Page 52 of The Bright Side of Christmas
“You wrote ‘All Lit Up’?” Wren asks in a breath.
I sigh, then sit on the edge of a desk and run a hand through my hair a few feet away from her, needing space. “Yeah.”
She turns to me then, raising an eyebrow at me in determined disbelief that is so Wren, I can’t help but let out a chuckle.
“And you hate Christmas?”
“Honestly, it’s the reason why,” I say with a self-deprecatory shrug. She continues to stare at me as if she doesn't understand, so I explain without further prompting.
“I wrote that song when I was twenty-eight. Midnight Ash had broken up, and I’d sold a few songs since, but nothing to really get my name moving. I wrote it in the middle of the summer after getting high and watching one of those cheesy Christmas in July specials.” She lets out a snort of a laugh. “Willa picked it up, and it went crazy. It was number two on the charts all December and went gold the next year.”
She smiles at me, and the shame that normally comes with it doesn’t feel as deep.
“And then what happened?”
“The next year, all anyone wanted from me was Christmas.” She nods, following what I’m saying. “I wrote four more that season.” I gesture to where the gold records sit, and she reads the titles with wide eyes.
“Oh mygod, Adam! You’re kidding me! So you‘re like Christmas music royalty?” I shake my head, grimacing. “Oh, we’re not happy about that.” She reads me, taking me in, and I let out a sigh. When I explain this to someone not in the industry, it feels…silly. Insignificant.
“If it weren’t a Christmas song and had the same kind of growth, it would have made Record of the Year easily. However, everything else since then has basically flopped or performed well enough, but nothing of true note. Now, I receive a yearly reminder that the best work I’ve ever done was on a generic Christmas song. A song most people hate just because it’s an earworm they can’t stop singing. It’s gotten to the point where most people in the industry think I’m just this idiot who only writes Christmas songs. They don’t evenwantto hear my other shit; they just want Christmas. So this year, I told my agent I wouldn’t be doing any holiday music.” I remember the conversation with Greg, the way he begged me to reconsider, but I knew if I kept going, I’d burn myself and hate writing.
“Unfortunately, he couldn’t sell a single one of my normal songs. In past years, it was a mix of what I sold, Christmas, and normal songs. But this year…crickets.” She steps forward and sets a hand to my cheek. There’s none of the judgment or pity I’ve been seeing for a year, and I give her my next confession. “It put me into the worst creative rut of my life. I haven’t been able to write at all, not in six months.”
“Is that long?” she asks, genuinely curious. She’s so far out of the industry, she doesn’t know what the norm is. It’s so refreshing.
“Yes, that’s long, especially for me. It’s been…painful, not writing. That’s why I moved here.” I sigh, looking out the window. The street is coated in a thick layer of snow, as the plow still hasn’t made it our way. “In LA, everyone looked at me with pity. In New York, it was too…busy. I thought maybe my muse needed some peace and quiet, so I found a random town on the map and moved here. Somewhere small, somewhere no one knew about me or my career.”
She gives me a soft smile. “Holly Ridge.”
“Holly Ridge.”
I return the look, remembering her coming to my door. “I thought I could escape it here, hide away from it all, spend a few months writing and find…something.”
“And did you?”
I shake my head, but then I hear it again, playing in my mind, and grin genuinely. I almost forgot, so lost in telling her my story.
“No, not until before, in the kitchen. I brought you up here not to show you who I am, but because I got inspired.”
Her eyebrow quirks. “You did?”
Suddenly, nerves fill my belly, and I press a kiss to her lips to assuage it a bit. “Yeah. Seems I may just have found my muse in Holly Ridge after all.” A blush burns on her cheeks, and I feel absolutely fucking giddy with inspiration. “I need to jot something down.”
Her eyes light up. “Music?”
“I’m not writing a recipe in here.”
She rolls those expressive eyes, pushes on my shoulder, and I feel it again—that lightness in my chest. Those chordsrun through my mind again, another adding to the end, and excitement rushes through me on the heels of that warmth.
“Can I stay and watch? I promise I’ll be so quiet,” she says, miming zipping her lips.
“Not planning to let you out of my sight for a while, Birdie,” I murmur, leaning down to press my lips to hers before I put my hands to her waist and lift her, placing her on the edge of my desk.
I grab a piece of blank sheet music and jot down some notes. In the margins, I jot down words that come to me, then move to the piano and start moving my fingers across the keys. I try not to feel self-conscious, but I find the concern is moot. When I look up at her, she isn’t watching me—she’s leaning with her back against the wall, eyes closed like she was listening but not watching otherwise. She must feel me looking because her eyes flutter open, a dazed look written across her face.
“Pretend I’m not even here. I’m not watching at all.” Then she pauses. “Or I can leave if you want—I promise I won’t be offended. Whatever your process is, I’ll respect it.”
I shake my head. “No, no. It’s fine. I’m just not used to having someone here when this happens.”
