CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

My apartment was empty when I returned, and the mail had piled up. Julie and Carla must both be out of town again. They’d probably told me at some point, but I’d been a terrible friend to them. We’d barely spoken more than a few words in weeks, and when we had, I’d lied to them.

I’d lost myself in the show, in Jared, in the impossible dream and the beautiful lie. No more. Rock Star Maddie had been a total failure. Time to return to Normal Maddie. I’d been a fool, thinking I could be anything more than that. I’d been perfectly happy with my life and my plans for the future until Jared had invited me to join his band and gotten me off-track. He’d tempted me to want a louder life, one where he and I could be together, but we’d been doomed from the start. That life was over, and now I remembered who I really was: the geeky piano player who dated safe guys, practiced guitar in secret, and watched from the sidelines while others went after their dreams.

Maybe if I begged the LA Philharmonic, I could get my internship back for the rest of the summer. No, that would be impossible. But there were plenty of other things I could do until school started. I had enough laundry to last a lifetime. I could start applying to graduate schools. I could lie in bed all day and get really, really drunk.

Guess which one of those I did.

The less that’s said of the next few days, the better. I turned off my phone so I wouldn’t have to deal with the outside world at all. I raided our alcohol supply and forgot about personal hygiene entirely. I ate nothing but ramen and ice cream and watched a ton of Netflix.

In my darkest moments, I watched videos of us performing on the show and cried about how I’d never be on stage with the guys again. In my rush to leave the show, I’d left my guitar at Dan’s studio, not that it mattered since it was broken anyway. Besides, it held too many memories now. It would be a long time before I could touch a guitar again.