Jesse's Girl (Hundred Oaks #6) (7 page)

It makes me happy he’s starting to open up. “Of course.”

“So you didn’t want Mark to put you in a recording booth, but you want to become a musician?”

“I do. More than anything.”

“Then why not let us record you so you could have the experience? I thought that’s why you wanted to spend today with me.”

“I’d love to be recorded, but I need a band for that.”

“What for?”

“I can’t do solos.”

He stops pumping his legs, and his swing begins to slow. “You sang just fine on your own this morning.”

“But that was just for you and Holly. When I’m in front of big crowds, something always goes wrong. I like it when the audience has somewhere else to look besides me.”

“You have a good voice. You don’t need a band to perform.”

“You don’t get it. You’ve always performed solo. I like being part of something, you know? That’s why I started The Fringe.”

“Which turned into a heavy metal band?”

“Yeah…”

“Do you even like heavy metal?”

“No, not really,” I say quietly.

“Then why were you playing it?”

Okay, so maybe I don’t want him asking hard personal questions. “Because I love performing.”

“Then why can’t you do it by yourself?”

“I just can’t.”

I jump off the swing and go over to the hopscotch court. He follows me. I start skipping through the numbered squares to try to escape, but Jesse reaches out and grabs my elbow. He puts his hands on my shoulders and bores into me with those caramel eyes.

“You okay? I talked to you about my life. You can talk to me.”

Do I really want this big star to know the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me? No, I don’t, because I’m ashamed of what happened. I don’t want him to think I’m a talentless loser and decide I’m not worth his time. But he told me about his ex-girlfriend and his parents…and when you think about it, what happened to me is nothing compared to Jesse’s ex telling the tabloids that he gets freaky in bed. As someone who has had his secrets shared, I bet he’ll keep mine.

“In seventh grade, I was singing a solo at a concert at school. It was awful because I locked my knees and fainted.”

Jesse cringes but gestures for me to keep talking.

I take a deep breath. “When I fainted, I busted my chin on the stage and had this terrible bruise for a long time. But what really hurt was how much kids made fun of me. After that, I never wanted people to look at me while I was performing. I quit the choir for a while too, but I ended up rejoining.”

“What made you go back?”

This is embarrassing to admit, but I told myself I would tell the truth. “I kept with it because of you.”

“Me?” he blurts.

I suck in a deep breath. If Nate or Hannah or anybody from The Fringe heard me say this, they’d make fun of me for all time. “Your second album came out around the time I fainted. ‘Agape’ was on the radio all the time, and my dad said, ‘if that boy can do big concerts for thousands of people, you can sing in the choir.’”

Jesse turns his gaze away from mine and rubs the back of his neck, furrowing his eyebrows. “I had really bad stage fright when I first started performing. But I worked through it. Did you?”

“I rejoined choir,” I say. “But I didn’t sing another solo until the talent show last spring. I was upset that my band wouldn’t perform, so I decided to go for it by myself. But my voice cracked…and I felt like this big joke. I sucked.”

“Your voice isn’t a joke. Up until it cracked, your performance in the talent show was pretty good.”

I trip over my feet as I’m hopping from block number 4 to 5. “How do you know that?”

He grins. “At first I wasn’t sure about you shadowing me, but then Uncle Bob showed me your ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ video.”

I groan. “He showed it to you?”

“Yeah—it was big-time. You should put it on YouTube.”

“It’s
already
on YouTube. It’s called ‘The Siren.’ Ugh.” I jump through the hopscotch blocks again. “So when did you see the video?” I ask.

“Right after you left my dressing room last week.”

“You were so mean to me that night!”

He looks over at the merry-go-round, watching it circle in place. “I’m sorry. I figured you’d be like all those other screaming girls, and I was in a grouchy mood, I guess.”

“Because of your parents? Because they didn’t show?”

He nods and hops through the numbered blocks. “You were mean to me too, you know. When you stormed out of my dressing room, I thought,
Who
is
this
mean, sexy punk girl?
”

“I am not mean!”

