After spending twenty-eight days in Rancho Mirage for rehab, I came back to LA and craved something totally different. Recording.
I’d had a lot of time with my thoughts and my journal. So much writing that my journal filled up, and I treated myself to a brand-new journal for being one month sober. The second month sober, Miles popped open a bottle of sparkling cider to celebrate being back in the recording studio, and even Corbin was blown away with what we came up with.
“This is a real album,” Corbin said three songs into the second full-length album. “I think this is the best way to answer all the questions everyone has.”
The first album was a thirteen-song collection we wrote from the ages of eighteen to twenty-three. Songs that dealt with growing up, partying, lust, and one song about death. But we’d grown so much since then, especially within the last year. The second album only had three songs recorded, but we had the list finalized. Songs about falling in love, heartbreak, addiction, and life and death. That gnawing feeling I had when I needed a drink now became a need to record. To get my voice back out there. To tell my side of the all the stories the internet told.
To continue celebrating two months sober, Miles and I went over to Mom’s house for dinner with her and Greg. She made my favorite: cheesy chicken casserole with a layer of shredded cheddar cheese underneath a thick layer of cornflakes. It wasn’t nutritious in the slightest, but it made my stomach and heart happy. I played her and Greg the three songs we recorded, and the song I wrote during my alcohol withdrawals made Mom cry and even Miles teared up a bit.
“Blair, you know how proud I am of you?” Mom said as she walked up behind me and hung her arms around my neck and shoulders, kissing me on the cheek.
It was a vast difference from when I told her two months prior about the drinking and the drugs. Her reaction was still engrained forever in my memory, and while I shivered, ached, and sobbed during my withdrawals, doubting my ability to make it through, I pictured Mom sobbing while yelling at me when I told her about the coke. Then I wondered what the hell Gramps would have done if he were still alive. That was what kept me going. As hard as it was. All those nights I lost sleep from the desire, from the pain igniting my bones, from the sweat sticking to my sheets. I wanted to get my life back because I really wasn’t living if I couldn’t even remember what were supposed to be the best days of my life.
Miles and I sat on the balcony, full of cheesy chicken casserole and homemade mashed potatoes—Grandma’s delicious recipe with sour cream, chives, and bacon. I had my new journal on my lap, on a page with freshly written lyrics. The words hadn’t stopped pouring out of my pen since I entered rehab and began reconstructing my whole life.
And the more I changed myself, the more I thought about her.
“Is it good?” Miles asked, pointing to my journal and opening a can of Coke.
I shrugged. “Just something that popped into my head.”
“I wonder who it’s about,” he said facetiously.
As he sat in the chair next to me, he swept his hair to the side and then looked at a sparkling Los Feliz with a little glimmer of downtown LA in the faint distance. I had to ask him the question that had been stuck in my head.
“Have you seen her?”
He looked at me with a confused stare. “Hmm?”
“Have you seen Reagan?”
“Ah,” he said and directed his gaze back at the hills. “I was wondering when you would ask.”
“So, that’s a yes?”
He took a sip from his Coke. “She invited me over about a month ago.”
“A month ago? Well, Jesus, where the hell was I?”
“Here with your mom.”
“And I’m just finding this out now?”
“I’m wasn’t gonna tell my best friend one month out of rehab that I was going to see her ex-girlfriend. I’m terrified of you relapsing, Blair. I just wanna protect you from shit. I wasn’t trying to keep anything from you.”
His eyes were soft, and I could see the residual hurt I’d left in him looking straight back at me. I was afraid of relapsing too. They kept drilling in my head that it was so common. And there were so many urges to drink more so than to do drugs. But two months in, I still stood firm, but also felt incredibly vulnerable.
“I’m scared too,” I said. “I just…well…did you guys talk?”
“No, we sat around in silence and stared at the walls.” He faced me, biting a smile. “Of course we talked.”
“You know what I mean.”
“We mostly talked about Meraki. Talked set lists, and then we talked about the rest of the tour—”
“And why Jessie Byrd was there?”
“If you want to know the answer to your question, it’s yes.”
“I haven’t even asked a question.”
“You don’t have to. I already know all of them.”
“Oh yeah? And what are they?”
He twisted around, tucking his knees into his chest and then looking skyward. “‘Did she ask about me? Does she miss me? Does she still think about me? Does she wonder how I’m doing? Does she still have feelings for me?’ The answer is yes.”
My heart raced, and all the questions and words that were going to follow vanished in my head because my brain couldn’t keep up with all this information. “How do you…how do you know?”
“Because she asked about you. She asked how you were doing, and I told her that you were doing amazing. That your spirits were high, that you’re so invested in the second album and staying sober, that you’re excited to record, like that’s all you want to do is record, and it’s sometimes annoying. That you’re so ready to get back on the stage for Meraki, and how I’m so fucking happy that I have my best friend back.”
“And what about the other questions? Did she mention those?”
“No, that’s all we talked about regarding you. But she didn’t have to say that she missed you or thought about you or still has feelings for you. I just know by how she asked.”
“Well, how did she ask?”
What was up with Miles and all his annoying cliffhangers?
