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“See you never, Finn.”
I turned and left the kitchen, heading for the stairs.
See you never, I thought, ignoring how much the words hurt.
See you never.
Seven hours later, I was on a plane to L.A. They told me the model’s name was Maggie and she was looking forward to meeting me. She said she was a fan.
TWO
Now
Juliet
I banged open the apartment door and wedged it with my foot. As I sidled through the door, bags in hand, my keys slipped from my fingers and skidded across the floor. Cursing, I scooped them up as I hurried to the kitchen.
In five minutes, I’d be late. Damn it.
I’d thought I had enough time to grocery shop before going to today’s studio session, but one of the cash registers at the store was down, and the elevator in my building was inexplicably slow. Also, I may have slept later than I intended to. Like, thirty minutes later.
Now I had barely a few minutes to put my food away and get on the road to the studio, which was over the Washington-Oregon border in Vancouver. My bandmates didn’t care all that much if I was late—we would work late anyway—but it still made me mad. Why was I always the tardy one? I needed to get my shit together.
I didn’t bother to sort my groceries—just stuffed the bags wholesale into the fridge. My roommate, Amara, had her own food placed carefully in there, labelled as if she was worried I would eat her lettuce leaves and low-fat yogurt. I shoved my shopping bags in and banged the fridge shut.
I turned to the mirror by the door, checking myself. The Road Kings didn’t care what I wore to rehearsal, and even though they were more famous than me, I didn’t dress to impress them. Wide-leg jeans and a tee were perfectly good work wear when you played bass in a rock n’ roll band. My blond hair was tied in a messy, high ponytail, and I’d swiped on mascara and tinted lip gloss. Except for the fact that I’d stopped dyeing my hair and rarely wore my nose ring anymore, I dressed the same way at thirty-two as I did at twenty. I should probably grow up sometime, but today was not that day.
I picked up my purse where I had dropped it on the floor, and my keys fell again. As I picked them up, my phone rang.
“Mom, I don’t have much time,” I said when I answered it. “I’m running out the door for rehearsal.”
“Juliet.” My mother’s voice was stern. “I sent you an email last night, but you didn’t answer it. You can spare me one minute.”
I had to physically strain not to roll my eyes, even though she couldn’t see me. I wasn’t an email person, but Mom was. She was the executive assistant to a high-powered CEO, and emails were her religion. “What was it about?”
“Are you coming to the fitting party next weekend? I have to know. We need numbers for the hotel.”
“Fitting party?” I paused, distracted by the fact that my T-shirt had a stain on it. Did I have time to change into another one? I didn’t think so. “No one said it was a whole weekend. How long does it take to do a fitting for a bridesmaid dress?”
“It isn’t about the fitting.” Mom was clearly exasperated. She likely had explained this to me before, though I didn’t remember. Maybe it was in the email I hadn’t checked. “It’s about the wedding party getting together for a weekend of fun and bonding. You need to be there.”
I lifted the phone from my ear long enough to rip the shirt off over my head. The lace bra I wore underneath only had one hole in it, which was a win. “I don’t think I can do a whole weekend,” I hedged. “I thought I was expected in Seattle just for a day.”
“Juliet, this is your sister’s wedding. You’re the maid of honor.”
She didn’t need to remind me yet again. My sister, Vicki, was marrying her long-time boyfriend, Alistair. They’d been together for over a decade and had two little kids, so when Vicki had announced they were finally making it legal, I honestly hadn’t thought it was a big deal. When she’d asked me to be her maid of honor, I’d pictured putting on a decent outfit and showing up at City Hall. I’d take Vicki out for shots as a bachelorette party, maybe take her to see a male stripper just to make her cringe. Done and done.
So I’d said yes. I had many regrets in my life, but saying yes to being Vicki’s maid of honor might just top the pile. For the last three months, I’d been consulted against my will about hotels, invitations, and dinner options. And dresses—seriously? Who thought I was the person to consult about bridesmaid dresses? So far I’d ducked out of all of it, but the wedding was getting closer, and the pressure was mounting.
Vicki and I had never been close. She was like Mom—decent, sweet, devoted to living on the straight and narrow. Our father was a failed musician who made Mom a lot of promises until she had two kids. Then he’d bailed without looking back, leaving her a single mother to raise us both.
Mom had gotten jobs as admin assistants, then moved up over time to the executive job she’d had for the last decade. Her hard work paid our bills growing up, so I understood why she was the way she was. I understood that Vicki was like Mom, that she was responsible and a good mother to her own kids. The problem was that neither Mom nor Vicki had ever tried to understand me.
I had learned guitar at twelve. I had formed an all-girl punk band at seventeen. I barely graduated high school, I had never held down a real job, and I sure as hell had never gotten married or had kids. A string of hookups and failed relationships with fellow musicians wasn’t the kind of love life that Mom and Vicki had any experience with. They had never understood that I couldn’t live like them. I needed music, I needed adventure, I needed art. I needed more.
I also needed to pay my bills, which was why I’d taken the gig as the Road Kings’ replacement bass player when their original bass player, Neal Watts, took a leave after his son was born.
The Road Kings weren’t chart toppers, but they were known as one of the best live bands who had ever taken a stage, and they had nearly twenty years of success behind them. They had built a studio, had started their own production company, and their latest record was the most popular one they’d ever released. After years playing bass with shitty bands after The Muffins broke up, this was the biggest break I had ever been offered.