The side of his mouth quirks up. “You’re mean as hell. Always yelling at me and telling me what to do.”

“Someone has to.” I step closer to him and shove his stomach. He retaliates by grabbing me around the waist. His cologne smells so good, and I can barely fight the urge to rest my cheek against the white T-shirt covering his strong chest. He tickles my side, and I jerk away, laughing, and that’s when he pulls me up against him for real. His body presses to mine, and his warmth radiates down to the tips of my toes.

“Seriously though,” he whispers. “If you want to sing on your own, just keep working at it, and don’t worry if people make fun of you. There will always be critics, but you have to trust your instincts. If you’re serious about being a musician, you can’t let other people decide what music you should play… You could end up going down a path that you were never meant to take…and then you could end up living a life that’s not
yours
.”

He suddenly takes a step back and looks away, putting distance between us that somehow feels greater than when we first met.

That’s when he jerks his head at the two reporters who have been following us. Behind them, a few moms with toddlers are taking pictures of Jesse with their cell phones, nudging each other and pointing at us.

“I can see the headlines now,” he says. “Jesse Scott Plays Hopscotch with Mean Sexy Punk Girl.”

I stick my tongue out at him and start hopping through the blocks again, and then Jesse jumps in too.

“You don’t care about being in the tabloids?” I ask.

“My parents care.” He hops through the blocks again. “But Mark says nearly any kind of publicity is good. You know, except joining a cult or hiring a hit man.”

“Don’t you think Mr. Logan is worried since you just took off after lunch?”

At that, Jesse takes out his phone, pushes a button, and puts the receiver to his ear. “Guess what I’m doing?… Playing hopscotch… No, I’m not making that up, Mark… Yes, I’m wearing my boots… No, I’m not telling you where I’m at… I don’t care if Uncle Bob’s mad—we’re having a nice time. He called
eight
times?… Tell him not to worry. We haven’t done anything against the law. Yet.”

That’s when I remember to check my cell—I don’t think I’ve ever gone so long without checking it—and discover four missed calls from the school number I dialed earlier, two missed calls from my mother, a text from Dad telling me I’m grounded (I wasn’t aware he knew how to send texts), ten texts from my brother demanding an explanation for why I went off the grid on shadow day, and one from Jordan telling me to disregard everything my brother says and enjoy myself.

I can’t believe Dr. Salter told on me to my parents! I am going to be in such deep shit when this day is over. I text Jordan and ask her to tell my family and Dr. Salter that everything is fine and put my phone back in my purse as Jesse ends his call.

Jesse walks over to the marble fountain, fishes a penny out of his pocket, and lobs it into the water.

“What’d you wish for?”

“If I tell you, it won’t come true.”

I’m so glad he seems happier than this morning. Maybe he needs more fun in his life. Fun, without a rhythm. Like how he ditched today’s schedule. We should do more of that.

I slip my ankle booties off. “Here’s some publicity for you!” I step into the fountain and start splashing around in the chilly water. I shriek at the cold and the joy.

The reporters aim their cameras at me, and Jesse grins and pulls his red boots and socks off. He rolls his jeans to his knees and hops in.

We splash and throw coins at each other, and I try to push him down, but he escapes through the water. The little kids rush over and squeal and try to join us. Their moms scoop them up, horrified, but not so horrified that they can’t snap pictures with their phones.

A cop gallops up on a massive brown horse, and Jesse and I tear out of the fountain and grab our shoes. The cop is on our tail!

Laughing, we dart across the street to his bike, water dripping off us.

“I like your job, Jesse Scott!”

We take off on Jesse’s bike to escape the horse cop and then drive at, like, seventy miles an hour down back roads in Brentwood until we lose the paparazzi. When he pulls over to the side of the road so we can regroup, we’re both out of breath when we take off our helmets.

“I don’t think we can go back to my house,” he says. “I bet my uncle and Mark will be waiting there.”

“That sucks. I was really looking forward to playing your double-neck Fender Strat.”

