Right Back to You

10. Difficult Life

"You!"

Yes, him. He should've kept her mouth shut. But he couldn't. "What happened? Did anyone else touch your instruments?"

"Why are you out here?"

"I'm the tech guy. I finished doing my tech stuff and I was resting."

Even if she looked ready to smite him with heavenly fire, she took a few steps towards him, away from the path between the trailers. She looked really pretty in the dim light.

"Huh." It appeared like she had nothing else to say.

"You can come closer if you want. I don't bite."

She glared at him, but did step closer. Even so, she kept silent, watching, judging. He tilted his head, wondering just what the hell was going on inside her head right then. Why she'd screamed into the night. He raised his eyebrows, inviting her to speak.

Jessie glanced over her shoulder as if expecting someone to come and save her, but sill walked over. He pulled back to make room for her and she sat next to him, her fists still clenched. She said nothing, merely taking in deep breaths.

"Do you want to talk or should I go inside and let you be?" he asked after a few minutes of loaded silence.

"I'm just so sick of this," she whispered. "So fed up."

"With what? Making music and being adored?"

Her heated gaze shot to him. "You have no idea how lucky you are."

He pulled back a little and raised his eyebrows again. "Excuse me?"

"To be out here. Free. Able to make any decision you want. No pressure, no pretense."

"You think I'm free?"

She frowned at this, as if his words made no sense. "Of course."

Poor little rich girl. Yelling at people, bossing them around, making tons of money and then complaining that she can't have everything.

"No pressure," he mumbled. "Do you think I want to work for you?"

"You get paid very well."

"And that should make me happy, shouldn't it?" He wasn't sure if it was his frustration with the whole matter, their earlier argument or her pretentiousness that riled him up, but he really didn't want to give her this. "I mean the real issues such as freedom and honesty are only for the rich, right?"

"Please," she spat out. "You could get out of here and do whatever you wanted with no real consequences."

"Real? What makes them real? The fact that people would bitch in the press because you quit, or someone not affording to walk away from something because they'd starve? Where's the freedom in that? And more often than not, we have to pretend to like the assholes we work for, so there's the pretense."

"What the hell is wrong with you? You have no idea what my life is like!"

"True. But for you to call me lucky when you have no idea what my life is like is just stupid."

"Oh, yeah?" She put her hands on her hips, angling her body towards him. "Have you been forced to make a show out of your life? Never surrounded by real people you can actually make friends with? Being forced to--" Her voice hitched. "Not being able to draw enough emotion out of your soul and put it down in words."

"I'm a high school dropout orphan working three jobs in hopes of putting my brother through college. I'm not sure I even have a soul anymore."

His words silenced her and she turned to him with wide eyes. There was definitely shock there, maybe a bit of embarrassment, but no pity. He liked that for some reason.