Page 16 of Always Been His

Sienna fucking Rhodes.

Or Echo, as the rest of the world has been calling her since the label sank its teeth into her.

I haven’t said her name out loud in two years, and I’d like to keep it that way.

As Echo, her hair is sleek and dark, falling past her shoulders in a glossy dark purple waterfall. Sienna’s hair has never been straight a day in her life. Sienna has a curly afro, dyed bright royal blue at the tips with her natural black roots, that smells like coconut oil and almost covers her hazel eyes. Has been that way since sophomore year of high school.

Echo sings about a heartbroken party-girl character, who lives in clubs and dates assholes and writes anthems about it. Sienna wrote pop hits about freedom, love, and feeling alive after feeling dead for so long. They both have the voice of an angel.

I could look past everything, but the thing I hate most about Echo is that she breaks her word. Sienna kept her word to people she loves. She would walk three miles in the snow at fourteen years old to make a sleepover she’d promised my little sister, Iris, she’d come to. Echo can’t be bothered to show up for the opening of Iris’s bakery.

Guess a lot of things about Sienna have changed now that she’s Echo.

I promise I don’t feel anything about it.

I’ve spent two years not feeling anything. I’ve put hours into not feeling anything. Hours in the gym at three in the morning, hours on the road in the truck with the radio off, hours pretending I didn’t know exactly which goddamn week her new album was dropping. Pretending that she wasn’t two hours away last week, performing in Boston.

I’m fine. I’m over it.

The chyron crawls across the bottom of the screen: Pop Star Echo Postpones World Tour Indefinitely After Alleged Mental Breakdown.

I reach for the remote.

“—a brief statement from her management team late this evening. We’ll go now to the statement, read by Echo’s longtime manager, Nicki Campbell.”

The screen cuts to a woman with a perfectly slicked-back bun standing behind a podium with too many microphones for a brief impromptu statement.

“Echo has decided to step away from public life for the foreseeable future to focus on her mental health and personal well-being. The remaining dates of the Heartbroken Girl Tour have been postponed indefinitely. We ask that fans and members of the press respect her privacy during this time. Echo is grateful for the unwavering support of her fans and looks forward to returning to the stage when she is ready. No further statements will be made at this time. Thank you.”

She doesn’t take questions. She doesn’t look at the camera. She turns and walks off in a pair of heels that look like they cost more than my truck, and the news anchor comes back onscreen with the kind of concerned-but-thrilled face anchors get when a celebrity falls apart on their watch.

Mental health.

That’s what publicists call it when the truth is uglier and more expensive. It could mean anything from ‘she needs a vacation’ to ‘she’s in a hospital bed somewhere with a tube down her throat’, and the publicist gets to decide which one we get to hear about.

Eventually.

When they’ve allowed for collateral damage and figured out a comeback strategy.

I sink into the couch, my phone still in my hand. I should text her.

I think about it for about four seconds. Long enough to scroll into my contacts. Long enough to thumb past Bud, Dad, Dominic, Iris, and land on her name, which I haven’t deleted because I’m not a complete sociopath, and start typing. Hey. You okay?

I stare at the three words. Hey. You okay?

Three words. From a man she hasn’t spoken to in two years, and whose last contact was a series of unanswered messages, including a ‘call me back.’

She is not going to answer.

She probably won’t even read it. Whoever has her phone right now, the publicist, the manager, the assistant, the security guy with the earpiece, they’re going to see Grayson pop up on a lock screen, roll their eyes, and swipe the notification away.

I delete the draft and scroll up to my baby sister Iris. Sienna’s best friend. She’ll know something, because I know Sienna never stopped talking to her.

ME: Did you hear about Sienna?

I send it, immediately cursing myself and staring at the ceiling, counting the brown water stains and trying to ignore the flashes of Sienna’s smiling face whenever I close my eyes.

“Gray,” Dominic says, startling me out of my spiral. “You good, man?”