Just like everyone who hears what I’m writing right now will know I’m falling in love with the girl in those songs.
There won’t be a chance in hell of keeping it a secret or explaining it away.
Yet another reason to keep Colette in the dark during the song-writing process.
There will be a time and a place to let her know that I’m falling for her so hard and fast it’s crazy. But when that time comes, I want her to hear it from me, not a song.
A song is created for public consumption, something I’ll share with my fans on the radio and every night that I take the stage. When I tell Colette I want a shot at her heart, I want it to be private, between the two of us, just her and me.
Even though I know it won’t stand a chance at capturing everything I’m feeling, I pull my phone out and snap a few pictures of Colette with her back turned. My phone is on silent, but sometime around the third pic, she seems to sense my presence and glances over her shoulder, a dreamy-sexy-happily surprised look in her eyes that makes me want to rush right back to my guitar and capture the spirit of that look.
Chip was right. I’ve got it bad. But when it feels this good, it’s hard to stress about it too much.
“Send me that later?” she asks as I cross to stand beside her. “I want to remember this moment. It’s so peaceful.” She links her arm through mine and kisses my shoulder with an easy intimacy that feels natural. Effortless. Just like her. “I think we’re going to have a beautiful time.”
“I agree.” I kiss the top of her head.
She sighs and leans against me, and I stop worrying about what lies ahead. As long as the present keeps feeling so damned perfect, I have a feeling the future will take care of itself.
Chapter Ten
Colette
Growing up, we didn’t go on vacation.
When my mom was clean, she worked one minimum wage job after another, and money was tight.
When she was using, it was even tighter.
But we lived by the beach in a village fifty miles north of Hidden Kill Bay, where the people who couldn’t afford Hidden Kill’s upscale shops and bougie bed and breakfasts came to play. In the summer months, when the tourists flooded into our seaside community and I got to go to the beach every day with my friends, I felt like the luckiest kid on the planet.
And then, in junior high, I landed the first of many full scholarships to an arts camp near Bangor and escaped to another world for a month every July.
Camp is where I met Theodora. Where I realized there were loads of people like me, dreamy souls who felt most at home when they were bringing the stuff of their imagination into the real world. Theo was in the cooking track, and I was in arts and crafts, but it didn’t matter—we were soul sisters from the start.
Creativity is creativity. It expresses itself in different forms, but the raw material swirling around inside a chef or a painter is made of the same stuff.
Ditto for musicians.
I cut a glance across the car to see Zack still scribbling away, filling page after page in a notebook he pulled out of his guitar case. I love that he’s feeling so inspired, that music is spilling out of him in waves, coming so fast he can barely keep up with the flood of inspiration.
It bodes well for his new album. And selfishly, I can’t help but feel that all this inspired energy bodes well for our other creative endeavor, as well.
If I were a baby, I’d want in on the excitement. Dad’s about to become an even more well-respected musician, Mom is stepping into her dream career as an interior designer, and both Mom and Dad are excited about starting a family, albeit a non-traditional one.
A baby could do a lot worse.
And if we have a child, he will definitely have some cool vacations with his dad, I think as I steer the car up the long, tree-smothered driveway to the retreat house.
“Oh wow,” I whisper, eyes going wide as the woods open to reveal a massive front lawn and a mansion straight out of an incredibly lovely…horror movie.
Zack looks up, huffing in surprise as he closes his notebook. “That isn’t what I was expecting.”
“It’s very elegant,” I say, trying to look on the bright side.
“And scary,” Zack adds, making it clear I’m not the only one who finds the ornate gingerbread decoration on the four-story Victorian a little…toothy. Each window is an open mouth sporting light-and-dark-blue fangs, and the stonework surrounding the front porch looks like gnarled fingers reaching out to snag unsuspecting victims.