The challenge itself was simple. Especially how Nate had started it out as a glow-up to “show the real you.” But that wasn’t my message, and I knew that it wasn’t what Campbell had meant when he wrote the song. He’d meant that I wasn’t the girl I showed everyone else. I was his girl. He had seen the truth.
Which meant that in the video…Campbell had to see the real me again.
I set up the camera with him out of sight. Just me in the first frame, staring off into the distance. I pulled my hair up into a high pony and brushed my bangs out of my face. Campbell strummed the tune of his most popular hit, and I lip-synced the words to the camera. Coy and distant. The girl I’d been in high school.
Then, I cut the camera. I didn’t even watch it to see if it needed a second take. I didn’t know how many times I could hear him sing that song. Let alone on an acoustic guitar with just his rich vocals a foot away from me. It ripped through every layer of the walls I’d put up around myself.
No. One take was going to have to do.
“I have to get changed for the second shot.”
“All right,” he said, strumming a different tune. One that I’d never heard before. His eyes focused on the strings. “What should I do?”
“You’re going to be in this one with your guitar, singing. Maybe put your leather jacket back on.”
“And you?” he asked, meeting my eyes, still playing that strange melody.
I liked it. It was catchy. Not like anything I’d heard from him before. I wondered what it was.
“You’ll see.”
I hurried into my bedroom and leaned back against the door. This was harder than I’d thought. Frankly, I hadn’t had much time to think about how it would affect me. I’d pay for this later.
But I didn’t have time now.
So, I pulled on my big-girl panties and got to work. I curled my hair into long, voluminous waves and worked my signature fringe bangs for all they were worth. My makeup wasn’t heavy, but it was still statement makeup. Smoky eyes, winged eyeliner, a cherry-red lip. I considered wearing a sexy outfit to complete the official glow-up, but that wasn’t what I was going for. Instead, I reached farther back in my closet and pulled out a long, flowy black skirt with a million pleats and an ash-gray crop top. I tugged on my Docs just to give it enough of an edge. It wasn’t sexy in the traditional sense. But it was me…and it matched Campbell.
I swallowed hard before stepping out of my room to find Campbell had added lyrics to the tune he was messing with. I didn’t catch them before he came to an abrupt halt, his eyes fixed on me.
He didn’t say a word. Just devoured me with his eyes.
I turned in place. “You think this works?”
“It looks like what you wore in high school.”
“That’s the idea,” I muttered. I hated the next words that came out of my mouth. Even though I knew they were what I should do. “I thought we could record it a couple of times in a few different outfits, and then I could cut them together. To show I’m always the same girl. In this, in my athleisure kits, in my soccer uniform, that sort of thing.”
“And I’ll just be like this?”
“Isn’t that exactly who you are?”
He could barely drag his eyes away from me long enough to look down at himself. “I’d probably change the guitar.”
I laughed, a soft, melodic thing, and he jerked his gaze back up to me.
“What?” I asked warily.
“I just…haven’t heard you laugh in a while.”
“I laugh,” I said defensively.
“Not around me.”
I bit my lip and hurried toward the camera. Well, if I didn’t laugh around him, I had good reason.
“Let’s do a test run, yeah?” I said, going straight back to business.
“Sure. Whatever you want.”
He adjusted himself on the stool I’d brought over for him so that he was in the shot. I set up right where I had been, and he drew in tight next to me. I swallowed at his nearness. Fuck, he was so close. And I’d signed up for this.
I could back out. I could bail on what was happening. But, damn, it would be good for my career.
So, I gritted my teeth and ignored the yawning, gaping need that had formed in Campbell’s presence. The want that millions of girls worldwide felt around him. And I was only different in that I’d had him before he was famous. I needed to keep reminding myself of that fact. It wasn’t real. This wasn’t real. It was just history. Nothing more.
“Okay. We’re set up. We’ll try this take.”
“Start over from the chorus?” he asked, settling into the stool.
“Sure. Or right before the chorus.”
He nodded as his fingers moved effortlessly across the guitar. I pressed the red circle on my phone to record and then stood next to him. For a moment, I let my eyes drift up from the guitar and to his face. His eyes were fixed on the guitar as he hummed the lyrics to get us into position.
Then, he started to sing, and everything in the entire world fell away as I catapulted back in time.
My body might have been in the present, standing before Campbell as he sang “I See the Real You.” But I was no longer there.
I was sitting on my bed, back at my parents’ house. Campbell waited outside in the cold, frantically texting me to see when my mom would be gone. Then, he tumbled in through the window, laughing as he worried more about his guitar than the gash at his knee.
“Shh,” I whispered even though I had the house to myself.
He sat up and drew me to him, kissing my lips so hot and fierce and needy that I almost forgot what he was doing here. His hands were halfway up my sweater before I giggled and shoved him backward.
“You said you wrote a song.”
His eyes were on my breasts, and then they jerked back up to my face. “I did. But I think I want to kiss you again.”
His hands slid up into my stupid brown bob, and then he was kissing me for real. Slow and languid, as if we had all night to explore this. Rather than the few hours that my mom was away on her girls’ night out. I wanted to live in this moment forever. But I was scared. We hadn’t gone all the way yet. We’d barely done anything, and though I wanted it all with him, could see our entire future, I still hadn’t agreed to it yet.
