Page 86 of Always Been His

“I was going to quit,” I say. “Not music. The whole label-made version of it. The machine. I’ve been reading my contract and trying to figure out how to walk away from it all.”

Miss Flack doesn’t react.

“And then I was in that room today,” I continue, “and Deja opened her mouth, and Ruby came in on the harmony, and I thought there is nothing I wouldn’t pay to keep doing this. Nothing. Whatever it costs. Whatever version of the deal I have to make, I’ll make it, because there are girls like them everywhere and they deserve to have someone in the room who will tell them their voice is theirs.”

Miss Flack faces me with a tender smile on her lips.

I pull into her driveway, put the Jeep in park, and sit there for a moment with the engine ticking, and the sunlight coming in through the cracked window, and everything quiet and still.

She puts her hand over mine on the gearshift. “How do you feel about singing now?” she asks, her eyes narrowed as if she already knows.

“Like I know what I’m fighting for,” I tell her.

She squeezes my hand once and lets it go.

“Good,” she says, stepping out. “That is all I ever wanted for you.”

22

GRAYSON

It’s the first time Iris and I have been alone since she found out about Sienna and me, and the space between us is filled with silence, other than the light clinking of our drinks hitting the edge of our wooden seats in our backyard.

Iris sits with her legs pulled up and a ginger ale balanced on her knee. I can’t remember a time when it has ever been this tense between us.

I’m not sorry for falling in love with her best friend. I cannot manufacture that regret no matter how long I sit with the silence, because the alternative is a version of my life where Sienna doesn’t exist the way she is now, and that version doesn’t hold together when I look at it directly. But I am sorry about the way it happened, sorry about the timing, about the look on Iris’s face in the kitchen doorway that I’ll be carrying for a while.

Iris picks at the label on her bottle.

She has been doing it for twenty minutes. Picking at the label, rolling the strips between her thumb and forefinger, not looking at me. Iris, who has never been unable to look at me for longer than thirty consecutive seconds, is currently finding every other surface on this porch more interesting than my face, which tells me everything I need to know about how badly I managed this.

“It’s fucked-up, Gray,” she says finally.

Her voice isn’t angry, and that’s almost worse. Angry I know how to handle. This is the other version, the quiet one, the version that means she has been sitting with it long enough that the first heat has burned off and what’s left is fact.

“I know,” I say.

“Like genuinely fucked-up,” she says, still not looking at me. “She’s my best friend. She has been my best friend since we were six years old. And you two were…” she stops, pressing her lips together. “How could you?”

“It just happened,” I say.

She takes a long drink of her soda and looks out at the tree line, the dark shape of the oak visible against the evening sky.

“She told me you’re in love,” Iris says. “When she came to the bakery. She said it like she needed me to hear it, not just know it. Like there was a difference.” She finally looks at me. Her blue eyes in the low evening light are the same blue as mine and our father’s, and it catches me off guard, the sameness of it. “Are you? In love with her?”

At this point, it’s a silly question. Sienna is everything I’ve ever yearned for.

“Yeah,” I say. “I am.”

Iris holds my gaze for a long moment. Then she exhales, a long slow breath and looks back at the tree line, and something in her posture changes, something held tight finally letting go by one degree.

“I was so upset,” she says, shaking her head like she’s reliving the memory. “When I saw you two. In the kitchen. I couldn’t think straight for four days. And then she came to the bakery and sang to me,” her voice wobbles like she’s choking down a laugh. “Which is the most Sienna thing she has ever done, and I was furious about it.”

“It worked though,” I say.

“I don’t like my weaknesses being used against me,” she snaps, picking at the label again. “But she told me she would walk away from you before she walked away from me. She meant it. I could tell she meant it.”

“That’s kind of shitty to hear, given that I love her and all.” I know it’s true. The promise to Iris has always come first.