Page 105 of The Ex-Best Thing
She gives a nod. When her body shifts to face me, I can practically feel Benny’s dismissal.
I want to scream.
Mom’s brow raises a bit. “Well, now I see why you disappeared.”
“This whole thing was a total coincidence. Kind of. I knew his grandma lived here, but I didn’t actually think…you know what? That’s not important.” I’m going to ramble and sound unintelligent if I don’t stop while I’m ahead. “I needed to get away. No one would stop the song release, and I couldn’t handle the fallout.”
“If you’d asked for support, Bree, we could have come up with a plan. I brought Andrew with me so we can all sit down together and map out a crisis-management strategy.”
“I’ve managed the crisis, Mom.”
She smiles indulgently. “You mean the song you put out last week? It was sweet, Bree, but an apology like that is only a small Band-Aid for something like this.”
“Which is why we should have stopped the diss track,” I say through my teeth.
She waves her hand once to swipe my words from the record. “You can’t help it now. You couldn’t have known the public would react the way they did.”
I gape at her. “Ididknow, though, which is why I ran away.”
How can she sit there and act like she wasn’t in full possession of all these facts?
Benny looks at his phone before sliding it back in his pocket. He stays at my side through all of this, despite how rudely my mom tried to dismiss him. I step closer to his side, wishing he could protect me from needing to have this conversation at all, but I know it needs to be done, and I’m glad he’ll be here to support me.
“You could take all the control back right now, Bree. There’s a stage and a couple hundred phones pointed right at it. Take the mic and talk about Jaida. You can fix this right now.”
“That’s the last thing I want to do. I’ve handled it already.Jaida got her pity, my apology was put out into the world. I can’t do more than that.”
“You can talk about it.”
“I don’t want to. It would only drag it out and make it worse.”
Mom sighs. “Why don’t you leave the decisions to the—to those of us with more experience?”
I’d bet my Pomeranian she wanted to end that sentence withthe adults. Which, evidently, is my final straw. “We’re finished with this. I’ve made my decision.”
“You might change your mind when you see what Jaida’s team has planned. The label got a hold of it and sent it to me as a courtesy, but we’re on our own here. You don’t have anyone backing you anymore. If you don’t find a way to fix this, no label is going to want to touch you.”
“What is it?”
Mom turns her phone around, and I take it, reading the caption to whatever overly dramatic picture Jaida is preparing. I’ll put ten bucks on it being posted in black and white.
Sometimes it’s too little too late. Not everyone understands that words cut deep, and once they’re out, they can’t be unsaid. I’ve remained on the high road through everything, and no matter what happens, that’s where I’ll stay. But no, we can never be friends again. Forgive and FORGET.
Okay, twenty bucks says she plans to post this with asadphoto, like she’s mourning the loss of the friendship that never was. This is absolutely nothing more than Jaida squeezing every last drop of sympathy that she can.
I hand Mom her phone back. “She’s milking it, but none of that has any foundation. We weren’treallyfriends, and I did nothing more than write a song about how she betrayed me. It’s a dramatization of the situation.”
“So correct her, Bree. You can’t let her ruin your reputation.”
“If anyone hurt my reputation, it was me.” I want to pushthe blame on her for convincing me that releasing the song was a good idea, but that won’t get us anywhere. At the end of the day, humility is accepting that I made a stupid decision and owning my mistake. That’s when I’ll be able to move on.
“It’s freeing to choose not to be bothered anymore, Mom. I’m vindicated now. I can’t control Jaida’s choices, but I can control how I respond, and I’ve learned that it’s better to walk away.”
“You’ll be walking away from your career,” she says, a lock of brown hair fluttering in the wind.
“I can’t do it anymore,” I say.
“Sing?”
