Chapter 15

Raegan

I've just taken a half dose of the prescription antihistamine I keep in my travel bag to stop the hive vine on my forearm when Micah knocks at my door. I answer in my sweats and my favorite sleep tee filled with Jane Austen quotes, but take care to keep the ugly red bumps hidden from view. If he saw them earlier while we cared for Hattie, he didn't mention it.

As he stands in the empty hallway with a stack of journals in his arms and reading glasses on his face, I'm wondering at the advanced math formula involved in taking an already attractive man and making him ten times more attractive with such a minor change.

"I figured since we don't know how much Hattie had to drink tonight, it might be good to have something to do while we keep an eye on her."

Every cell in my body swoons at his suggestion.

"You don't have to stay up with me, really." I'd planned on it, of course, hence my half dose of meds, but Micah has a bus to drive tomorrow. "I'll be fine." I scrunch my nose as I catch my slip. "I mean, I don't expect you to—"

"What if I told you I'd like to stay up and keep you company? Would you be good with that?"

I nod, willing the butterflies inside me to stay in their respective cocoons. They don't.

He stops and scans my hotel suite, noting Hattie asleep on the far sofa where we'd propped her on pillows. "I'm glad she's resting."

"Me too."

As we each take in the ransacked suitcases, hastily discarded clothing, damp towels, half-drank water bottles, and toiletries scattered about the sofa opposite Hattie's, Micah starts to make his way over to it as it's the only other place in the room to sit outside of the bed. Only, I have no energy left for cleaning tonight, and I'm certain he doesn't, either.

"I'm not opposed to sharing the bed with you," I say two seconds before my brain catches up to my mouth.

Micah turns slowly, smirking. "I'm flattered, Raegan, but I'm afraid I'm not that kind of guy."

I ignore the heat engulfing my neck and point to the mess in the tiny living room area. "Then by all means, please feel free to pick up the trail of soggy laundry and towels on the sofa so we can—"

"On second thought, the bed sounds swell, as long as you're sure you can keep your hands to yourself."

I roll my eyes. "I'll do my best."

I perch at the foot of the king-size bed where he tosses me a couple of pillows before taking two for himself and stretching out horizontally across the head of the mattress. I don't hesitate to follow his lead. It's been a long night.

He sets the journals between us once we're settled, and I smile at him over the stack.

"Thank you," I start, knowing the sentiment is nowhere near enough to cover my gratitude for what he did for my family tonight. "You were ... tonight was..."

"Gross?" he supplies helpfully.

"No doubt about that." I grimace. "But I really do appreciate your help with my sister tonight. There's no way I could have done all that on my own."

He holds my gaze, and I don't even try to swat the flutters away this time. "I think the two of us make a pretty good team."

Of all the things he could have said, this hits with unexpected warmth. He can't possibly know how un-team-like my world often feels. "I do, too."

"There is something I'm going to need an answer to, though, before we can go any further in this new partnership of ours."

My stomach clenches as I think of all the possible topics my family drama provided him tonight. No doubt he has lots of questions. I would, too. "What do you want to know?"

"Why on earth are you called Sunny Bear?"

I'm barely able to stifle my laugh to keep from waking Hattie. "It's really silly, actually. My dad used to call me his little Rae of sunshine, emphasis on the Rae. But Rae never really stuck, so then they started calling me variations of Sunny. Then one infamous day when I was about seven, Sunny morphed its way to Sunny Bear, which makes absolutely no sense at all, but that is the origin story of my nickname. It's ridiculous."

"I think it's pretty cute." His oversize smile causes his glasses to slip a tad on the bridge of his nose, which I think is pretty cute.

"I'm twenty-six. Sunny Bear's life-span should have ended before I entered middle school."

"We'll have to agree to disagree, Sunny Bear." When he makes no effort to look away, I'm suddenly grateful for Lynn's journal-keeping. It's clear I'm going to need a distraction from Micah's glasses tonight.

I reach for the pile of hardbacks between us.

"Have you been reading these?" I find the one I flipped through on the bus and locate the last entry I read—when Lynn and my mother were making their first album with TriplePlay Records and my parents were secretly dating to keep the guise of Mama being a young, eligible, blonde bombshell.

