I park in front of the vegan Mexican place where I’m meeting my mom for dinner. The restaurant, on the fancy stretch of mid-Melrose, is one of my favorites. While I’m not vegan, I strictly follow whatever diet involves consuming this place’s soyrizo burritos in high quantities. In more practical terms, I’ve learned the restaurant’s cozy relationship with celebrities means they understand important points like discreet seat placement.
I power off my car’s electric engine. Usually, this is when my music system would fade out. Tonight, however, there’s only continued silence. I drove here from Harcourt Homes without music, which I only do when I’m really rattled.
I’m going to need some exquisite vegan horchata to wash from my mouth the taste of my conversation with Max. What frustrates me isn’t just his refusal. It’s the revelation that he doesn’t even listen to my music. If Max were releasing music, I’d be following him on Spotify, streaming on every release day.
But Max gave up music in college.
I figured he was watching my career with even the slightest interest. Finding out he’s not, I don’t know how I feel. My pride hurts. Maybe my heart, too.
I’m not still in love with Max Harcourt. He’s just . . . still important to me, in some way my soul refuses to forget. It’s like knowing which way the compass points even when my life’s journey is leading me in other directions. I guess I just wanted some sign I was important to him, too.
Whatever. This is the best year of my career. I’m determined to enjoy it, no matter whether Max Harcourt listens to my music or not.
In the restaurant’s entryway, the heavy heels of my boots thud on the intricate tile under the conical overhead lights. The design here coheres in unexpected ways, this perfect mélange of old-school character and modern California cool. Conversation carries in from the patio over the clinking of glasses with elaborate garnishes.
I follow the sound onto the expansive flagstone space. In the corner, I find my mom seated at our table. She’s left me the chair facing away from the street.
I used to get recognized occasionally before The Breakup Record, more often when I was out with Wesley. Now, if I’m not careful, it’s unnervingly easy for crowds to form, crushing in with cameras and prying questions. Going out in public feels like feeding wolves. Of course they’re excited to see you. It’s just very easy for the excitement to darken into something more ravenous.
The fame I’ve found with The Breakup Record intimidates even while it exhilarates me, honestly. The “M” for millions on the follower count under the checkmark next to my name on Instagram, the heyday surrounding my label’s SUV leaving The Tonight Show when I debuted “The Final Word,” one of my favorite new songs. Sharing my music with countless listeners on the country’s largest stages is the stuff of my lifelong dreams.
Yet—fame like this is irreversible in ways I’m still grappling with. I remember when, inside the last nine months, I could grab sushi in Santa Monica, smile in some fans’ selfies, then head home to my pre-Wesley house off the curb on Crescent Heights, where I never worried whether the hedges were high enough to keep paparazzi out.
Melrose fortunately has the benefit of being peppered with celebrities and having a culture of be cool around them. Half the people on this patio are probably in either the film or music industry.
I sit. Despite my dark mood, I have to smile when I notice how much my mom stands out here. In this expanse of high fashion, Carrie Wynn, with her short blond hair looking exactly like it does on every other occasion, is wearing her favorite purple sweater, which eschews style for comfort. My mom is Midwestern to the max. It’s from her I get my genuineness, never mind how different our genuine selves look.
She glances up from the menu, pleasantly surprised. “You’re on time,” she observes. “You said you would be late.”
“My errand wrapped up faster than I thought,” I say lightly.
“Everything okay?” Mom’s eyes laser in on me. I pretend to read the menu, hoping I can evade her intuition.
“Everything is great,” I lie. “Should we get the nachos?”
This underhanded ploy works exactly like I expected. The mention of the nachos distracts my mother. “I can make those at home,” she says disapprovingly.
I purse my lips to suppress my laugh. My mother has long held the philosophy of never ordering from a restaurant something she already has a tried-and-true recipe for. Which, for me, includes the entire menu. My mom, however, former housewife and personal chef to my dad and me my whole life, has developed a formidable culinary repertoire. While I’m not certain she could recreate these nachos—which infuse dragon fruit with mole-drizzled cashew cheese covering effervescently crunchy chips—I don’t point this out.
“Okay, you pick,” I reply.
“Why don’t we get the gorditas,” she declares. While what she’s said is grammatically a question, she’s not asking.
I wave down our waiter. When he swings by our table, I notice his jolt of recognition, then he recovers his composure. “What can I get started for you?” His voice is friendly, casual. He’s pretty good, this one.
