How quickly I’d forgotten that he thought he was hilarious.
I saw three dots scrolling while he typed his response.
I always liked sparring with someone who could keep up with me. And despite his ridiculous assertions, Diego was staying with me, quick with his retorts.
I was enjoying this way more than I should, especially given Rule #1.
I would never keep a diary on a device I lost on a regular basis. I quickly racked my brain, trying to think if there was anything mortifying on there.
Especially because I couldn’t recall everything I stored on it. Did I have sappy song lyrics on there? Pop songs in my library that I hadn’t yet deleted? I really should pay more attention to the kind of stuff I put on my phone.
My devotion? What was he doing?
I opened Facebook on Cole’s phone and searched for my name. There at the top of my page was a picture of Angie, Ryan, and me. The caption read:
He’d followed it with a bunch of heart emojis. I would lose what little street cred I currently possessed, and my brothers would never let me hear the end of it. Like if I died before them, they’d make it a point to drive to the cemetery and hang Ryan De Luna posters on my tombstone.
What could he be watching? I’d never once taken a naked or risqué photo of myself, and since I hadn’t slept with anyone, there obviously wasn’t a tape that could be leaked, but I found myself strangely apprehensive all the same. What was he looking at?
Ack! There was something completely humiliating on there! I typed quickly.
He didn’t respond. He wasn’t typing. He just left me hanging, not knowing what he would do next.
The reason I’d created that clip was because I had noticed that other singers had success by doing covers of famous songs and earned a decent income through YouTube. I’d thought maybe we could do the same. So I had uploaded all our original songs and done a few solo covers. I kept trying to get my brothers to do a song alone or a duet with me, but they just mocked me instead.
Anyway, I’d turned Ryan’s dance/pop hit “One More Night” into a slowed-down acoustic version. Even though the lyrics were about a girl staying at a club to dance one more night with the guy singing, I sang it thinking about my mom. How I wished I could have one more night with her.
But the videos made us only a few bucks a month. Nothing that would help, especially given our current situation.
I could explain it easily. My fingers flew over the buttons.
What could I say? That it was the song I put on repeat when my musician father permanently walked away from us and my mom stopped being my mom? That I wanted something happy and upbeat to counteract my sadness? That I desperately wanted to believe in fairy-tale romance and love at first sight? That when I finally felt like I could get out of bed and face the world, I never wanted to listen to another false, lying pop song ever again?
I finally settled on:
Then I added:
Why did that make me smile?
It was true—I’d seen many a failed relationship between a musical person and a nonmusical person. They didn’t get the drive, the need to create, and how that usually came first before everything else.
But I was not going to be my mother and blindly devote myself to an unreliable, cheating musician, ruining my life and the lives of everyone around me. I had to draw a line in the sand somewhere.
He seemed to think about that one; it took him a bit longer to respond this time.
Why did that make me blush?
The owner of the club, Rodrigo Sanchez, had taken a liking to us. None of us knew why, but playing at Rodrigo’s was the only gig we could consistently count on. Unfortunately, it didn’t pay a whole lot. Just a little bit more than what it cost us in gas and repairs on our dilapidated van.
I didn’t need the winking emoji to know he was teasing. I knew I really should put a stop to all this flirting we were doing.
What was he expecting? Was he still on that “We should hook up” thing from last night?
That should shut him down.
At least he wasn’t acting like every other shocked and outraged musician who had ever hit on me and expected me to swoon at his feet. It was refreshing that he could joke about it.
I had thought Diego was cute, and although I’d enjoyed chatting with him backstage, this entire exchange made me like him even more. His sense of humor was like mine. He’d made me laugh several times. He was quick and clever and fun. My brothers might even like him and possibly wouldn’t punch him if he tried to hold my hand or kiss me.
Cole’s phone buzzed. Another text from Diego.
Why did that make my heart pound and my skin flush?
And why was I picturing Ryan De Luna saying those words to me instead of Diego?
I hadn’t expected to hear from Diego until I saw him in person on Wednesday. But he texted me the next morning, asking who my favorite guitar players were.
Which I found out only after Cole came storming into my room to show me his screen. “Who is this fool texting you on my phone?”
I explained the situation to him, but it didn’t do much to calm him down. “Diego and I are just friends. It’s not a big deal.”
“Whatever. I read your texts. This dude does not want to be ‘just friends’ with you.” Cole handed me his phone. “Give him your email. Because if he sends you a picture of his junk on my phone, I’m not going to be responsible for what happens after that.”
