The Mixtape by Brittainy C. Cherry

35

OLIVER

“Slow down, Em. What are you talking about?” I asked. She wasn’t making any sense as she stood in front of me. She’d shown up to my house with puffy eyes and a shaky voice.

“I can’t work for you anymore.” Her eyes were swollen, and I couldn’t imagine the amount of crying she’d done the previous night. I didn’t know what had brought her to spend the evening crying, but I hated that I hadn’t been there to comfort her.

“What happened?” I asked, concern overtaking me as I stepped in her direction.

Her shoulders dropped and rounded forward. “It’s a long story.”

“I have time.”

“I don’t. I’m sorry. I just wanted to tell you face to face instead of over the phone. I figured you deserved that much.”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Her lips parted, and her body began to shake. She was trying her hardest to keep herself together, but she was failing every single second that passed by. “It doesn’t matter, Oliver. I’m handling it. Which means I can’t work for you.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“It does. I know it’s probably a lot to hear, but I have to do what’s best for my daughter. I have to put her first.”

“Is it about your parents?”

She nodded.

“What does that have to do with me and this job, though? I mean, hell, if you want to quit, that’s fine, Em. But what I really want to know is how I can help you. I need to know what I can do for you.”

“Nothing. You can’t do anything for me.” She glanced down at the tiled floor in the foyer as tears rolled down her face. “Oliver, I can’t be with you anymore. After this, we can’t see each other again.”

That sent a shock of panic through me. “What the hell are you talking about? What does that mean?”

“It means exactly that. I don’t have time for a relationship right now, not with everything going on with my family and Reese. My main focus has to be on her and keeping her safe.”

“Of course that makes sense. But I don’t see why you won’t let me help you. I can do whatever it takes to make sure Reese stays in your custody. I can get you the best lawyers. I can—”

“Oliver, stop. Please. You’re making this harder than it has to be.”

“You’re breaking my fucking heart, so please excuse me if I am making this hard,” I snapped, and I instantly felt like an asshole for doing such a thing, but dammit. My heart felt as if it was going through a fucking paper shredder. I couldn’t think straight.

She wiped away the tears that kept streaming down her cheeks and locked her brown eyes with mine. She didn’t say anything, though; she just stared my way, and with that simple stare, I felt her worry, I saw her fears. I couldn’t help but step toward her and wrap her into my embrace. “Em, come on. It’s me. You don’t have to do this alone.”

“I do,” she disagreed, shaking her head. “I do. You don’t understand, Oliver. My father is a powerful force in our small town, and he has connections with people in the law system, and he will use this against me. He will use you against me.”

“How?”

She sniffled and tilted her head up toward me. “They sent me all these articles from Cam about you. They said it shows proof that you being with me is an unhealthy environment for Reese. What’s worse is there’s no interviews or anything from you to counter the assumptions. So it makes you look guilty.”

Son of a bitch.

How could someone shoot so low to hurt another person?

Did they really think they were doing what was right?

Did they think this was the best way to go about everything? By ripping a child away from the one parent she’d known her whole life?

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to comfort her over this issue, because I knew how Cam’s comments appeared. She’d painted me as a sick devil.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered, not knowing what else to say, because shit. I was so fucking sorry. And sad. And hurt.

She pulled me in closer and laid her lips against mine, kissing me hard. Her kisses didn’t taste like new beginnings anymore. Her lips tasted like goodbyes, and that broke my fucking heart.

“Please,” I muttered against her mouth, not even knowing what I was begging her for. Because I knew it was too much to ask her to stay. I knew it was too much to beg her to give us a chance. I would never want to be a roadblock in Reese’s life. I would never want to be a cause of Emery losing her daughter.

But damn it, it hurt.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her lips still grazing mine. I didn’t want her to pull away. I didn’t want her to walk away from me, because I needed her more than I’d realized. I loved her. I loved her so much, and the thought of losing her was killing me second by second. And that was exactly what was happening. I was losing the woman who’d saved me.

“This is just a bad track,” I said, my hands against her lower back, holding her to me as I shook my head. I rested my forehead against hers and closed my eyes. “This is just a bad song on our mixtape, Em. This isn’t the end of us. Okay? This isn’t the end, and I will wait as long as it takes for everything to work out for us. I’m not giving up on this, I’m not giving up on us,” I told her.

She gave me one last goodbye kiss as she slowly removed my touch from her. With one big step backward, she let me go.

“I’m so sorry, Oliver,” she repeated, turning to walk away. “I love you,” she whispered, walking out of the front door quickly, almost as if she had to run away; otherwise she might’ve thought about staying.

She didn’t even hear me tell her that I loved her too.

The next several days all felt like night. Even though I wanted to turn to my familiar demons, I didn’t do it. I wanted to drown in the whiskey and wake up with vodka in my hands. I wanted to shut off my brain and forget how I’d lost the two girls who meant the world to me.

But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t spiral, because that would prove that Emery’s parents were right about me. That would prove that I wasn’t good enough for the two girls I loved.

I missed Emery. Every second, every minute, and every hour of every day, I missed her. I turned to the only thing that kept me sane in the darkness: I turned to my music.

I wrote nonstop, almost in a manic state. The words poured out of me until my studio floor was littered with paper. Then I wrote some more.

When my mind felt emptied, I called Tyler over to come listen to a few of the tracks I’d created that week. I wasn’t even sure if they were any good, but I wanted him to hear them, because it felt like the first time in ages I’d been able to truly tap deeply into my emotions. I was learning to use my pain to create beauty.

