The Idea of You by Robinne Lee

Author:Robinne Lee
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

malibu

It was not supposed to happen this way. Our dalliance was supposed to be easy and casual and fun. It was not supposed to entail me wringing my hands about how and when exactly to break my daughter’s heart. But that is how I spent most of November. When the group’s first single from the new album was released and it felt as if suddenly they were everywhere. On the radio, on the TV, on a massive billboard on Sunset that made me simultaneously giddy and nauseated every time I drove past. Hayes, six stories high. When Isabelle was listening to “Sorrowed Talk” on repeat and I could not share with her that Hayes had given me six additional tracks from Wise or Naked for fear that she would tell her friends and somehow they might be leaked. Apparently this—leaking an album—was a thing. And I could not share with anyone how somehow their songs had gone from feeling like harmless pop ditties to inspired, earnest compositions. His words, his voice, affecting me in ways I could not have foreseen, profound. None of this was supposed to happen.

They were performing at the American Music Awards. They were scheduled for several days of press leading up to the show, and Hayes arranged to arrive earlier than the rest of the group and rent a house in Malibu for a few days before heading down to the Chateau Marmont to stay with the others.

I’d had every intention of breaking the news to Isabelle before then, but at each turn my attempts were thwarted.

* * *

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you,” I said. We were hiking in Temescal Canyon the Sunday before Hayes’s arrival. She was leading.

“Me, too.” She smiled back at me, eyes alight.

“You wanna go first?”

“I kind of like this guy, but he barely knows I exist.” The words spilled out of her mouth so quickly, it took me a second to register.

And then I panicked. She’d been raving about him since the Sea Change opening. “Who?”

“Avi Goldman. He’s a senior. He’s on the soccer team. He’s like perfect.”

Oh, sweet relief. “That’s great, Izz.”

“It’s not great, Mom. He sees me, but he looks right through me.” She was walking faster now, the narrow path winding. “It’s like I don’t even register.”

“That’s likely in your head, peanut. You can always introduce yourself, say hi.”

“It won’t matter. He only dates cool, pretty, popular girls. And I’m like…” She shook her head, trailing off.

“You’re what?”

“I’m an eighth-grade fencer with braces.”

“Are you trying to tell me that’s not cool?” I smiled up at her.

She stopped walking suddenly, her eyes welling with tears.

“Oh, Izz, I’m sorry … It’s not going to always be this way. I promise you. You will not always feel this way.”

“You can say that, because look at you.”

I hesitated then. I did not want her making comparisons. “What is he, Avi? Seventeen? Eighteen? Boys that age don’t always have the best judgment. They don’t necessarily know what they want or what’s best for them.

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