Tone Deaf

Chapter Fourteen

Author's Note:

Hello! It's been a while, I know. I sort of thought I'd never get back to this story, being as it's been so long since I started it, and didn't really have a concrete vision of where it was going. I'm not really active on Wattpad anymore, I don't have time to write as much these days as I used to. I just recently logged back in for the first time in months, and saw some of you comment on my profile, wondering if I'm okay. I wanted to say thank you for thinking of me and worrying over me, but I'm okay! I'm still in college and I've also been working, I've moved countries twice in the past three years, so it's just been a lot. 

I can't promise regular updates to this, but I will try to check back in more often, and hopefully will have more time to write soon.

Q.

Kyle

All of a sudden, I have something in common with millions of teenage girls across the country—nay, across the world.

I have a crush on Devon Pine.

I can't remember the last time I had a crush on somebody like this. It must have been sometime in high school, while I was in the group home. Besides Nadia, I never really dated much in high school. I never had the time or the money, and then I got signed at sixteen, so I got all swept up in the crazy shit that was my rise to fame. There have been girls since then, of course—and guys, too, let's be honest—but nothing really stable or long-term. No real feelings ever came into the picture.

So I have no idea what to do with myself now.

Devon's attractive. Wildly attractive. In a stupidly annoying, sweet Southern-boy way. But that's not news to anybody, certainly not to me. And as soon as we started hanging out and I realized he wasn't the fake I had assumed he was and that he was actually pretty cool, I knew I was attracted to him. Which is no big deal, truthfully. I could handle it, no problem.

But this shit?

Don't get me wrong, I write songs about love and romance, but this feels more like one of Devon's songs—from his early days, where he sang about butterflies and stumbling over words and looking away to avoid being caught staring and all of those terrible clichés that I used to make fun of him for.

I suppose I should've seen it coming. I've been way more open with Devon than I've been with anyone, and although I couldn't really explain it, I should've guessed there was a reason I feel so much more comfortable around him.

But hindsight is always 20/20, and thinking about how I should've known isn't helping me in my current predicament, which happens to be listening to Devon's new songs as he looks at me nervously and awaits my judgment.

And of course I'm trying to focus, because I want to be honest with him and give him my professional opinion, but that's hard as well because this new music is good—like, really good. His voice is smooth and emotional and the lyrics are open and raw and I know how much work he's put into this and how anxious he is about sharing this side of himself and fuck, I'm just not equipped to handle these types of emotions.

When the song ends, I look up and see Devon looking at me, his eyebrows furrowed deeply as he chews on his bottom lip.

"Well?" he asks, and I realize I've just been staring at him silently.

"It's amazing," I say honestly, my voice coming out quieter than I expected. "I mean it. It's introspective but not alienating. I think it's really powerful, a new sound but it still sounds like you, which I know Powell will care about. I think you killed it."