Page 30 of Paint Our Song (Cloverlily #1)
M iles doesn’t pass by Dad’s grave on his way to the inn. He doesn’t want to unload all this negativity at his grave. Just—no. Also, it’s the dead of the night and going to the cemetery at this hour is really damn spooky.
His house is quiet when he gets home. Even when he tries his best to be silent, the main door creaks when he opens and closes it. The wall clock says it’s half past midnight, so Mom’s likely already asleep. Miles puts away his keys in the fishbowl near the door, glancing around. Everything looks so much emptier without people around. Is this what Mom sees, every single day, since he moved to the city?
“Hey, dad,” Miles says to a framed photo of him resting on the mantle. “Sorry I didn’t pass by. I’ll bring you flowers tomorrow.”
A door opens, and then there are footsteps from the top of the floor.
“Miles?” calls Mom, her voice sleepy. Miles walks up to the bottom of the staircase where she can see him, and he grins at her sheepishly. Mom yawns and rubs her eyes, a thick blanket wrapped around her shoulders. “Why are you here?”
“No reason,” he says. “Wanted to come home, I guess. Did I wake you?”
“The door did. What time is it?”
When she finds out how late it is, she sighs and tells him to head upstairs. She can barely keep her eyes open as she nudges him to his room, telling him to get some rest immediately, and that she’ll have breakfast for him in the morning.
Miles’s childhood room looks exactly as it did when he left it barely a day ago. Mom has cleaned it and changed the bedsheets, but didn’t touch his paint-stained desk—it still has the same mess of sketchbooks and pencils.
“Get some rest.” Mom stands on her toes and kisses his cheek.
***
He heads to the inn once the sun’s risen. Gabby’s surprised to see him back, and he beams at the spiffy new nametag she’s wearing. It says General Manager, with her name right above it. Miles saw it on her before he left town two days ago, but it still makes him unreasonably giddy to see it again.
While she still has a month to go before she finishes her short course, Mom wanted to promote her already so that she could start feeling out the position. “Feeling out the position” was a misnomer, and both he and Mom knew it, because she’s been doing most of the responsibilities for years now. The course wasn’t a prerequisite for the position, anyway. For Miles, it was simply a line in her resume to prove that she’s officially studied for this, and Miles knows Mom would have given her the position even without it.
Still, he understands why Gabby felt the need to take the course. In the past few weeks, there were times he’d found her buried in a book about Hotel Management, expression all lit up and focused, and he knew it had been the right choice for her. He can tell she already has a mental checklist of all the things she wanted to improve for the inn.
It doesn’t take long for Miles to find out that he doesn’t have much to do. Everything’s already taken care of, with all the new staff hard at work. It’s a wonder how everything can turn around so quickly, and he sends a quiet plea to the universe that the inn’s able to keep it up.
“So, why are you here?” Gabby asks, looking up from the computer she’s working on. Miles is beside her by the front desk, swiveling a chair around absently.
“No reason.”
“Have you listened to Cloverlily’s new song? It came out an hour ago.”
Right. The band had their live release at eleven a.m., and he had received the reminder about it. He didn’t watch. “Of course.”
Gabby scoffs, “You didn’t.”
“I most certainly did,” he lies.
“Yeah? And what do you think?”
“It’s a masterpiece, as always. Have you listened to it?”
“No, and neither have you. You’re such a horrible liar.” She rolls her eyes, prints out a sheet of paper, and shoves it at him. “Check out these financials, will you? I’m still not sure I’m doing these right.”
He’s not any good at them either, but he doesn’t tell her that. If she figures out how little he’s needed around here, she might make him drive all the way back to the city and do his actual job. Maybe they should hire an accountant. If he keeps up his dry spell, Andy might actually give up on his art manager career out of sheer exasperation, and he can offer him a job.
Calvin calls him throughout the day—texts him, too, and Miles expertly dodges him. He asks what Miles thinks of the new song, asks him how the inn is doing, if he’s made new paintings, and Miles stares at his phone way too long typing and then deleting entire messages.
***
He can’t paint.
It’s so frustrating, setting up all these papers and pencils and inks and watercolors—and he doesn’t come up with anything. He stares at them all day, brings them to the roof garden, to the lake, even back to his childhood room. He comes up with absolutely nothing, just emptiness and a whole lot of frustration.
