Sing (2 page)

92 Days Until Tour

June 12th

“HE'S AN ASS.”

Tess arrives bearing Jeni's ice cream sandwiches and a flimsy book of matches from the bodega on the corner. We're on the roof deck, overlooking the lamplit West Village cobblestones and the dark, reflective sheen of the Hudson River.

“A giant, hairy ass,” Sammy agrees. She's sprawled across one of the chaise longues, her long strawberry-blond hair fanned out behind her. Mom picked the patio furniture on one of her visits last fall, before I'd officially moved in. Neither of us had any idea that “patio” meant something different in New York than it did in Los Angeles. Or back home in Wisconsin, for that matter.
It's almost impossible to squeeze past the matching glass tables and rustic lanterns and stocky potted ferns without tripping.

“I mean, not that his ass is hairy,” Sammy clarifies. “Though it probably is. I just meant that his hair is big.” Between her knees is a shoebox full of cards, photographs, and other Jed-related memorabilia. She flips through a small photo book I'd had printed for Valentine's Day. “Not big. Gigantic.”

Tess kicks Sammy from her post on one of the cushioned benches that line the perimeter of the deck.

“What?” Sammy whines, rubbing the side of her ankle. “It's not a secret that his hair is huge. There could be an entire colony of small creatures reproducing in there and we'd never have a clue.”

I laugh, even though I don't feel like it, which is why Sammy has been my best friend since preschool. She will do or say anything to make me smile, even if it means making herself look bad, which—given her insanely long legs, porcelain skin, and freakishly shiny hair—is nearly impossible to do.

“I'm just not sure we've entered the trash-talking portion of the evening yet,” Tess says flatly. She fiddles with the piercing in the soft cartilage of her upper ear, a tiny silver barbell. “We still don't even know what happened.”

“I told you what happened.” I groan, pulling my favorite gray cashmere sweater across my bare knees. It was the first nice thing I bought for myself when I signed to my label in LA Sammy helped me pick it out in a boutique in Santa Monica, and even though the sleeves are stretched and it's worn around the collar, I've kept it with me ever since.

“I refuse to believe you broke up with Jed Monroe because he ordered soup,” Sam says. “But even if you did, I'm sure he deserved it. I mean, look at these.” She pulls out a strip of photo booth shots we took at a meet-and-greet with fans a few months back. I'm making all sorts of wacky faces and Jed is pouting, his big, handsome features arranged stoically and identically from shot to shot. “Would it kill him to smile?”

I sigh. “I didn't break up with him. Stop trying to make me feel better.”

Tess and Sammy exchange what is supposed to be an undercover look of concern. “Sorry.” Sam shrugs. She puts the photos back in the shoebox and lays the matches beside them.

“Don't be sorry!” Tess barks. She stands abruptly, gathering her brown hair into a knot on the top of her head, exposing a newly shorn undercut that makes her look part punk, part little boy. Tess is pretty fierce about breakups, not that she's had many of her own. When she
told us she was gay the summer after high school, I was relieved, figuring she'd finally start opening up about the girls she was seeing. But she didn't. As far as I know, she's never had a relationship longer than a few months. Independence is her calling card, sort of the way falling in love is mine.

I shake my head stubbornly. “I don't want to keep doing this.”

“Then let's go out!” Sammy says, bolting upright.
Let's go out
is pretty much Sammy's mantra. If they gave out advanced degrees for partying your problems away, she would have her PhD.

“No,” I say. “I mean,
this
.” I wave distractedly at the shoebox. “I don't want to keep doing this to myself. Getting dumped, and pretending to be better for it. Writing songs about how much stronger I am on my own. Because what if the truth is that there's something wrong with me? What if I'm destined to be alone?” I bite at the corners of my thumbnail, my oldest and grossest habit.

“That's ridiculous,” Tess says. “The only thing wrong with you is that you have terrible taste in men.”

I roll my eyes. “You loved Jed,” I remind her. “You said he was so much better than—and I quote—‘the industry douchebags' I usually fall for.”

Tess scoffs. “Hardly a glowing recommendation,”
she jokes, before turning serious. “No, you're right. Jed's a solid guy and a kick-ass musician. You guys, your careers . . . it all made sense. But you deserve more than a business partner. You deserve somebody who gets the real you—crazy, silly, goofy you. That's what you're looking for. Right?”

I shake my head. “I don't know,” I say, stretching out my legs and looking up at the starless sky. “All I know is that I'm tired of my own battle cry. It's boring.”

“Your battle cry is Billboard platinum.” Sammy laughs, collapsing back onto the chaise. “You can't give up now. “

Tess kicks her again and rolls her eyes. “That's not what she means, Samantha.”

“I don't know what I mean,” I say with a frustrated sigh.

“I have an idea.” Tess shifts closer to me on the bench. “Let's get out of here.”

Sammy reaches down to pull on her sandals.

“No, no, I don't mean now.” Tess raises her thick, dark brows. “For the summer.”

“The summer?” Sam looks confused. “Like, the whole summer?”