“Like, how you’re asking me about her right now. With cautious hesitancy. It was like she was holding in that question all night, the same way I think you were holding it in. Am I right?”
I rolled my eyes because I hated so much when Miles knew me better than I knew myself. But the darkness shielded my eye roll from him, therefore not boosting his pride.
I glanced at the homes below us starting to twinkle in the glow of dusk and thought about her more. Picturing her playing with her fingers as she asked Miles about me with trepidation rattling her voice. I wished she told him more. I wished I knew the depths of how she felt about me because it felt like every day that progressed without her, the deeper my feelings for her became.
When I was sixteen, I asked Gramps how he knew he was in love with Grandma. He said it was when he was twenty-six, and he and Grandma had a falling-out because she wanted to get married and start a family when Gramps was at the peak of his performing career. The two broke up when Gramps continued on with his band, and during those two months, he said he really struggled. He drank a lot, he lost a lot of sleep, and he felt like a shell of himself, despite living out the dream he always imagined. On his drive to Memphis to play a show, he heard a brand-new song on the radio from one of his favorite singers, John Denver. The song was “Annie’s Song,” and the beautiful melody and lyrics captivated him. He bought the album and listened to it on repeat for the rest of the day. At that Memphis show, Gramps performed a cover of it, and the only person he could think about was Grandma and how John Denver’s lyrics described how he felt about Grandma to a T. Every time he heard the song, his stomach sank just remembering the woman he lost. So, a few weeks later, he told Grandma he wanted to start a family too. He took a break from his band, got married, had my mom a year later, and occasionally when he and Grandma had a night to themselves to enjoy a date, he’d put the B-side of Back Home Again on his record player so he could share a dance with Grandma to “Annie’s Song.”
“You’ll know you love someone when you listen to ‘Annie’s Song,’ and you feel the love for them in your chest and gut,” he said to me after telling me the story. I asked him how he knew he loved Grandma because I wondered if I was in love with Dana Bohlen. So, to put his theory to the test, we listened to the song on his record player in the living room, and I didn’t feel a single thing. The lyrics made me roll my eyes, I told him the song was lame, and he told me when I matured and found true love I would appreciate the song. I responded by saying he was full of it.
In rehab, I had a lot of time to listen to music, and the song popped up when my music was set to shuffle. I remembered Gramps’s story, and when I fully listened to the song as an adult who missed a woman so terribly, I realized the old man was right this whole time. I could only think about Reagan and all the feelings she injected in me when she kissed me, held me, slept next to me, smiled at me. I didn’t have the urge to roll my eyes or deem the song as “lame.” The lyrics John Denver wrote for his then-wife perfectly described all the feelings swirling inside me. I was in love with Reagan Moore, and admitting that wasn’t terrifying like I always thought it would. It was freeing if anything.
“Can I confess something?” I asked and let out a long, heavy sigh that came from the deepest part of my gut.
“Is it juicy?” Miles asked.
“It’s pretty juicy.”
He sat straight up in his chair eagerly. “Go for it.”
“I think I’m in love with her. Actually, I know I’m in love her.”
“Whoa.”
“I know.”
“Have you ever been in love with anyone before?”
“No.”
His eyes rounded. “So, what are you gonna do about it?”
I thought about it for a moment. “I have an idea.” I bolted out of my seat as an idea formed in my head.
“Hey! Wait! You have to run your ideas by your best friend!”
I ran inside to my room, shut the door, and grabbed a pen. Flipping to the next blank page in my journal, I stared at the empty lines ready to capture all my words I imagined myself saying the next time I saw her. Without putting too much thought in it, I decided that the most heartfelt apology was one that wasn’t heavily edited with too much time, too much doubt, or too much thinking. So, I wrote the first words that came to mind. I wrote as if Reagan stood right in front of me, and I wanted her to hear everything I had to say to her since the last time I saw her.
Reagan,
I have no idea what I’m about to write, but I’m just going to write down everything I feel because it’s all coming out at once.
I owe you an apology that’s beyond the words I can write right now. I put all the hard work you invested in building your career at risk because of my stupid actions, and it wasn’t until I was already off the tour that I was able to fully see the scope of my damage. Hurting you was the last thing I ever wanted to do, and I would take back all the things I said and did in a heartbeat if I could. I want you to know that.
I haven’t stopped thinking about you since I left the tour. You won’t leave my mind, and the ache I have in my stomach keeps getting stronger the more time that passes without you. I know I said and did enough to make you not want to forgive me, and if you don’t forgive me, I understand. But I don’t think I could ever forgive myself if I didn’t give you the proper apology that you deserve and if I didn’t confess all the things I feel about you.
I could go on and on about how I feel about you. Like how you’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever met in my life. How you were the reason I wanted to get out of bed. How every time we kissed, you were able to still give me butterflies. And you still do, Reagan. None of that has changed.
You once asked to look at my journal, and I only showed you one song because it was my most prized possession, and I only gave it to Miles when I wanted him to look over a lyric. But as I finished this book in rehab and I reread all the pages, I realized that ever since last June, you were the theme of all my lyrics. I think my journal can better show you the impact you made on my life better than this letter can.
