Playing Autumn (Breathe Rockstar Romance Book 1) (15 page)

That was what she kept saying, what she knew in her heart as a mentor, but not a support system she ever used as an artist.

Because she wasn’t as good as any of them?

Because she was a good weekend mentor and that was it?

Because she had her fifteen minutes of fame on the Internet and nothing else had come of it?

“Look,” Mama was saying, “I would appreciate it if you did not tell Oliver about what I know. I help him out whenever I can, but he has to think I'm his innocent, doting grandmother, or else he won't accept any advice I give. There was a time when it was only my phone calls he’d pick up, because he does that—when it’s bad, he withdraws from everyone related to his music. And he’s never done that with me, so we have to keep this up. Is this all right with you?”

“If I'm asked about it, I won't lie,” Haley bargained.

“Fair enough.”

Mama excused herself to go to the kitchen, and a few minutes later Oliver came back in, sweaty, with blades of grass in his clothes and hair.

“You okay?” he asked her. “Mama treating you all right?”

He didn't know it, but to Haley he had become so real, and open, and vulnerable. Did it change the way she felt about him?

No, but what exactly did she feel about him? Haley aimed at her foot and sprayed.

“She's the best,” she said.

Chapter 18

They were going to be late for the evening performance, but Oliver had to stay for Mama's pumpkin pie. Fall, and Mama's pumpkin pie. It was the best combination of any two things.

It had been a while since someone actually questioned him on this, but yes, he apparently didn't know his grandmother's home address. He knew the route she used when she picked him up from music lessons as a kid and brought him back to her house, which went on for months sometimes when his parents were away on tour. She only took side roads, so it took her longer to get anywhere, and the family had moved east when he finally got his license. He was using a grandmother's route, from memory, and thank God some things never changed.

“You seem better,” Haley said beside him on the passenger seat of the “borrowed” car.

He did feel better. Something about the blue door, the house, the fireplace that was never used (because a bird had built a nest somewhere in there), the lawn that he spent most of his childhood mowing, all of that together made him feel comfortably insignificant again. Years ago, when his ego was at its most inflated, he talked up his achievements and platinum records to Mama, hoping she'd finally seem interested and impressed. But she was always happy for him in that subdued way, probably because his grandfather was still a better songwriter, his father still a better violinist, his mother still a better singer. Or she was blandly supportive but not really into it. She wasn't a musician the way they were, after all.

Today he longed for that insignificance, again, because at least to her he was never a failure. Since she wasn't all that impressed by his highs, she wasn't all that devastated about his lows too.

She told him to enjoy being a mentor at Breathe Music, reminding him of the time when she taught high school decades ago.

“Young people are a pain in the ass, but being around them makes you feel you can start over,” she told him.

He really should be more into this, the mentoring thing. Even just for the weekend.

“Mama sets me straight, all the time,” he told Haley. “Pie and coffee and Mama. I'm really sorry about the ants.”

“It's not your fault,” she said. “You reminded me. Now I want to scratch.”

“Don't scratch.”

Haley lifted her affected foot and sprayed at it again. “Oh God. I'm running out of spray.”

“We can pass by a CVS, irony of ironies.”

“We're already late. Victoria is going to kill us.”

“Just blame me. How bad can it get?”

He said that bravely, all rock star-like, but he did feel a smidge of regret when he experienced the look that Victoria gave him when he turned over the car and when they showed up in the middle of the evening performances.

“Am I going to have to put a watch on you both?” Victoria hissed, taking the car keys from him and throwing them into her purse. “You don't just take off when there are a zillion things happening and two zillion things I need help with. I’ve had to kick out an intern for blogging about this and feeding photos to the Trey Girls. “

“I'm sorry,” Haley said. “I'm injured.”

“I will deal with you later,” Victoria said. “Your student is Mia, right? She needs help setting up. And I bumped Kari and John to the end so you'd actually get to see them, Oliver. Go ask if they need help.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said.

***

Dinner was at the Lake Star Hotel’s ballroom, really the three function rooms on the second floor merged by opening up the dividing walls. Because Oliver and Haley were late, they lost prime spots at many of the tables and had a small table at the back all to themselves.

“Like a date,” Oliver teased.

“With maybe the best or worst dinner music, depending on how it goes,” she muttered with a smirk.

He gestured for her to take a seat next to him at a round table set for four. A hotel waiter gently laid a white plate of salmon atop fresh greens and a pale yellow sauce. They seemed to have settled down in time to see Trey’s student Ash, and she took the stage with a shy smile.

“You know who she reminds me of?” Oliver said as his knife slid into the pink flakey fish.

“Blair Casey?” She threw that name out so casually, her eyes on Ash as she began the first few lines of—surprise surprise—a Katy Perry song.

Blair Casey was the winner of
Tomorrow’s Talent
the season right after his. She was almost completely his opposite: contemporary, female, and plain enough to be molded into anything. They even dyed her hair three different colors throughout her run to see what made her the most popular, and blonde it stayed. And yes, that was what Oliver was going to say.

He didn’t often get to hang out with people who knew his…history like this. The guys in the band didn’t care. Rob his former manager barely remembered that he was on a talent show, and his parents considered it a gaudy episode from his childhood that shouldn’t be brought up in polite company.