I shake my head defiantly. “I don't want to go back to LA. Every time I leave the house it's like a graveyard of zombie exes.”

“I didn't say anything about LA.” Tess flashes a sly smile. “Remember that house my dad used to rent, up in Maine?”

I nod. Sammy and I met Tess when we were twelve, at a summer camp on Lake Michigan. Every year, after camp, Tess's father would take her back east, to a ramshackle cottage on a tiny island in Penobscot Bay. “What about it?”

“Oh, not much.” Tess shrugs playfully. “Other than I just bought it.”

“You
what
?” Sammy shrieks.

“You bought it?” I ask. “You didn't tell me you were thinking about buying a house!”

Tess smirks. “Just because you pay me an ungodly sum of money to hang out with you doesn't mean I have to consult you on every business decision I make,” she says.

My cheeks burn. Technically, Tess and Sammy are my assistants—it's how we could justify them putting their lives on hold to keep up with mine. Sammy did a few semesters at Madison before dropping out to follow me, first to LA and then cross-country to New York. Tess was already at NYU when we got here, but it wasn't long before she decided to take a hiatus. They both insist they wouldn't have it any other way, and I know I couldn't do it without them. But I hate when they talk about money—mine or theirs—even when I know they're joking.

“It's nothing fancy,” Tess continues, “just a tiny house in a real-life fishing village. I think maybe we could all use some real life for a change.” Tess looks at me, and I wonder for the billionth time when she got so good at reading my mind. “What do you think, Bird? Are you in?”

Bird, originally Songbird and sometimes Birdie, is the nickname Tess gave me at camp when we were kids. Over the years it has been adapted as an easy shorthand among family and friends, to differentiate from the
other
Lily Ross, the Lily Ross who headlines tours and cranks out albums and is forever at the center of a media cyclone and who, increasingly, has almost nothing to do with me.

I stand and lean against the roof ledge, looking out over the city. A police siren pierces the air and I feel my whole body tensing. There is nothing I would love more than to leave, to hide in some cozy corner of the world, away from photographers and interviews and studio schedules. All of it.

“It's a nice idea,” I say wistfully. But I know this feeling, and I know it won't last. Tomorrow it will be right back to business—there's an album to finish, the first singles to put out, endless publicity, and in the fall, my next tour. There isn't any time to feel sorry for myself.

“But . . .” Sammy prompts.

I smile. “You know I can't take that much time away from work.”

Tess stares at me with her arms crossed. Sammy pretends to inspect her freshly painted, pale pink nails.

“What?” I prod. They both look like they want to say more, but don't.

“It's no big deal,” Tess finally huffs, waving her hand in the air between us. “We can stay.” She unpeels the wrapper from an ice cream sandwich and licks slowly around the dripping edges. “Summer in the city is delightful.”

I look out at the puzzle of inching cars and shuffling pedestrians. I moved to New York because I thought it would be a fresh start. After Caleb, LA was feeling claustrophobic, like it already knew me too well. I loved the way New York made me feel off-balance. I wanted the city to swallow me up, to consume me. And it did, for about a week.

Then I met Jed. I wasn't looking for another relationship so soon, but it was almost a foregone conclusion. Our lives fit so perfectly together. We were so alike. And everything he was, I wanted to be. Successful, established, respected, grown-up. Right away, people loved us together. We were supposed to make it.

I wasn't supposed to be here, again.

Suddenly, there's an overwhelming rumbling in my chest. I turn on my heel and walk to Sammy's chaise, standing over the shoebox. I hold out one hand and
without saying a word, Tess is there with the matches. I strike one and Sam passes me the photo booth strip. I tilt the flame until it licks the photo's glossy edge.

“It was fun, but now it's done,” I say, the silly rhyme I stole from Sammy, the one she used to chant to get over high school breakups, back before I had any boyfriends of my own. I hold on to the burning photo, watching as Jed's face contorts, melting into mine, until the whole thing goes up in an orange burst of flame.

91 Days Until Tour

June 13th

RAY IS WAITING
beside one of two black Escalades parked at the back entrance of Equinox. Despite the urge to stay cocooned in my bed for weeks on end, I dragged myself to my so-early-it-should-be-illegal private session with Leon this morning, intense interval training that consistently liquefies the lower half of my body. It was typically brutal, but it felt good to be distracted, and as I approach the car I even manage something that resembles a smile.

“Nice guns,” Ray teases. I lift the sleeve of my retro silk blouse to flex my wiry muscles, our post-gym comedy routine. Of the entire security team, Ray has been around the longest and is my favorite. He's sort
of like an older brother, if your older brother were an ex-Navy SEAL with biceps the size of watermelons. He holds the door open and I climb in, tossing my tote on the seat beside me.

“Hey, K2.” I nod at Kevin, the same driver I've had since moving to New York. Ray has another Kevin on the security team, so now we call this one K2.

“M'lady.” K2 fake-bows. Even though he's from the Bronx, he has a habit of slipping into a phony British accent and calling my apartment “The Manor.”

