Sunkissed by Kasie West (popular e readers .txt) 📕

“I told you I could sing. That’s not what I’m worried about.”

“Oh, right.” He looked up as if replaying our conversation in his head. “Stage fright. We need to work on that.”

My legs were jittery and I realized that even though the singing felt better than I expected, I was still beyond nervous about this. “Can we go through it again?”

“Of course. As many times as you want.”

“It feels…I don’t know, fast?”

He hummed. “Yeah, I can see that. We don’t have a band to fill it out. You want to try it slower?”

“It would feel less punk rock,” I said.

“I’m okay with that. Are you?”

“This is your thing.”

“This is our thing now, Avery. We’ll make song decisions together.” He held his fist out.

“Are you asking for a fist bump?” I said with a laugh.

He bumped his fist against my hand that rested on my leg. “Was that so hard?” His smile made me happy inside.

He pulled on a piece of string hanging off the bottom of my flannel shirt, but it was attached and stayed very much in place.

“You know what else we need to work on?” he asked.

“My wardrobe?”

“No…Well, I mean, obviously we’re not wearing camp clothes to the audition.”

“You’re right. Just let me go to the section in my suitcase I packed knowing I’d need something other than camp clothes.”

“Huh. Maybe Maricela will have something you can borrow.”

I wondered if Brooks knew about Kai and Maricela. Kai was his best friend; he’d probably told him. “I’ll ask her. So if it’s not my wardrobe, what else do we need to work on?”

“Figuring out how you’re going to disappear all day for the audition.”

The blood seemed to drain from my face. I hadn’t even thought about what the audition would entail. “All day?”

“Roseville is about an hour away, and no matter when we audition, we have to stay until the end for results.”

“That really is all day.”

“Can you make it work?” he asked.

I wasn’t sure I could. “I’ll figure something out.”

The lobby of the spa smelled like chlorine and incense. The large windows behind the front desk framed the lake. I imagined that same view was visible from the massage room and the pedicure room and the mud-bath room. Well, maybe not the mud-bath room. That probably had no windows.

I stared at the prices in the leather folder the lady at the counter had handed me. They were way beyond my price range; even a simple forty-five minute massage was something I couldn’t afford to gift my parents. And that definitely wouldn’t fill up their entire day. I’d have to think of another way to keep them busy on the Saturday I auditioned.

“Thank you,” I said, handing the folder back to the woman.

“You don’t want to book anything?”

“No, I’m okay.” As I left, a group of older women walked in wearing swimsuits and talking about cold therapy.

I exited through the glass doors and down a wide set of wooden steps and back along the dusty path around the lake. I tried to think of other activities the camp offered. Maybe it was time to enlist the help of my sister. It was possible I’d need her to cover for me. But when I went back to the cabin, all I found was her phone on the nightstand. That worried me. She rarely left her phone. Was she bored without her documentary project? It really was time for me to tell her what I was doing. To suck it up and let her record me.

“Everyone stand perfectly still!”

When I finally found Lauren, she was on a paddle board, twenty feet from the shore with two other girls around her age. My sister was in the middle and trying to slowly stand along with the other girls. Two boards floated beside the one they now occupied, abandoned.

Lauren let out a squeal and they all fell in the water. She came up sputtering and laughing. “We are going to get this!” she said, climbing back up. “Again!”

“Huh,” I said. She didn’t need her phone or this project. If I believed in signs now, maybe I could believe the festival had always been meant for me. Maybe it was the thing that was helping me wake up, find myself, find my passion. I sure felt more alive lately. I smiled and walked away.

“I brought Oreos tonight to celebrate finishing the lyrics yesterday,” I said, walking into the back room of the theater and sitting on the side of the couch that I had been sitting on all week. I now considered it my side of the couch.

“Nice,” Brooks said. He was studying his messy guitar tab paper. He strummed a progression of chords. “Does that sound better?” He played a different one. “Or that?”

“I liked the second.”

He looked over at me and his eyes that were normally light and playful were dark and intense.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, my smile immediately disappearing. I set the cookies on the ground next to the couch and moved to the middle cushion.

“Nothing.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Nothing new, I should say. I checked in with my dad’s caretaker today and he has a fever. It doesn’t sound bad, but for him, any sickness has a way of turning into some sort of secondary infection. I’m sure he’ll be fine, but it’s just one of those things that reminds me that my life is bigger than me, you know?”

“Yeah…Well, honestly, I don’t know. I’ve never had anything close to that in my life, but I can imagine.” I reached out and patted his arm, not sure what else to do. His guitar was a barrier between us. “Does he get sick a lot?”

“He doesn’t, but when he does, it makes everything harder.” He paused as if debating whether to share something with me or not. “I’m trying to