Free Collaboration by Michelle Lynn, Nevaeh Lee Page A

embracing her in a hug. From the gleam in my mom’s eyes, I know exactly what she’s thinking. She’s never been quiet about wanting me to date Ryder…except when Maverick was in the picture. My mom has always been on the, shall we say, opportunistic side and Maverick’s stardom was an opportunity she thought was too good to pass up. “And you let them kick you out? How out of character,” Ryder jokes and my mom gives her annoyingly fake giggle.
    “Oh Ryder, I didn’t want to cause ripples when the collaboration has been going so smoothly. You know that’s not my style.” She’s using her southern drawl that she usually tries to conceal and I roll my eyes in irritation. When I look away, I find my own tour poster being hung up by a man wearing a blue uniform.
    He gently encases it in the glass and I want to vomit when I see the picture they used. I’m wearing jeans and a plaid button-down with a studded black belt. If that’s not bad enough, I’m standing in a field of wheat grass with a damn daisy in my hair. Not quite sure who put this together or what they were trying to accomplish, but I look like some confused country/granola girl. Racking my brain, I try to remember ever wearing that ensemble and it dawns on me—the photo shoot a few weeks ago when they wanted to try a few different looks. They told me it was just for fun but obviously not. I decide I’d better get over it since there’s no changing it at this point, but then gasp when I read the tour title, splashed across the bottom.
    “Oh, it turned out fabulous,” my mom remarks, inching closer. Looking for a flaw, I’m sure.
    “What happened to Onward and Upward ?” I ask her. The heat is starting to rise and I can feel it in my face. We decided on that together—months ago.
    “Well, I thought this was better,” she says with a huge grin.
    “You thought that Sweet and Sassy, Cute and Classy was better? What the h—“ I stop myself before my anger gets out of control. As much as I would love to scream at her, my dad raised me better than that.
    “What they don’t know can’t hurt them, right?” she responds and my blood runs hot—not cold, but blazing, blistering hot. I cannot believe that she would go there, especially with Ryder standing right behind us.
    “Hey, it’s not that bad,” he chimes in and I wonder what he is looking at, because this is not the image I want to portray. Yeah, maybe when I was sixteen or seventeen but I’m older now—even though I feel like I’m about a half a second away from throwing a tantrum that could rival any two-year-old.
    “What are you doing here, anyway?” I turn away from the poster to face Ryder so I can focus on something else, anything other than that monstrosity up on the wall.
    “The band is recording the back tracks to the song. I guess someone wanted it done separately and then they’ll put it all together later,” he explains, shrugging his shoulders. Ryder has always been so easygoing, which is a nice quality to have but sometimes it’s just too much. Though nothing ever seems to ruffle him, the flipside is that he doesn’t ever seem passionate about anything either.
    After we chat for a few more minutes, he kisses my cheek and disappears down the hall. While my perfectionist mother makes sure the poster is hung to her specifications, I wave goodbye to Stella, who is talking on the phone, and then slip out. I’m still furious about the changes my mom made to the tour promotion without my approval so it’s better if I don’t speak to her right now. Plus, there’s no way she can sabotage my plans with Gina tonight if she doesn’t know about them.
    ***
    Gina made reservations at the hottest restaurant in town—for the moment. I say that because, in this town, it changes every month…if not week. After leaving my car with the valet, I make my way through an Asian-inspired room with a stream of water cascading down a cement wall, stalks of bamboo and an array of orchids