I didn’t only write about Emery and Reese. I wrote about my brother. I wrote about the pain and sorrow that flooded through me. I wrote about hurts and happiness. I worked through every single emotion that hit me because I was no longer pushing everything down within me. I felt it all and didn’t criticize myself for the need to feel. When anger built up in my system, I wrote it down. When love was heavily in my heart, I created from that place of being.

I created a mixtape and set it in front of my friend to hear.

Tyler’s jaw sat on the floor after I played the tracks for him. He raced his hand over his head. “Holy shit,” he muttered. “You did all of this over the past two weeks?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Holy shit,” he repeated, running his hand over his mouth. “Oliver, this is the best music you’ve ever created. It’s raw and real, and holy shit,” he huffed, shaking his head in disbelief as he pushed the palms of his hands against his eyes.

“Don’t tell me you’re crying,” I joked.

“Fuck off, will you? There’s nothing wrong about a grown man expressing his emotions.”

“So, that means you like it?” I asked.

“That means I think you’ve created your comeback album.”

“I don’t really care if the world hates it,” I started to argue, but he cut me off.

“Nobody’s thinking about the world right now, Oliver. I’m talking about your world. This is the comeback album for you and your soul.” He clapped his hands together. “So what about Emery? Did you figure out how you’re getting her back?”

I grimaced, because I wished it was that easy. I wished I could just play her a few songs, and everything would fall back into place. But I knew better than to give myself that false hope. Emery had too much to lose in order to keep me. I wouldn’t get in her way.

“I can’t have her back, Tyler. She can’t be in my life.”

“Wrong.” He clasped his hands behind his head and gave me a smirk as if he knew something that I didn’t. “I saw you with her, Oliver. I saw how she was with you. It’s not that she made you better . . . you made her better too. You’re stronger when you both are together. So, now’s not the time to respect her wishes, because these aren’t her true wishes. Now’s the time to fight for her. To fight for each other. We only get this one shot at life. Please don’t stop fighting for Emery’s love.”

“What do I do?”

“Don’t play dumb, Oliver. I think you already know, and you’re just too much of a little bitch to do it. So go ahead. Just do what you think needs to be done.”

I hated him, because he was right. I knew what I had to do, but I also knew I would be crossing some lines.

But for Emery and Reese?

I’d cross every border, if it meant I could keep them in my life.

“Thanks, Tyler.”

“Yup. Always here,” he said, repeating the words my parents often said to me. “Alex would love this, you know,” he said, waving toward the soundboard at the tracks I’d played for him. “This is what he wanted from you all along. To go back to the basics. Now, figure out a way to let those two girls hear this too. Don’t let your music die in the studio.”

After speaking to Tyler, I knew I had to do something for Emery, even from a distance. So I went to the last person I wanted to see in order to try to protect Emery from losing Reese.

“I’m surprised you called,” Cam stated as we sat down at a table outside a restaurant. I wanted to meet in private, but of course, Cam wanted to go somewhere public. Probably for the opportunity of the paparazzi to get their photographs of us together. “Now, what do you want, Oliver?”

“We need to talk.”

“Oh, now you want to talk? You sure didn’t when you broke up with me for your bullshit reasons.”

“They weren’t bullshit, Cam. We both knew that we weren’t compatible.”

“Yeah, but I was sticking it out because I saw the opportunities that could’ve come from being with you. You could’ve really helped my career.”

“Don’t you see why that’s a shitty reason to stay in a relationship?”

She rolled her eyes. “What exactly do you want, Oliver? If you’re here to just waste my time, congratulations. I’m already bored.”

I clasped my hands together and placed them on the table. “I need you to tell the truth to the news outlets about our relationship. I need you to tell them that I wasn’t the monster you made me out to be.”

She huffed. “Yeah fucking right. You think I’m an idiot? That would make me look insane in the public eye.”

“Don’t you care about how you made me look?”

She laughed. No shit, she actually laughed. I couldn’t for the life of me believe that I’d been so low in my past that I’d settled for someone as cruel as her.

“I couldn’t care less about how it makes you look. Haven’t you seen? Ever since those interviews, my career has taken off. I’ve had the number one single for the past three weeks. Not to mention, I’ve been on almost every magazine cover.”

“You’ve also ruined my life.”

She smirked and shrugged. “That’s show business, baby. We’re in the entertainment industry, Oliver. This is what we do. We tell the world a story. The story I’m telling is that I’m the country sweetheart, and you’re the dark, damaged musician who lost his way.”

“You don’t feel remorse for doing that to me?”

“Not a lick. The truth is, the only reason I stuck around with you was because of the payoff I was supposed to get. The fame and celebrity-couple status.”

And there it was.

Cam’s true colors.

“What you’ve done is affecting other people’s lives, though, Cam. In a very serious way. I don’t care about me anymore. You’re hurting people that I love.”

“Like who? It’s not like you have anyone in your life that actually cares for you, except for your pathetic parents. Is it Tyler? Kelly? Whose life?”

“It’s not them.”

She cocked an eyebrow. “Then who?” Her lips pursed together as she released a low whistle. “Don’t tell me it’s that chef?”

“It doesn’t matter who it is.”

“But it does,” she disagreed. “Oh my God, of course it’s her. Were you fucking her when we were together?”

“No. The only one who was ever unfaithful in our relationship was you.”

She snickered. “Can you blame me? Why would anyone want to love someone as damaged as you?”

I didn’t have anything else to say to her. Honestly, I’d heard everything that I needed to hear. She wasn’t going to go back on what she’d said to the press; therefore I had no reason to stay around Cam for a second longer. Her and her toxic ways weren’t a lifestyle I lived in anymore. I’d worked too hard on my healing to crumble at her feet.