"I've read through two of them. She jumps months and even years in the coming entries. I don't think journaling was as much of a priority to her when they weren't on the road."

"So you're saying I have a lot of catching up to do?"

"Be my guest." He slides over the second journal with the date range of 1976–1979. My parents' unofficial wedding was in '80, though their marriage the public knew about was in '82. Adele was born two years later, and I've always wondered about those years leading up to it—what Lynn and my mama's relationship was like back then, and how their slow but steady rise to fame affected it. I'm about to say this very thing when Micah's voice cuts through my thoughts.

"Why did your mother name you after mine?"

Unlike before, this beat of silence that passes between us is thick and palpable.

I swallow. "I've often wondered that myself."

"You've never asked her?"

"Not directly, no." When I think back to the days before Mama's final visit with Lynn, it's difficult to recall the closed-off way she once spoke about her old friend, or about the time period before Luella Farrow was a standalone act on stage. I used to interpret Mama's tight-lipped responses of the before era as a lack of affection for a woman who had so obviously wronged her.

But as of late, I'm not sure I interpreted much about my mother's past friendship with Lynn correctly at all.

I splay my fingers over one of Lynn's hand-drawn crosswords near an entry in '77 and think of how sad it is that her creative design was never completed.

"Honestly, Micah," I say with extra care, "discussing some of the details of our mothers' pasts might be a bit ... awkward."

"You mean because we believed them to be mortal enemies once upon a time?"

My lips pull to one side. "Something like that, yeah."

Gingerly, he rotates the journal from beneath my palm so that the clues of the crossword can be read by us both. We each take a second to scan through them, but my gaze halts at the clue given for four across. The only clue Lynn wrote was: Us.

The simplicity of it is distracting. I've just started to puzzle it out when Micah says, "I'm willing to lean in to the awkward if you are."

I look up from the crossword. "What?"

"Lean in to the awkward. It's something I use to say a lot in my school office. We're trained from an early age to retreat from anything that makes us feel uncomfortable, but comfort never pushes us to grow or even view things from a different perspective. So, if given the choice, I lean in to it."

I want to say something intelligent in response, but my insides are too rattled by the truth bomb he's detonated. Everything he said sounds right, and yet I pretty much do the opposite. Maybe it's not too late to try.

I prop my head in my hand. "Then I'll lean in with you."

"Deal." He nods earnestly.

"I didn't realize how close our mothers were all those years ago until recently. I knew they were teenage friends who became bandmates, and enough about the mess that followed their split and broken contracts to assume my mother avoided conversations about Lynn out of resentment. But I don't think that anymore. Now, I think she avoided talking about those times out of pain. My mama was different after she came home from seeing Lynn in Idaho...." I purse my lips, remembering her tears, her vulnerability, her return to attending weekly church services even though it meant a three-ring circus of security detail and disguises. But mostly, I think about her desire to talk late into the evenings about things she's never spoken about with me before. "I think whatever bond was broken between them all those years ago began to heal as soon as that old song of theirs went viral."

Micah's eyes are soft on my face. "I don't know what shocked my family more—having that prestigious award show up at my parents' house, engraved to my mother, or opening the door to Luella herself standing there only a month later at my mom's request."

From the sofa behind us, Hattie releases a soft snore. We both freeze and then slowly twist to find her burrowing deeper into one of the extra blankets Micah requested at the front desk.

I return my gaze to the open journal between us and trace the seven-letter blank for the clue on three across once again. Us. I count out the letters for friends, but it doesn't fit with the answers for the vertical clues. And then—

"Sisters." A raw sensation crawls up my throat and seems to confirm my timely hypothesis. I tap the blank row. "That's what they were to each other once, just like your mom wrote in her journal. An old friend you can live without after a time, but a sister..." I shake my head. "That's different. My sisters can infuriate me like no one else in this world, and because of that, I suppose we can hurt each other like no one else in the world, too. But no matter what offense comes between us, I'd never be able to cut them off completely." A new conviction surges within me. "I think Mama gave me Lynn's name out of hope. Hope that one day, despite all the brokenness between them, things might be restored."

Micah sets his hand on the page next to mine. His palm covers entries written before either of us were born, treasured words that hold mystery and truth, joy and sorrow. And I imagine, for Micah, a fair amount of heartache, too.