The last time he went through this—not having the drive to paint—the band’s music helped him. That’s not going to happen this time around.
At night, Miles finally sucks it up. He retreats to the roof garden, right after dinner with his mom, and calls Calvin back .
“You upset with me?” Calvin asks. “You’ve been ignoring me all day.”
No, he’s not upset. He just doesn’t want to listen to another song written by him and sung by Theo. He’s fucking broken is what it is, being unable to inhale the music of his all-time favorite band.
“It was a busy day,” Miles says. Lots of lugging around blank papers and skipping rocks in the lake. On the upside, his new record is five skips. “Sorry.”
“My day’s been pretty busy, too, Miles.”
He takes a deep breath and starts picking at an old paint stain on the table. “Sorry,” he says again.
“What did you think of our new song?”
Miles is quiet for too long.
“You didn’t even listen,” Calvin says dryly. “Oh, god.”
“I was busy,” Miles says, and he grips the edge of the table hard enough that his knuckles go white. His chest is tight. He could throw up, with the way his stomach is twisting. He hasn’t even checked social media, knowing that it’ll just be a bunch of people talking about a song he doesn’t want to hear. “I’ll listen to it now.”
“Don’t bother.” His voice is so flat, and Miles can tell he’s upset. Why wouldn’t he be? He’s talking to Miles the same way he did during the first day they met, when he would barely look his way, and it was as if he just wanted Miles to leave him alone. It doesn’t hold the same type of softness that he’s grown somewhat accustomed to.
“Calvin.”
“Just don’t bother,” he snaps.
God, here comes the word vomit. Miles can feel it creeping up his throat, impossible to stop. “I didn’t want to listen to your ex sing another love song, okay?”
“If you—if you listened to it, then you’d—” Calvin stumbles over his words, losing the usual composure he has. “I—fuck. Fuck. You said it’d be a good idea to fight to keep the band together. Last night you said all we had to do was learn to work together.”
“Yeah, and I still think that. What I told you about your band, fighting for it, working together with your ex—it has nothing to do with me. You shouldn’t, like, have to think about me when you make decisions about your job.”
“So, the downside to all this fabulous advice you’re giving is that you don’t want anything to do with me?” He says it slowly, as if letting each word pierce Miles, and it does. “You want me to refuse to play with the band? Break it up again? Because that’s already the plan.”
“Jesus, no, Calvin.” Miles groans. “Honestly, I don’t think you should do that. All those hits your band has? That doesn’t come easy. This is something you’ve built for years, and it’s your passion. This is your career. What if you’re not able to write any more songs after you cut him out of your life?”
“What the hell is your problem?”
“I can’t paint.”
Calvin huffs in disbelief. “What does that have to do with anything right now?”
“I can’t paint and it sucks. The last time I couldn’t paint was when my dad died, and it feels horrible. My manager says it’s because I’ve lost my muse, and I don’t even know what that means. I literally depend on being able to paint for my livelihood, because god knows I can’t run an inn.”
“I… what? You can run an inn—wait, what? What are we talking about, exactly?”
“And you. You’re so talented, and extraordinary, and you’ve done so much for me, and you’ve written all these songs I’m crazy about. And I’m crazy for you, too, if that wasn’t clear enough. But I’m never going to be that person who you’ll write all that for.” Miles laughs, and it sounds like he’s on the verge of a meltdown. “You don’t even like doing lead vocals. Without Theo, how’s anyone going to hear what you wrote? He’s being an ass now because he’s hurt, but face it, he’s the one you actually need.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I’m serious. I don’t… I’ve got nothing to offer you. Honestly, I’m not even sure why you’re into me.”
“You don’t know why I’m into you?” Calvin sucks in a breath, then he scoffs. Miles listens to him stammer and try to get his words out, then he goes quiet altogether. The silence stretches forever and when he speaks again, his voice is much clearer, much calmer. “Your art is out of this world, but more than that—you’re incredible as a person. You’re kind, and you’re funny, and so insanely resilient, and you put everyone else ahead of you. I like how you take care of your mom, and of Gabby. And you—shit, you made me feel like I actually mattered, because damn, have I been waiting for that for a good while.”
“Calvin,” Miles says, voice cracking.
“Thanks for being a jackass. ”
The line goes dead.
Calvin doesn’t answer his calls after that, doesn’t even reply to his texts. He knows he sees them, though, because the icon that shows he’s read them says so.