“She’s like pre-makeover Blair,” Haley continued, already eating her fish. “She’s really pretty.”

And she wasn’t a bad singer. Something about her wasn’t popping though, the same way that Blair hadn’t popped on TV until the stylists figured out what to do with her. Because that wasn’t going to happen here, Ash would have to rely on her style, which right now sounded like Katy Perry and Trey Lewis had a lovechild.

“They’ll make her lose ten pounds, you know,” Oliver said, “That’s going to be one of the first things she’ll hear.”

“Is Trey saying stuff like that to her? Because Victoria is really against it. I mean, you can tell them about image, but…”

“But you want them to think they can make it on their own, by being themselves?”

Her shoulders pulled into her body a bit. “You think it’s naïve.”

“I think it’s sweet.”

Her eyes dropped, and her fork moved the asparagus on her plate this way and that. “You got by, being yourself. You don’t think it’s possible for anyone else to?”

“I think I’m not the shining example of being successful at being yourself.”

“I think—”

“Wait. Is this mentoring? Didn’t we agree not to?”

Haley smiled and her lips shut. “Fine. Oh, Mia’s next.”

Onstage, there was a shuffle of hands as Mia figured out which to use to adjust the microphone and which one to keep on the guitar. She fussed a little, cursed under her breath, and then apologized to the diners.

“Well, that’s a great start,” Haley said, the encouraging smile frozen on her face.

“Hi,” Mia breathed into the microphone, needing to tilt her head up because she hadn’t moved it down properly. “So, um, this is
Head Over Feet
by Alanis Morissette.”

From the look on Haley’s face, Oliver guessed a bait and switch had occurred. “What was she practicing?”

Smile still frozen, she bit her lip. “Definitely something else. I don’t get her.”

“Wasn’t expecting Alanis from her, to be honest.”

“It’s a
great
song for her voice. I could have…told her how to sing it. But she didn’t…” Haley shook her head, fork tossing around a different stalk of asparagus. “This is it, right? The sign from the universe. I lose my job, and for the first time I get a student here who joins for mentoring and absolutely refuses to be mentored.”

“Signs.” He noticed her fidgeting, had been fidgeting for minutes now, and it occurred to him that her foot was bothering her. That was his fault, right? Because he had dragged her to Mama’s. Because he forgot about the pests that inhabited that garden. She’d have a quieter weekend if he chose to sit beside someone else, Mr. Bolton for example, but he was messing up her life instead.

He wasn’t exactly letting up though.

Mia received pretty much the same level of applause as Ash, something between polite and encouraging, and Haley sighed as she contributed to it.

“How did you know it was over? You and Tori?” she asked.

Oliver was genuinely taken aback by that. Not that no one had ever asked, because many people asked and wrote about his volatile relationship with actress Tori Gordon, whether he wanted to talk about it or not.

Partly he was surprised at his lack of a crazed reaction to it.

Haley blinked at him. “Wait. I’m sorry. I should have…I was thinking of something. I kind of threw that out without context.”

“It’s fine,” Oliver replied, and it was one of those auto responses that felt true when it settled down. “There was that time when I caught her and my manager Rob together. That’s when it became obvious to me.”

“I’m really sorry I brought it up—”

“It’s fine. It’s not like in the movies, caught in the act or anything. I made the mistake of dropping by his place unexpected, and she was there. I knew what they had just done. I didn’t even know she was in town. But it felt like it was getting there…maybe months. I ignored all the, well, signs.”

She didn’t have to explain the context, the station her train of thought was at. He could see that she had her upcoming dinner with Logan on her mind, apart from everything else. He wanted to be careful about the words he used, knowing she was going to be hanging on to them as she thought about her future.

But he didn’t want himself completely out of it either.

Haley opened her mouth and started to say something but changed her mind. Instead she brought another piece of food to her mouth and chewed, slowly. “This is good,” she said.

Kari and John were last to take the stage. Oliver wasn’t worried for them; he was least nervous right before performing anyway, when he had minutes to go and stopped himself from thinking that he could still change anything. Kari and John could end up better or worse than at lunch, but he doubted they’d allow themselves to stink even more. If they did, they didn’t deserve this break and should be slinking back into obscurity as soon as possible.

Then John started his part on acoustic guitar, and Haley’s head turned to Oliver.

“Right?” he said.

It was an arrangement that allowed John to show off on guitar despite stripping down the song to its basics. With John’s ego taken care of, Kari could do most of the vocals her way, and she was, so far, spot on. They weren’t there yet, he could imagine one of the
TT
judges calling them a “coffee shop act” with disdain, but it was a step in the right direction, and they both looked comfortable doing it.

The applause for them was real, and Oliver had experience with real applause. He felt Haley’s foot hit his under the table, and her neck flushed pink.

“Sorry, I was scratching,” she said.

“I’m going to pretend you meant to do that,” he said.

“They’re better,” Haley nodded toward the stage. “You’re this genius about everything, aren’t you? Maybe I should give you my student, too.”

There was movement at one of the tables in the middle, closer to the stage, and Oliver became aware of the other people in the room. Because that guy, the kid, stood up and scanned the room for him, and found him. Trey looked pissed and not as willing to hand over anything to Oliver.