29

One Month Later

Los Angeles

“LILY?”

There’s a quick knock on my dressing room before the door opens and Ray ushers in Tess and Sammy. He checks his watch and gives me hurry-up eyes while the distant, throbbing hum of an eager crowd vibrates in the walls around us. It’s only been an hour since we finished sound check, but it seems like I’ve been backstage for a lifetime, staring vacantly at my heavily made-up reflection, listening to the insistent chanting, the echoes of my name tumbling into the room each time the door is opened.

“Li-ly! Li-ly! Li-ly!”

I shift to the edge of the L-shaped couch, tugging at the tassels on my short sequined skirt. Tess and Sammy perch carefully on either side of me. I look back and forth between them and force a shaky smile.

“Any sign?” I ask, trying not to get my hopes up.

I watch in the mirror as they share a look. Sammy shakes her head. “The seats are still empty . . . Sorry, Bird.”

I nod slowly. It’s been weeks since Noel and I have spoken—we texted a bit in the beginning right after I left the island, but then things got too crazy, and it was easier, for both of us, I think, to make a clean break. Before we stopped talking, I sent him and Sidney tickets to the first show, but I never really believed they’d fly all the way out here. It’s not that I’m surprised, but there’s a part of me that has been holding out hope, and now the disappointment sinks in my gut like a stone.

“Nice digs.” Tess glances around the swanky dressing room approvingly. It’s the first time I’ve gotten ready for a show without them, and I know that’s part of the reason I’m feeling so off.

“I think maybe this was a mistake,” I say, as if there’s still time to change my mind. As if I could duck out the side door and run back to the hotel without anybody noticing. Curl up with room service and an on-demand movie. The thought is so tempting it makes my whole body ache.

Sammy grabs my hand and squeezes it tight, while Tess shakes her head. Her hair has started to grow out, the short pieces underneath now feathery layers mixed in with the rest.

“You’re just freaking out,” she says flatly. She stands and pulls me to my feet, dragging me over to the mirror. “Look at yourself. You look . . .”

“I know,” I say, grimacing at my shimmery leotard, the slinky skirt. “I look ridiculous.”

Tess shakes her head, this time defiantly. She pushes me closer to the mirror. “You look phenomenal,” Tess insists. “You look like a star.”

“You do,” Sammy echoes. “And it’s okay to be nervous. But you’re going to be great. Rehearsals have been going well, right?”

I scoff at my reflection. Rehearsals have been brutal. I’ve had to cram months’ worth of new choreography and new set and costume changes into a handful of weeks. When I got back to the city, I was so out of shape that I could barely make it through an hour without collapsing. Lounging on a beach all summer didn’t exactly prepare me to leap around onstage in high heels for twelve hours a day. And emotionally, I was a wreck—I was convinced I’d made a terrible mistake. I was distracted, and everyone knew it. Terry tried to mask his concern, but I could feel him watching me whenever I missed a step or fumbled a lyric, waiting for me to break down.

Then little by little, I snapped out of it. Learning the intricate steps, wearing the glittering costumes—it’s been like a mini boot camp. I’ve had to relearn how to give myself over to something bigger than me, to the beautiful chaos of the tour machine, the theater of life on the road.

But there are still moments every day when it all comes back in flashes: when I see a guy with Noel’s same broad shoulders working on set, hunched over a hammer, or when, running through lyrics, I remember the island, the life I could be living, the life I left behind.

“Bird, you’ve got this,” Sammy says, as if reading my mind.

Tess holds out a hand. “Come on,” she says. “Why would we lie? It’s not like there’s anything in it for us anymore.” She winks at me and I follow nervously, the pulsing vibrations growing more intense as we near the door to the hall.

“Wait!” Sam calls out from behind us. She’s bent over a side table, fiddling with her phone. When she straightens, the cheery introductory beat of our favorite preshow Madonna song blasts through a portable speaker.

“I can’t believe we almost forgot.” Tess grins. “You can’t go onstage without a dance party warm-up.”