You might think I threw us away, but I hope this journal proves to you how much you mean to me. No one else has made me feel this way but you.
Blair
P.S. Since this is my most prized possession, I’ll need it back eventually.
I folded the paper and pulled out the finished journal.
Here went nothing.
* * *
A few weeks had passed since I asked Finn to deliver my letter and my journal to Reagan, and now Miles and I were ready to do our first show at the Meraki Music and Arts Festival in the open fields of Tennessee.
I loved taking the stage. It was like walking into a room knowing you had a surprise party waiting for you, and everyone jumped and cheered as they emerged from the darkness, all ecstatic to see you. It never got old. I loved every time Miles kicked the bass drum, and I felt the rhythm in my throat. I loved hearing the chords I created with my fingers—whether on guitar, piano, bass, violin, or whatever instrument—burst through the speakers and elicit another outbreak of cheers.
The stage was my home. And I was so happy to be back.
Once the stage lights flickered off, the crowd grew together in a solid “Woo.” Miles was already behind his drums and started kicking quarter notes on his bass drum as the stage lights flashed for every thump. I stood on the side stage, waiting for my cue, taking one last, deep breath. As much as I was excited for our performance, I was also nervous. This was our first performance since the Minneapolis show back in March. Now here we were in late June, and I wanted our first ever music festival performance to be epic.
Four measures into Miles’s bass drum kicks, I clutched the neck of my Fender and walked out on stage as the red lights flickered upward to each bass drum beat. Our very own concert sonic boom evoked screams that pierced through my in-ears. A clamor of cheers all for Miles and me. We didn’t have to share it. We weren’t opening for anyone. I couldn’t tell how many people showed up to our stage to hear us perform, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more than twenty thousand. All of them came out for us. The crowd mingled with the sunset quickly encompassing us as the sky turned a light orange and pink. Inflatable killer whales, dolphins, and unicorns bounced up and down, and beach balls frolicked over the canopy of raised hands. Most of the bodies that made up the crowd were cloaked in a sparkling layer of sweat and humidity. Some wore headbands around their foreheads. Many of them wearing colorful mismatched outfits, but matching didn’t matter at musical festivals. You could get away with anything.
I waved as I positioned myself behind my looping pedals and the other nine instruments.
“Meraki, how are we doing tonight?” I said into the microphone at center stage, and the audience responded with the same applause that erupted when I walked out. “We’re Midnight Konfusion. Let’s have some fun together.”
After hearing they were ready, I started playing our fun, upbeat, soulful rock song, “1969,” and a smile tugged my lips as I sank into the comfort and familiarity of the thing I loved the most: performing.
Being at a music festival was quite the experience. When we graduated high school, Miles and I saved our graduation money to buy Coachella tickets. Everyone was so happy to be there. No one walked around with a frown. Everyone wanted to be friends. Even in the crowd, tall people made sure the shorter people could see the stage. One guy picked up a girl he didn’t know—who had to have been only five feet tall—and put her on his shoulders. People shared water, booze, drugs. For a very short time, differences didn’t exist. They just came for the music and a good time, and that was all that mattered to anyone. Performing for those people was no different. They projected their energy to the stage, which only inspired us to play with even more heart.
As the night swallowed the sunset and the crowded grass field, glow sticks of every neon color cut through the darkness. All the bodies morphed into a variety of light speckles from their phones, lighters, and glow sticks swaying in the air. I couldn’t see them anymore, but I heard them. Loud and clear. A solid thunderous roar from a drunk crowd pierced through my in-ears. I never heard our lyrics sung that loudly before, it was fucking awesome and addicting.
“Are we still doing okay out there? No one has overheated, right?” I asked, and the roar hit the stage like a wave. “Good.” I turned to my maroon digital piano and tickled the keys in broken chords. “So, we took some time off for the last few months. For personal reasons because sometimes you have to pause, take a break, and reflect to make sure you’re living your best life. And I wasn’t living mine. So, I fixed myself and wrote a lot of songs, and some of those songs are already on the album we’re recording right now. But there’s one I want to test out with you guys tonight. Are we cool with that?”
The masses wooed, and I pressed the pedal and recorded the first loop on the digital piano, playing those broken chords before switching the piano to sound like a synthesizer for the second loop. Then for the third loop, I strapped my Fender on, and moved my fingers up the neck of my guitar, letting individual strings cry out through the speakers. The song was one of the slowest ones I’d ever written. Most of the time, we kept our soulful rock in every song. But our new song took the form of something completely different, and maybe it was the start of a shift to a different kind of sound for our second album. We ditched the distorted electric guitars wailing out seventies rock and a bit of soul for the touch of synth, acoustic guitar, and the classic sounds of the piano.
The song was different because the girl who it was about was completely different. I had to sing this song for her. I hadn’t gotten a response to my journal despite the three weeks that passed by. But I knew Reagan was somewhere on the Meraki premises. I knew she would be watching me. I had to make sure she really knew how sorry I was for everything.
As the loop continued to play, I lowered my Fender so I could play a live layer of piano chords.
