn’t want to subject him to any more agony.

  The heels of my palms smart as I push myself up, but at least they’re not bleeding. I grab my helmet and bag and right my bike. Besides a crooked spoke and scuffs on the glossy black frame, it seems fine. I turn the motor off, because my legs are shaking too much to cycle.

  Hand resting on the frame of his open car door, he watches me for a moment. I watch him back, but then that turns awkward, so I lower my eyes to his T-shirt, which reads BEAST MODE ACTIVATED.

  “You need a ride somewhere?” he asks.

  I jerk my gaze back up to his face.

  His eyes, which look golden in the rapidly setting sun, are guarded and reticent.