I pressed my lips together so I wouldn’t laugh, and I told Diego to email me instead, giving him my address.
Then, sadly, I sat and waited for my in-box to load. It took so long that I nearly died of boredom.
But there it was! An email from [email protected] with just one question:
Who are your favorite guitar players?
I hit the REPLY button and wrote:
Joni Mitchell, Lita Ford, Christa Harbinger. Also, Bonnie Raitt is a goddess. What about you?
I pushed SEND, but I knew it would probably be a while before I got his response. I left my room and made myself some toast while I waited. Just as I sat back down at my computer, I had another email from him.
Hendrix (obviously), Jimmy Page, Muddy Waters, and Johnny Ramone are my favorites.
Most guys would say Eddie Van Halen or Keith Richards or Slash when you asked them. They were the more obvious choices. I liked that his picks were a little offbeat.
His next line asked:
Why don’t you have any men on your list?
I responded:
Why don’t you have any women on yours?
He replied:
Touché.
Back and forth we went, talking about our top five bands and singers, favorite albums, best live concerts. It was slow going because of my machine and the connection. Like Pony Express slow. I wondered if he was playing me. I knew from experience that the way to a musician’s heart was to ask him or her about their musical influences or why they’d written a certain lyric, or to tell them how much you loved a specific melody. I’d watched my brothers fall prey to many a girl who’d focused all her attention on just the music instead of gushing about how hot my brothers were. To make it seem like she was different from the others.
They fell for it every time.
Even after I pointed it out.
Our online flirtation continued until Wednesday evening finally rolled around and my brothers and I headed to Rodrigo’s. Despite Rule #1, I was strangely excited to see Diego. We unpacked our van, which was currently leaking coolant. Another expensive problem we couldn’t afford to fix. Our instruments were arranged in the back like pieces in a Tetris game, but we’d been doing this so long it was easy to extract them in the right order.
We went inside Rodrigo’s and got set up. I plucked at my vintage Martin Dreadnought. I’d found it at a garage sale a couple of years ago and had seen that the woman selling it had no idea how much it was actually worth. She had put a five-dollar sticker on it. Part of me wanted to pay the money and run, but my conscience wouldn’t let me. When I told her she was really underselling, the woman said her husband had left her for her sister, and the judge had ordered her to sell their assets and split the proceeds. She apparently had a trust fund he couldn’t touch, thanks to an ironclad prenup, and she didn’t need this money. She was very happy to sell me the guitar for five bucks.
Sometimes I played my Dreadnought onstage; other times it was the Gibson Les Paul that had been passed down to me. Fitz had given it to me, but I suspected that my father had initially owned it (and most likely paid for it with my mom’s money), but I didn’t ask because I didn’t want to know.
I didn’t want him tainting my guitars, too.
He’d ruined so much of my world already. Like how I disliked performing in clubs. My childhood memories of my father centered around how he smelled after a show—stale cigarette smoke, cheap booze, and even cheaper perfume. Every club we ever played in specialized in that particular aroma combination.
I despised the smell of coffee. He’d drunk coffee around the clock, and every time he’d deigned to grace us with his presence, the coffeepot would be on day and night.
“Hey, Maze? Have you seen this?” There was a weird tone in Fitz’s voice.
“Seen what?” Knowing him, it was probably some clip of a bunch of guys burping and farting that he thought was hilarious. I put my ear closer to the guitar string as I slightly turned one of the top tuning pegs, finally satisfied with the sound.
“This.” He shoved his phone in front of my face. It was the YouTube video of me singing “One More Night.” He asked, “Did you know about this?”
That was a stupid question. “Yeah, I know about the video. I’m the one who filmed myself singing it.”
“I’m not talking about the video.” He scrolled down slightly, and the first thing I saw was the number of views.
Just a little over one million. “A million views?” I gasped, grabbing at his phone, wondering if I was hallucinating.
“Really? A million views?” Parker asked, coming to peer at the phone over my shoulder. “How much money is that?”
“I can’t math that high right now!” My brain was too excited to figure it out. It was probably only a few thousand dollars, but it was more than we’d ever earned from an upload before.
“That’s why Mom wanted you to go to college. So you could math,” Fitz teased me, apparently enjoying my mental freak-out.
“You mean like you did?” I quickly retorted. “Before you dropped out your junior year to pursue your lifelong dream of paying back student loans?”
“How did we get so many views?” Cole asked, coming over to stand next to Parker.
“Keep scrolling down,” Fitz instructed.
The very first comment I saw was from Ryan De Luna, and he’d posted it twenty-four hours ago.