Page 15 of Betsy
Worry clouded my mother’s expression. With good reason. She didn’t trust musicians any more than I did.
We hadn’t always been this way. Although, if we had, could anyone really blame us? Musicians’ reputations were notorious. They wrecked hotel rooms, misused illegal substances, and slept with groupies without even bothering to get a name first. And that was just what the media reported. Who knew what kind of other activities they participated in when people weren’t looking? But despite all that, we’d put aside our misgivings and given a musical artist a chance once. All he’d done in return was broken hearts, shattered lives, and solidified our mistrust against all like him.
I took my mother’s fingers in my hands. “Don’t worry, Mami. I won’t do anything stupid.”
She tilted my head down to kiss my forehead. “I know you won’t, mija.” She lifted my chin and looked into my eyes. “But I am your mother, and I will always worry about you because I love you.”
The instrumental version of “Dos Oruguitas”filled the living room as my cousins scampered in.
“Are we done talking yet?” Diego asked.
“Yeah. You are takingforever.” Ava and her theatrics.
I tweaked her nose and took my phone back from Diego, pressing play on a song in a different playlist. Striking a pose, I grinned down at my cousins. “Because we are Argentine”—I thickened my accent to comical levels—“we tango.”
Diego and Ava giggled. I pulled Diego close to me while Tio did the same with Ava. As the music played, we adopted exaggerated steps. High kicks, slow shuffles, and arms extended out like arrows in front of us as we prowled from one end of the room to the other.
“No, no, no, no.” Papi stood, wiping his palms against the air like he could erase what he’d just witnessed. “You are a disgrace to your heritage. I disown you all.” He winked before adopting a smolder Flynn Ryder would be jealous of and aiming it at Mami (Seriously, if Disney wanted a leading man with arealsmolder, they should have made him Latino.) He held out a hand to Mami. “Should we show them how it’s done,mi vida?”
Mami blushed as she slipped her palm against Papi’s. With a tug, he pulled her to his chest and slid his other hand to rest on the small of her back. Their eyes locked, and the dance began. No matter where their feet took them or what steps they mastered, they never took their eyes off each other the entire time.
The front door opened, and I turned to see my baby sister with her own baby on her hip.
I wished I could’ve said the guilt of the sight had worn off, but that would’ve been a lie. Guilt always came, followed quickly by anger.
“A dance party without me?” Bella let the diaper bag fall from her shoulder to the ground with a thud. She moved baby Charlotte from her hip to her front and held her daughter’s tiny arm out to the side as she swayed left to right.
Bella smiled, but the happy expression did nothing to mask the strain around her mouth or the tired bags under her eyes. Bella should’ve been missing sleep to study for final exams, not because an infant kept her up all night.
Resolve hardened in my gut. Asher North could flash his charming smile and study me as if he could see past my thick outer layer of sarcasm all he wanted.
I would not be moved.
6
Asher
Noise
All around me
Seeping into me
Drowning out your voice
I tapped the eraser end of my pencil onto my notebook as I read the lines for the sixth time. What came next? Unfortunately, that noise on the page had ratcheted up in volume between my ears.
I sighed and tossed my pencil on top of the paper. My head needed to clear before anything else would come to me. I picked out a simple tune on the strings. One that took zero concentration and mental acuity but allowed my mind to follow the pattern.
We needed a few more songs to add to our playlist. I’d been hoping to get at least five written to share with the rest of the band and get their opinion on which we should debut to a live audience on the road. But to do that, we’d need time to practice the songs. And to practice the songs, I had to actually write them.
I could hear snippets. A simple melody here. A small stanza there. But so far, nothing had come together like I wanted it to. Like I needed it to.
I closed my eyes and picked out the melody that had played on a loop along the edges of my consciousness. The key of D. With my pinky resting at the pickguard, I used my other four fingers to pluck at the strings over the sound hole. My heartbeat slowed. Played percussion to the tune. Kept rhythm. When it felt right, I added my voice to the mix, singing the small sample of lyrics that I’d read so many times I’d already memorized them.
Noise
All around me