My phone buzzes and I look down to see an e-mail from Terry. The studio time has officially been booked for this afternoon. I wince. I'm supposed to be putting the final touches on my new album. But that was before yesterday, before the breakup. Now the idea of spending time with those songs, songs I've been working on for the last six months, seems impossible. Twelve songs, each one about Jed, my missing puzzle piece, all my dreams come true.

The album is titled, unbelievably,
Forever.

“I need a fix,” I tell K2, code for
If there isn't a cup of coffee
in my immediate future, we'll be approaching DEFCON red.

K2 nods and seamlessly navigates the chaos of the road. I watch his eyes flicker in the mirror, searching for the nearest Starbucks. I catch a glimpse of my own reflection. It's not as bad as I'd imagined, but there are
shallow dark circles under my eyes, and my skin looks dry and dull, despite the full face of makeup I applied after getting out of the gym shower. I look like somebody who hasn't slept, which, aside from a few, fitful hours full of punishing dreams—dreams about Jed, about us together, as if nothing had happened—is true.

I tuck my phone back in my bag as K2 wedges us into an illegal spot on Thirty-third Street. Ray hops out to the curb and for a moment I consider sending him in with my order. I just don't know if I have it in me to pull it together for my fans. But getting my own coffee is a thing I do, a deal I made with myself when my world started to really change, when I started hearing my own voice on every radio station:
Don't stop doing normal things
.

I'm fully aware that being trailed by bodyguards and getting mobbed at every stop is nowhere in the neighborhood of normal, but for some reason it feels better than the alternative. No matter how surreal everything else gets, it's important to believe I can still do things for myself, even if it takes an absurdly long time to do them.

I slide out after Ray and we walk into the coffee shop together. Behind us, the rest of the security team is assembling, a handful of beefy guys in sunglasses trying to blend in with the hordes of pedestrians swarming the midtown sidewalk.

Ray holds the door open and I duck inside. As always, there are a few quiet moments before the phones start flashing and the crowd descends. Sometimes, I like to imagine that I can live in these moments. Freeze them and drag them out. Today, I use them to take a few steadying breaths. I make sure that all traces of sadness are buried deep beneath an easy, carefree facade.

As I start toward the back of the line, a trio of squealing girls shuffles over from the window. Their moms follow, iPhones at the ready, and I smile and ask their names. One of them is wearing a T-shirt that says
GREELEY GYMNASTICS
and I tell her I used to dream of going to the Olympics. “Now I can't do a cartwheel,” I admit, and they giggle. Their moms gently guide them away after we've selfied in a variety of formations, and I inch my way closer to the counter.

Twenty minutes, twelve photo ops, and half an iced Americano later, I give Ray the sign—a tug on one earring—and a path is cleared toward the door. I've almost made it out of the frosty AC and into the sticky city heat when a girl, maybe college-age, maybe older, pops up by the counter and yells my name.

I turn to her with a warm smile, ready to sign whatever she thrusts at me, and then I see the expensive camera in her hands. She could easily be a college student studying photography, but I recognize the focused,
calculating look in her eyes.
Paparazzi
.

“Where's Jed?” she calls out, once, and then again. “Where's Jed?” By now she's practically clawing Ray's elbow to keep me in her sight.

My skin starts to prickle and I hurry toward the door, but the girl scoots around Ray, camera thrust outward. “I heard you guys broke up! Is it true? What happened to
Forever
?”

There's a pounding in my chest and the smile on my face turns stale. Confused whispers travel through the crowd and there's a subtle change in the energy around me, like the charge in the air before a storm.

I reach out for the door but somehow misjudge the distance and lean into space, my legs still weak from this morning's workout. I stumble against the corner of a trash can, and before I know it, Ray is at my elbow. But it's too late: I'm going down.

The whispers turn to frenzied panic as I splay across the linoleum floor, and I feel the crowd closing in. I shut my eyes, take a deep breath, and hear the unmistakable snap of a shutter going off. I know I should get up. I know I should laugh, make a joke about being the world's biggest klutz, but I can't. I lean into Ray's shoulder as he helps me to my feet, and keep my head down as I finally duck through the door and out onto the sidewalk, tumbling into the car.

K2 peels away from the curb. He makes a series of
quick turns and soon we're careening down the West Side Highway. I look out at the river on one side, the towering clump of high-rise buildings on the other. My breathing has started to return to normal, but I still feel trapped.

This isn't the way it was supposed to happen. Usually after a breakup, I crave contact with the outside world. Being around my fans, talking to them, feeling their energy . . . it's what gets me through. It's what inspires me to get back to writing, to mine the heartache and make it my own. To wrestle it down and wring it out: a new song, a new album, a new experience.

But now it feels like I'm the one being wrung out.

I need a change of scenery. I need to be alone. I need to hear myself think.

I take out my phone and scroll through my messages, searching for a recent group text.
Changed my mind
, I type furiously to Tess and Sammy.
Need a vacation. Who's in?