didn’t say anything about LA.” Tess flashes a sly smile. “Remember that house my dad used to rent, up in Maine?”
I nod. Sammy and I met Tess when we were twelve, at a summer camp on Lake Michigan. Every year, after camp, Tess’s father would take her back east, to a ramshackle cottage on a tiny island in Penobscot Bay. “What about it?”
“Oh, not much.” Tess shrugs playfully. “Other than I just bought it.”
“You what?” Sammy shrieks.
“You bought it?” I ask. “You didn’t tell me you were thinking about buying a house!”
Tess smirks. “Just because you pay me an ungodly sum of money to hang out with you doesn’t mean I have to consult you on every business decision I make,” she says.
My cheeks burn. Technically, Tess and Sammy are my assistants—it’s how we could justify them putting their lives on hold to keep up with mine. Sammy did a few semesters at Madison before dropping out to follow me, first to LA and then cross-country to New York. Tess was already at NYU when we got here, but it wasn’t long before she decided to take a hiatus. They both insist they wouldn’t have it any other way, and I know I couldn’t do it without them. But I hate when they talk about money—mine or theirs—even when I know they’re joking.
“It’s nothing fancy,” Tess continues, “just a tiny house in a real-life fishing village. I think maybe we could all use some real life for a change.” Tess looks at me, and I wonder for the billionth time when she got so good at reading my mind. “What do you think, Bird? Are you in?”
Bird, originally Songbird and sometimes Birdie, is the nickname Tess gave me at camp when we were kids. Over the years it has been adapted as an easy shorthand among family and friends, to differentiate from the other Lily Ross, the Lily Ross who headlines tours and cranks out albums and is forever at the center of a media cyclone and who, increasingly, has almost nothing to do with me.
I stand and lean against the roof ledge, looking out over the city. A police siren pierces the air and I feel my whole body tensing. There is nothing I would love more than to leave, to hide in some cozy corner of the world, away from photographers and interviews and studio schedules. All of it.
“It’s a nice idea,” I say wistfully. But I know this feeling, and I know it won’t last. Tomorrow it will be right back to business—there’s an album to finish, the first singles to put out, endless publicity, and in the fall, my next tour. There isn’t any time to feel sorry for myself.
“But …” Sammy prompts.
I smile. “You know I can’t take that much time away from work.”
Tess stares at me with her arms crossed. Sammy pretends to inspect her freshly painted, pale pink nails.
“What?” I prod. They both look like they want to say more, but don’t.
“It’s no big deal,” Tess finally huffs, waving her hand in the air between us. “We can stay.” She unpeels the wrapper from an ice cream sandwich and licks slowly around the dripping edges. “Summer in the city is delightful.”
I look out at the puzzle of inching cars and shuffling pedestrians. I moved to New York because I thought it would be a fresh start. After Caleb, LA was feeling claustrophobic, like it already knew me too well. I loved the way New York made me feel off-balance. I wanted the city to swallow me up, to consume me. And it did, for about a week.
Then I met Jed. I wasn’t looking for another relationship so soon, but it was almost a foregone conclusion. Our lives fit so perfectly together. We were so alike. And everything he was, I wanted to be. Successful, established, respected, grown-up. Right away, people loved us together. We were supposed to make it.
I wasn’t supposed to be here, again.
Suddenly, there’s an overwhelming rumbling in my chest. I turn on my heel and walk to Sammy’s chaise, standing over the shoebox. I hold out one hand and without saying a word, Tess is there with the matches. I strike one and Sam passes me the photo booth strip. I tilt the flame until it licks the photo’s glossy edge.
“It was fun, but now it’s done,” I say, the silly rhyme I stole from Sammy, the one she used to chant to get over high school breakups, back before I had any boyfriends of my own. I hold on to the burning photo, watching as Jed’s face contorts, melting into mine, until the whole thing goes up in an orange burst of flame.
RAY IS WAITING beside one of two black Escalades parked at the back entrance of Equinox. Despite the urge to stay cocooned in my bed for weeks on end, I dragged myself to my so-early-it-should-be-illegal private session with Leon this morning, intense interval training that consistently liquefies the lower half of my body. It was typically brutal, but it felt good to be distracted, and as I approach the car I even manage something that resembles a smile.
“Nice guns,” Ray teases. I lift the sleeve of my retro silk blouse to flex my wiry muscles, our post-gym comedy routine. Of the entire security team, Ray has been around the longest and is my favorite. He’s sort of like an older brother, if your older brother were an ex-Navy SEAL with biceps the size of watermelons. He holds the door open and I climb in, tossing my tote on the seat beside me.
“Hey, K2.” I nod at Kevin, the same driver I’ve had since moving to New York. Ray has another Kevin on the security team, so now we call this one K2.
“M’lady.” K2 fake-bows. Even though he’s from the Bronx, he has a habit of slipping into a phony British accent and calling my apartment “The Manor.”
My phone buzzes and I look down to see an e-mail from Terry. The studio time has officially been booked for this afternoon. I wince. I’m supposed to be putting the final touches on my new album. But that was before yesterday, before the breakup. Now the idea of spending time with those songs, songs I’ve been working on for the last six months, seems impossible. Twelve songs, each one about Jed, my missing puzzle piece, all my dreams come true.
The album is titled, unbelievably, Forever.
“I need a fix,” I tell K2, code for If there isn’t a cup of coffee in my immediate future, we’ll be approaching DEFCON red.
K2 nods and seamlessly navigates the chaos of the road. I watch his eyes flicker in the mirror, searching for the nearest Starbucks. I catch a glimpse of my own reflection. It’s not as bad as I’d imagined, but there are shallow dark circles under my eyes, and my skin looks dry and dull, despite the full face of makeup I applied after getting out of the gym shower. I look like somebody who hasn’t slept, which, aside from a few, fitful hours full of punishing dreams—dreams about Jed, about us together, as if nothing had happened—is true.
I tuck my phone back in my bag as K2 wedges us into an illegal spot on Thirty-third Street. Ray hops out to the curb and for a moment I consider sending him in with my order. I just don’t know if I have it in me to pull it together for my fans. But