“Okay. Okay,” he said with a laugh as I scooted back again.
I lay down on my bed and watched as he tuned his acoustic guitar. He shot me one heart-melting grin and began to play. The words falling from his lips.
Tears welled in my eyes as I realized that this wasn’t just a song; this was a song about me. This was about him seeing me. Really seeing me. Not just the weird girl at school, but the girl I was when I was with him. The girl that belonged to him.
His eyes left the guitar and fixed on my face. As we stared at each other across the short distance, I knew with teenage certainty that I would love him forever.
I blinked, and the memory dissolved in my mind. Campbell was still singing, but he was looking at me as if he knew exactly where my mind had gone. The same unshed tears that had come to my eyes at seventeen were there again today.
He ended the chorus and let the rest of the music fade away. He still stared at me. Waited for the moment to break or to see if I would give him exactly what I had given him that first night. My whole heart.
Except that my heart was no longer whole. It was a broken, shredded thing that he’d destroyed all on his own. So, though the music was a spell that lingered between us, it was also a lie. Because no matter how much he had seen me then, he didn’t even know me now. And he couldn’t fix any of that.
“Blaire,” he said with concern, reaching out for me.
I yanked away from him on instinct. I swiped at my eyes and rushed to the camera. I ended the recording and breathed heavily as I tried to get myself back under control.
“Do we need to do it again?”
I watched the video to see what in the hell had even happened. I hadn’t been singing or even lip-syncing. I didn’t even look at the camera. In fact, neither of us looked at the camera. He was playing, and then all of a sudden, he looked up at me, sang to me, existed for me. We had eyes only for each other. And then the moment ended. He’d finished singing, and a look of terror had come into my eyes. A rabbit seeing a fox.
“Fuck,” I whispered.
“That bad?”
I turned off my phone. “No.”
“Can I see?”
I dipped my chin to my chest, and then with a sigh, I handed him my phone to watch it.
After a second, he said, “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“We can do it again.”
I shook my head. There was no point. I couldn’t handle trying one more time. I probably couldn’t even use this. No one could look at that video and not see emotions swirling between us. Even if I were a great actor, which I was not, people would still say there was too much chemistry for us to fake all of it.
“It’s fine.”
“Blaire…”
“What did you want to talk to me about?” I asked to change the subject as I took my phone back.
“I wrote a new song,” he said slowly.
I turned finally to face him. “Okay.”
“It’s based off of what you said to me. About how, to me, you were only ever invisible or everything. That there was no in-between.”
“You wrote another song about me?” I said incomprehensibly.
“Yeah.” He ran a hand back through his hair. “I haven’t been able to write. Critics hated the last album, and I think they got into my head. Everything I’ve written since, I have absolutely hated.”
“They can’t all be bad.”
“My manager thinks they’re good, but what does he know? They all sucked…until this song.” He sat back down on the stool, fiddled with the guitar, and began to play.
It was the melody that he had been playing earlier that I thought was catchy. I’d missed the lyrics then, but I immediately decided the tune was going to be a hit. And then when he started singing, I actually sat down because it was so good.
I tried really hard not to smile as he belted out about the invisible girl who was everything to him. I tried to remind myself that it was just a song. I’d just happened to be the inspiration for it. It had nothing to do with me. But it was hard to differentiate. It was hard to hear him sing words that I’d said to him in hate sang back to me in love.
“That’s what I have so far,” he said, stilling his fingers and looking at me warily. “What do you think?”
“It’s amazing.”
His eyes lit up. “Yeah?”
I nodded slowly. “Better than the last album.”
“That’s what I thought!” He got up and paced around like the excited fool he was. Then, he turned back to face me with fear and uncertainty. “I didn’t give you a choice with the last song, Blaire. And I didn’t think it was fair to just record this, knowing how you felt about the last one.”
“What are you saying?”
“I don’t know. I wanted to make sure you were okay with it.”
“You don’t get to choose when inspiration strikes, Campbell.”
“I know but…”
“It’s okay,” I finally said. I looked down at the phone in my hand. The secret that was hidden in that video. He’d done that for me just because he’d thought I’d asked. For no other reason. Could I really deny him a song that would help his career? I met his eyes again. “You can record it.”
He blew out a relieved breath. “Oh, good. I was going to lay it down with Weston later this week if you were okay with it.”
“Weston? Really?”
“Yeah, we’ve been hanging out. He’s a cool guy. Plus, he works in a local studio. You can swing by to hear it if you want.”
I gulped and drew back. I couldn’t fall further for this man. He’d hurt me once, and he was surely leaving again. No matter what he thought. LA was his home now.
“Maybe.”
He heard my refusal in the word and just nodded. “Well, if you change your mind,” he said, taking my phone out of my hand and typing into it, “here’s my number.”
Then, he smiled down at me, and it took everything in me not to reach up onto my tiptoes and drag his mouth down to mine. He was gone before I could do something stupid, and I flopped back on the couch.
“I am so screwed.”