Playing Autumn (Breathe Rockstar Romance Book 1) (11 page)

He handed her a hotel taco and she gingerly accepted it. Then he gestured for them to start walking outside, by the pool.

Kari was not familiar with this and held her taco horizontally for a bit, considering when to bite.

“I’m sorry,” Oliver said. “I didn’t ask if you ate tacos. Or chicken.”

She nodded. “I do. This is…weird, that’s all.”

“Believe me, you’ll need all the space to think that you can get.” He started a slow pace around the pool, thoughtfully chewing his first bite.

“I know who you are,” Kari admitted. She took her own first bite and caught the falling chicken slivers with a hand. “I know about
Tomorrow’s Talent
and your season. I know about your classical career and the rock one too. John doesn’t.”

“Does it matter?”

“He’s not really into this, that’s why. Doesn’t care for the rest of the stuff. Wants to sing and be applauded.” Kari sighed. “I’m sorry. He’s going to be more of an ass as this moves along.”

“He seemed to like Trey.”

“Because Trey sings and gets applause. That’s all.”

“Are you really going to sing the song Trey picked out for you?”

Kari paused, then swallowed. “It’s way better than what John picked. And I usually give in to his choices so we don’t end up arguing too long.”

She was a short girl. The top of her head barely reached his chest, and he was able to see the roots of her hair as they paced around the pool. It occurred to him that he hadn’t hung out with a real teenager in so long. They sounded like adults but experienced things differently.

This short walk was bringing back another skill: the ability to strategize. Oliver swallowed the last of his taco and told Kari they’d be heading back upstairs.

***

Oliver decided to let Trey have Kari and John’s day one. The song he chose, the advice he gave, the works. John didn’t want to sing it straight up and wanted a new arrangement; Trey agreed. Oliver let John create that arrangement, hastily teach it to Kari, and rehearse the whole thing twice before it was time for lunch, their first performance for the group.

It was, as expected, a trainwreck. Despite Oliver’s recommendations to Kari to just go with it, she did not want to. She deliberately did not use the same arrangement when she was on her verse, which made the duet part as perfectly matched as mustard and vanilla ice cream.

Like the old days,
Oliver thought, clapping politely.
Drunken karaoke glorification.

Kari looked mortified after. John was annoyed too, but not in the way that Kari was; he thought she had screwed him instead of both of them bombing. He was great at the guitar though, and if Oliver cared a little more, he would have asked him to play instead of sing.

But it wasn’t time for that yet.

He was wondering when he’d see Haley again. Lunch had apparently been planned as an outdoor barbecue, but it had to be moved indoors because of the Trey Girls.

He found her hovering by the grill area, still outside in the garden. Ribs, shrimp, and corn were being prepped. He had to wade through students, volunteers, and mentors all mingling, but it wasn't exactly a party atmosphere yet. He could hear Trey’s student Ash performing—one of Trey’s songs, surprise surprise—and he didn’t feel like stopping to
critique
it.

“Oliver.” He felt a hand against his arm, and he stopped to face the esteemed Mr. Bolton himself, responsible for a number of top R&B and jazz acts. “Please give my regards to your parents.”

“Of course,” Oliver replied, reluctantly realizing that
this
was what he was supposed to be doing. “Mr. Bolton, how long has it been?”

“Since I saw your dad? Must be ten, twelve years by now. Where do they live mostly?”

“Chicago and Manhattan.”

“They won’t like the cold soon enough.”

Oliver laughed, because his parents had always loved the cold. They preferred to write and perform in isolated, chilly environments, and he inherited a little bit of that himself. “My grandmother’s just waiting for that to happen, sir.”

Mr. Bolton asked about his grandmother’s health, and Oliver answered as best he could but couldn’t keep from looking for Haley, placing her in his line of sight. Being nice and negotiating with small talk was something he had to learn, and even after years of doing this, it exhausted him. He wanted to find Haley before he inevitably collapsed from having to be nice.

“Go get something to eat,” Mr. Bolton told him, or maybe he had noticed that Oliver’s thoughts were elsewhere. “I’ll see you around.”

Haley had been helping with lunch but was simply standing there at the moment, looking at her phone.

“This is hard work,” he said, as a joke.

Haley looked up at him, smiling but distracted. He felt an instant stab of disappointment in his gut.
Like what? You expected her to lay one on you in front of all of these people?

She said, “Oh. This? Yes, it can be. Have you seen Victoria anywhere?”

Not at all, but he wasn't looking. “Is this a bad time?”

It was a combination of things: a sniffle, a quick look away, shielding her eyes from the sun. Instinctively he took her arm and steered her into the hotel, away from everyone, away from the sun, if that was all she was avoiding. As soon as she made it indoors, she let out a ragged sigh.

“I'm going up,” she said.

He stayed right behind her, through the café, past the lobby, and into the elevator, not even realizing he was doing it. When they got off at the floor where their rooms were, he hung back as she worked the card on her door.

“Do you...need me to call Victoria?” he asked, not sure about this part.

“No,” she said. “You can come in if you like.”