“I can feel myself fading from you
Just because I walked away didn’t mean I wanted to
The toxic pools I swam in at night
Remind me of all that went wrong
Searching for it all, just trying to belong
All those nights drinking
Now replaced with the thought of us
I’m sober, just not when it comes to my thoughts.”
Then the chorus came around, and I switched back to the Fender after a measure, strumming against the loop during the chorus. Miles’s drums crescendo was a tease to build up to the climax of the song.
“You’re the one thing I’ve done right in a long time
Now all I have is the memory of your skin on mine
I used to think you were too good to be true
I guess that’s just the feeling of falling for you.”
And then the drums hushed.
“I can see your smile fading from view
Just because I said those things doesn’t mean they’re true
All the songs we used to sing
Remind me of how we begged for love
Searching for it all, just trying to belong
All our nights kissing
Replaced with an empty bed
Filled with all the thoughts that were left unsaid.”
The second time the chorus came, Miles didn’t mute the bass drum, toms, or cymbals. He let them ring out into the audience, who cheered on the progression of the song slowly building. Hearing them send me positive feedback through their cheers and raised hands gave me more courage to sing the rest of the song. If all the people in the crowd seemed hooked by the lyrics and the melody, maybe that meant Reagan would be too. If she was watching.
I hoped she was watching. I performed the song as if I knew for sure she was.
“My love, I regret all the things I did to you
But not for a second do I regret our love
I can still taste our last kiss
Just tell me how to be the girl you miss.”
Miles went all out on the drums, and I could picture his hair flipping back and forth as he got lost in the music. I improvised a few licks on the Fender after singing the chorus once more, playing whatever notes felt natural to how I felt in that moment. Hopeful but hurt. Nostalgic but disappointed. The song at its peak. An assortment of stage lights of reds, blues, and whites lambent toward the sky. I strummed the high notes of the guitar’s neck, and what started off as a soft song now cried in vibrant sounds with the thousands of people in front of me cheering, with their hands still swaying as if they felt all the feelings that comprised the song too.
And then the drums vanished, my cue to stop playing the guitar. I kicked my foot off the loop so the only thing playing was the piano, the simple chords I played during the first verse. I glanced into the audience that stretched throughout the fields as dusk was almost over, knowing that somewhere Reagan was out there in those Tennessee fields. I sang the last two lines softly, “I used to think you were too good to be true. I guess that’s just the feeling of falling for you.”
And then the stage lights flickered to black.
* * *
The next night was Reagan’s night.
Her name lit up the stage in neon pink lights. A sea of people traveled down the hill, a clamor of shrills pierced the night air. I couldn’t tell you how many people were in front of her stage, but I wouldn’t be shocked if she drew in around seventy-five to one hundred thousand, like Taz Jones did about an hour after our performance. I could hear the audience enjoying themselves all the way from our bus where Miles, Corbin, and I sat on chairs outside, drinking Cokes and listening to the distant, thunderous crowd.
Before we weaved in and out of Reagan’s crowd as much as we could to get closer, Miles and I overheard a group of four girls talking about how their friend had been waiting for four hours in her spot up against the metal railings, making sure she was front row for the show. Four hours for us was two shows and a nap ago, and now we stood all the way in the back, far enough that her band was the size of ants.
Since darkness hung in the air, no one recognized us mingled with the rest of the crowd with their hands in the air, ready for Reagan Moore. As one of the three headliners, she drew in practically the whole festival. Or what seemed to be the whole festival. People pushed to get closer once the lights flickered off, and a wave of roaring quickly crept from the front of the stage to where we stood like a tidal wave, and all the fans circling us nudged us. I loved when fans nudged each other when I was on stage, but when I fucked something up and had to subject myself to the far back of a general admission crowd, no, I hated the nudging. The music poured through the giant speakers, and the stage lights flipped on, and when Reagan walked onto the stage, the jumbo screen behind her projected her beauty and her smile all the way back to us, the crowd of seventy-five thousand created a concert sonic boom just as strong as the one we heard at Gillette Stadium.
Watching her beauty on the screen created this optical illusion that I was much closer to her than I was. For a second, I thought her eyes were on me, that the smile brightening her summer-soaked face was for me. Three months had passed, and her smile still found a way to tangle up my insides. A nice reminder of everything I lost so easily. Her smile was so bright, her eyes sparkling with the same kind of excitement and energy she always had before shows; she almost fooled me into thinking she just didn’t go through a breakup a few months back.
A few songs into her hour-and-a-half-long performance, I was already feeling like a pile of crap. Everyone around me bobbed their heads to the beat, singing every lyric. Even Miles. His wide grin matched the ones all around us. Why did I torture myself, insisting on watching her performance, knowing exactly how it would pan out? I waited for her response to my letter because I knew she got it. I didn’t even use the postal service, so the letter wasn’t lost. Finn handed it to her, knowing that it was my olive branch, and he texted me when he gave it to her. No other details followed. Details like if she was happy or sad, if she ripped open the letter, if she had any lingering hope in her eyes. I didn’t hear if she heard my performance. All was quiet on the Benmoore front.
Now, I was unworthy to even catch her eyes from up close. I was pushed so far back that her face blurred into the complexion of her summer tan.
“I’m gonna head back to the bus,” I said over the cheering and singing.
