Page 40 of The Ex-Best Thing
“Your new single is mean, but it’s catchy. You know how to write, honey.”
“No one will produce it, though,” I argue. I’m the Comic Sans of fonts. The onion flavored jellybean. The thing everyone universally dislikes.
“Benny will do it,” Nancy offers.
His eyes widen, so I tear my gaze away before he can refuse me. “It wouldn’t work. I appreciate you both for checking on me, but I need to wallow for a few weeks, then go home. My mom’s publicist is probably already coming up with a plan to fix this. I need to give it time.”
Silence sits heavily in the room for a beat before Benny speaks. “Don’t you want to break away from the family business?”
“Well, yeah?—”
“Then let’s do it.”
I stare at him, unblinking. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying, Benny Rhodes?”
“Yeah.” His piercing blue eyes hold me like a lifeline. “Let’s write a song.”
12
BENNY
When I needhelp with anything career related, I call my agent, Justin. When I want juicy gossip, I call my only other connection to the industry, Chip Paxton, my bass guitarist who went on to become a singer in his own right after I left the industry. He’s connected in all the ways Justin is, but on a less dignified level. I wouldn’t be shocked to learn he’s a dragon-riding mind reader. The man knowseverything.
Which is why I call him immediately after leaving Bree’s house under the guise of fetching a writing notebook and my guitar. I took Grandma home first, of course. She was much too eager to leave us alone together.
Anyway, Chip is good for the gossip. In the space of two minutes, I learn all about Bree’s fight with her label, and how she allegedly tried to stop the song from being released but couldn’t once the train left the studio’s station, so to speak.
I’m not surprised to learn that, of course, but it’s also something of a relief. The song shocked me. Bree is a good woman with a good heart, so it feels icky knowing that came from her. Her regret doesn’t remove her actions, but it makes me feel like maybe she’s still the same Bree I knew all those years ago.
“Career suicide,” Chip says. “I don’t know why she’d do something like this. That whole Belacourt family is astute in business. You’d think her mom or publicist or someone would have talked her out of it.”
A flash of memory sneaks into my mind of the time we ran away from our bodyguards and spent a day in Disneyland. Bree left the park with bags of souvenirs for her siblings and nothing for herself. Every time she’d find something for one of them, she’d find something for the other two to keep things even. It snowballed until we were walking around with more bags than we had arms for. She has always been fair and just.
If there’s one thing I learned from listening to her diss track twenty-five times before Grandma dragged me over to Colby’s house, it’s how unjust Jaida must have been toward Bree. I would be more angry on Jaida’s behalf, except that I have the hunch she did something terrible to earn Bree’s ire. Maybe that’s why it’s so easy to forgive her, and why my inclination was to jump in and help. Bree must have felt she was alone in facing this, or she would have stayed in contact with her family. I can’t abandon her.
Too bad the whole thing makes a victim out of Jaida and the world is rallying to her defense online.
“It’s done now.”
“Are you okay?” Chip asks. “I remember how tight you and Bree used to be.”
“Yeah, I’m not…I feel bad for her. I doubt she meant for the song to become what it is right now.”
“I don’t know, man. It’s pretty overt. You can’t sing like that without intention.”
It’s a fair point, so I have no argument. “I better run. Let me know if you hear anything else? I’m invested.”
“You got it.”
I hang up and slide my phone into my pocket. This is a mess. I agree with Grandma that Bree needs a killer song to fix this,but writing with her feels like a bad idea. Everything with Bree feels like a bad idea, yet I can’t stay away from her.
“Let’s try that again,”Bree says, chewing a pen cap and pushing her toes against the grass to move the chair swing. I’m beside her, guitar on my lap, and we’ve been at this for two hours with no progress.
I lean forward, forcing the swing to quit moving. Colby’s house is as old as mine, but he hasn’t updated it yet. After inheriting it from his mom, he sort of moved in, but left a lot of things as is inside. The backyard, though? He’s put a lot of work into making it a bit of an oasis. Next to my yard, Colby’s should be winning awards. Rock beds and sand beds are artfully arranged around plants and trees that can withstand the north bay wind and fog atmosphere. With the sun glinting off the ocean in front of us and the beach stretching below the cliff on the other side of the road, it’s a stunning view.
I should really put more of an effort into my outdoor spaces.
“For-giveme,” Bree sings. “I didn’t mean to…to…toooooo…” She groans. “It sounds forced, Benny.”
