Playing Autumn (Breathe Rockstar Romance Book 1) (14 page)

Agh, even she wouldn’t hire her. But she sent it out anyway.

Fifteen minutes later, she was in a car, driving away from Lake Star, with Oliver at the wheel. There had to be at least an hour left on the afternoon mentoring session. He shouldn’t have ditched—but she shouldn’t have gotten in the car with him either. They both seemed to be flirting with irrelevance lately.

“How did you get this car again?” she asked, a bit nervous.

“I told Victoria I was borrowing it,” he said.

“Did you
ask
her, or tell her?”

“I may not have asked.”

“Did she say yes?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“What about your rehearsals?”

“Kari and John and I are tight now. Told them what to do. They’ll get it done tonight, I know it.”

“Great,” Haley sank a little bit deeper into her seat and touched her seatbelt instinctively. “You want to add grand theft auto to your story of hitting rock bottom then?”

“Relax. Victoria said she was okay with it. Maybe she didn't realize I would use it right now, but…are you scared
?
”

Haley realized that she had been gripping her knee a little too tightly. “What? No. It looks like you don't really drive.”

“I have a license.”

“You're taking a really, um, leisurely route. If you told me where you wanted to go, I could have taken us there on the freeway. Or are we lost?”

“We aren't lost.”

“It looks like…”

“Old Louetta, yes…” Oliver was muttering as they turned into the road that bore that name. “We aren't lost,” he said with more conviction. “A second ago, we might have been.”

“I could have gotten us here faster.”

A few more turns, and then into a residential area. They slowed down at a row of brick homes, each one looking like the other's sibling, slight differences on the same theme. He stopped abruptly at one of them, 17335C, and nodded at her, looking vastly proud of himself.

“I'm sure you could have,” Oliver said, “but the only way I know how to get here is through my grandmother's route, and she doesn't take the freeway.”

“You were serious about the grandmother thing? We have a GPS,” Haley reminded him. “Or this car does, anyway.”

“I don't know the address,” he insisted. “And if my grandmother had painted her door another color, I would have missed it entirely. It's this one, the blue door.”

His grandmother's house. For the twenty minutes they'd been in the car together, a few thoughts cycled in her mind. At first she thought they were ditching the festival mentoring sessions to make out or maybe more, but then the drive went on a little longer.

Then she wondered if he was starting to lose it, like seriously, because he
was
on the very end of some kind of downward spiral, and who knew if it didn't just start spiraling downward still? But then, his grandmother's house.

“My mom said I absolutely had to visit,” he explained. “Not sure if I can get another chance this weekend.”

“You could have
said
so,” Haley told him as she stepped onto the lawn. Now she wished she had worn something else. The floral shirtdress, the flip-flops… they seemed right for the weather and her plans for the day, but not for visiting
Oliver Cabrera's
family. Not that she had a spare Vera Wang in her luggage, which would have been the only appropriate thing that she could think of at the moment.

“If I got lost, I was going to say I intended to bring us to a CVS all along,” he said. “God knows I'd run into one eventually.”

He was starting to look more real, by the way. Less like an album or magazine cover walking in front of her and more like a guy who used to hang out here. Someone whose grandmother lived in a house with a brick facade. She wanted to say something about that, but then she felt a sharp pain on her toes, specifically on three toes on her left foot, sharp as needles.

She screamed a little, and cursed a little, or maybe a lot.

***

Oliver's grandmother was not a frail, petite creature, and that made Haley feel a little better about having obscenities be the first thing she said in her presence.

“Fire ants!” she yelled from the front porch. “Oliver, get her out of there!”

Of course they were fire ants. The other possibility, that Oliver's grandmother had some exposed syringes scattered out on the lawn for people to step on, wasn't going to be true at all. Haley had forgotten about lawn creatures in the short time she'd been away. Living in the Lee mansion had made her soft and think she could just wear flip-flops anytime without consequences.

In a flash, she was lying on a very big and comfy couch, barefoot, while Oliver's grandma searched a drawer for something.

“Don't you dare scratch it,” she warned, coming over with a small bottle of calamine spray. “Not from here, are you?”

Oliver's voice came from somewhere behind her. “She is. Mama, this is Haley Reese. But she's been living in Florida since the summer.”

“Don't scratch,” Mama scolded.

She knew she shouldn't, but she couldn't help it. It felt like she had to do
something
, because the cool spray from the calamine was taking too damn long...oh wait. Haley was starting to feel relief.

“Thank you,” she said. “I forgot why I never wore these things on grass.”

Mama placed the bottle in her hand. “Spray when you start feeling it again. And keep it.” She turned to hug her grandson, and Haley was surprised to note that he was only a couple of inches taller than her. “Your mom said you'd be over this weekend. Just you, though. Anything wrong?”

He shook his head. “I can't visit my Mama? I'm helping out some kids at a music festival at the Lake Star. I'm playing on Sunday. You should come.”

Mama smiled, the thin and polite smile of a supportive grandmother. Haley saw that in her parents’ faces all the time when it was about Breathe Music. “That's nice. What are you playing? Something new?”

Oliver looked at Haley. “I don't know yet,” he said, to them, and to himself, it seemed. “I guess I should start thinking about it.”

