Fly With Me | ✓

26

"I'll get over it, but you know Stevie's going to kill you when she finds out you filled half a notebook in a month and not told her the contents of it, right?"

Maverick moved his hand so Everleigh could see the London sticker he'd placed across the front cover. Where his old notebook had been leather, bound by a string holding everything inside, this one was more hardcovered plastic with rubber bands acting as ties. He'd likely bought it at the pound store one of the days he'd had Everleigh's car. She'd place a hard bet that he had his boarding passes tucked inside. "I'm hoping the contents convince her that I shouldn't be killed."

"A whole album of Paper Planes?"

"Is that your song of choice from Revive?"

"If it's not yours, you're nuts."

"Must be nuts." Maverick pushed his glasses up his nose with a single finger.

Everleigh waved her hand like she was attempting to get the first violins in an orchestra to crescendo. "And...?"

"I like Back to Life, but I haven't seen many people say that. They're with you on Paper Planes."

Everleigh felt something heat up her chest. "How does that make you feel?"

Maverick shrugged. "I'm glad they found something they enjoyed. It's not up to me to dictate which songs people like and dislike."

"I don't dislike Back to Life," Everleigh said.

Quite the opposite. It had one of his best melodies. Some of his best lyrics. It wasn't a single, though. They hardly played it on the radio. Everleigh had to memorize the lyrics by listening to it from her phone in her cupholder acting as a speaker.

(Spent so long in the ups and downs / every smile I gave met, shut up! and frowns / Saw the message, missed your call and / didn't think you'd be on the line bawling / Come as fast as I can, fly me away, Peter Pan / Knocked on every fuckin' hotel door / 'Til you opened up, a sight for sore / eyes; rest your head on me, I'm your man / Lost in thoughts like the boys / Shot out like cannons, ships destroyed / Darling, darling, take a breath / My night is yours, to have and hold / You've got me, I'm sold / promise you're not out of my depth.) (How could Everleigh not have fallen in love?)

"It's fine if you do," Maverick said. "I wasn't trying to imply anything about you specifically. Just fans in general. Sometimes they like the more experimental ones, sometimes they don't. That's okay."

Everleigh didn't like not having a way to make him feel better. Song writing wasn't like nursing. There wasn't a prescription. No answer that was right every time. Art was hard. One had to keep recreating themselves to stay relevant and sometimes even that wasn't enough. Everleigh wouldn't have known how to feel if she'd put her heart into something about her own life and people simply decided they didn't like it. Who were they to dictate whether poetry about oneself was good or not? What defined good or bad when it was entirely too subjective to start with?

"Every radio DJ I've heard has liked the entire EP," Everleigh tried. Lamely. "For what that's worth."

"I'm not upset," Maverick said. "You asked what my favourite song was from the EP."

"I just..." Everleigh frowned. "I want you to know it's good."

Maverick smiled.

"What?"

"You..." Maverick chuckled. Pretended his hand wasn't offscreen scribbling something in his notebook. A lazy gaze tossed to the side as he filled another page.