"Can you tell me what happened between them?" he asks.

"I don't know all the details that led up to their fight, but I do know it was your mama's decision to leave it all behind—their music, their tour plans, their new record, their friendship." I take a breath, wanting to take care in how I say this next part. "Farrow Music Productions was still so new at that time that when Lynn backed out, it cost my parents every cent of collateral they put down on the company, and eventually, it bankrupted them. They lost their home and had to move with my sisters into my grandparents' house while my dad worked to rebuild the label from the ground up. The way my mama tells it, she thought she was done with music forever after all that. She didn't step foot on stage again until I was three years old, after much encouragement from my daddy."

"I didn't know any of that." Micah says, rolling on his side to thread a hand through his hair. "I never knew it was my mother who initiated the decision to leave." I can hear the grief in his long exhale. "It's hard not to think of all the questions I wish I could ask her now, starting with the motivation behind why she would choose to keep so many secrets from us."

I nod to the journals. "Maybe the more you read, the more you'll understand. Your mother expresses herself well through her writing. She obviously had a way with words."

"I have it on good authority she's not the only one with that gift." This time when his gaze fixes on mine, the query in his voice transports me back to the mural in Carter's Ballroom, to a conversation that feels as foreign now as it does impossible.

Had I actually suggested I write my mama's love story for publication?

I barely have time to answer the first question due to the one that comes directly behind it: Would I actually write under my real name?

"You're panicking," Micah notes calmly. "Why?"

I try to sit up, but the mattress is like quicksand, and it takes two attempts to push myself into a cross-legged position.

"I misspoke before—at the mural. I can't write a book like that. I wasn't thinking clearly."

His expression doesn't budge even a fraction of an inch, and the patience rolling off him is almost irritating.

"Micah," I start again, this time bolder. "I don't know how to write nonfiction. Obviously, there's a Raegan Farrow doppelg?nger on the loose who says stupid things when she's stressed out."

His lips quirk. "I can vouch for the fact that it was most definitely you back at that mural: jean skirt, purple top, curls for days, and a face I've enjoyed looking at from every angle since the day we met." He hikes an eyebrow, and all the fluttering I'd managed to contain to my abdomen is now roaming free in every nook and cranny of my body.

"You know their stories by heart, Raegan. You said so yourself. So take the next step and write them down." He readjusts his position on the mattress to mirror my own and then reaches for my hand. I offer him the one that isn't marred by signs of stress and slip the other behind my back. It's easy to melt into the sensation of his touch. "Don't sell yourself short just because you're afraid to lean in to something new."

"What if I lean so far I fall flat on my face and fail my whole family?" I whisper in the hollow space between us.

"And what if it's the best thing you ever do for your family?" he asks. "What if what you write does exactly what we hope and it knocks Cheater Peter's book right off the shelves?" He clasps my hand a little tighter. "What if this is the timing you've been waiting for?"

I close my eyes and focus on the feel of Micah's hand on mine until I can process it all over again. Only, this time, when I plug the details into my own story narrative, I don't give fear a plot point. Because if anyone in our circle is qualified to write my mama and daddy's love story, it's me. Adele's version would read like a business exposition of dates and facts, and Hattie's idea of writing was to bribe her sorority sisters to finish her term papers with VIP concert tickets to any show Mama's team could get their hands on. And Mama? Well, she's an orator by nature. I've rarely seen her put pen to paper.

It's strange to think how little I knew about the personal life of Lynn Davenport prior to opening her journal for the first time, when now I can hear her voice inside my head, telling me a story I'm inspired to follow. Perhaps nonfiction isn't as different as I fear.

The idea sprouts chill bumps down my arms.

"I'll call and talk to Chip tomorrow," I say. "Ultimately, it's his decision to make or break."

"And your family's." I don't miss his not-too-subtle hint.

I gesture to the couch where my sister is snoring off her booze and hike an eyebrow. "Would you like me to wake Hattie to ask her now or...?"

"Raegan," he says gently. "It's easy to fool ourselves into thinking secrets are the best way to protect the ones we love, when it's really ourselves we want to protect."

