RATHER BE
A Songbird Novel
Melissa Pearl
© Copyright 2017 Melissa Pearl
http://www.melissapearlauthor.com
*****
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, businesses, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, actual events or locales is purely coincidental.
*****
Cover art (copyright) by Mae I Design. All rights reserved.
http://www.maeidesign.com/
*****
License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy.
Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Blurb & Dedication
Soundtrack
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Other Books by Melissa Pearl
About Melissa Pearl
Connect with Melissa Pearl
RATHER BE
Love can last a lifetime…
Best buds in high school, Charlotte (Charlie) Watson and Nixon Holloway were inseparable…until the summer after graduation, when things in their relationship shifted and it all fell apart.
Four years later, their paths cross at a snowbound New York airport, and it doesn’t take long for them to realize that time and distance has done nothing to extinguish the flame between them. But life has moved on. Nixon has a girlfriend, and Charlie must face up to the lasting consequences of what she let happen that dreadful summer.
In a secret attempt to make amends, Charlie suggests a spontaneous road trip from New York to LA. As usual, Nixon can’t resist her persuasive charm, so they hit the road together. But as the duo make their way across the country, they are both forced to face some honest truths about themselves, their present lives, and all of the unfulfilled dreams they’ve let slip by.
Each of them can see the course their lives are taking…but is there someplace else they’d rather be? And will they have the courage to fight for the person they would rather be with?
For Against the Current
I can’t even explain what it is about this band, but I can listen to them constantly and not get sick of them. They are just my style and I’ve used a bunch of their songs in this book as a way to say ‘Thanks for being awesome!’
#musicmakeseverythingbetter
TWO FREE NOVELLAS!
Sign up for Melissa Pearl’s mailing list, and you’ll receive these two free novellas. You’ll see these characters featured in Rather Be. If you’d like to know their stories, then you can download the books for free by clicking on this link…
YES, PLEASE! I’D LIKE THESE FREE BOOKS!
Note
In previous Songbird Novels, I have placed the playlist here, but one reader suggested that the list can give too much away. So, if you don’t want to see the song list before reading the book, you can skip straight to Chapter One from here. If you’d like to see the Rather Be song list, keep reading…
RATHER BE SOUNDTRACK
(Please note: The songs listed below are not always the original versions, but the ones I chose to listen to while constructing this book. The songs are listed in the order they appear.)
DON’T WORRY BE HAPPY
Performed by Bobby McFerrin
HAVE FUN GO MAD
Performed by Blair
THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO
Performed by Busted
IN TOO DEEP
Performed by Sum 41
BREAK ME DOWN
Performed by Tenth Avenue North
RAISE YOUR GLASS
Performed by P!nk
DREAMING ALONE
Performed by Against The Current
SHE MOVES IN HER OWN WAY
Performed by The Kooks
WHY DON’T YOU LOVE ME
Performed by Hot Chelle Rae & Demi Lovato
CLOSER
Performed by The Chainsmokers & Halsey
LONG WAY HOME
Performed by 5 Seconds of Summer
THIS TOWN
Performed by Niall Horan
WE ARE YOUNG
Performed by Glee Cast
GOOD TIME
Performed by Owl City & Carly Rae Jepsen
JUST A DREAM
Performed by Jason Chen & Joseph Vincent
LIVE LIFE LOUD
Performed by Hawk Nelson
ANOTHER YOU (ANOTHER WAY)
Performed by Against the Current
EVERYTHING I DIDN’T SAY
Performed by 5 Seconds of Summer
WE BELONG
Performed by Sheppard
LET ME DOWN EASY
Performed by Sheppard
EMPTY
Performed by The Click Five
11 BLOCKS
Performed by Wrabel
GRAVITY
Performed by Against the Current
CARRY ON
Performed by Fun
CUPS
Performed by The Barden Bellas
NEVER SURRENDER
Performed by Skillet
COMEBACK KID
Performed by Against the Current
CRASHED THE WEDDING
Performed by Busted
SAY YOU WON’T LET GO
Performed by James Arthur
HAPPY TOGETHER
Performed by Simple Plan
LEAVING ON A JET PLANE
Performed by Me First and the Gimme Gimmes
RATHER BE
Performed by Clean Bandit & Jess Glynne
AFTERNOON DELIGHT
Performed by Glee Cast
CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF YOU BABY
Performed by Smash Mouth
To enhance your reading experience, you can listen along to the playlist for RATHER BE on Spotify.