Tess drops my hand and does a quick series of “Vogue”-inspired moves, beckoning me to join her. Sammy’s arms are in the air, her face upturned as she shouts the lyrics at the ceiling. I laugh and feel the nerves settle into something closer to familiar anticipation and giddy excitement.

Something I can work with.

We dance and laugh until we’re sweaty and out of breath, until Ray pokes his head in to tell us it’s time.

My friends walk me to the wings and hug me tight, before ducking back to their seats on the other side. I watch them disappear and feel the stadium swelling around me. I squeeze my eyes shut and lose myself in the thousands of voices. There’s a bustle of activity, people fussing with my hair, my clothes, pushing me into position beneath the stage, where I’ll be shut into a glass elevator and lifted into view.

“Ready?” somebody on the crew asks. The machinery creaks and groans, the moving set is swallowed in darkness except for the streaks of light filtering through cracks overhead.

There’s a whoosh inside of me, a great, sudden shift. Everything gets quiet.

It’s just me. I know what I have to do.

“I’m ready,” I say as the doors close around me and the floor starts to move, inching me up toward the light.

I stand onstage, my chest heaving, the final notes of a song echoing in the air. Lights swirl across the stadium in crisscrossing formation, shining back into the far reaches of the mezzanines, sweeping over hands and fingers and faces, tens of thousands of eyes on me.

I’m halfway through the first set, and my heart is racing, my cheeks sore from smiling nonstop. I’d forgotten this: that the first night of tour—after all the hard work of choreographing and rehearsing and planning and sound-checking—is always exhilarating. It’s the pure joy of looking out at the sea of smiling, shouting, singing faces. Young faces, old faces, some in shy pairs and some in gleeful groups. Some faces are familiar, like my parents’ in the front row, or Tess’s and Sammy’s, who, for the first time in years, are cheering in the audience and not frazzled and busy, hard at work backstage. It’s a thrill like nothing I’ve felt before, a heart-blasting, blood-pumping energy in my veins, a bliss-filled balloon stretching between my ribs.

It’s always been like this, the magic and euphoria I feel being back after a long break. But tonight, it’s magnified and mixed with bittersweet relief. Sammy and Tess were right: Despite everything that’s happened this summer, despite all my fears, I can still get up here and do what I do. I can do it with everything that I have, everything that I’ve become. I can do it and still be me.

Now, as I stand onstage, the last chords fading around me and the deafening cheers dying down to a low rumble, I walk carefully to where the piano has been wheeled out. I told the crew I wanted to try something new tonight. After the opening, after I’d played a few favorites, I wanted to take a few minutes and just chat, as if I were sitting in my living room with a couple of friends. I’m pretty sure they all thought I’d lost it, but they humored me, and now the piano is here and the stadium is buzzing with a charged, expectant silence.

My stomach flip-flops and my pulse rages in my ears. Before I sit down, I lock eyes with Tess and Sammy. Their arms are linked and they’re smiling like proud parents at a recital. I know I couldn’t have done this without them. I also know that when the weekend is over, when the tour moves on and they head off to begin their own adventures, we’ll all be just fine. We won’t see each other as much, we’ll have to work harder to keep in touch, but friends like these don’t need titles, or daily check-ins, or routines. Friends like these are forever.

I sit at the piano bench, angling my crazy, impossible-to-walk-in lace-up stilettos toward the crowd. “Hi, guys,” I say, adjusting my microphone’s headpiece. The crowd explodes as if I’ve just given them all free cars. I giggle and hear my voice echoing overhead, wondering if I’ll ever get used to this. I hope that I never do.

“I had an idea,” I shout above the cheers. “It may be crazy, but I just want to . . . Would you mind if I talked to you for a minute? I promise I’ll get back to the music soon, but there are a few things I want to say first. Is that cool?”

There’s a roar and the lights come down, spotlighting me at the piano. I pull the bench in closer, leaning one elbow against the lid to get comfortable. I smile at the glow of tens of thousands of cell phones and cameras, each one like a tiny flame in a sea of shifting, silent bodies.

