Jesse's Girl (Hundred Oaks #6) by Miranda Kenneally Page B

ashamed of what happened. I don’t want him to think I’m a talentless loser and decide I’m not worth his time. But he told me about his ex-girlfriend and his parents…and when you think about it, what happened to me is nothing compared to Jesse’s ex telling the tabloids that he gets freaky in bed. As someone who has had his secrets shared, I bet he’ll keep mine.
    “In seventh grade, I was singing a solo at a concert at school. It was awful because I locked my knees and fainted.”
    Jesse cringes but gestures for me to keep talking.
    I take a deep breath. “When I fainted, I busted my chin on the stage and had this terrible bruise for a long time. But what really hurt was how much kids made fun of me. After that, I never wanted people to look at me while I was performing. I quit the choir for a while too, but I ended up rejoining.”
    “What made you go back?”
    This is embarrassing to admit, but I told myself I would tell the truth. “I kept with it because of you.”
    “Me?” he blurts.
    I suck in a deep breath. If Nate or Hannah or anybody from The Fringe heard me say this, they’d make fun of me for all time. “Your second album came out around the time I fainted. ‘Agape’ was on the radio all the time, and my dad said, ‘if that boy can do big concerts for thousands of people, you can sing in the choir.’”
    Jesse turns his gaze away from mine and rubs the back of his neck, furrowing his eyebrows. “I had really bad stage fright when I first started performing. But I worked through it. Did you?”
    “I rejoined choir,” I say. “But I didn’t sing another solo until the talent show last spring. I was upset that my band wouldn’t perform, so I decided to go for it by myself. But my voice cracked…and I felt like this big joke. I sucked.”
    “Your voice isn’t a joke. Up until it cracked, your performance in the talent show was pretty good.”
    I trip over my feet as I’m hopping from block number 4 to 5. “How do you know that?”
    He grins. “At first I wasn’t sure about you shadowing me, but then Uncle Bob showed me your ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ video.”
    I groan. “He showed it to you?”
    “Yeah—it was big-time. You should put it on YouTube.”
    “It’s already on YouTube. It’s called ‘The Siren.’ Ugh.” I jump through the hopscotch blocks again. “So when did you see the video?” I ask.
    “Right after you left my dressing room last week.”
    “You were so mean to me that night!”
    He looks over at the merry-go-round, watching it circle in place. “I’m sorry. I figured you’d be like all those other screaming girls, and I was in a grouchy mood, I guess.”
    “Because of your parents? Because they didn’t show?”
    He nods and hops through the numbered blocks. “You were mean to me too, you know. When you stormed out of my dressing room, I thought, Who is this mean, sexy punk girl? ”
    “I am not mean!”
    The side of his mouth quirks up. “You’re mean as hell. Always yelling at me and telling me what to do.”
    “Someone has to.” I step closer to him and shove his stomach. He retaliates by grabbing me around the waist. His cologne smells so good, and I can barely fight the urge to rest my cheek against the white T-shirt covering his strong chest. He tickles my side, and I jerk away, laughing, and that’s when he pulls me up against him for real. His body presses to mine, and his warmth radiates down to the tips of my toes.
    “Seriously though,” he whispers. “If you want to sing on your own, just keep working at it, and don’t worry if people make fun of you. There will always be critics, but you have to trust your instincts. If you’re serious about being a musician, you can’t let other people decide what music you should play… You could end up going down a path that you were never meant to take…and then you could end up living a life that’s not yours .”
    He suddenly takes a step back and looks away, putting distance between us