“Then what happened?”

He thought about it. I thought about how my face probably looked like a battlefield. Sofia gathered my hair into a ponytail and then released it again.

Finally, he said, “We weren’t friends, I guess. It was just love.

Infatuation. So we didn’t really do things together unless it was a date night. We needed an excuse. And after a while, we just didn’t bother making excuses anymore. We had other friends.

We didn’t really grow apart. We just weren’t ever together. It was a failure of friendship.”

I thought about me and Cole. Were we friends? Or was it just infatuation?

I felt Sofia lay her head on my back and then sigh. She must’ve looked sad, because her father looked sad, too. He said, “Only marry your best friend, Sofia. That’s my dad advice.”

I said, “I thought you were supposed to chase her dates away with a shotgun. I thought that was dad advice.”

“Maybe your dad,” Paolo said. “He shoots lots of things, joy included.”

Both he and I laughed, sharp and surprised and guilty. I sat up, shoving Sofia off, and rearranged so that my shoulder was against hers. I held out a hand for a root beer. For the first time in a week, I didn’t feel awful. I might be okay. I might survive this.

I thought about returning Virtual Cole tonight. The options of putting it in Cole’s hand myself or leaving it on his car.

Then I thought of a third idea.

I pulled out Virtual Cole and then my phone. I checked to make sure I had Baby’s phone number programmed in to it.

“I have to make a call. Do you mind?” I gestured to Virtual Cole. “This is actually Baby’s phone. I’m going to return it tonight.”

As I stood, Sofia started to pat my shoulder before realizing that I wouldn’t tolerate it now that I wasn’t crying. She tapped the neck of her root beer against mine instead. We were learning each other.

As I dialed Baby, I wondered if I was really doing this.

This was life. This is what it looked like. This was happening.

Chapter Fifty-Three

· cole ·

The last track took forever, and I was sure it was making pretty shitty television. I’d saved it for last because it was the most difficult — I wasn’t good at slow stuff that was supposed to be pretty. It was easy to hide a lack of songwriting with some thrashing drums or a flailing tempo. People would forgive all kinds of deficiencies as long as they could dance to it.

But “Lovers (Killers)” wasn’t a dance tune. It was going to be the outro, the last one on the album, the last sound in the listener’s ear. I couldn’t cheat.

We were seven hours into the recording process. I thought both Leyla and Jeremy wanted to kill me, but were too evolved to say it out loud. I was making Leyla record her drum part for the ninth — tenth? maybe tenth — time. I sat in the big recording room on the vinyl couch, the room headphones on my head, listening to Leyla playing her kit in the isolation booth. Jeremy looked asleep or at peace on the opposite end of the couch.

On the other side of the soulless studio, T and Joan looked as if they were hoping for sleep, too. This hadn’t been the most riveting episode so far. I kept waiting for Baby to spring something on me, but it seemed like she, too, was tired of playing the game.

Leyla picked her way through the track again. Unlike the rest of us, she improved as the hours stretched, like she unwound into a different version of herself. If she was this much better after ten times, I probably ought to make her do it three or four more times and see what happened. It was a little bit of a shame that it had taken six weeks to learn how to work with her, and now it was about to be over.

Over.

A lot of my brain was on the Mustang parked outside.

Before I’d come over here, I had packed everything I’d brought from Minnesota back into my backpack, and put it in the tiny backseat. Tonight I was staying at Jeremy’s, and in the morning I was doing some wrap-up stuff with Baby and a couple of interviews with some magazines. And then — I didn’t even know.

I didn’t want to go back to Minnesota. But I couldn’t stay here. I saw her everywhere, in everything. Maybe one day I could come back, but not now, not like this. I couldn’t spend every day looking at L.A. but not feeling it inside me.

I dropped my head into my hands, listening. There was no reason to have Leyla redo her drums. She was fine. It was my vocal track that needed work. I sounded like I’d been anesthetized.

Standing, I made a chopping motion across my neck to the sound engineer in the mixing room. I had tried and failed to remember his name, and now, at this late point in the game, it seemed pointless to try again. “She’s fine. It’s good. I need to get back in there, though.”

Everyone in the room heaved a collected sigh, except for Jeremy. He just said, “Eventually, it’ll have to be over, Cole.”

“It’s over when I say it’s over.” I headed into the tiny, glasswalled isolation booth.

In the booth, I slid the headphones on again, and as the engineer adjusted the levels and got ready to record another vocal track, I tried to think of how I’d improve on my previous attempt. Maybe I should just add another layer of harmonies this time around.

Or maybe I should stop sounding like I was heartbroken.

I fidgeted. I was well aware that the cameras could see me through the walls of the booth. It was a goldfish bowl.

“Okay,” the engineer said. “You’re good. Go for it.”

I heard the now endlessly familiar synthesizer loop that began “Lovers (Killers)” and then Leyla’s tapped-in drum, and then Jeremy’s tripping, gentle bass line. My voice sang in my ears, a Cole who was weary and heartbroken and homesick for a home he hadn’t left yet but was about to. I kept waiting for a place that begged for me to put down another layer, but nothing stood out.

I closed my eyes and just listened to my sung miserable confession.

I didn’t want to go.

Because of the headphones, I felt more than heard the door open. A rush of cooler air entered the booth.

I opened my eyes.

Isabel stood in the door, cool and elegant as a handgun.

Behind her, through the glass, I saw the cameras pointed at us, and Baby standing in the double doors that had been opened to the night. In the parking lot beyond, several hundred people were gathered, craning their necks to see inside.