Chapter One
Nixon
Snow.
Who knew it’d disrupt my life so badly.
I was an LA boy, used to blue skies and sunshine.
But there I was in JFK Airport, New York, hampered by piles of snow.
Did I seriously want to live there?
That was the big question, the one that brought bile surging up my throat whenever I thought about it. Mom said it was just nerves, and she was right. She told me I’d never been great with change.
“When you were a boy, we had to give you warnings about everything. You were so nervous and jumpy. You always felt safest when you knew the plan.” She laughed whenever she said those things to me, like the memories were sweet treasures to hold on to. Then her eyes would mist over and I knew she was thinking about my older sister, Reagan. She’d been nothing like timid little me. Impulsive was more her style—impulsive, bullheaded and insane.
I tried to shrug off the morose thoughts and focus on problem-solving my way back home, but the idea of how Reagan would handle the situation niggled at the back of my mind. She wouldn’t have been irritated by the snow. Hell, she would have seen it as a challenge. Something else to conquer. Knowing her, she would have dragged our butts back to the city to live it up for the night—party until the flights resumed again. Or worse yet, she would have chatted up some random strangers and found us a ride home—one vehicle after another.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I pinched the bridge of my nose and played a round of dodge ’em with my brain.
My sister had only been sixteen when she died. I’d been thirteen at the time and it shattered me. It shattered everyone.
It was like the lights in our house went off all of a sudden, and no one knew how to switch them back on.
Mom spent the next year wavering between numb sadness, angry outbursts, and tearful despair. I didn’t know how to handle it, so when she cried, I’d give her a hug. She’d hold me tight and whisper, “What would I do without you?”
Dad had never been good with tears, which made him quiet and grumpy. Since he couldn’t control Mom’s fluctuating emotions, he set out to control every other aspect of his life. He was desperate to fix things, to return some sense of normalcy to our home.
But how did we make things normal again when the loudest, most vibrant member of the family had been ripped out of our lives without warning?
When I wasn’t trying to comfort Mom, I shut out the world, withdrawing from everyone at school so I didn’t have to talk about my sister and her tragic end.
Thinking about her hurt. We hadn’t been best buds or anything, but I still missed her. She was sunshine and laughter…just like another girl I knew.
The one who saved me.
My eyes shot open and I shook my head.
Don’t frickin’ go there, man.
The pain of losing her was worse than mourning Reagan.
I needed to get the hell home and back to the safety of my stable, uncomplicated life. The one where I knew what was coming and didn’t have to worry about people disappearing or letting me down.
Sure, I was restless some days, but at least I knew where I stood. My life had been mapped out, charted carefully, and Columbia Law School was next on the agenda.
Everybody was happy about that.
I nodded, reminding myself that I was too.
It was a good plan.
But one random springtime blizzard was going to change all of that.
“Spring,” I muttered, staring up at the flight board and cursing the word CANCELED. “It’s not supposed to snow in spring.”
Flustered travelers buzzed around me—pulling suitcases, calming partners and whining children, making unwanted phone calls.
Yanking out my phone, I hovered my thumb over the screen, already dreading the one call I had to make. She’d be pissed. It was out of my control, but she’d still be pissed. Well, not pissed…disappointed.
I was supposed to spend spring break with my girlfriend. Get some one-on-one couple time just hanging out together. I’d promised her. I’d specially caught the red-eye flights so I could be in New York City for the shortest amount of time possible.
If life was fair, I’d be checking in and hanging around for my 10pm flight back to Los Angeles.
I’d been in the Big Apple for less than twenty-four hours, and my body was hating me for it.
Sleeping on a plane was impossible.
I’d arrived blurry-eyed to meet up with a law professor buddy of my dad’s. Having finished my online interviews, my parents thought it’d be a good idea to check out the school in person. So to save myself weeks of nagging from the ones I loved, I jumped at the first chance of getting a personal tour from one of Columbia Law School’s most highly regarded professors. He was friendly and seemed impressed with my UCLA grades, but stayed pretty tight-lipped when I tried to find out if I had a shot at getting in to the prestigious East Coast college.