His words knock hard against my chest. "That's not what's happening here, Micah." I disconnect my gaze from this intense staring match, only to realize our hands are still entwined. "I know my family. News like this will throw everyone into chaos." I gesture again to Hattie. "It will be best if I have a prepared solution at the ready when I tell them. I need to be certain."

"Is that the same logic you apply to Tav—that you need to be certain before you discuss your relationship?"

He must anticipate my reaction because he loosens his grip a second before I pull my hand away.

"That's ... that's not the same thing at all."

"Okay," he says simply. Too simply.

"What do you mean by okay?"

"Exactly what it sounds like." He smiles annoyingly. "If you say it's not the same, then it's not."

I study him suspiciously, and he leans back, planting his palms on the mattress behind him while his biceps put on a show that is not appropriate for the moment. "You think I'm avoiding a conversation with him because I don't know how I feel?"

"It doesn't matter what I think. What do you think?"

"For not working as a therapist right now, that sounds like a very therapisty thing for you to ask. For your information, I was the one who ended things between us."

Something indecipherable crosses over his face. "And yet you're the one who said things are still complicated between the two of you."

"Aren't all breakups complicated at some level?" I ask in earnest. "I've known Tav all my life; I can't just flip a switch and pretend all the history we've shared doesn't matter or that I don't care about his future. I'm not that kind of person."

"You're right," Micah says. "You're not that kind of person. I do know that." There's a dull ache in my lower belly when he looks away from me. "I'll make sure you get the privacy you need for that phone call tomorrow with Chip."

I'm not sure what I've done wrong, but I want things to go back to how they were five minutes ago. "Thank you," I say, my throat suddenly tight. "I appreciate that."

I scramble to think of a way to get us back to a better place and reach for his mother's journals when—

"What's that?"

He captures my left arm mid-reach, and I silently chastise myself for killing the atmosphere even further with the ugly hive vine that is still present despite my half dose of medicine. I open my mouth to dismiss his concern when he strokes his finger from the underside of my wrist to the middle of my forearm. His eyes narrow with concern. I try to pull my arm back. Only, this time, his hold tightens.

"It's nothing, it's just—"

"Hives," he says knowingly. "What are you allergic to?"

"Stress." I try to say this with casual indifference, but somehow it makes the crease between his eyebrows intensify. "Believe it or not, they actually look better now than they did earlier. I only took a half dose of my antihistamines since I wasn't sure how Hattie was going to do tonight. They usually take a couple of hours to disappear."

"How long has this been happening? How often?" he asks in a decidedly doctoral tone.

"A few years. The first time was in the months following my dad's heart attack."

Without warning, he releases my arm, stands from the bed, and walks to the bathroom sink. He's back an instant later with a washcloth. There are no words exchanged as he settles beside me again and presses the cool, damp cloth to my sensitive skin. Technically, I'm the baby in my family, yet given our unique dynamics, I'm rarely the one being looked after in a physical sense.

"Should I call you Dr. Davenport now?" The tease in my voice is thicker than I intend, and though I want to blame it on the antihistamines floating in my bloodstream, I know not even a medically induced coma could mimic the way I feel every time Micah comes close.

"My brother, Garrett, is actually our resident family doctor," he says, while applying pressure to my arm. "A dermatologist. Any medical tips or tricks I've managed to pick up over the years are from him."

"Are you saying I owe your brother a thank you for his past advice?"

Micah's gaze pierces me. "Depends on which advice, I suppose. If I'd taken his most recent advice, I never would have met you."

I wrinkle my eyebrows. "He didn't support you coming here?"

"He worries I'm becoming too impulsive."

My breathing shallows as I contemplate the possibility of never having met Micah, and there's no doubt in my mind how not-a-fan I am of that equation. "I'm glad you didn't listen to him. You were meant to be here. With us. With me."

The compress stills on my arm, but Micah doesn't meet my gaze this time. And maybe that's the reason I find the courage to say more. "Maybe being impulsive isn't the worst thing a person can be."

He's slow to lift his head, but when he does, his eyes are dialed in on my mouth. "Maybe not."

Every thought in my head evaporates with the exception of one: lean in to this.

And so I do.

And then, after only a second of hesitation, so does he.