I match his noncommittal warmth, following one of my publicist’s pointers. If you’re overfriendly, people will think you’re obsessed with being recognized. If you’re disaffected, they’ll think you’re a bitch. “The gorditas to start, please,” I say, smiling. “And horchata for both of us.”
When he leaves, my mom wastes no time. “So the furniture is fully moved. I’ve unpacked your bathrooms, your kitchen. You’re a thirty-year-old woman, and you can unpack your clothes. Besides, you have so many of them, I wouldn’t know where to start. It’s time I book my ticket home.”
My smile slips. “You don’t have to leave so fast.”
“Yes. I do.” In my mom’s immediate reply, I’m pretty sure I hear something other than impatience. “You don’t need me, and you certainly don’t want to be living with your mother. I have to go home. Sort through my own house.”
I fall silent, wishing I had my horchata just for something to do with my hands. Like our matching brown eyes, my mom and I now have matching divorces, just months apart. Of course, my parents’ ended thirty-five years of marriage; mine, three months. When I asked her to fly to LA to help me move out of the Malibu house I’d just bought with Wesley and into my new place in the Hills, I knew my mom would welcome the distraction. We both would.
“Dealing with . . . home could wait, Mom,” I say. In the humming glow of the patio heaters, I wonder if it’s visible how my cheeks color from my ineloquence. When you center your entire career on evoking emotion with the perfect lyrics, it’s funny how the right words sometimes desert you when you need them. I press on. “How about you come on tour with me instead?”
Mom lets out a baffled laugh.
“Tour is . . . your dad’s thing,” she explains when she realizes I’m not joking. “You know I’m so proud of you, but I’d just get in the way. I need to live my own life, hon.”
I nod patiently, having known she would say this. It’s true my dad taught me guitar. On my first tour, he came to half my shows. Would he be delighted to come on my next tour? Of course he would. In fact, I know he would.
“I actually talked to Dad about this,” I say delicately.
Immediately, my mom’s forced sunniness clouds over.
“It was his idea,” I continue.
I went on a long drive days ago in between tour rehearsals so I could catch up with him, his gravelly voice from my car’s speakers filling the quiet interior while I followed the Pacific Coast Highway without destination. The conversation was nice, if a little painful. Although the divorce was mutual, neither of my parents is happy with the development.
However, my dad has his career, land surveying in St. Louis. My mom gave up hers when she had me. I have no siblings, and neither does she. Even the saddest songs I’ve ever heard don’t capture the hurt of imagining my mom alone in her house—our house, once—with no one. My dad felt the same way.
Mom fusses petulantly in her seat. “I thought one of the effects of divorce was not having to listen to what my ex-husband thinks I should do.”
“He still cares about you. He worries,” I say gently. “And he’s not the only one.”
Knowing every line on my mom’s face means I can pick out exactly when her resistance softens, despite her expression hardly changing. Unspeaking, she gazes past me to where the string lights illuminating the intricately gardened patio glow over the diners. “I’m fine,” she says, scoffing unconvincingly.
I shift my head to find her eyes. My penetrating stare is the one I learned from her.
It works. “Okay, I’m not fine-fine,” she amends. “I’m getting there, though. I’m fine enough on my own, hon,” she says, her voice settling into the self-sacrificial conviction I know she’s spent decades learning. “You don’t have to take your sad divorced mom on tour with you. I don’t need a babysitter.”
“What if I do?” I improvise. I pride myself on my capacity for winging it, inventing magic from nothing. No matter how prepared everything I do is nowadays, nobody gets where I have without knowing how to improvise. “This tour is going to be huge,” I go on. “Everyone on my team acts like they’re on my side, but really they’re in it for themselves. I could use someone who is there just for me. The person, not, you know—Riley Wynn.” I say my name like it’s written in lights. “I need you,” I finish.
The moment I do, I know I’ve found my angle. It feels like hearing the perfect riff unfold from my fingertips. Playing on my mom’s instinct to do whatever I need is how I’ll convince her to do what she needs.
“You butt,” Mom says, evidently feeling my rhetorical hand.
I laugh—noticing she’s not arguing. Like when I feel the audience is with me, I ride my momentum. “It’ll be fun!” I promise her. “Single ladies on tour! Hey, you can stay on the bus with me! We’ll watch bad movies and eat crap!”
While my mom frowns, the disapproval doesn’t reach her eyes. She’s warming up to the idea.
I’m preparing to extol the virtues of Tour Bus Movie Nights when my phone vibrates. My publicist’s name on the notification gets me to reluctantly swipe the conversation open.