God help me if I don’t.
My shoulders were aching under the weight of expectation. Between my girlfriend, Shayna, and my parents, they had me pretty well covered. I was the golden son and the perfect boyfriend. Because that’s what they needed me to be.
So I kept pushing. Kept being what I was supposed to. Kept making them proud.
I grimaced. Pride would not be in the cards after I made this phone call.
With a reluctant sigh, I pulled up Shayna’s number and pressed the green circle on my screen. I raised the phone to my ear and looked across the agitated crowd while I listened to the ring.
And my world stopped moving.
Like a mirage from the back recesses of my memory banks, she stood before me.
Charlie Watson.
My best friend from high school. The girl with the wacky sense of fashion and a personality so big it could barely fit into a room.
My eyes traveled down her body, quickly capturing the checkered skinny jeans, bright purple Doc Marten boots, and the fitted Snoopy sweater. She had a big camera slung across her body, resting against her hip like it always did.
Man, she hadn’t changed a bit.
The only difference was the blue dye at the ends of her long brown hair. It was a vibrant royal blue that made me grin. She always liked to make a statement.
Flicking the long strands over her shoulder, she stared at the flight board with a glum smile, then turned to her left and spotted me.
She froze. Her lips parted and her hazel eyes rounded in surprise. Then her chest jerked like she was choking on something, her face bunching with a powerful sadness. For a second, I thought she was going to burst into tears, but then she started blinking really fast and this shaky laugh popped out of her mouth.
I didn’t know what to do, except hang up the phone and slip it into my pocket. The world around me dissolved as everything but Charlie became a blur.
She’d always had that effect on me.
The one person I could never let myself think about was suddenly the only thing I could see.
With a quivering smile, she hid her face behind her camera and snapped a photo of my stunned expression, then let out a low chuckle that reminded me of the girl I once knew.
She started closing the gap between us.
I wasn’t sure how to feel at first. When she reached me, did I wrap my arms around her? Or did I push her away because she’d hurt me so bad?
Four years of radio silence.
I’d accepted the fact that I’d never see her again.
Yet there she was, weaving her way towards me.
One step closer.
Then another.
And she was near enough to touch.
I swallowed and let out this breathy kind of laugh, trapped in the surreal moment with no way out.
Was I dreaming?
“Hey, Nix,” she whispered, her eyes glassy as she stepped forward and took me back to high school.
Her blue hair tickled my face as her slender arms wrapped around my neck and her black-painted fingernails clutched my sweater. Her trembling breath whistled against my ear, and in spite of all the unanswered questions, the deep bruising that I thought would never heal, I could do nothing else but wind my arms around her waist and hold on tight.
Chapter Two
Charlie
It was Nixon.
And he was holding me.
Just like he had in high school.
Just like he had that summer.
I rested my chin on his shoulder and squeezed tight, never wanting to let go.
I couldn’t believe it. After all those years of missing him, there he was.
His arms slackened around my waist and he pulled back, staring down at me. I studied his long, oval face. Still the same, yet different. His dark hair was even neater than it used to be—short at the sides and combed back, held in place with military-grade hair product. His mom must love it.
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes as I smoothed my hand down his sweater, then tweaked his collar.
“Wow,” I murmured. “It’s you.”
“It’s me.” His soft whisper made me wonder if I’d been forgiven, but then I glanced into his brown eyes and had to concede that walking out on our friendship without a word probably had a lasting impact. One I wasn’t quite ready to face.
So, in my usual style, I squeezed his arm and let out a laugh that was light and fresh. I couldn’t ruin this precious moment with angst and heartache. I was standing beside Nixon. That was my happy place, and I had to make the most of it.
With a little grin, I nudged his elbow. “Of all the airports in all the world, huh? What are you doing in New York?”
His stunned surprise was making way for a smile. His lips twitched, nearly rising as he tried to answer me.
“I’m, uh…” The phone in his pocket cut him off.
Pulling it out with a fleeting wince, he checked the screen and I swear his shoulders slumped.