“What? Come on. She sounds great!” Miles said, still beaming.
“Yeah, but this is my ex-girlfriend we’re talking about.”
He turned to me with a frown. “But I thought you wanted to come.”
“I did, but I realized it’s a bad idea. A very bad idea.”
Standing in the crowd really put all my progress to the test, and if I learned anything from my recovery meetings it was that I needed to escape whatever was prompting me to have the urge. And that situation was the anxiety that came with zero closure with Reagan. I practically sent her my heart in the form of my journal and sang her a love song to a whole music festival. Knowing that I hadn’t seen her in months filled me with dread, as if all these overwhelming feelings I didn’t want to feel would take hold of me. Usually, this kind of anxiety would make me drink, but there was no way I wanted to backtrack. Three months was a long time, a painfully long time, and one sip would erase all of that. No matter how tempting it was. So, I channeled Gramps and bought myself a banjo so that anytime I had the urge to drink, I’d learn more of the banjo. The urge to drink broke out in a burning itch on my skin again. I was no stranger to this after rehab, and the feeling ate at my skin so many times, I played enough banjo to distract my thoughts that I could play the dueling banjos scene from Deliverance before it got really fast. Now I was ready to hide from Reagan and cure the immense craving I had for alcohol by perfecting the fast sixteenth note part I’d been avoiding. That was a better way to spend the rest of my night rather than torturing myself by looking at my beautiful, smiley ex-girlfriend.
“Can we go after this song?” Miles asked.
I rolled my eyes and faced the stage. I didn’t want to walk back to the bus by myself, so it was worth the wait just in case I got chased. After the song ended, the crowd applauded. I turned to Miles, and he motioned for me to go ahead.
“You guys don’t mind if I play a new song, do you?” Reagan asked the crowd. I stopped dead in my tracks and snapped my attention back to her. All the people encouraged her with applause and hands held high to show their enthusiasm, which drew a full smile from Reagan. “I knew you guys wouldn’t mind. This is a song I’ve been wanting to share with you for a while now. You’ll let me know after if you like it?”
She strapped on her black acoustic-electric guitar. It was a nice sight to see someone of her fame opt for something as simple as a guitar. Since becoming a superstar, she started incorporating more theatrics like dancing and wardrobe changes, but had originally started out on just piano and guitar. Even on tour when she did play, she still had some theatrics added, whether it was dancers, backup vocalists, or a stunning stage display.
Her band came in, and synthesizers hummed a slow tune, the bassist plucking a deep eighties bass line. A few measures in, Reagan strummed rhythm chords, and my mind traveled back to when I was lucky enough to see her before the shows, close enough to smell her perfume and her hair and the sage scenting her skin.
Now, all I could smell was weed, beer, and stale sweaty outdoors sticking to everyone around me. The stage lights of blue, white, and red highlighted the sweat glistening on her face as her eyes searched the audience. A dull burn brewed inside me, wondering if she was searching for me or someone else.
The melody of the opening measures froze me in my spot.
“In the sun she floats away
As I try to pull her down
She’s got a thousand worlds to locate
Spinning me tirelessly around
No two minutes are the same
With a thrill of unknown things
She locks her heart and her mind
Maybe because she’s a Gemini.”
Miles and I exchanged glances at the same time. Eyes rounded. Eyebrows halfway up our foreheads. My gut hollowed out. I had no idea if Zeke Fowler or Jessie Byrd were Geminis, but I definitely was one. I snatched my phone out of my pocket to do a quick internet search, clenching my teeth, hoping that all the people around me wouldn’t hinder my research. But then I got something. Zeke Fowler was born on July twenty-seventh, which meant he was a Leo, and Jessie Byrd was born on November fourth, which meant she was a Scorpio.
I lowered my phone and looked back at Miles, still waiting for an answer.
The brunette in front of me with a tie-dyed bandana tapped her blond friend’s arm. “You know this is about Blair Bennett, right?”
The blonde’s mouth dropped. “You think?”
“Oh totally. She’s probably singing it because Blair Bennett sang that new song last night. The one that was totally about Reagan Moore.”
“Oh my God, you’re right. But I thought she was back together with Jessie Byrd?”
The brunette shook her head. “I don’t know. We haven’t seen anything since the tour. Maybe it was just a one-time thing.”
I gulped at the same time a warmth spread across my face, and I hoped that those girls didn’t turn around and recognize me underneath my black floppy hat.
“Soften soundly in my bed
The only time she’s pinned down
All the secrets in her head
She’ll keep that part to herself
Your face she’ll have memorized
Like the wonders of the world
You’ll be the reason she’s confined
All because she’s your Gemini.”
Her band brought on the intensity. Her drummer ditched the muted high hat cymbal and banged on the crash cymbal while his other hand pounded beats into the floor tom and bass drum. The muted guitars that strummed in the background burst open in heavy electric strums on the rhythm guitar and modest riffs on the lead guitar. Reagan stepped away from the mic and got lost in the strumming of her acoustic, which I could barely hear over the drums, electric guitars, and the vibrant synths still adding a mysterious hum to the song. As the climax of the song came alive, the lights on stage swirled upward to the night sky, and the audience roared as they felt the emotion Reagan, the band, and the melody emanated into the crowd. It was powerful enough that my skin broke out in goose bumps, and after a few measures, Reagan stepped back to the mic to sing the climax.