This was something else though, not the “you can come in if you like” that he'd gotten in other hotel rooms before. He shrugged and went in anyway, because it was that kind of weekend.

***

She cried quietly for about five minutes.

There was a dignity to it. He almost offered a hug, but she asked him to stay where he was. “No, please. This'll be over in a sec. Sit, please.”

There was a love seat by her window, something he didn't have in his room. He parked himself there while she first sat on the bed and then lay on her back, brushing tears off her temples as she stared up at the ceiling.

“I'm sorry. I didn't want anybody downstairs to see me like this,” she said. “It's not very mentorly behavior.”

“What happened?”

“I got fired. Kind of. I won't have a job by Thanksgiving.”

“Sorry about that.”

She laughed a little, up at the ceiling. “I know it's pathetic to feel like this over a job. I mean, you've probably seen worse.”

“Why, because my career is over?”

That got her to look at him. “No offense, okay? I just thought, you know, more life experience and all.”

“Don't worry about it.”

“I didn't want to come back home yet,” Haley admitted. “I thought I'd have at least until Sophie left for college. I didn't want to have to come home and show them that I'd accomplished nothing.”

“Show who?”

“People. I don't know.”

“You've accomplished
something
. You did what you were supposed to do. Who are you afraid of?”

Haley shook her head. “How bad did it get for you?”

Ah, how bad did it get. Oliver cracked his knuckles. “I've told you about the being homeless and being dropped by the people who used to kiss my ass, yes?”

She smiled. “Yes, a little.”

“Sit back and make yourself comfortable, because I'm going to tell you a story. It's not that it was all fun and games until it got bad, to be honest. It was obviously a pattern of me being thrown into the deep end and not being able to fucking swim. Do you want the entire sordid tale?”

She picked up her phone. “Whatever you can spill before the next session starts in an hour and fifteen minutes.”

“That's not enough time. But I'm not averse to quickies.”

Haley smiled and rolled her eyes, and he congratulated himself silently. And then she stood up and squeezed into the seat next to him. He scooted over to his right to give her some room. The contact was pleasant, warm and smooth against his side.

Just like on the plane
, he told himself, clearing his throat, trying to keep his mind on what he was going to say.

Oliver was not making this up, by the way, just to have something to tell a girl, even though he had done the “let me tell you a story” shtick at least once before. He didn't have as many actual friends around lately so that gave him much time to think, and this was what he had come up with.

“You were saying?” Haley said, settling in, deliberately hooking her elbow under his.

“You know how things never happen overnight? If you thought about it, you can trace something far back enough to the point when you could have walked away, did something else. I keep thinking about that lately. Guess which moment I ended up wanting to do over?”

She shifted slightly beside him. “Your last album?”

“Ouch. No. I meant when I first picked up a violin.”

“But you were really young then.”

“Five. I still remember it. I could have done that, or kicked a ball. It could have gone either way. Picking up an instrument is such a big deal in my family, that this kind of life inevitably follows. We don't play for fun, to show off for guests and have them say,
oh how nice, your boy's so talented.
Just showing interest sealed my fate. But it's insane to think that far back and blame a five-year-old for what my life is like. So I jump to the next moment.”

“The recital at San Antonio?” she said.

“How do you know that?”

Haley grinned sheepishly. “It was in the
People
article. I told you, I’m a fan.”

He shook his head. “Not exactly the recital. Or even the blasted talent show. I would have become part of Parkland as a teenager no matter what happened, but then I was asked if I wanted to go on tour with them and quit school.”

“They asked you? You could have said no?”

His parents didn’t push him to do this. For people who were incredibly artistic, they happened to be well-adjusted and practical people. Or at least, they knew right away that they’d need to be and overcompensated by making sure their son would not have to live as a stereotypical starving artist.

And yet here he was. Some things couldn’t be planned, he guessed.

Oliver couldn’t blame them, though. He never did. “Someone was telling me I didn't have to go to school anymore. Who says no to that? Another thing that made this life inevitable. But who blames a twelve-year-old for this kind of fuckup, right?”

“I hope you don't regret going solo.”

He paused. Did he? If he had stayed in a collaborative environment, would things have gotten fucked up this badly? “No. That first year, I did so many things right. And then, that short trip to jail.”

“That was so weird. Did you hit him first?”

“Of course I did.” He was surprised that it was even a question. “He told me that my girlfriend and my manager were fucking. No wait—he didn’t even say it. He implied that he knew about it and didn’t tell me.”

“Right.” She whispered that, and he realized that she had turned her head toward him. He felt that word in his shoulder.

“It was true. But I was twenty-one then, so yes, we can blame that version of me for anything. I wasn't ready for what was given to me, and I just proved it.” That night he lost a friend (the guy he punched was doing right by him, when all was said and done), and the aforementioned manager and girlfriend. He also lost several other things, the most important of which being time, because the next year or so was an alcohol-drenched blur. One thing after another.

She shifted beside him again, her arm slipping between his back and the seat. “I'm glad you didn't quit music at five, or twelve, or anytime after. You're so
so
good at it. I was playing kid versions of Beethoven and Bach, but seeing you play Vivaldi so well when I was ten…I really needed to see that.”