He scratches the back of his neck. For a second, I expect him to say the polite thing—that maybe I can play his guitar another time. But then I remember who I’m talking to. Somehow over the course of the afternoon, Jesse Scott started feeling like a regular ole guy. But he’s not.

It’s only three o’clock. The schedule said shadow day is over at three-thirty, but I’m not ready to leave my new friend yet. Is that what we are? Friends? I would like that, but how can I make it happen?

“What do you want to do now?” I ask.

He shrugs.

“Let’s just drive,” I tell him.

As he zooms down country roads, my heart finally begins to slow. Did I really just run from a cop? I laugh at the idea, vibrations filling my chest. Jesse must feel it, my happiness, because his back relaxes against my front. I hold on tight as he dips around curves and flies over hills. He slides to a stop at a small gravel path leading into some woods. We’re
way
out in the country.

After exchanging his helmet for his cowboy hat, he takes my elbow and leads me up the gravel path into the woods. Birds chirp and sing, and I can’t hear anything man-made. No traffic, no tractors, no talking. It’s just us.

The gravel turns into a dirt path, which winds through the dense green trees. We walk for about five minutes until the path empties us in front of a sparkling lake. It’s tiny—not anywhere as big as Normandy Lake—but it’s a beautiful blue.

“Where are we?”

“My pa—my great-grandfather—used to bring me here as a kid. It’s his fishing hole. It was our secret.”

“And you brought me here?” I whisper.

Avoiding my stare, he adjusts his hat. “You said to just drive…and this is where I ended up. It felt right.”

I gaze out at the calm, blue water. “Do you come here a lot?”

“When I need to be alone, yeah. I write a lot of my songs here. I feel closer to my pa, you know?”

“So you were really close?”

He nods sadly. “He taught me to play guitar. He always encouraged me, but he never got to see me make it big. He had a bad hip, see, and one day…one day, he fell down the stairs, hit his head, and didn’t wake up.”

I touch Jesse’s elbow. “You must miss him, huh?”

“Yeah.” Jesse’s voice sounds raw with emotion. “To be honest, I’ve kinda felt alone ever since he died.”

“I get that. I’ve never really felt like I truly belong…with my choir, and now my band, and even my family.”

“Nothing wrong with being a solo artist,” he says with a small smile.

If there’s anything I’ve learned today, aside from the amazing lesson from Jesse and Holly, it’s that singing by myself is not as scary as before. I stayed calm when I sang for him, and my voice didn’t crack. Maybe one day, I could try a solo on my own again. I do prefer being part of a band though, where I don’t have to carry all the weight all the time.

Seeing Jesse all on his own and lonely, I can’t help but wonder if being a big star would be easier for him if he was part of a group. If he were part of something larger than himself.

“This seems like a good place to write,” I tell Jesse. “I usually write on our back patio.”

“You write too?”

“Uh, well, I write, but I don’t write well.”

“You got any of your stuff?”

Crap. I didn’t expect he’d actually want to read it. With a trembling hand, I reach into my purse and pull out my tiny Moleskine journal, the black one with gold trim that my brother gave me for Christmas. The small songbook is too pretty for my crappy songs, but I love writing in it. It makes me feel special, like the music I put in the notebook is important.

Jesse sits on the grass, takes his boots and socks off, and rolls up his jeans to dip his feet in the water. As he opens my tiny songbook, I skim my fingers across the lake’s surface. It’s cold but not freezing, so I copy Jesse and take off my booties. It reminds me of how we jumped in that fountain a little while ago. But this lake is quiet and intimate, and what we did at the playground feels like a million years ago.

He flips from page to page in my Moleskine. He stops on a page and holds it out to me. “You got a melody for this?”

I nod.

“Sing it to me,” he says. “But make sure you sing from your diaphragm, okay?”

He wants me to sing a song
I
wrote
without a guitar? No piano for backup? Just my voice? That’s crazy.

But Jesse put himself out there for me today, telling me about his life. Not judging me when I told him that my family couldn’t afford music lessons. He didn’t laugh when I told him about fainting onstage or when I told him about losing the band I started.