“You see her in the way
She dreams she could see herself
She’ll try to save you from her doubts
She doesn’t think she’s enough
She’s a diamond in the rough
But underneath it all she’s soft
It’s just part of her disguise
All because she’s a Gemini.
In the past, you’d run away
As she walks on the razor’s edge
But it’s something about her air
That coaxes you to come along
She paints your world in colors
When you used to hide in grays
She’s made you feel the most alive
And that’s why you love that Gemini.”
She held out the last note an octave higher, repeating it for several measures with the same climatic intensity. And then the band dropped to the muted hush from the beginning of the song, and she repeated the last line somberly, “And that’s why you love that Gemini,” four more times until the song faded into nothing.
Was she really in love with me? Because I was really in love with her.
The field cheered, the people all around us raised their hands in the air and clapped, sending their “Woos” to the stage. I stood there with my mouth halfway to the grass, tears stinging my eyes as I watched Reagan take in the loudness of the crowd and the emotion from the power-rock ballad still hanging in the air like the humidity. Her eyes sparkled, and I could see how her body still felt all the words she just sang. I felt it too.
I fucked up so badly, I wasn’t sure if I would even take me back if things were reversed. I knew she heard my song because this song had to have been a response to mine—or my letter.
But either way, she was thinking about me.
* * *
I hid in our bus as my heart raced, still pumping adrenaline but also mixed with some fear. I had no idea what to do. Did I go find Reagan’s bus? Did I call her? Did I text her? Was the ball in my court? Was it in hers? I knew I needed to do something, I just had no idea what.
I turned to the banjo and plucked the strings to the fast part of the Deliverance scene over and over as Miles sat across from me, texting Ethan so we could all arrange to meet up for the silent disco in the woods after he was done dismantling Reagan’s stuff on the main stage.
“You need a new song,” Miles said when he looked up from his phone. “I’m getting really sick of this.”
“Well, fuck off then.”
He gave me a smile. “Wanna sit here and analyze it?”
I stopped playing as I looked at him. “What should I do? If this happened a few months ago, I’d drink to forget about it.”
“First, how about you breathe and then recognize that she wrote you a song. That’s hopeful, right?”
“I guess.” I paused and took a couple deep breaths. “I should go to her bus. Can you get the info from Ethan?”
“Haven’t heard from him in ten minutes. I can snoop around for some details about Reagan’s whereabouts.”
I started playing the banjo again. “Okay. Do that.”
About a half hour later, after plotting with Miles on how I could polish up my sweet-talking skills to charm her bodyguards into allowing me to get to her, something from the corner of my eye pulled my gaze.
Reagan stood outside with her eyes on the ground. She flinched toward the door and then backed away. For a second, I thought she would run away, but then she looked up and caught my stare. I’d only been thinking about her nonstop since I left the tour. Getting back together with her was one of the beacons that led me out of the darkness. But then her lips thinned, giving me as much of a cordial smile as an ex-girlfriend without any closure could give, but that was enough for me to open the door. She cautiously took a step inside with my journal in her hands. I backed to my couch, resuming my safe space as the air in the bus wafted out before the door closed behind her.
My heart thudded as hard and loud as a bass drum, and my nerves spiraled inside me. Three months without seeing her or looking at her or talking to her or having anything to do with her. I thought she’d written me out of her life until she sang about me. And here she was standing feet in front of me. Looking at me. Standing so uncomfortably in the entryway as if she was crossing enemy lines.
“Hey,” she mumbled as she struggled to make eye contact.
I had no idea what to say, especially since she wore the sexiest black tank top that accentuated the curves of her breasts, almost as if to torture me. I thought of so many things to tell her if this scenario ever played out in real life, but now that she stood in front of me, perfect copper legs, the dip of her shirt, and the curves of her worried eyebrows, I had nothing. It was as if my mind took a leave of absence with no warning sign. Or maybe all the words tried rushing out of me at once so they clogged all up.
“Hi,” I said, still holding my breath in my rapidly tightening chest.
“And that’s my cue,” Miles said as he got off the couch. “I need to go find your guitar tech. You guys say and do the right things,” he said with an orderly stare to both of us before he left us alone.
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one with warmth spreading across my cheeks after his comment.
“I, um, I read your journal.” She spoke softly as she glanced down at it in her hands.
“You did?”
“Yeah.”
A silence passed between us. I could hear my heart keeping a beat in my ears while my breaths shortened. I hated the tandem silence. I hated the space. How come she was right in front of me, enclosed in the same four walls, yet she felt as far away as when I was lost in the sea of her fans? I hated how I couldn’t just follow my instinct and kiss her. I hated so much how it took all my strength to keep myself on the couch and not focus on her lips.
“I heard your song,” she said softly.
“I heard yours.”
“Good.”
Her response landed in my stomach. The song really was for me. All those lyrics were for me.
She took a step into the bus and held the journal out for me to take. I stood and accepted it, closing in on the large space that held all of our awkwardness.
