Sing. Vivi Greene
and a salad. I even toast some bread with garlic butter. There’s an incident with a pan full of sizzling oil and a finicky smoke detector, but when the food is finally plated and largely resembles an actual, edible meal, I feel like a bona fide gourmand.
“This is not terrible,” Tess says as we take our first bites at the round kitchen table.
“Gee, thanks,” I deadpan, but I have to admit I’ve surprised myself. The last real meal I cooked was probably before I left home, when Mom made me help her in the kitchen on Thanksgiving. It’s nice to have accomplished something, even if it’s not songwriting. Anxious butterflies swarm my stomach—there are eighty-seven days until the tour, which sounds like a lot, but I can feel the hours ticking down already.
“Who wants to go out?” Sammy asks, stacking the dirty dishes after we’ve finished.
“Out?” Tess laughs. “Did you maybe get a little too much sun today? We’re on an island with three restaurants, one of which is also the post office. There is no out.”
Sammy drops the plates in the sink with a clatter, and I notice the pink lines of a burn on her neck. I feel suddenly guilty for dragging her here, where her fair skin and freckles will be at constant risk of sun damage, and where there isn’t a decent cocktail menu within a fifty-mile radius.
“There has to be something,” I insist on Sammy’s behalf. “What do people here do for fun?”
Tess leans back against the wide bay window. “You’re looking at it,” she says.
“No way,” Sammy says, turning off the faucet. “Get dressed. If there’s a jukebox in this town, I’ll find it.”
Energized by the possibility of stimulation, I grab Tess by the hand and pull her from the cushioned bench, shooing her toward the shower. I almost make it to the top of the stairs before I remember my journal, which I stashed in Sammy’s bag after the beach.
I race back downstairs and duck into the living room. The bag is slumped against the tattered ottoman, and as I pull it up by its leather handles, a magazine slides out and into my hands.
My heart drops.
There I am, in all of my clumsy glory, sprawled out on the shellacked floor of a midtown Starbucks. One arm shields my eyes but my mouth is locked in a pained grimace. In boxy white type the headline reads: Down on Her Luck: Lily’s Alone Again.
I’m in such a trance that it takes me a few moments to register the other tabloids that have tumbled out of the bag at my feet. I glance down and am assaulted with the same photo from different angles. More oversize type, exclamation points: Bruised and Brokenhearted: Lily Heads to Rehab and Where in the World Is Lily Ross?
“Shit.” I hear a voice over my shoulder. I stare at the jumbled collection of my own startled faces. Tess rushes into the room and sweeps the pile aside with one foot. Sammy stops short in the hallway behind her.
“I’m so sorry,” Sammy says. “I was trying to clean out the shelves at the grocery store. They only had a few of each …”
“I want to see them,” I say sternly.
Sammy bends down to scoop them up but Tess puts a hand out to stop her. “No,” she says stubbornly. “You don’t. It’s all garbage. None of it is real.”
I collect the magazines myself and walk briskly up the stairs.
“Birdie!” they call after me in unison.
I shake my head. “I’m good,” I say, my voice trembling. “Really. I just … I need a few minutes.”
I close the door to my room behind me and collapse onto the bed, my pulse pounding an erratic beat inside my ears. I try to count my breaths, to close my eyes and be present, but none of the usual tricks work.
This is not the first time my face has been plastered on the cover of trashy tabloids. It comes with the territory, particularly post-breakup. After my first boyfriend in LA, Sebastian, it was a circus. Word was he was cheating with one of his backup singers. Then: all his backup singers.
After Caleb, I was the one who was moving on too fast. I was “heartless” and “career obsessed” for ending things and moving to New York when my second album took off and his, well, didn’t. I could have set the record straight, done an interview and insisted that he broke up with me, but Terry was sure it would only make things worse. The best thing to do with this kind of press is ignore it. Days later, it’s always somebody else’s heartbreak, someone else’s mistake—real or fabricated—staring back at the world from the checkout racks.
But this time, somehow, I’m not prepared. Being here, away from everything, it’s easy to forget that the world is still chugging along. Jed is still touring, answering questions, being who his fans want him to be. I’m not. I’m nowhere. So I’m fair game.
I open the magazine on top and flip slowly to the center spread. It’s all there. Our last dinner date. The stupid soup. A grainy shot of me watching Jed’s car as it sped away, spare keys dangling in one hand, staring after him like an abandoned puppy.
I quickly scan the poorly written copy, quoting various “inside sources” about our relationship, how it had been stalled for months. “Lily is ready to settle down, and Jed isn’t. The pressure became too much.”
I scoff. Pressure? The only thing I ever pressured him to do was sleep in on Sundays and eat fewer carbs. Tess was right. There’s not a single kernel of truth to be found anywhere.
But as my eyes travel down the page, they land on a quote that makes my stomach drop. “Sources say that Lily’s new album, Forever, was a promise to Jed. A promise he wasn’t ready to make. ‘It was never the big, epic romance everyone wanted it to be,’ says one inside source. ‘Maybe Lily thought they were Forever, but Jed never saw it that way. Just last month she wanted him to fly home to meet her family. He pretended he was busy with work, but really he thought things were moving too fast.”
My heart feels like it’s being squeezed in a vise. It was my grandparents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. My parents had planned a surprise party at the Italian restaurant where Grandpa had proposed. Jed promised he’d come, but at the last minute a bunch of appearances were added to his schedule. I hadn’t told anyone he was coming. He had a habit of double-booking himself, and I was tired of getting everyone’s hopes up.
There’s a timid knock at the door. Without waiting for an answer, Tess and Sammy shuffle carefully into the room. “Are you okay?”
Sammy slumps beside me and rests her head on my shoulder.
“He talked to them,” I say, my voice a trembling whisper. “He had to. There are things in there …”
“We know,” Tess says quietly. “We’re so sorry.”
“How could he do this?” I’m genuinely bewildered. I’ve been around long enough to know there’s no such thing as an “inside source.” He talked to the press about me, my family. And why? So he could have the last word in our relationship? So he could come out on top? If he wanted to make me look pathetic, it worked. Tears burn my eyes and I fight not to let them spill over. If I felt shock and heartbreak when he broke it off, this is a thousand times worse—now I feel like a fool.
“You have to forget him,” Tess urges. “I mean it. This is exactly why we’re here.”
Sammy rubs my back. “She’s right,” she says. “It’s not worth it. This summer is for you. For us, right? Remember how fun it was, just the three of us at camp?”
“No bugs or bad food,” Tess cuts in. “But otherwise, this summer should be like a grown-up version of the way things used to be. No responsibilities. No stress. Deal?”
I wipe my eyes and smile. “Deal.”
“Good,” Sammy says. “Now …”
“Let’s