Our lips are a fraction of an inch apart when a loud moan erupts from the opposite side of the room, breaking the heated spell between us. I propel myself off the mattress and toward my sister, rushing her to the bathroom in a blurred frenzy.

There is absolutely nothing charming or romantic about the thirty minutes I spend tending to my sister.

After I've helped Hattie back to the sofa and Micah's finished yet another round of cleanup, he settles back on the bed, this time engrossing himself in his mother's journals. Tentatively, I resume my place at the far end of the mattress and pick up the journal nearest me. I sneak a glance at him again, and it's as if those few heartbeats we shared earlier were nothing more than a fleeting, confusing moment of temptation. Perhaps that's all they were for him.

But as I flip the page to start reading, I know they were way more than that for me.

September 13, 1979

Idaho bound!

Dear Chickee,

I can't stop smiling! Ever since Luella surprised me with a plane ticket home to see you, I've been a mixture of every emotion imaginable. She knew how badly I wanted to show you our first album in person—I just can't quite believe she made it happen. She must have saved every tip she made for over six months. I'll be on a plane in three days! I can't wait to hug you and show you and tell you everything. Four years is way too long.

See you soon,

Lynn

February 6, 1980

Nashville

Dear Chickee,

Today started out like every other day. After practice, Luella and I drove Lima Bean to The Lounge on Broadway and were busy bussing tables during the dinner hour when Troy and Dorian and Russell burst through the front doors and started hollering our names and drawing all sorts of attention. At first, Luella grabbed my arm because we both thought something must be terribly wrong, but then they shouted for the barkeep to turn on the radio right then. If they didn't do so much business there, I'm sure Mr. Buchanan would have turned them out on the street as he reminds us often how genteel his establishment is. But about two minutes later, the DJ announced our song on the radio! Luella and I nearly collapsed with joy. We were jumping and crying and laughing and hugging all at the same time. Five years in and over a hundred live performances under our belts and none of them compared to this moment. The best part was they were playing your favorite song: "No Clouds Overhead."

I love you,

Lynn

May 10, 1981

On the road!

Dear Chickee,

It's official! We're on tour! Troy sat us down last Christmas and told us once we had three songs in the top forty in a three-month period, he'd personally rent us a bus and set up a summer tour. Well, we currently have four songs in the top twenty and one that hit number one! Luella and I keep pinching ourselves that this is our lives. We quit The Lounge a few months back to spend more time in the studio, but we're there so often with the guys it kind of feels like we still work there, only now we don't bus our own dishes.

In other news, Troy tried to arrange for Luella to attend a movie premier with a big-time Hollywood actor for some added publicity before our tour, but Russell was strongly opposed. The conversation got so heated between the two men that at one point Dorian had to step in and keep them from coming to blows right there at table eight in The Lounge. Luella and I weren't present when Russell confessed what only I've known since last fall (their courthouse wedding), but the mood around the studio has plummeted from bad to worse.

Russell and Troy haven't spoken to each other in weeks, and there were many times Luella and I wondered if the tour would be canceled over it, but Dorian reassured us that they will work things out eventually and that we should stay focused on what we do best. So that's exactly what we're going to do.

I love you,

Lynn

December 19, 1981

Dear Chickee,

For months we've listened to Troy's lectures about the importance of protecting Luella's public image from the press. There are all sorts of rules we follow to ensure she's perceived as single and desirable even though she's been married to his business partner for over a year. So far, it's been easy to trick the world as people believe whatever story we tell them from the stage about us being two regular chicks who chased a dream all the way from Idaho. But it's when we're all back home that I realize just how different things have become.

Since we'd agreed it would be best for us to continue living as roommates, I didn't expect much to change other than the size of the house we purchased together with the private backyard, patio, and pool. But being single and having a married best friend and being single and having a single best friend are two different things. I try to explain this to Luella on the nights Russell doesn't sneak over and we can actually talk the way we used to, but I don't think she quite understands what I'm saying.

Tonight, when I found the National Enquirer shoved in the kitchen trash featuring an unflattering picture of me next to the stunning Luella with a caption that read: Life in Luella's Shadow, all I wanted was to run to my best friend for comfort. But her husband was over and her door was locked, so instead, I sat on the sofa alone and ate a bowl of pistachio ice cream.

I love you,

Lynn