She looked at me differently than the last time we saw each other. I hoped her observing stare was because she saw a transformed woman in front of her instead of the broken mess who left her. I hoped that I didn’t stain all of our memories. They weren’t stained for me.
“I read it from the beginning,” she muttered.
I swallowed hard. “And?”
“You wrote about me for about thirty-three pages.”
“That’s it? Seems like it would be more,” I said. “Look, I know I fucked up, and I know I hurt you.”
“You did hurt me. A lot. You broke my trust, and you made me feel like an idiot—”
“That wasn’t my intention.”
“You were such an asshole to Finn.”
“I know.”
“And Miles. And me.”
“I know. That was probably the worst time of my life because I had so many good things to lose at the same time, I felt like I had no control of my life. And then my dad just shows up and that was it. I was done. I completely lost the very little grip I had. If I could take it back, trust me, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”
“I felt like nothing I did or said made you feel happier.”
“But that’s not even true, Reagan. You were the only thing that made me feel better. At night, I just wanted to fast-forward to the morning so I could wake up next to you and talk to you and experience this rush and thrill of seeing you. That’s all you had to do to make me happy. Just being there.”
“Then why wasn’t it enough? You still got drunk every night. You still walked off this tour without even saying anything.”
“I thought leaving the tour was the best thing for both of us. Also, you replaced me with your ex-girlfriend. If you wanted to win the breakup, you did by doing that.”
She rolled her eyes. “Jesus, Blair, I didn’t want to win the breakup. I asked Jessie to come on because I knew she had the next three months off, and I needed a fast replacement. You might think I did it to get back at you, but I don’t do things to purposely fuck with people. I thought about you the whole goddamn time. Every day. Even when she tried coming onto my bus and flirting with me, I pushed her away because I only wanted you.”
“She tried getting on your bus?”
She crossed her arms. “That’s really the only thing you picked up on? Yes, she tried getting on my bus. She’s like a sixteen-year-old boy.”
I let out a steady breath, trying to ease the anger and jealousy warming my blood. It didn’t matter if Jessie Byrd tried getting with Reagan again. What mattered was Reagan thought about me the whole time. While I thought about her.
“I don’t understand how you could perform with her when you knew that everyone knew about you two. But you couldn’t perform with me.”
“Because I was trying to protect us. Going out on that stage together was inviting the media in, and the worst thing that would have happened would be that I would lose you, and I didn’t want to lose you, Blair. I went on stage with Jessie because I don’t care if she’s pushed out of my life. Probably for the better anyways.”
Okay, she kind of made sense there.
“And somehow, I still fucked it up even without the media,” I said shamefully.
“You were hurting, Blair. I know now that all the anger was just from you hurting. Maybe that’s why I was so hurt because I saw you transform into someone you weren’t.”
“Look, Reagan, I’m in a better place than I was before,” I said and closed the space between us with one more step. Now we stood close enough that it took zero energy to grab her fingers loosely. When I did, her eyes immediately fell as her fingers hooked through mine, and man, that was the best feeling in the world after all the things we put each other through. Even if our raised voices from moments before still echoed in the bus, our fingers still found a way to latch on to each other. “I did it mostly for me because I was so tired of feeling like crap. But I also did it because I wanted to get you back. I want to be with you, and you deserve the best person, and I feel like I’m finally on my way to being the best version of me. I’m nowhere near being perfect, but I like myself a lot more than I use to. I know I was an asshole, and I really wish I could show you how sorry I am. Do you want to know why?”
“Why?” she asked shyly, almost as if afraid of the answer.
“Because I’m in love with you.”
Her eyes opened and deepened at the same time my chest swelled as the words echoed. There was nothing truer than what I said. Reagan made me feel things I’d never felt before. I didn’t want to sleep because I wanted to be with her. I wanted to kiss her forehead all the time, and she made me realize that “Annie’s Song” wasn’t lame at all. All the disgusting things couples did, I wanted to do with her.
“You love me?” she asked as if she wasn’t sure if she heard me correctly.
“I definitely love you. So much. I think I’ve known it since Thanksgiving.”
“Thanksgiving?”
“The whole night, I wanted to kiss your forehead, then I told myself I couldn’t do that because that’s an intimate thing to do.”
“Kissing a forehead?”
“Yes! You don’t do that to someone you’re just fucking. It’s way too intimate. After we slept together that night, you kissed my forehead and that’s when I knew.”
She smiled. “I kissed your forehead?”
“You did. Maybe back then I didn’t know what my feelings were exactly, but I know what they were now. It was the moment I realized I was falling in love with you. Actually, it was the moment you gave me the Winnie-the-Pooh book. That’s the first moment I wanted to kiss your forehead.”
She looked down at our fingers still intertwined. She gripped them a little tighter before her eyes met mine again. “I think I knew that I loved you when you left the tour without saying good-bye, and it tore me up in a way I never felt before. I was so heartbroken about the things you said, what you were doing to yourself, knowing there was nothing I could do to fix you. Just seeing you crumble in front of me—and us. Blair, those four days you were out of it, you had this look in your eyes I can’t forget. After the Indianapolis show, there was nothing there. Your eyes were blank. That was so scary. I thought I was gonna have to take you to the hospital. I was so worried about you. It was like you were all hollowed out, nothing else left in you.”
