Page 35 of So Not My Thing
“Not possible.” The way he said it made me blush. It wasn’t a practiced line, just a quiet observation.
“Anyway, I went out of my way to avoid any mention of you after theLaurathing. If you came on the radio, I changed it. If you were in an award show, I didn’t watch it. I didn’t follow any celebrity gossip because I didn’t want to hear your name. I got good at it, so I guess in my mind, you’ve been frozen in time. Just a sixteen-year-old punk kid.”
“I grew up. I promise.”
He had. Nicely. It was hard not to notice how well he’d aged, the way he’d grown into his body. But I knew he meant emotionally.
“I’m figuring that out,” I said. “I was thinking about some advice my grandma gave me once. She had a complication after my mom was born, a stroke that paralyzed half her face. She said she used to wish it hadn’t happened, but then slowly, she realized that the experience had made her stronger. She said if I was lucky, that’s what hard things would do for me too. That they’ll define me no matter what, but I could decide how.’”
“So you quit letting it define you?”
“As much.” I gave him a smile. “Now that you’ve suddenly popped up in my life as my client, I need to wrestle with defining myreactionto it.”
“How’s that going?”
We passed a tin oyster shack with the restaurant name sprayed right on the building. “Maybe my old self can be mad at your old self, and we can leave it all in the past.”
He nudged me with his shoulder. It was probably supposed to comfort me, but instead it sent heat flooding through that whole side of my body. “Glad to hear it.”
I needed a reason to put some distance between us, so I turned around and walked backwards. “My turn for a question.”
“Shoot.”
“What did you mean when you said that I’d be surprised by how much the meme had defined you even more than the show?”
He hesitated, shoving his hands back into his pockets. “We just made friends. I don’t want to mess it up by answering.”
“If telling me the truth is going to put our friendship at risk, it’s not much of a friendship. Break it now or break it later.”
We reached the end of Piety Street where it ran into Chartres, and I turned back around.
“What’s that?” Miles asked, pointing ahead of us.
“A bridge to the river. It’s a nice trail.”
“Walk it with me?”
We crossed the bridge and watched the muddy Mississippi come into view. A train sat idle on the tracks beneath the bridge. The only sound was the light slap of the river against its banks, but it was soft. Even though the bridge wasn’t high, the breeze off the water was stronger here, and it tried to tug some of my hair loose from its rubber band.
He led us to one of the benches along the path.
“I’ll start by saying that nothing I’m about to explain in any way excuses my sixteen-year-old jerk self.”
“Understood.” I leaned forward slightly, anxious for the explanation.
“Second, it was less the meme and more your viral video that...” he trailed off.
“Are you self-editing? Pulling punches? Don’t. Just talk. I promise to stay right here.”
He nodded and did that nervous thing where he pushed his hair out of the way even though it didn’t flop anymore. “That video made my career in some ways and broke it in others. I’ve always had complicated feelings about it.”
“How could it do both?” It was surreal to think my teenage angst could do either.
“It turned me into dollar signs in the record executives’ eyes. A lot of times on these shows, the winner gets a recording contract, but the record company never invests in the marketing and publicity that will get the winner’s career off the ground. They say, ‘You won a million-dollar recording contract,’ but all it means is they subtract the cost of your studio times the producer, and the songwriters from that advance, then they do all kinds of shady accounting to explain where the rest of it went. If you’re lucky, they send you to state fairs or casinos to play shows, but they’re not trying to book you on high-profile gigs.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said. “I heard the ‘million dollar’ part and assumed you guys got it all.”
“We see almost none of it. But if we’re very lucky, the record company sees a commercial future for us, like One Direction. Which is what happened to me. Because of you. They saw your meltdown and thought, ‘We may have something here.’ Anyway, they brought in big name producers and booked me to open on some big tours, and you know the rest.”