“First of all, thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for giving me the chance to disappear this summer,” I say. “I’m going to be totally honest with you: I needed it. I was feeling . . . I was sad. And tired. And confused. And sometimes, when you’re sad and tired and confused, you need to take a break. You need to hang out with the girls who knew you when you were a kid. You need to be that kid again. And that’s what I did.”

I find Tess and Sammy again in the darkness, the lights of the stage reflected in their smiling eyes. I take a deep breath.

“Also . . . I met someone this summer.”

There’s another, sudden roar, cheers and chants, and I see a few flapping signs that say things like: WHERE’S NOEL? and WE LOVE NOEL! with giant hearts and arrows. I keep smiling, holding up my hands until the quiet returns.

“I know, I know,” I say. “You wanted him to be here. I wanted him to be here, too. But sometimes . . . sometimes . . .”

The words falter. I’d had a whole speech planned, but now, sitting in front of thousands of hopeful faces, I’ve lost it. Being this honest about Noel is more difficult than I’d anticipated. I take a deep breath, trying to remind myself that this is the point. Not everything can be easy all of the time. Sometimes, the hard parts are what help us grow the most.

All night, I’ve been avoiding a certain section of the crowd, the seats I’d saved for Noel and Sid. But now I feel my eyes drawn there, as if my body needs a visual reminder. As if I need to remember the crazy love and the painful loss and the enduring heartache that pushed me to bare my soul here in the first place.

I steel myself and glance over the front rows, searching for the pair of empty seats . . . and then my stomach drops.

There, in the third row, are Noel and Sidney.

A sharp, piercing pain squeezes around my heart. The room starts to spin. I blink and look again. Sidney is standing on her seat, one arm resting on Noel’s shoulder. I can tell by Noel’s posture that his hands are stuffed in his pockets. He looks sheepishly from side to side. Sidney waves one arm goofily over her head.

They’re here. They came. My heart soars, a wide smile pushing across my face. But as soon as I turn back to the piano, a new and paralyzing fear creeps in. Here I am, about to do the same thing I’ve always done: share myself with thousands of strangers, invite them into my life in a way that might make some people uncomfortable. In a sense, it’s the very thing that tore me and Noel apart. Is it worth it? Is it what I really want to do?

I look back at Noel, and our eyes lock. Beneath the uncertainty, beneath the fidgeting discomfort, I see him smile. And I know that he’s okay. He’ll be okay, and so will I. Which is funny, because that’s just what I wanted to say tonight: Even if things don’t work out exactly the way you’d hoped, even if it’s not your perfect, happy ending, everything is going to be okay. Falling in love isn’t everything.

It’s a lot. But it’s not everything.

I clear my throat and go on.

“Sometimes, life gives you all kinds of stuff at once, and you have to make choices. Sometimes what you want and what you need will be two different things. Sometimes life won’t make sense, and things will be complicated, and it won’t be easy. The choices won’t be easy. But you’re going to be okay. We’re going to be okay. Because right here, right now, I choose all of you.”

The stadium erupts and I stand up, now close to shouting, just to hear myself over the deafening roar. “You are the reason all my dreams have come true. You are the reason I get to do the thing I love most in the world every day and every night. I get to write songs, and we get to sing them together. So, as long as you show up, I’ll show up, too. As long as you’re here, I’ll be here, too. Deal?”

There are whoops and shouts and I laugh, returning to the piano and pushing back the lid. I lay my hands on the keys, pressing into them slowly. I play the first few bars of “Let It Be,” improvising until my fingers find the right, new chords.

“So this song is for all of you. It’s for anyone who has a choice to make. Anyone who’s still waiting. It’s called ‘Dear Sid,’ and I wrote it for a very special friend of mine.”

I sneak a glance at the crowd and see Sidney with her hands up to her face, her eyes wide and glistening.

I turn back to the piano.

I close my eyes and take a breath.

I sing.