Page 1 of One More Made Up Love Song
CHAPTER ONE
Ivy
It’s not loston me that at least half of all single women between the ages of eighteen and thirty would probably kill to have my job.
As they should. It’s a good job. The pay is great. Benefits are comprehensive. It includes a lot of travel to destinations all over the world, and I meet famous people on a regular basis.
But it is not all glitz and glamour.
A lot of my job is ridiculous. Tedious. Exhausting in the worst way possible.
I do not have regular work hours. I basically have no work hours. My entire life is just…work.
Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year.
I live in my boss’s house. I sleep on his tour bus. I manage every single detail of his life with what, I am proud to say, is exceptional precision.
And, because I am not at all recognizable and my boss is recognized by almost everyone, I’m the one who has to go inside the twenty-four-hour drugstore even though it’s well past two a.m. just to hunt for Freddie Ridgefield’s favorite flavor of Starburst Minis.
I glance at my watch as I steer my shopping cart into the candy aisle. “FaveReds,” I say to myself as I scan the numerous colorful bags decorating the shelves. “Come on. You have to be here somewhere.”
There are plenty of other Starburst variations. Starburst Gummies, original Starburst, Starburst Jellybeans…seriously? Jellybeans? How many different ways can we eat a Starburst? And why are there no Starburst Minis here? Everyone knows they’re the best kind.
I crouch down to look on a lower shelf, my muscles groaning in protest. Twenty-six feels much too young for groaning muscles. Then again, I have been awake for almost twenty-four hours. Maybe I should cut my muscles some slack.
“Found you!” I say as I reach to the back of the shelf. The bag of Starburst Minis isn’t the FaveReds variety, but it’s better than nothing. I’ll eat all the yellow and orange ones if Freddie really cares that much.
I toss the candy into the cart, then wheel toward the back of the store where I pick up tampons, the cinnamon toothpaste I like so much, and some curl cream that should not work so well for how inexpensive it is.
No matter how many fancy creams and serums and sprays I’ve tried, I always come back to the one my older sister taught me to use.
“Ivy, you’re a teenager now,” Daphne said the night before my thirteenth birthday. She guided me to the edge ofthe bathtub and sat me down, then raked her fingers through my shower-damp hair. “You have to start acting like you care about your hair.”
For the next twenty minutes, she scrunched and shaped and tamed my curls until they looked as good as hers, talking the whole time, teaching me all the methods she’d learned from online tutorials and curly hair guides.
It felt very ceremonial, this process, like she’d specifically waited until the eve of my thirteenth birthday to bestow the wisdom and knowledge of curly-haired goddesses.
I don’t always remember everything Daphne taught me. The list is way too long.
But I do have really exceptional curls—and that’s all thanks to her.
I drop the curl cream next to Freddie’s candy as a sharp pang of longing cuts across my chest. I rub at my sternum, like I’m rubbing the ache away, but mostly I just need something to do with my hands. Some action to remind me that I’m still here, still living…and that’s exactly what Daphne would want me to do. Live.
Even if she couldn’t.
At the end of the aisle, a couple of women break into giggles. I look up, immediately noting their attire. Sparkles, glitter, stars on their cheeks, and yep, they’re both wearing Freddie Ridgefield t-shirts. Well, one of them is wearing a Midnight Rush t-shirt, a throwback to Freddie’s boyband days before he went solo, but it’s clear these women were just at Freddie’s concert.
I duck into the next aisle and head toward the self-checkout at the front of the store, hoping I haven’t taken so long that Freddie comes in looking for me. It’s exactly thekind of thing he would do—despite Wayne’s constant efforts to keep him in check.
After last year, when Freddie rented a black sedan and drove himself from his home in Nashville over to North Carolina to visit Adam, one of his Midnight Rush bandmates—totally alone—his head of security has been a lot more serious about his responsibility to keep Freddie safe.
The fact that Freddie even made it out of his house without alerting Wayne was, in the security guard’s mind, a personal failure on his part.
But Freddie is too charming for his own good. Whether it’s Wayne or me or the entire global female population, he just has a way of winning people over. And that usually means he gets what he wants.
“Did you find them?” A deep voice asks right next to my ear.
I startle and spin around to see Freddie smirking at me, face shaded by a turquoise Appies Hockey baseball cap.