My ex-husband’s face greets me in the iMessage conversation. His unchanging grin stares out from the still of the TikTok my publicist sent me. Feeling less hungry now, I click the link.
When I hear the music, I’m grateful I keep my phone’s volume low. The piano rhythm under the first verse of “Until You” is one song I do not need noticed coming out of my speakers in the middle of dinner on Melrose.
In the video, Wesley brushes his teeth shirtless, obviously proud of the shower-glistening pecs he’s developed for the medieval period drama he just signed on to. While he’s not the hunky sort, he’s conscious enough of his ebony-haired, chiseled gravitas to understand “unlikely” sex symbol status is one more opportunity to exploit for his own gain.
In front of the mirror in the modern bathroom I called ours for, like, six weeks, he grooves to the most recognizable lyrics in the country right now. My lyrics. Woke up with my heart under your fingers, I sing near the end of the opening verse.
When I reach under your fingers, he winks into the camera.
Indignation pounding in my heart, I check out the video’s specifics. Millions of views since he posted this morning. Of course. Of course he’s reaping only rewards for this shit. He knows what he’s doing on social media, feeding #WesleyTok with fancast responses, winking references to rumors, everything to boost his internet-loved persona.
The video is far from his first featuring my music. When we were married, he would humorously caption clips of him frowning with idiosyncratic stuff I’d “gotten mad at him for,” with some of my more vengeful songs for musical accompaniment.
His viewers lapped up the self-deprecating clowning—and certain male-pattern fanboys loved how relatable the complaints of his nasty wife made him. Ignore the comments, Wesley would say.
Of course, my label fucking loves it. While I’ve refrained from requesting my publicist chasten his for content like he’s just posted, I’m honestly not sure the label would cooperate if I did. They wish I would hype my music on social media more, which I won’t. Frankly, my label flacks have no idea how it feels reading the shit I expose myself to whenever I post.
The fact that Wesley is doing the new-media promo for them, even if it shifts the glory to him, makes him their hero. One of the flashiest rising stars in the world promoting my music online? Well, who cares how much it hurts the musician.
Fury unfurls in my cheeks, searing my face unpleasantly under the restaurant’s patio heaters.
It’s nothing compared to how I feel when I open the caption, though.
Divorced life = not so bad when you inspired Riley’s best bop.
I feel my fingers clench on the custom iPhone case I commissioned from one of my favorite social media–famous designers. What pisses me off isn’t just Wesley racking up more internet credit for my work. Not this time.
It’s his fucking word choice. Bop? I love songs I would consider bops, including songs of mine. “Until You” isn’t one of them. While Wesley knows nothing of the songwriting of “Until You,” the whole point is the ripped-open longing I put into every note. Fucking “bop” changes not the song’s value but its purpose. Its meaning, to listeners, to me.
Which he knows. He went to Yale Drama. He’s done Shakespeare. He knows what words mean, how words feel. He knows me well enough to understand how it would crawl under my skin for him to misconstrue the work I’m proudest of in this way.
“What’s wrong?” My mom’s question is part instantaneous protectiveness, part relief that she’s no longer the subject of inquisition.
“Just the same. Fucking Wesley,” I say honestly. “I can’t believe I actually married that asshole.” Grunting in frustration, I flip my phone face down on the table. Mom needs no more explanation—when we weren’t unpacking silverware or framed photographs, we spent nights unpacking my ill-fated marriage. There were tears. There were hugs like I haven’t needed since I was sixteen.
She’s silent for a moment. I start figuring out my response to my publicist. While I don’t want them to feel like I endorse or welcome Wesley’s ill-intentioned humor, if I resist overenthusiastically, they’ll pressure me to do my own social media instead. I’ll have to say something noncommittally sarcastic—
“Maybe I can come on part of the tour,” my mom says.
I look up, hope leaping into my heart. Of course the moment I wasn’t plying her to join me on tour is what persuaded her. Nothing reaches people like real emotion. Just like songwriting. “Oh my god, yes,” I reply instantly. “It’s going to be so much fun. I promise.”
Mom rolls her eyes, looking pleased. “You’re going to be sick of me in three cities,” she comments as the waiter returns with our gorditas. “I guarantee it.”
When the horchata is set down, I pounce on mine. It’s perfect. Milky, sweet comfort over ice. “We’ll see,” I say playfully, not meaning it. My plan may have been to ease my mom’s transition to divorce, but I can feel the truth even now. I might need my mom more than my mom needs this tour.