Page 32

SINCE SEBASTIAN HAD called off work today, I invited Gigi over to my parents’ house.

It was Monday, and she didn’t have anything booked in the morning, so we staked out at the beach with a rainbow-colored umbrella planted in the sand.

I had hoped to spend today with Mom, but it was a bad day, so she stayed in bed, and I wasn’t sure how to navigate her bad days yet.

They didn’t look how I thought they would, though now that I was here I wasn’t really sure what I had expected.

Someone lost in her memories? Unable to tell the year from the day?

I’d watched YouTube videos and read firsthand accounts to prepare, but her bad days—at least for now—were just days where she simply stayed in bed.

They were days that looked more like a steady creep of depression, and maybe at the moment, that’s what it was.

The beach in front of my parents’ house wasn’t private, but it’d always been pretty barren, until a few years ago, when some TikTok influencer spilled about the hidden beach access lot, and so now it was just as crowded as everywhere else.

A family had set up shop right beside us, and a soccer ball kept whizzing by our heads, too close for comfort.

I stared at a text from Rooney, checking in. Should I send her another margarita emoji or … ?

“I think I might take a trip inland on Wednesday for supplies before the hurricane gets here,” Gigi said, putting down her book. It was the newest big fantasy romance—something about fairy kings and encyclopedias. “Wanna come?”

I decided to figure out the Rooney of it all later and dropped my phone in my purse. “Sure—oh, wait.” I winced, remembering. “I can’t.”

“Doing something with your mom?”

“Not quite …” I realized I’d never told Gigi about getting ice cream with Van or our upcoming dinner date.

So I bit the bullet, and I told her.

Gigi, as predicted, was not cool about it. At all.

“Sebastian’s right there and you choose Van ?” she asked in disbelief, sitting up on her beach towel. She abandoned her book in the sand and turned to me.

“It’s not what you think.” I was about to explain, and then realized that I still hadn’t told her about my burnout, or the fact that I was stuck, or that I felt that maybe hanging out with Van could spark some sort of inspiration in me—

It felt like an elephant in the room at this point. I should tell her. Everything. I began to muster up my courage, when she gave a loud sigh and slumped back on her towel. “What I wouldn’t give to have your life sometimes.”

And that courage died on my tongue.

She went on, “What’s it like having a hot ex back in the picture and a pop star vying for your heart?”

“We’re just cowriters,” I insisted weakly.

“Mm-hmm.”

Maybe now wasn’t the time to tell her. “It wouldn’t work out between us. We all know that. Besides, he’s infuriating sometimes.”

Gigi crossed her arms behind her head. “Oh?”

“First off, did you know that he’s classically trained?”

“Yes, I told you that. Like, fifteen years ago.”

“Well, it’s maddening.”

“Because he’s talented?”

I began to respond, but then thought better of it because what if I accidentally projected it to him? I did not need him getting a bigger head. “And anyway, he’s thoughtful and he remembers my coffee order and he’s even got a nickname for me—bird. Bird! ”

Gigi propped herself up on her elbow, watching me with a growing smile.

“And I thought I could, I don’t know, make him look like a normal dude if I made him wear an ugly Hawaiian shirt.

But no! He’s still aggravatingly hot in it!

And he knows what I mean even when I don’t say it, and he has this weird faith in me that I don’t even have in myself , and it freaks me out, and even when I can get into his head, I can’t figure him out!

And it’s not like I want to figure him out, because I don’t care, but I don’t not care, either, you know? ” I pursed my lips. “I think.”

“Oh, dear,” Gigi noted. “You’ve got it bad.”

I shot her an alarmed look. “No, I don’t. I’m going on a date with Van . Not Sebastian .”

“Right, that . And that’s what you want?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

Gigi flopped back onto her towel, putting her sunglasses back on. “I dunno. He did a shitty thing to you. I just don’t want you to get your heart broken like that again.”

“I won’t. I’m not that girl anymore,” I replied, turning my gaze out to the ocean. The family beside us sent a soccer ball careening behind us and into the dunes. A kid ran after it. “And he’s not that guy anymore.”

“I don’t think people change that much,” Gigi said, checking her watch. “Ugh, I have a telegram in an hour and I probably should shower before I show up as an anatomically correct heart to someone’s anniversary dinner.”

I frowned. “Do you ever think about doing something else?”

“All the time,” she said, and pushed herself up to her feet. She shook out her towel. “But what other jobs let me dress up in sequins and sing?”

“Not many,” I admitted. I thought again about asking her if Mitchell had popped any sort of life-altering question—Mom had given him the ring so he could ask her, after all—but I figured that if he had, Gigi would’ve told me.

She wouldn’t keep something like that a secret. Not from me.

“Want me to walk you to your car?” I asked, beginning to gather my things, but she motioned for me to stay.

“I think I’m going to go use your shower to wash the sand off and go, so no worries. Wyn’s on a bad day?”

“Yeah. She’s in bed. She was fine this morning, but when she remembered she’d misplaced the Folgers jar and we haven’t found it yet, she went back to bed. And now Dad’s turning the house upside down looking for it.”

“It’s somewhere,” Gigi said, “and she’ll be better tomorrow. I’ll pop my head in to tell her hi.” Gigi waved goodbye, saying she’d see me at the Rev tomorrow, and picked her way up the hot sand to the tiny wooden archway into my parents’ backyard, and by then she was lost behind the sand dunes.

I lay back down on the towel and closed my eyes.

The wind whipped across the beach, rattling the umbrella, and the seagulls squawked back and forth, and the family with the soccer ball lost it somewhere in the waves.

A little ways down the beach, someone had brought a radio, and it crackled with a power-pop ballad.

I couldn’t make out the song—the waves were too loud and the seagulls too annoying and the wind too heavy—but I liked the tune.

Bright, bold. Peppy. The kind of sound that made you want to twirl fast, arms wide, and land exhausted in a sand dune.

It was the taste of cherry licorice on your tongue.

Sun on your shoulders. Strong hands gliding over piano keys, a ballad of seagulls, moonlight painting the beach in silver linings, sticky-sweet strawberry kiwi margaritas, hands on your waist, a mouth against your ear, a secret and a promise.

It sounded like …

Wait— that was it.

Jerking to sit up, I dug my notebook out of my beach bag and flipped to a clean page. The melody flared, sunny and bold, in my head. I jotted down a few chords. A word, and then another.

“You’re writing,” Sasha said softly.

I was relieved to hear his voice, strangely enough. Am I singing in my head?

“No, but I can feel your joy. It feels like—like being at the top of a roller coaster just before the drop. It’s so bright and—addicting. Happy.”

Don’t you feel like that when you’re creating?

“I don’t think I ever have, but I like it when you do. What do you have so far?”

Well —I flipped back a page— I can show you. If you wanna get back to work tomorrow?

I couldn’t see his grin, but I could feel it as he said, “I can hardly wait.”