“I’m so sorry, Reagan. I really am.”
“I’ve never seen anyone that obliterated before. Seeing you miserable made me miserable. Seeing you hurt made me feel it too. I officially knew that I loved you when you were gone, and nothing made me feel better except seeing Miles and hearing that you were sober and doing really well. Then it made me feel a little better. It made me feel less broken. And I’m sorry that I wasn’t there for you. I should have been there to encourage you to get better and to help you through something I didn’t fully understand. But because I didn’t understand it, I got angry and ran away from something really scary.”
“None of that was your fault, Reagan. It was something that was a problem long before you. You wouldn’t have been able to fix me.”
“Yeah, well, I should have tried a little harder.”
I rested my hand against her cheek as the pain that still lingered inside her resurfaced in her watery eyes. “Reagan, it wasn’t your fault.”
“It was just awful to see you in so much pain. I was falling in love with you and seeing how amazing a person you were, and you couldn’t even see it for yourself.”
“No, because I was an idiot. A selfish idiot who hurt you.”
“But you’re not a selfish idiot. Far from it. You hurt me, yeah, but I still want to be with you because I believe in you—in us. It’s because I love you too.”
I smiled. “You love me?”
“I sang it in my song, didn’t I?”
Hearing someone tell me that they loved me was the best feeling. I’d never heard it before. Well, I guess I did from Alanna, but maybe her words never sat well with me because I didn’t feel it back. My chest didn’t feel as if it sank into a soft bed after running a grueling marathon. My heart didn’t flutter. My mouth didn’t involuntarily form a grin. None of that happened with Alanna. If anything, it felt like dry swallowing a pill. I felt guilty that she felt that way about me and I didn’t feel that way about her.
But all those things did happen when Reagan admitted it.
“Reagan, this hasn’t been easy at all. It’s actually the hardest fucking thing I’ve ever done, but if I want you and Miles back in my life, I know what I need to do. It’s the only thing that’s really been getting me through it. But I want to get better. I’m still trying to at least. I’m committed to this, and I’m going to try everything in my being to stay sober. I promise. I don’t want to hurt you or Miles or my mom or anyone else again.”
“Blair, you’re not perfect,” she said. “And neither am I. Far from it. We’ve been focusing on all the wrongs we did for the past couple of months; I think we need to focus on all the rights because there are so many more of them. I mean, you wrote me a whole book of love songs without even intentionally doing it.”
I smiled. “Yeah, I guess I did. And you bought me a first edition Winnie-the-Pooh.”
“I did. And you brought me a whole kitchen to our hotel room for a romantic dinner. You gave me my first romantic dinner.”
“And you bought me a birthday cake when you hardly even knew me.”
“And you took me in for Thanksgiving when the stupid weather ruined my plans.”
“And you offered to FaceTime my mom when I was so upset that I didn’t have family at Madison Square Garden.”
Her smile grew. “And most importantly, you put sunscreen on my back even though it’s your biggest phobia. Now that’s love.”
I laughed, and the space that separated us officially evaporated. “Only for you, though. I don’t wanna touch anyone else.”
“I’ll gladly accept the role. Whenever you have that urge, I volunteer.”
“So, does that mean you forgive me? Does that mean we can try this again? The sunscreen applications…and us? Because I really wanna try again. I’m still working on me, but I feel like I’m on an incline for once in my life, and there’s no one else I want by my side other than you.”
She slowly nodded, as if giving herself the chance to think about it one last time. “I wanna try this again too. More than anything.”
I softly grazed her cheek with my thumb as her eyes held mine. “I love you, Reagan.”
She grinned. “And I love you, but can you stop talking and kiss me, damn it.”
I cupped her face and quickly pulled her in. I couldn’t wait anymore. She kissed me back, and no time was wasted letting our lips take hold of one another’s, deepening the kiss, our tongues dancing in sync, still having each other’s rhythms memorized. Our accelerated breathing in between kisses only encouraged me to push her against the wall. How she softly moaned into my mouth made my brain so dizzy. As she grabbed a fistful of my hair, I snuck my hands under the hem of her tank top so they could be reacquainted with her warm, soft skin. The second my fingers touched her sides, the tiny bumps that broke out on the surface spelled out how much she missed me, and if I had any doubts about that, skimming my hands across her sides and to the small of her back reminded me.
After we kissed long enough to almost make up for three months of lost time, the kiss simmered into an unhurried rhythm, so I could take her in all at once, kissing each atom that made up her lips, fully taking in the taste of her mouth. A taste I never wanted to forget again. The more we kissed, the less I wanted to throw her on the bed and have my way with her, and the more I wanted to take my time, making sure I touched her whole body so that the goose bumps on her skin never got a break, that every part of her was kissed so that our time apart didn’t matter anymore.
“Can we go to the back?” I said, the breaths seeping out of me quick and thin. “I want to show you how much I love you and missed you.”
“I can’t say no to that. Can we utilize a VIP lanyard?”