“You chased my muse away.” My tone was low, lazy, and sort of psychotic. Even to my own ears.

“And?” She didn’t bother turning around.

“And now you owe me. So it’s a good thing you’re in my possession.”

“Your possession?” she echoed, incredulous. “I’m not your anything, Winslow.”

“You are. For three months. I have a signed contract to prove it, and now I’m going to take what’s inside you and put it in my notebook, because I’m empty and you’re full.”

It was weird. To say the truth out loud. The truth was meant to be whispered, not shouted, but I didn’t care what she thought of me, so I stood up and grabbed my leather jacket, not bothering to offer it to her.

“Meet me outside your hotel room at midnight,” I said.

She opened her mouth. I didn’t stay long enough to listen to what she had to say.

I was going to get my muse back and write that album.

Take over Billboard with every single I released and make it my bitch.

Reclaim my title as king of alternative music from that wanker, Will Bushell.

And claim what was mine. What had always been mine. Fallon.

Even if I had to cheat my way or bulldoze through everyone else to get it.

Legs stretched and crossed at the ankles, Tania in hand, my fingers flew over the fret board as I tried to come up with a melody. My back was pressed against my door, so I had a direct view to New Girl’s door. Our rooms were in front of one another. Jenna had asked Hudson, my PA, to make sure New Girl was always ten feet or closer in all the hotels we’d stayed in.

At five past midnight, her door opened and she stepped out.

She was wearing red plaid PJ shorts and a gray hoodie with the name of a college she couldn’t possibly afford plastered on it. I motioned to her with my chin to sit down, and she did. Her face, clean of makeup and pretense, was rapt. She slid down her door, tucking her knees under her chin, blinking at me. I couldn’t decide if she had no personality at all, or too much of it. I was about to find out.

I continued moving the pick over the strings of the acoustic guitar, ignoring the red, lush carpet and impersonal hallway, and imagined we were someplace real. A house or a beach or a cobblestoned London street with the bite of rain pinching at our nostrils.

“Why am I here?” she asked.

“I’m asking myself the same question.” I stared at my callused fingers strumming Tania before looking up. “You’re hanging onto this job for dear life. You in some sort of trouble?”

“No,” she said, not taken aback by my candor. “I have a nephew. His parents can’t find steady jobs, and he deserves more. More than we’re giving him. More than constant ear infections. More than drinking milk that expired two days ago because it’s cheaper. Just…more.”

I poked my lip out, considering her answer. I didn’t care too much for my family. In fact, the part I dreaded the most about the tour—along with trying to come up with new songs—was seeing my mum, dad, and older sister, Carly. If I was going to see them at all.

“What’s his name?” I asked, not entirely sure why. I never felt compelled to be polite, least of all to people who were on my payroll.

“Ziggy.” She smiled. Her smile wasn’t as annoying. Dimpled and genuine and Botox-less. Big lips. Small teeth. I liked it. Flaws were intimate. Telling. Pure. Indigo was pretty. Like a wasted sunset, beautiful in a taken-for-granted sort of way.

“Like the David Bowie album?” My eyebrows fell into a frown. I banged up a few notes on Tania, and they actually made sense. Maybe I was remembering “Starman” or “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide.” Though it sounded different, fresh.

“My brother is a fan.” She stared up and started absentmindedly chewing on her bottom lip. “Ziggy is two years old. Smart, funny, and kind. I always tell him he is Ziggy, and I am…”

“Stardust,” I finished, bunching up a few notes into a melody in my head. Of course I was still dressed in the same clothes I’d worn to the gig. And of course I smelled like stale piss in a dark London alleyway. “Silence, now.”

She didn’t scold me. Instead, she started braiding small pieces of that blue hair as I came up with something…new. I closed my eyes, my fingers trembling a little. Finding a good tune felt very close to finding a flower in the sand. Improbable, rare, thrilling. I played for a few minutes before pulling Tania’s strap off of my shoulder and propping it against my door. I took out the little notepad and Sharpie from my back pocket and started writing the notes. When I looked up, New Girl was still braiding. The troubled look on her face told me she felt sorry for me. The thought was unsettling.

“Tell me about yourself.” I ignored her quizzing eyes.

“You’ll need to be more specific than that.”

“What makes you, you? Your personality. Your secrets. Your quirks.”

Another girl would giggle, avert the topic, or play dumb. She didn’t.

“I’m left-handed. Hate clowns. Love making dresses. It makes me feel…” She looked up, searching for the word. “Focused.”

I strapped Tania back on, my pick moving over the strings without direction.

“What else?”

“I don’t have any social media accounts. If I could study anything, it’d be fashion. I used to work at a thrift shop called Thrifty in Beverly Hills run by a seventy-year-old woman named Clara before she closed it down to spend more time with her family. Working there was—still is—my dream job.”

She looked at me like I would deem her dreams too small or too insignificant. I bet anything she didn’t know I hadn’t planned on becoming a hotshot TMZ regular. The initial goal was far more romantic. I got sucked into this world by my childhood mate, Will. We used to have a band together—The Kryptonites—before we’d decided to go solo and live together in London, all five of us—me, Will, Alfie, Blake, and Lucas. I’d wanted to stay indie when Will got that fat, mass-production deal. He was the one who’d hooked me up with Grapevine Records. Who’d made me me, in more than one sense.

My fingers were moving faster, chasing a rhythm, a forgotten song that was always there in my head. This was why I wanted her in the hallway. Somewhere neutral. Not in one of our rooms, where all I’d think about was how to shag her, because she was there, with a pulse, and in all probability willing. I needed her words and her thoughts and her disposition. I wanted to suck her soul dry and pour it onto the pages, my pages , getting my money’s worth out of my babysitter. Because she was innocent. And strong. And so infuriating, picking at her brain felt like a necessity.