Page 10 of Reality With You (Arden Beach #1)

“W ho was this girl? I’m going to go report all of her social media accounts.”

“For what? Being a dick?” Lennon asked Erin around a mouthful of cereal, standing at the short counter that bumped out from a bank of kitchen cabinets, long enough to fit one small stool, which she’d never bothered to buy.

She swiped a drop of milk from her mouth with her thumb.

As soon as she got back to her apartment, she caught Erin up on a video chat on her exciting forty-eight hours of losing two jobs back-to-back.

“I’ll bet if you told the internet what happened, they’d go on a crusade for you.” Erin took out her aggression on the cucumber she’d been dicing as she meal-prepped in her kitchen. “They hate it when people treat service workers like shit.”

“With my luck, she’d end up twisting it and making me look like the bad guy. She has millions of followers to send after me. My career would be even deader than it is already.”

Ironically, one of the biggest recurring complaints from the record label had been that Lennon wasn’t hitting their “target metrics” with her social media following.

She’d struggled to keep up with creating content on top of writing and recording music, which she wasn’t allowed to share yet, and working full-time.

She’d never been able to figure out a balance.

“I feel so stupid.” Lennon pushed around the last few pieces of soggy rainbow cereal in the milk. “I can’t even get people to follow me on these godforsaken apps. How am I supposed to sell records?”

“You’re not stupid,” Erin firmly stated.

“ They’re stupid for not knowing how to market their artists anymore and putting the burden on you to have a following before you even release anything when all you should be worried about is making good music.

Which, clearly, they don’t know anything about. ”

“Their artists have a million awards, and two are in the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame.”

“Even a broken clock is right twice a day.”

Lennon snorted. “You sound like your brother.” It flowed from her mouth before she could catch it.

The energy shift rippled across the Wi-Fi before Erin uttered a word, her food chopping momentarily ceasing. Tension corded through Lennon’s muscles, the sugar in her bloodstream becoming a liability.

“So … how did that go?” Erin casually asked, impressively smooth. She was a pro at broaching difficult conversations with care and ease, while Lennon was the type to call her ex-husband for the first time in six years while trying not to have an emotional breakdown on a moving train.

Lennon glanced at the screen. Erin was back to chopping—working on a sweet potato now—the camera angling up from its spot propped against a canister at her soft hazel eyes.

Her dirty blonde hair was gathered in a light pink claw clip, matching her dusty rose-colored sports bra and high-waisted bike shorts.

She looked like a bombshell from a Sofia Coppola movie—naturally, effortlessly beautiful in a girl-next-door sort of way.

In the little thumbnail in the corner, Lennon’s dark hair stuck out at various angles from where it had come loose from the bun she’d thrown it in when she got home, her faded, oversized Queen tee dwarfing her body again.

She’d shed the professional attire she’d worn to the meeting, recommitting to the whole pajamas-for-the-rest-of-the-day thing.

Their aesthetic and lifestyle differences had always amused her—and everyone else. Lennon always said Erin was a Marilyn, while she was a Freddie Mercury. Erin was control, Lennon was chaos. But that was the beauty of their friendship; they balanced each other.

Lennon continued swirling her spoon through the pale pink milk.

“I was already in the midst of one emotional breakdown, so I guess it was efficient to kill two birds with one stone. You know what they say, an object in motion likes to stay in motion.” Her gaze lifted and settled on one of the chipped spots on the speckled laminate counter, her focus pulling inward as she allowed the memory of the prior night to resurface.

Erin steadily kept chopping in the background, leaving Lennon space to continue when she was ready.

“It was … OK?” was the answer Lennon finally landed on as she dug her thumbnail into the chipped groove. “I mean, as OK as the first time talking to your ex-husband years after your divorce can be. I’m surprised he answered.”

“Really? You’re surprised?”

Lennon’s brows scrunched together, struggling to compute why Erin would be surprised that Lennon was surprised.

“Well, yeah. I mean, I’ve pretty much been avoiding him for years, and then I call him out of the blue?

Wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t want to open that can of worms without warning first thing in the morning. ”

“He was probably just happy to hear from you.”