“Well,” Mama said. “Since we noticed the lawn. And you don't have any other reason for coming…” She nodded toward the door.

“What, now?” he said.

“You know your job, son. The mower's in the garage.”

Oliver got half a protest out but then he shrugged, and Haley had to add it to one of the stranger things she learned about him lately. Oliver's grandmother ruled all.

As soon as the door closed behind him, Mama pulled up a chair and sat in front of Haley, regarding her with curiosity. “So. Haley, are you?”

Haley blinked. “Yes.”

“How long have you known Oliver?”

“I...I met him on the plane. But I've been a fan since I was a kid.”

“Is it true that his label dropped him?”

What? Haley coughed. “He...said something like that.”

“The bastards,” Mama said under her breath, and Haley couldn't help but smile. And then she tried to kill that smile immediately. “He had a gold single on that last album. That doesn't mean anything anymore?”

He did, didn’t he? She vaguely remembered that it charted for a short time, one of the songs, on that album she didn’t buy. There was an article about it,
Is this the end of Pretty Boy Rock Stars?
She got as far as the second paragraph and then stopped reading. “The radio stations didn't want it,” Haley caught herself saying.

Mama took the calamine bottle from her hand and aimed at Haley's foot then sprayed. “That's it? He sounded exactly like he was supposed to sound.”

“His fans grew up.”
I grew up.
I stopped being compulsively into him. It’s me, it’s all my fault!
Was the calamine laced with something? Haley was starting to feel a little panicked. Or maybe it was guilt.

“No,” Mama said, as if explaining this all to a child. “Do you see how many people watch his performances, his music videos? His audience is still there. You'd think that these suits would stop desperately pandering to the noisy majority and take care of the people who genuinely love and support their favorite artists.”

“I felt so bad for him when he didn't hit number one this time.” Haley’s admission came out in a rush, very much like a suspect at the end of a cop show. And as soon as she said it, she felt a bit of relief. “Like I had failed him, you know?”

Mama wouldn’t have any of her guilt though. “It would have been easier for you to support him if someone actually paid for him to tour. Perform at places. That's what musicians do. Did you get his last album?”

“I didn't. I'm sorry.”

“It was half crap,” Mama said nonchalantly. “It was almost brilliant sometimes, but I know when that boy's trying so hard to please somebody he hates.”

“It's my fault,” Haley moaned, also because the pain in her foot had dulled but still stung. “I didn't buy it. And now he doesn't have the support to get new music out anymore.”

“Is it really bad? Is he broke?”

“I don't know how bad it actually is, he’s kind of adorably self-deprecating but maybe he’s serious…and I don't know if I should be saying anything.”

Mama rolled her eyes. “Are you an artist, Haley?”

She honestly didn't know the answer to that and took too long to reply.

“Well,” Mama continued, cocking her head toward the photographs framed and displayed around the room, “My dear departed husband was an artist. So is my daughter, and her husband, and now my grandson. I can't sing to save my own life, but I know what it's like to live around artists.

“Oliver, in particular, doesn't like to work with people. He bears the burden of his art alone, has always done that. The reason why he keeps visiting, and has never avoided me, is because I act like the grandmother he wants me to be and pretend I don't know or care about his rock star career. About any of this.”

“But you know everything,” Haley said, or maybe asked. “You…you picked him up from his lessons.”

“I was proud but not involved. He appreciates that very much.”

“You know
everything
though.”

“I have the Internet and a lot of time on my hands. So, is he broke?”

“His landlord might be kicking him out, like right now,” Haley said.

“In New York? That's not a problem. I never wanted him to live there. Is he getting money to teach the kids this weekend?”

“He's getting a small fee. It's a non-profit, but he's still getting something.”

“Is he still dating that girl?”

Haley shrugged. “Um, Tori?”

“No, not that one. The sister of the reality show girl. They had a photo on a gossip site a few weeks ago.”

Haley's cheeks burned. No, he hadn't mentioned a sister-of-a-reality-show-girl at all, not the whole time, not a word of it as they sucked face, as she humped his fingers. But that was understandable. And inappropriate to think about at this very moment. “I really don't know.”

“Well, that’s the only time he’s in the tabloids anymore. And they haven't been seen together since,” Mama said, possibly reading a lot into Haley's reaction. “You must find it odd that I track my grandson's life like this.”

“Oh no, I totally understand,” Haley said. “I mean, it's out there. How can you not look?”

“Artists try not to look, I noticed. They try not to see the things that could keep them from staying on this path, because there's so much to discourage them.”

Life, the normal living of it, was one big discouraging force. It was one thing to be a Cabrera, apparently, and at least have music as a valid career choice. Some people weren’t as lucky.

Haley sighed. “I wanted to be an artist.”

Mama laughed. “And here I thought you and I were on the same team. Because I believe that, you know? Anyone out to chase a crazy dream needs to have a stable support system. I don’t mind being that for my entire family. I’m not like they are.”

“That’s what the festival is,” Haley said, “for a lot of people. A lot of these kids don’t come from musical families, like me, and it gives them a place to meet people who care, you know? Who can tell them what to do.”