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“Well, to be fair, there’s not many people I love, so losing one is a big deal.”
“Same,” Vivi said faintly, and Remy thought of the arena of people chanting her name, the thousands and millions of people who loved her but didn’t know her. He thought about how she was sitting here with him, and somehow, they had more in common than they’d ever had before.
“You’re not going to lose your brother. That’s not how being a brother works,” Vivi said after a long pause.
“I lost my sister,” Remy said quietly.
Vivi started, her eyes jumping toward him. “Oh, god, I’m sorry—I didn’t know she was—wow—”
“No, no,” Remy said. “She’s not dead. She’s back in Florida. I guess we didn’t lose her, exactly. Val and I left her behind. We had to.”
They had to. Right?
“Why?” Vivi asked, and the question sounded so sincere, Remy knew he couldn’t do anything but answer honestly.
“My family—the religious thing. You can’t just leave halfway. It’s all or nothing. If she’d been old enough to come with us, orwellenough to come with us…but she was little and sick.Medically fragilewas the term.”
Vivi nodded a bit. “I do hospital visits sometimes for kids like that. Maybe…I mean, if I’m in Florida, I could…” She trailed off then flushed deep red. “Sorry.”
“For what?”
“Just…” Vivi waved a hand. “Fame and pop music can’t fix sick kids, I know that. I just thought I would offer, but then it sounded so dumb when I said it out loud.”
Remy smiled. “I appreciate it. But trust me—if it’s not praise music, my parents aren’t letting it anywhere near my sister. Look what happened to Val and me, after all.”
“You’re absolute disasters,” Vivi said, nodding solemnly.
Remy laughed under his breath, because his parents would have said the same thing with complete sincerity. “You’re not going to lose Tuesday, though. Not if you care this much about keeping her.”
Vivi made a face. “Please. Have you met me, Remy? I can lose anyone,” she said, and while the phrase started as a joke, in the end a breath released from her body that seemed far too big for someone so small to contain. Tension released in her hands, her ankles, her shoulders; she closed her eyes for a long time. When she opened them, she was humming lightly—
“What’s that?” Remy asked, brows knitting.
“I can lose anyone.It’s a solid lyric for something.I can lose anyone.I need my notebook.” She murmured the last bit to herself. She sniffed and wiped at her face a little then shook her head like she was apologizing for something. Vivi drew her hand away—
“Maybe it’s me,” Remy said at the last instant, when only Vivi’s fingertips were against his skin. She stilled, and a smile played at her lips, something hopeful and sweet.
“What did you say?” she asked a little hazily.
Remy licked his lips. “‘Maybe It’s Me’—those lyrics line up with the start of the chorus you’ve already written for ‘Maybe It’s Me.’Maybe it’s me, it’s my fault all along, I can lose anyone…It works great as the break in that blank section.”
“Oh!” Vivi said and smiled broader but falser. “Yeah, it does. It works great there,” she said a little rockily. She pulled her fingers away from Remy’s palm, leaving it cold and clammy. Vivi walked briskly toward the kitchen counter, where her Moleskine was by her phone. “Still a breakup song, though, isn’t it? Just about me and a friend instead of me and a guy,” she said as she flipped the notebook open.
“No,” Remy answered, shaking his head. “It’s not a breakup song. Because you aren’t breaking up with Tuesday any more than I’m breaking up with my brother. It’s a…it’s whatever the opposite of a breakup song is.”
“A love letter,” Vivi said thoughtfully.
Remy looked down at his hand, the place where her fingers had been a few moments ago. “Maybe they’re all love letters.”
Someone knocked hard on the bus door, the sound sharp as a foreign curse against the room’s delicate melody.
“Come on in,” Vivi shouted, trying to pretend she hadn’t literally leapt into the air in surprise.
“Hey, doll.” Walter’s assistant poked his head in the open door, his voice loud and too bright. “Just checking—is Remy Young on here? David said he snuck off Bus Three, and we can’t find him.”
“I am,” Remy said, jumping to stand, as if being on the couch was something incriminating.
Walter’s assistant’s head popped up, and there was a knowing look in his eyes. He wasn’t surprised at all to find Remy on Vivi’s bus, nor was he particularly happy about it. “You guys working?” he asked in a voice that said he knew they hadn’t been working—even if he didn’t know what, exactly, they’d been doing.