I can put myself out there too. I take a deep breath. I tap out a beat on my leg, then sing the song I wrote after Nate turned me down at the beach last spring. Jesse drags a hand through his floppy brown hair when I sing my favorite line, “I tell you again and again, but only the darkness hears.”

The words aren’t lyrical—some are choppy even—but my chest burns every time I sing this song, because it’s filled with my feelings.

When I’m done, Jesse doesn’t say anything about the song. He just takes the songbook out of my hands and turns the page. He truly is a tough critic. But that only makes me want to work harder. I may not like country, but the guy knows his stuff, and I respect his opinions.

Jesse reading my lyrics makes me nervous, so to distract myself, I stand and wade out a few feet into the fishing hole.

He reads part of another song aloud: “I’m a tiny swatch of quilt, and I want to be sewn into your heart.”

“Ugh, that’s terrible. I don’t even remember writing that. I plead insanity.”

Jesse yodels the line Dolly Parton style. “I want to be sewn into your hearrrrrttttt,” he croons, and it makes me snort.

“Stop making fun of me!”

He sets my songbook on the ground, jumps to his feet, and starts serenading me with a pretend microphone in hand, “I’m a tinnnnnnnnnny swatch of quilllltttt.”

I giggle. “Stop it!” I push his chest as hard as I can, causing him to stumble backward. Realization dawns on his face right before he splashes onto his butt.

Oops.

He pulls himself to his feet, water sloshing around him. His clothes are soaked from neck to ankles. He fumbles for his hat as it floats away from him.

“Are you crazy, Maya? It’s September. It’s freezing!”

“It’s seventy degrees outside, you big baby.”

He wades over, shaking the water from his hair, and I’m thinking
God, water makes this boy even sexier
when he grabs me by the wrist. I try to escape, but he playfully yanks me toward him. I scream so loud you could hear me on the moon. The water goes up to my waist. My dress billows and I have to hold it down to make sure my underwear stays covered.

“You jerk!” I yell.

“Tell me something I haven’t heard before,” he says, smiling down at me.

“Fine. I think your new spurs are ugly.”

“Oh, you did not.”

“Did.”

“That’s it.” He chases after me, but I quickly wade back onto the banks and throw my arms around a skinny tree trunk so he can’t pull me in.

Breathing hard, he pushes the wet hair out of his face and follows me to the shore. He reaches over his shoulder and pulls his T-shirt off in one movement, and then he removes his jeans, revealing a pair of navy blue boxers.

Confident, much?

As he’s laying his clothes on the grass to dry, I let go of the tree and smooth my wet dress back into place, staring at him. His Celtic tattoo is giving me heart palpitations. “What is it with you and hanging out in your underwear?”

“I told you this is what I do on Fridays.”

“And Thursdays,” I reply.

“And Wednesdays.” With a laugh, he starts to move toward me again. I dart away through the grass. Is this really happening? Is Jesse Scott chasing me in his boxers?

“Marco,” he calls out.

“Polo.”

Soon, my only escape is back into the water. It hits my knees as I splash away from him. “Turn around,” I say.

“Why?”

“I’m gonna ditch my dress—it’s too heavy when it’s wet—and then we can go for a swim.”
Did
I
just
ask
Jesse
Scott
to
go
swimming
in
our
underwear?
Yes, I think I did. I reach around to pull my zipper down, and that’s when I see his face fall.

“I told you I don’t swim,” he says.

I slowly take my fingers off my zipper and move closer to him. He grabs the back of his neck, staring down into the water, which barely reaches his shins. Is he scared to come deeper?

“What happened on the yacht?” I ask quietly.

He turns, giving me a view of his tattoo. “It was stupid.”

“You can talk to me.”

He stares up at the sky, his back still turned toward me. “You know
Wannabe
Rocker
?”

Just thinking of the show and what The Fringe could have been—and won’t be—makes my heart start racing so hard it hurts. I sweep my bleached hair behind my ears. “Of course,” I say, calmly as I can. “That’s how you got your start.”

