| CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
| anything for you
ᴏᴀᴋʟᴇʏ ᴄᴀʀʀɪʟʟᴏ
My family looked at me as I walked in the room, trying to suppress the corners of my mouth from turning upwards too much.
"I'm sorry I'm late."
"How was your day?" my mom asked, ignoring my apology completely.
"It was fine," I said. "Good. It was good. We baked cookies. Or well, I guess he did," I said, placing said cookies down on the kitchen counter. "And then we just sat around and talked a lot."
And we kissed, and it was exactly what everyone described it should be. Sparks. And I was still feeling the after-effects. It was like my first concert. Fuck.
"Stop standing there like a crazy person," Trisha said, kicking the empty chair across from her, indicating for me to sit.
"Right," I said. Sitting down.
"You baked?" my dad asked, just having finished chewing his food.
"He baked. Best cookies in the world. Sorry, Dad."
My dad looked at the cookies through the glass, inspecting them.
"They do look prettier than yours," my mom said, tapping him on the shoulder. Trisha nodded in response. My dad didn't react, though. He seemed way too impressed by the absolute beauty of them.
"Wait till you try them," I said.
It wasn't until after dinner that Trisha seemed to suddenly need me for everything.
"Can you drive me to school tomorrow?" she asked first. Surely I said yes, I had to be somewhere in the morning anyway. "Can you also pick me up after?" she then asked, to which I also said yes, since I figured we could grab something to eat afterward. She had a different idea, though. "Can you also drive me to the beach then?"
"The beach?" I asked her, confused as to why.
"Yeah, I was just gonna go to the beach with Molly and Sam."
"Who the fuck is Sam?"
"This girl Molly likes. Last time we went to the beach you didn't ask this many questions."
"Then why are you gonna be there?"
"Because she's nervous. Can you drive me or not?"
"Who else is gonna be there?" I asked her, turning back to my phone to scroll through messages. Mason, amateur radio and podcast hosts that somehow got my number, people I've worked with in the past... it was gonna take a while to spit through all of these.
"No one," Trisha said, but she had a tendency to change her tone when she lied. But to mention she asked me and didn't immediately run to Mom or Dad once she got her first no.
"I'm not driving you unless you tell me."
"No one," she said, though she clearly held back the rest of her sentence.
"Okay then," I said with a shrug.
"'Okay' as in you'll drive me?"
"No. As in you don't need a ride apparently."
"Just Sam's brother," she then said.
"Oh, you know I'm gonna need more than just 'Sam's brother'."
"But—" She looked at me, wanting to protest, but she changed her mind. "Fine," she said. When I looked up from my phone, she was standing in my doorway with her arms crossed, shaking her head in annoyance. "His name is Travis Evans, he's sixteen, lives near the beach, about my height, he's blind in one eye because of some skateboarding accident... is that enough?"
"The same Travis from—"
"We made up," she interrupted me. "Everything is cool."
"And you want me to drive you there for some double date or whatever?"
She nodded.
"Fine," I said. "But I'm picking you up before sundown."
"Yes, thank you Oakley!" she said, running towards me and hugging me like a little kid. "Oh, by the way, how was your date today?" she asked, not yet having let go of me.
"I didn't have a..."
"You came home all smiley with freshly baked cookies."
"I didn't have a date," mumbled, doing anything in my power to stop myself from smiling as that would give me away. I looked down at my phone, pretending to be busy reading important messages. Instead, I was just staring at them, not even trying to read them, as I scrolled through.
Thinking about it, it was kind of a thing we did have to do now. Go on a date. I should ask him out.
"Sure," Trisha said, her eyes boring holes in my skull. "Good night, in case you're gonna hide yourself up here all evening."
"Fine, good night," I said, looking up at her, a small smile still somehow managing to force itself onto my lips. Her expression mimicked mine, but I could tell she saw right through me.
"Dumbass," she said, shutting the door loudly.
I immediately looked back at my phone, looking for Nolan's contact, and then I texted him.
You:
I had fun today
•••
The next morning, everything felt like a dream. The only reassurance I had that it wasn't, was our text exchanges.
Nolan:
You asked me out, remember? You decide
You:
But I've never done this before. Please?
I waited patiently for a reply, and after three minutes of waiting, I was almost afraid he had already gotten up to fulfill his duties of the day. He didn't though. It took him a total of six minutes to reply.
Nolan:
Fine, I'll do it.
I grinned at the blue light emitting from my phone. He was going to plan our date.
Nolan:
But you owe me. I'm not only expecting a date once you come back. I'm also expecting some of that godly European chocolate. I don't care how you get it.
You:
Deal, anything for you
Nolan:
And I'm expecting you to stop being so cheesy
You:
Anything for you
Nolan:
I have to get back to work, I'll call you around lunch?
You:
Please do.
You:
Bye
Nolan:
Bye
It was still early, only a little over nine, and I had to get up for a radio interview. I'd been lying in bed texting with Nolan since the moment I got up, and even now, half an hour later, I hadn't found the energy to open my curtains yet.
Everything that happened since Nolan and I kissed the other day went by in a blur. It was like nothing lived up to it, and I couldn't wait for the date for much longer. Luckily for me, it was Saturday already, which meant I had a lot to do, but it would do me right.
When the interviewer asked me questions about my new music, I forgot what I'd practiced to the point where I was stumbling over my words.
"And now enough about Europe. That's in the past, now it's finally time to look at the present. Your new EP, A Collection of Anti-Love Songs, what inspired you to write such a heartbreaking album?" The interviewer asked. He was a man in his mid-fifties, already halfway gray and bald, leaving only a quarter of his head still a reddish brown. "Who broke your heart?"
I let out a laugh. "Yeah, myself, I guess. The songs... I write mainly from experience. Sometimes I write from experiences from others."
"So is this your experience or someone else's?"
"This one's fully mine. I didn't understand love. Or dating. I guess I'm either a late bloomer or something is wrong with me," I said, everyone in the room chuckling at my remark. I forced a smile on my face. If I learned anything from media training, it was that the public could pick up on any fluctuations in tone. People were insane.
"...but I'm fine with it. I don't think finding love should be the main focal point in your life. I think that if you center your life around finding your better half, you could end up in really bad situations, either with someone else or with yourself."
"So you're saying people should stop looking for love and live like every day is their last in that regard?"
"I guess so."
"Yet in your last song, One Year From Now, you write about this... when I listened to it the other day, I called it an 'itch' for finding the one. Does that mean you still haven't given up?"
This was where I couldn't fully keep my composure anymore. I smiled, and Higgins picked up on it quickly.
"What— why are you smiling, did anything change?"
"I think my perception just changed during writing." I didn't have to tell them about essentially being forced to write a song like that. Ultimately I didn't care though, because after last week, the song had started sounding a lot less like a lie. "But I'm not saying I'll undoubtedly fall in love anytime soon."
"You're not?"
"No. The thing is, I used to think people fooled themselves and were just looking for some myth. But now, I do think... romantic love exists, for some it's just harder to feel than for others. For me, I don't think it's impossible."
"Alright. You heard it here first, ladies. All hope is not lost yet. Thank you so much for being here, Oakley. And now, to end our lovely chat, Loveless, by Oakley Carrillo, now at..."
The radio station's jingle started playing, right before my new song did, and the mics cut out.
•••