Ray, our manager, had called to set a band meeting.
"So this billionaire guy wants us to write his fiancée a song and play at their wedding?" I asked after Ray's weirdly worded presentation.
"Essentially yes."
"Who's this guy anyway?" I asked again, "why would we go all this way up there?"
"Because he is a producer. This is an opportunity to play him some of your new stuff."
"Hey, I found his Insta account," Sadie said, "Oh my god, he is HOT."
We gathered around her to look at the guy.
"Wow, I'd ride that any day!" Dahlia commented. "He is the epitome of sex appeal."
"Meh, I don't see it," Kiara said, "the jawline, nose, lips and everything is on point but I'd never do him."
"Of course not, he doesn't have boobs!" Dahlia countered.
"No, no, I'm with Kiara on this," I said, "guys gotta be a little ugly to be sexy. It's science!"
"You're just as biased as her," Dahlia said.
"On what grounds?"
"On the grounds that you're in love with Miles Kane."
"I'm so not! Just because I had a crush on him a lifetime ago doesn't mean I'm in love with him. That's bullshit."
"Then why do you still have his pictures on your wall and you look at him like you wanna have his babies?" Sadie joked.
Was I really that obvious?
"Well, I'm over it," I denied, "he practically threw me out of his house and he went on a blind date and you know me, I'm not the pining type."
"You totally are," they all said in their own words.
"You've written a shit ton of songs about pining and it's your favorite trope." Miriam knew me way too well. This was a lost battle.
"I was a teenager!" I was getting desperate to get out of this conversation.
"Are we gonna have to do an intervention for you?" Miriam asked.
"To what end? It doesn't matter what I feel. He doesn't want me and he'll be gone in a few months and I'm going to Italy apparently. So why can't we just leave it alone?" My voice was shaking and if it was any other circle of people I'd be embarrassed and hate myself for being so unnecessarily emotional.
Being kind, flirty, or strangely cheerful was fine but to show that I was hurt, I wasn't comfortable with that.
"Oh, dear," Miriam said. "Why can't you see that he cares about you or at least he likes you?"
"Whatever. We don't need no one to be happy." I smiled. "What we need is to go to Florence and play some music. Am I right?"
"Hell, yeah," Dahlia's voice was the loudest.
Being done with Elle, the animation I had been singing on, meant I had a lot of time on my hands to spend overthinking about Miles and the things my friends had said.
Maybe I should just ask him out? I can call him, set a date. We can sit and talk about the past few months and how we see them. Yes, that was a good idea, very adult. I gave myself a pat on the back, I'm proud of myself.
On the first ring, I was excited. The second one, I started doubting. What if they were wrong and it was just going to make him feel awkward? What if he didn't even think of me that way? Maybe he wasn't looking for that kind of thing right now.
