Page 75 of The Ex-Best Thing
“Jaida invited my team to join her for lunch. We thought it was a reconciliation effort, maybe a collaboration pitch.”
“I’m guessing it wasn’t,” he says dryly.
“Far from it. She was super nice. The whole thing went well.She asked what I was working on, and I told her bits of it. I was trying to be polite but keep the important things close to the chest, you know? It wasn’t really a shocker that my music was skewing more and more toward country. I had planned to do something heavily countryfied on my next album. My mom was chatting with Jaida’s PR guy about how it’s a good shot at a Grammy.”
“You have Grammys.”
“She wasn’t satisfied.” My limbs get jittery, remembering how that entire day went down. I stare into the distance, but not before I notice Benny sit taller, like maybe he’s put together the rest of the story on his own. The rest is public knowledge, anyway.
Well, not how it went down. But the aftermath.
I curl my fingers around the wooden step we’re sitting on. “I told Jaida that country music is where my heart is, that it’s the sound I’ve wanted to do from the beginning, that I’ve slowly gained the label’s trust enough that I think it’s time they’ll let me transition fully away from pop.”
Benny has probably heard my last album, which means he knows hownotcountry it sounded.
“Jaida got there first,” I tell him. “Her meeting was before mine. She told the label she thought she had a shot at winning country album of the year if she could try once, and that she already had an entire catalog of sixteen songs written to get started. Or so I’ve heard. All I know is that my meeting directly followed hers, and it was a train wreck. They shot my idea down because they didn’t want us competing for the same thing. They told me to go hard on pop this time, and I can do what I want in the future.”
Silence buzzes between us for a moment before Benny scoffs. “She stole your idea, your Grammy?—”
“And two of my songs.”
“How?”
“Jacob Freeman had been writing them for me because I had told him my plan months before that. He’d been sending me clips of ideas. The label rerouted them to Jaida once her album was set in motion.”
“What a snake.”
“That’s a nice word for it.”
“Ah, Medusa,” he says. “Judas.”
“It felt that way. I was furious. She played nice, pretending to reconcile so she could pump us for information, and immediately used it to further her career. Within an hour she was pitching my idea and taking my career path for herself. I was wary the entire time but my mom bought into the whole thing. Everyone did.”
“Can you blame them? Jaida has the whole innocent act down.”
I glance at him, my elbows leaning on my bent knees while the breeze rustles my fake blonde hair. “How do you know that?”
“You can tell. She’s overkill. I’ve had a few interactions with her in the last few years, anyway. She’s not the same person behind the scenes that she lets the public think she is.”
“That’s what I wanted to expose with my song, but it backfired. It only made me look bad and made her look like a poor, mistreated angel.” I drop my forehead onto my knees and groan. Benny rubs my back, and I lean toward him.
“It’ll blow over. In the meantime, I get to have you for a while. Things could be worse.”
My laugh is hollow. His words would mean more if they didn’t sound so accepting of me being a blip in his life, here for a moment and gone again quickly. The idea makes my shoulders want to slump, but I heroically keep them up.
“True,” I say, trying to smile. “What do you mean you’ve had interactions with her?”
He looks startled, like he didn’t expect the question. Beforehe can respond, the sound of a car starting behind the church steals our attention, followed shortly by wheels crunching over the gravel lane that meets up with the road. Cold nerves wash through me. I exchange a look with Benny.
He shakes his head. “There’s no way anyone overheard us.”
I swallow. I hope he’s right.
21
BENNY
Peter hasa difficult history with alcohol, so his bonfire party on the beach is totally dry, as usual. He’s provided coolers of sodas and waters, everyone in town brought various sides, and I smoked enough pork to feed a crowd twice over. Bree is wearing her sunglasses to keep her concussion ruse up, and the music is loud, but not as loud as usual, no doubt for the same reason.
