14
BENNY
The house smells like bacon,which isn’t something I’m used to. I enjoy a brief fantasy that Bree crawled in through another window and is waiting in my kitchen, but then I remember thatone: she can’t cook, andtwo: Colby is still here. He’s been staying with me for three days now, and in that time, I haven’t seen Bree once.
I’ve texted to invite her to have dinner with us, asked if she wanted to walk down to the beach and play volleyball, and sent messages to check in, but she’s ignored everything. I’d be worried, but there’s been signs of life in the house next door, like a bag of trash in the outdoor can and lights from the windows pouring onto the back lawn in the evening.
Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I pad into the kitchen in my sweats and find Colby frying eggs with the bacon.
His gray shirt is dark with sweat, and his hair is still damp at the neck. “Morning.”
“You worked out without me?”
“I figured you needed the sleep after last night.”
He’s not wrong. I nod to his sizzling pan. “Enough for two in there?”
“Of course. I have to earn my keep somehow, right?”
“Not really, but I’ll take it.” I sit, fighting a yawn. Something about the song Bree and I have been writing together has been eluding me. I’ve been trying to hammer out the arrangement for the last few days. I got some of the piano worked out, but the rest is proving more difficult than I’d expected. Last night I was working on the melody until four in the morning, but I didn’t make much progress. I guess I don’t know exactly what vibe she wants to go with now that Jaida victimized herself further.
It’s also hard to know how to feel about everything when I don’t know what happened. Bree’s definitely remorseful, but short of that, how much Jaida deserves to be a victim here is still a mystery.
“That song is catchy,” he says.
I give him a look. “It’s not even a song yet. I have the words down, but nothing else is falling into place.”
“Then move on to something else and come back to it later.”
I scrub a hand over my face, my gaze dragging toward the window facing Colby’s backyard. “This one is kind of time sensitive.”
He brings two plates to the island counter with toast, eggs, and bacon, and sits beside me. “Old flame, eh?” He correctly surmises it has to do with Bree.
“It’s not really like that.”
“I saw how you were looking at her when she was over here.”
I take a bite of bacon. “I’ll always care about her, man.”
“Yeah, but is it mutual?”
“How would I know?”
“She broke your heart.”
“I’m the one who broke up with her. I couldn’t handle…I needed to get away from the pressure and the crowds.”
Colby leans back, eyeing me. “I remember it pretty well. You were a mopey mess foryears.”
“Thank you.”
He shoves a piece of toast covered in egg into his mouth. “It’s true.”
“Yeah, but none of it was her fault. My anxiety was out of control.” I focus on eating. Technically, he didn’t say anything that isn’t true. I hadn’t wanted to end things with Bree, but I saw how our lives were diverging, and I couldn’t handle living in the spotlight anymore. I couldn’t keep playing that game when it felt like my parents were bleeding me dry and pushing me to do more and more. If I hadn’t cut the whole industry off the way I did, it would have killed my spirit. I’m not cut out for that kind of life, and I didn’t enjoy all the fake people and schmoozers and suck-ups—everyone wanting to be my friend because I wastheBenny Rhodes.
It was exhausting, and I was just a kid. Facing a lifetime of that was…it became unthinkable if I wanted to keep my sanity.
“It was hard,” I finally say. “I didn’t want to leave her, but I didn’t see how we could stay together if I was going to cut off that whole part of my life. With the way her family is and the reality show and her dreams of singing one day…it wasn’t realistic. I had to choose, and I chose myself, I guess.”