A strange fluttering sensation spread through Lennon’s chest. Was he probably happy to hear from me, or did he tell Erin he was happy to hear from me? Something about the way Erin said it had her wondering …

No, she couldn’t go there.

Not now.

Lennon set her spoon down in the bowl. “At least the bandage has been ripped off. But I don’t think either of us is in the mental space to rehash what happened between us.”

“Did you ever read his letter I gave you?” Erin asked with gentle curiosity.

Lennon scrunched her nose, guilt prickling.

Her gaze instinctively drifted toward the small chest of drawers at the end of the daybed where she kept a box of mementos nestled among her bras and panties.

“No. I was going to. But then, every time I thought about it, I just … couldn’t bring myself to do it.

I’m pretty sure I already know what it says.

He’s sorry, he didn’t mean to hurt me. It was too much, too fast. We were too young; he made mistakes.

” And none of that would be what she wanted to hear.

It was easier to move on than to face the blow of yet another disappointment.

Erin gave her a melancholy smile. “Maybe read it sometime when you’re ready. Even if you think you know what’s in it, it may help give you more closure to see it in his handwriting. To read it in his words.”

Lennon picked at a fingernail. “Yeah, maybe. I’ll think about it.”

Erin scooped the diced sweet potato into a colorful container, then grabbed an onion and started peeling it. Lennon’s eyes almost started watering like a Pavlovian response. “So, what are you getting up to today?”

Lennon blew air through her lips, making them vibrate. She carried the bowl to the sink half a step away as she answered, “Well, I’m debating between going back to bed, crying, or watching sitcom reruns all day. Or I may live on the wild side and do all three .”

“Whatever you need, babe,” Erin encouraged. “Give yourself a day to wallow and process everything. Just don’t let yourself spiral too much.”

“Spiral? Me? Pfft. ” Lennon rolled her eyes as she rinsed out the bowl. “That’s totally not something I would do.”

Erin raised an eyebrow, shooting her a look that screamed bullshit .

“I’m an artist. We have a lot of feelings , OK?”

“Why don’t you pour some of those feelings into your music?”

Lennon’s chest turned to ice. Suddenly, she wanted to crawl out of her skin. “I don’t want to do anything with music right now,” she said, forcefully scrubbing the bowl with a soapy sponge.

“Why not? That’s what you usually do when you’re upset about something.”

Shame bit at her as she shrugged. “I just don’t want to.” Lennon moved on to scrubbing the spoon, then rinsed it while Erin remained quiet. Lennon knew she was giving her space to work out her shit while Erin likely debated whether it was beneficial to continue this line of conversation.

As Lennon dried the bowl with a dish towel, she admitted, “Right now, it’s a reminder that what I create isn’t good enough. At least, not for a career.”

Erin abruptly ceased chopping. “Lennon,” she said, head cocked to the side with an admonishing look. “Be real.”

“I am! I’m trying to be,” she replied, frustrated. “I may have to accept that I’m not cut out for being a recording artist. At least, not one in the way I’d imagined, with a big record label, going on tour. The life I’d dreamed of may not be possible for me because I … don’t have what it takes.”

Pressure built behind her eyes. Which pissed her off even more.

“I get that you’re frustrated—you have every damn right to be—but I’m not going to let you talk shit about yourself,” Erin said.

Lennon gripped the edge of the counter, leaning onto it. The pressure that began behind her eyes now spread to every inch of her body, desperate to push its way out. “I just … I can’t believe they preferred to cut their losses rather than waste more time on me. I wasn’t even worth the effort.”

The last statement sliced a deep wound open. Its roots snaked through the darkest parts of her. Bullying in grade school. Her father leaving. Her mother refusing to support her dreams. Dylan putting everything else ahead of her during their embarrassingly short marriage.

And now, the one thing she thought she did well—the one thing she thought no one could take away from her, on which she had banked everything—had proved to be yet another way in which she was not enough.

Lennon turned her head as a few tears slipped down her flushed cheeks.

The hum of the window AC unit filled the silence.

After nearly a minute, she found the courage to look back at the phone.

Erin had picked hers up, holding it closer to her bare, sun-kissed face.

Her eyes shone glassy as she wiped a tear from her cheek. The sight disarmed Lennon.