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Vivi ignored his defense. “You should’ve given country music a shot, actually. You’ve got a country music name.”
“Remy’s a country music name?”
“No, Remember Young is a country music name. You’d have to sing something twangy. And do some covers of classics. And wear a cowboy hat.”
Remy snorted and shook his head. “I don’t think I can pull off a cowboy hat. And I don’t think I want to start going byRememberagain.”
“It’s a hell of a name,” Vivi said, swinging her legs off the couch so she was facing him. “Is there a story behind it?”
Remy considered this—because the answer was there was a long, involved, and not-entirely-pleasant story behind his name. One that wasn’t made for bus rides and definitely wasn’t made for a girl like Vivi Swan. Then again, if she knew his real name, she might knowsomethingof his origin story, which meant an out-and-out lie wouldn’t do him any good.
“It’s a virtue,” he said, opting for the shortest, plainest version of the truth. “So I’m Remember, my older brother is Valor, and my little sister is Mercy.” Vivi’s eyebrows lifted, and Remy grinned. “You can say it. My parents never gave us a chance.”
“Valor?” she said warily.
“He goes by Val. Plus we were homeschooled, so there was minimal opportunity for kids to make name-themed jokes. Though one kid in our homeschool group used to punch me and yell, ‘Rememberthis?’ so I still got my fair share of teasing,” Remy said thoughtfully.
“Seems fair. Everyone has to get teased for something.”
“What’d you get teased for?” Remy asked before thinking better of it. He believed her, of course—everyone, no matter how famous or pretty or skinny—has a teasing story. But he was curious to know what asinine aspect her classmates had chosen. Hair? Teeth? Quiet Coyote had toured with a girl who’d been picked on for the size of her fingernail beds, so anything was possible.
“I had cornrows,” Vivi said, lifting her eyebrows, a small smile playing with the corners of her mouth.
“Uh.”
“Yep. Cornrows. Have you seen the picture? It’s all over the internet,” she said, waving a hand.
Still wide-eyed, Remy picked up his phone to look for it—
“You can’t look it up!” Vivi said, looking horrified.
“You just said it’s all over the internet!” he answered, though he dropped his phone immediately.
“I don’twantit to be all over the internet! It just is. I’m not sharing it so everyone can gawk at the thing, it’s just, it was in a yearbook, so someone found it and—”
“Oh my god,” Remy said—because the picture had already been loading when he dropped his phone, and now it was beaming up at him from the table. Chubby-cheeked, and with tiny, almost piggy eyes, a young Vivi Swan looked at him dead on from his phone screen. She looked proud—she looked like she felt pretty. And she had cornrows. Dozens and dozens of cornrows, with little beads on the ends.
“We’d gone to Jamaica for a family trip, and I got them there,” Vivi said when she realized it was too late, that the photo was pulled up.
“So you paid someone to appropriate the absolute hell out of Jamaican culture on your head?” he said, daring to walk the line between joking and professionalism.
“Your name’s Remember!” she argued.
“Yeah, but someone did that to me before I was old enough to protest,” Remy said. He then made a show of putting the phone down, proving he was no longer staring at the picture. Vivi didn’t look particularly offended by the whole thing, which was a relief—in fact, she looked amused, if anything.
Vivi took a long drink of her water. She did so carefully, so there was no risk of her lipstick smudging. “I loved that Quiet Coyote record, by the way,” she said as she screwed the cap back on.
“Thanks,” Remy said. He meant it, specifically because she saidrecordrather than song. Everyone knew “Everything but the World,” their hit, but not many people knew the album. Val probably would have quizzed her, eager to make her prove she knew the entire record—and to be entirely honest, Remy would have liked to have seen that. But the wordrecordalone was enough to make him feel a strange sense of release, like they were meeting in the middle of some sort of musical island.
“And you and your brother are still doing gigs, right?” Vivi said.
“We are,” Remy said, lifting an eyebrow. “And if you can tell me my birthday and shoe size, this will get creepy.”
Vivi flushed a little under all her makeup. “Sorry. I just like to know who’s on tour with me. I always read the security briefings Walter draws up.”
Remy nodded—this made sense, though it was, in fact, a little creepy. “It’s fine. And yeah, we’re still playing gigs. I’m trying to get more into producing, though,” he said.
“Producing? That’s great. Play me something you’re working on,” she commanded.
