Page 44 of Chronicles of a Rockin' Mess

“I need motherly advice, and you are way better at giving it than anyone in my family,” I say to her.

“Lay it on me.”

I take a deep breath. I don’t even know where to start. Mimi knows what happened before. She knows exactly why I left. It all came tumbling out over drinks when I first arrived at her home.

“I think my crush hasn’t gone away,” I whisper loud enough for her to hear.

“Oh, dear,” she says. “Did you tell him?”

“Hell no,” I whisper-yell.

“Honey, I think you should tell him.”

I sigh. “We kissed,” I say on a breath.

“Kiss, kissed?” she asks, her voice going up an octave.

“Yeah,” I admit.

“Oh, my, oh my,” she says. “I think I had him all wrong. I think he likes you.”

“What?” I say. “No.”

“You know when the little boys chase the little girls on the playground?” Mimi asks me.

“Trust me, this is not that,” I say to her.

“Uh-huh, sure is,” she says as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“Mimi, seriously?”

“Yep, seriously. I’d put money on it, but I will watch you two when I come up to the festival,” she says.

“What do I do until then?”

“Let him chase you,” she says. “Gotta go, the girls and I are going out later.”

“Alright, I’ll see you in a few days,” I say to her.

We hang up, and I stay in the seat and stare out the window, watching the fields and trees pass by us. I grew up in a place like this, a place in the middle of nowhere BFE America. Time seems to stand still in such places, or at least move very slowly. I wonder what my brother and dad are up to. My parents divorced when I was a kid. My mom moved back in with her dad a few towns over and works as a waitress at a truck stop. She smokes a pack a day, and I’m honestly shocked she hasn’t gotten lung cancer yet. She was never very motherly, and I hardly ever talk to her. My dad, Cliff, still works at a local car parts factory. He’s been working shifts there my whole life. My mom got knocked up with my older brother, Derek, when she was nineteen. It was a shotgun wedding, and then I came along three years later. Derek works at the car parts factory too, like half of my graduating class. It’s the main employer for our county. Everyone always laughed at me when I said I wanted to be a famous singer. And when I told my parents I was moving to LA, they said fine. I honestly think they thought I’d be back in a few weeks, broke as fuck and begging for a job at the car parts plant.

Maybe that’s why when two different record labels and three agents turned me down, I took the job with Lincoln. It paid shit at the time, but shit pay was more than I was making back home. Plus, Lincoln offered me a room in the band house, and then in his home once he could afford one. And so, it saved me, saved me from having to slink home with my tail between my legs, a failure, just like everyone said I would be.

Singing with Magnolia Tear has helped a bit, but they don’t get a lot of record labels coming to see them these days. A bunch of men in their late seventies doesn’t exactly attract the attention of the music bigwigs. But they’ve helped me prove to myself that I can sing. They helped restore a little piece of my confidence. I’m not sure I’ll ever get back the confidence I had as a kid. When you’re the only one who can carry a tune in a small town, it’s easy to shine bright. But in Hollywood, I’m just another Midwestern girl trying to be someone.

I contemplate what I’ll do in another week when my deal with Kade and Harry comes to an end. Once the tour is over, and they are settled back in LA and gearing up for some time in the studio, I’m free to leave. Gwen has scheduled one last show in LA, but that still doesn’t buy me much time to make a decision. Part of me wants to stay, to try again. Another part of me wants to run as fast as possible back to New Orleans and the life I’ve made there.

“Hey,” a voice interrupts my deep thoughts.

I turn to see Amelia. She gives me a warm smile.

“Hey,” I say to her. “How’s the studying going?”

She blushes. “Fine, thanks,” she says. “Sooo, how are things? We haven’t really had much of a chance to catch up since you’ve been back.”

“Well, you are busy with school,” I point out. She shrugs.

“You can still call, you know,” she says. I never really thought about it. I mean Savannah, Amelia, and I have a group chat, but I also know they are much closer with each other as girlfriends of band members. When I left, they tried to get me to talk with them, but I just said I needed time. And time became weeks and then months.

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