Sing. Vivi Greene

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      I shake my head. “I’m good,” I say, my voice trembling. “Really. I just … I need a few minutes.”

      I close the door to my room behind me and collapse onto the bed, my pulse pounding an erratic beat inside my ears. I try to count my breaths, to close my eyes and be present, but none of the usual tricks work.

      This is not the first time my face has been plastered on the cover of trashy tabloids. It comes with the territory, particularly post-breakup. After my first boyfriend in LA, Sebastian, it was a circus. Word was he was cheating with one of his backup singers. Then: all his backup singers.

      After Caleb, I was the one who was moving on too fast. I was “heartless” and “career obsessed” for ending things and moving to New York when my second album took off and his, well, didn’t. I could have set the record straight, done an interview and insisted that he broke up with me, but Terry was sure it would only make things worse. The best thing to do with this kind of press is ignore it. Days later, it’s always somebody else’s heartbreak, someone else’s mistake—real or fabricated—staring back at the world from the checkout racks.

      But this time, somehow, I’m not prepared. Being here, away from everything, it’s easy to forget that the world is still chugging along. Jed is still touring, answering questions, being who his fans want him to be. I’m not. I’m nowhere. So I’m fair game.

      I open the magazine on top and flip slowly to the center spread. It’s all there. Our last dinner date. The stupid soup. A grainy shot of me watching Jed’s car as it sped away, spare keys dangling in one hand, staring after him like an abandoned puppy.

      I quickly scan the poorly written copy, quoting various “inside sources” about our relationship, how it had been stalled for months. “Lily is ready to settle down, and Jed isn’t. The pressure became too much.”

      I scoff. Pressure? The only thing I ever pressured him to do was sleep in on Sundays and eat fewer carbs. Tess was right. There’s not a single kernel of truth to be found anywhere.

      But as my eyes travel down the page, they land on a quote that makes my stomach drop. “Sources say that Lily’s new album, Forever, was a promise to Jed. A promise he wasn’t ready to make. ‘It was never the big, epic romance everyone wanted it to be,’ says one inside source. ‘Maybe Lily thought they were Forever, but Jed never saw it that way. Just last month she wanted him to fly home to meet her family. He pretended he was busy with work, but really he thought things were moving too fast.”

      My heart feels like it’s being squeezed in a vise. It was my grandparents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. My parents had planned a surprise party at the Italian restaurant where Grandpa had proposed. Jed promised he’d come, but at the last minute a bunch of appearances were added to his schedule. I hadn’t told anyone he was coming. He had a habit of double-booking himself, and I was tired of getting everyone’s hopes up.

      There’s a timid knock at the door. Without waiting for an answer, Tess and Sammy shuffle carefully into the room. “Are you okay?”

      Sammy slumps beside me and rests her head on my shoulder.

      “He talked to them,” I say, my voice a trembling whisper. “He had to. There are things in there …”

      “We know,” Tess says quietly. “We’re so sorry.”

      “How could he do this?” I’m genuinely bewildered. I’ve been around long enough to know there’s no such thing as an “inside source.” He talked to the press about me, my family. And why? So he could have the last word in our relationship? So he could come out on top? If he wanted to make me look pathetic, it worked. Tears burn my eyes and I fight not to let them spill over. If I felt shock and heartbreak when he broke it off, this is a thousand times worse—now I feel like a fool.

      “You have to forget him,” Tess urges. “I mean it. This is exactly why we’re here.”

      Sammy rubs my back. “She’s right,” she says. “It’s not worth it. This summer is for you. For us, right? Remember how fun it was, just the three of us at camp?”

      “No bugs or bad food,” Tess cuts in. “But otherwise, this summer should be like a grown-up version of the way things used to be. No responsibilities. No stress. Deal?”

      I wipe my eyes and smile. “Deal.”

      “Good,” Sammy says. “Now …”

      “Let’s go out, we know,” Tess singsongs, finishing her thought. “Hold your horses, party girl. I haven’t even showered.”

      Tess scoops up the magazines on her way out and stuffs them under one arm. Sammy lingers in the doorway. “See you downstairs?”

      I shake my head and put on a smile. “You guys go ahead,” I say. “I think I’ll do some writing.”

      “No wallowing!” Tess calls from the hallway.

      “No wallowing,” I promise.

      Sammy looks skeptical but blows me a kiss from the door.

      I grab my journal from the nightstand, my guitar from its case on the floor, and cozy up in a corner of the bed, wedging the pillows behind me.

      There’s so much I want to say. I could write a dozen songs in the next three hours about all the ways Jed has hurt me. But they would still be about him. Every time I write a song it feels like I’m giving little bits of myself away. And I don’t want to give Jed—or any of the guys I’ve dated—another piece of me.

      A cool breeze tickles the back of my neck. I look out the window, where the sun has just set, casting an orangey-pink light over the treetops. The water sparkles beyond the jetties, the ocean reaching out in every direction, as far as I can see. This is why I’m here. Real quiet. Real life. Real time with real people who love me, who care about me enough to buy all ten copies of the junkiest magazines on the newsstand, just so I won’t see them.

      This new album needs to be different. There has to be more to me than just a girlfriend, a lonely left-behind. Before Sebastian, before LA, I’d never been in a relationship. I made it nineteen years on my own, nineteen years that I spent binge-watching The O.C. with Sammy, daydreaming about moving to California. Or spilling secrets to my journal on a Friday night, about how lonely it felt to be different, to never know how to say or wear the right thing. Those secrets turned into songs, my very first songs—the songs that got me a manager, a record deal, a life beyond my wildest dreams.

      I close my eyes and imagine the summer I discover who I used to be, who I still could be, with nobody watching. The summer I write the songs I’m meant to write, songs that are more than just starry-eyed sagas or recycled broken-heart ballads. The summer I turn down all the noise and listen to the voice in the quiet, the voice I heard when I was a little girl, telling me to stop worrying so much about what everyone else was thinking. Close your eyes, the voice said.

       Close your eyes and sing.

      

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