“Mark wanted me to become a judge for the show next season. You know, to improve my reputation?”

“What’s wrong with your rep? I mean, besides the whole falling off the yacht thing.”

“Ha ha,” he says sarcastically, giving me a look. “I wanted to be seen as an adult artist, so I said I didn’t wanna do any more photo shoots for those tween bop magazines. And Mark got scared I’d lose my fan base if I gave them up.”

“Was this before you decided to retire?”

“Yeah.” He musses his wet hair.

I stretch out on the banks to warm myself in the sun. “What does this have to do with falling off a boat?”

Jesse gives me an amused shake of the head. “You are obsessed with me.”

“I know…and with the pending shortage of tween magazines featuring your face, I have no idea what I’m gonna do with my spare time. Can we get back to the boat already?”

“Last June, Mark invited me and all these Hollywood types to a party on his yacht so we could seal the deal for me to become a judge on the show. So we’re on the yacht with all these people I don’t know, and all I can think about is this field trip I took in fourth grade. My class went on a riverboat cruise on the Cumberland.”

“Oh yeah! We did that too. There was even a swing band. It was fun. We’re having our graduation cruise in June on a riverboat too.”

“Well, during my field trip, I loved hearing that band. I thought it would be cool to sing on the Belle Carol one day.”

I smile. I can’t believe Jesse Scott got his inspiration from the Belle Carol Riverboat.

He goes on, “So after the field trip, I told my pa, and he signed me up for singing lessons. After the first session, Holly said I was a prodigy and should be singing professionally. She encouraged me to try out for
Wannabe
Rocker
, so Pa helped me make an audition video, and a few weeks later, I was accepted onto the show. That’s how it all started. Life hasn’t slowed down since.”

“Being on the yacht made you think about all this?” He nods, so I add, “And this isn’t what you wanted out of life?”

He shakes his head. This must be what he was talking about earlier, how you can end up leading a whole life you were never meant to lead. For me, it was letting Nate take over my band that landed me on the wrong path. But I don’t buy that Jesse wasn’t born to showcase his talent.

“Jess, you were meant to perform. Other people would kill to have your voice—”

He interrupts, “I’m about to turn nineteen. I can’t go to the grocery store without getting mauled—Grace has to do everything for me, or I have to have stuff delivered. You saw what happened earlier—I couldn’t even go to lunch without being interrupted for an autograph. My manager basically raised me. I have no friends—”

Suddenly he picks up a rock from the shore and hurls it into the water. He watches the surface ripple and wave until it smoothes. Then he sits down next to me on the grass. “I just sat there on the yacht that night, thinking all I wanted was to perform on the Belle Carol Riverboat. Now no one I used to know from school will talk to me anymore, ’cause I won’t give them money and record deals…not that I wanna talk to them anyway. And my parents were still angry with me because my girlfriend blabbed about our sex life.”

“So you were lonely?” He nods, and I swallow hard and ask with a shaky voice, “You weren’t trying to die or anything, right?”

“Of course not.” Jesse bends over and drops his forehead onto his crossed arms. “I drank, like, half a fifth of Jack Daniel’s and slipped and fell off the boat.”

“Half a fifth?” I exclaim.

“I’d never actually drank before—or after—that night.”

“Wait—why did you ask if I wanted to get drunk earlier today?”

He tousles his wet hair, peeking up at me. “Maybe I was testing you a bit.”

I stick my tongue out at him. “You sure know how to do things up the first time. You practically get a record deal during your first singing lesson, and then you totally wipe out during your first alcoholic experience.”

“I always say go big or go home.”

I stretch out my legs and wiggle my toes, drying them in the sun. “Do you still love singing and playing guitar?”

“More than anything.”

“So what are you gonna do when you retire?”

He looks to the opposite shore. “No idea.”

“Then why would you quit?”

“I don’t have a choice, Maya. I can quit or never have a real life. Right now, I don’t have anything but my music. Not friends, not family.”