The Breakup Tour - Softcover

Wibberley, Emily; Siegemund-Broka, Austin

 
9780593638644: The Breakup Tour
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0593638646 ISBN 13: 9780593638644
Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

A rising-star musician has a second chance at love with an old flame she remembers all too well in this swoony romance from the acclaimed authors of The Roughest Draft.

Riley Wynn went from a promising singer-songwriter to a superstar overnight, thanks to her breakup song concept album and its unforgettable lead single. When Riley’s ex-husband claims the hit song is about him, she does something she hasn’t in ten years and calls Max Harcourt, her college boyfriend and the real inspiration for the song of the summer.

Max hasn’t spoken to Riley since their relationship ended. He’s content with managing the retirement home his family owns, but it’s not the life filled with music he dreamed of. When Riley asks him to go public as her songwriting muse, he agrees on one condition: he’ll join her band on tour.

As they perform across the country, Max and Riley start to realize that while they hit some wrong notes in the past, their future could hold incredible things. And their rekindled relationship will either last forever or go down in flames.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka met and fell in love in high school. Austin went on to graduate from Harvard, while Emily graduated from Princeton. Together, they are the authors of several novels about romance for teens and adults. Now married, they live in Los Angeles, where they continue to take daily inspiration from their own love story.

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one

Max

I remember exactly what song was playing when I started my car on the night I got my heart broken.

I cranked the key in the ignition. The radio came on-Joni Mitchell's "The Same Situation" filled the interior of the used Camry I'd gotten for two thousand dollars when I graduated from high school. Feeling foolish, pretending I was fine, I let the song play, even while I knew it would entwine itself with the day's sad memories. I drove home on Los Angeles's silent freeways, recognizing in the pit of my stomach how Joni's voice would haunt me from then on.

Which is why a decade later I find myself hovering my finger over my laptop's space bar, unable to press play.

Open on Spotify is Riley Wynn's new album, framed on my screen in the small office I share with my sister in Harcourt Homes, the senior assisted-living facility I run with her help. It's just me in here right now, waiting for myself, ignoring the spreadsheets printed out on my desk. January is the coldest the San Fernando Valley gets. The California chill surrounds me, invading my fingertips, expectant, urging. Listen, Max. Just listen.

I know what will happen when I start the first song. If I start the first song. The voice of the country's new favorite pop prophetess will steal into my soul the way only she can.

I should listen, I know I should. Hit play. Let Riley's music-her magic-ensnare me. Especially "Until You," the undisputed song of the year. I've had to work to escape hearing it because it hides around every corner in the labyrinth of the same songs every radio station plays.

I haven't entirely succeeded, instead hearing snatches in the supermarket or when I'm changing stations. Then there are the billboards, Riley looming over my commute on Sunset. She stands in the wedding dress she's wearing on the album cover, looking caught off guard while fire licks the edges of her veil. The Rolling Stone email with her featured interview hit my inbox a week ago.

Yet[?] I've resisted Riley's new music until today, when I suddenly knew I could hold out no longer-gravity was pulling me. Of what heavenly body, I don't know. Stars have gravity, but so do black holes. Like one inside the other, Riley's eyes stare out from my laptop screen.

My hesitation is sort of pathetic, I know. In fairness, however, not many people in the world face the question I do when it comes to Riley Wynn's new album.

How do you listen to The Breakup Record when one of the songs is about you?

Maybe we should form a support group-me and the eleven other people Riley's immortalized on her chart-smashing second LP. It's the gripping, genius conceit of her new collection of songs-each one centers on a romantic split of Riley's life.

Which means our nine months together in college is presumably included in the company of Hollywood-headline relationships, of short-lived flings, of her notorious divorce. Nine months when I dated the woman who would become one of the most famous musicians in the world. Nine months in which I felt like I'd found the chorus to my verse in Riley Wynn-whose lips made me ignite, whose smile looked like stage lights, whose laughter played secret chords on my heartstrings.

There's a chance I'm not included, some hopeful part of me whispers. What if our relationship didn't register enough to make the cut?

On second thought, that might be worse.

Riley is known for her breakup songs. Renowned or infamous, depending on the source of the judgment. On her first album and EPs-when she was popular, just not yet the most loved figure in the contemporary music industry-the songs of heartbreak were the hits.

It was easy to understand why. When I listened to them once or twice, out of nostalgia or masochistic indulgence or some combination, Riley's preoccupation with the pain or pleasure of romantic endings was evident in the power of her voice, the sharpness of her structures, and the keenness of her lyrics.

Her reputation was made. "The Breakup Queen," the music press calls her.

The Breakup Record is her meta-manifestation of her own reputation, self-commentary and self-realization in one. It's ingeniously Riley, making masterpieces out of misadventures, conferring ironic honor on romantic failures memorable enough to spawn songs. While I'm pretty much the opposite of fame-hungry, even I would prefer Riley Wynn's songwriting scalpel over the ignominy of being the forgotten ex.

I know there's only one way to find out whether she wrote us into song. It's just-how do I prepare myself for what feels like walking into the fire on the album's cover?

Melodies hold memories. Like nothing else on earth, they recall feelings, places, moments-the needle dropping into the groove of the soul's record player. I remember what song was playing when I had my first kiss, what I put on while having dinner alone the night I moved into my first apartment, what was on the radio while my father stiffly said I would need to run Harcourt Homes if I wanted it to stay open because my parents could no longer manage the property.

Whenever I listen to them, I'm there.

The same will happen here. When I play whatever Riley's written for us, I'll find myself reliving a part of my life I'm not sure I'm over, even ten years later.

"Did you listen yet?"

The sound of Jess's voice has me snapping my laptop shut. Instantly, my furtiveness embarrasses me. It's not like I was watching porn or something.

Sure enough, my sister smiles. She's opened the door just a little to poke her head into the office. The loose curls of her chestnut hair hang past her collarbone. The sparkle in her green eyes says she knows exactly what hell I'm presently in. We're obviously siblings, matched in every significant physical characteristic-the perfect pair for, say, the "About Us" page on retirement home websites.

"I've heard it," I say neutrally.

"Liar," Jess replies. She slouches in mock desperation. "Come on. I need you to listen and tell me which one is about you."

"You don't know if any of them are about me." Hearing my own lack of conviction, I wince.

Jess rolls her eyes. "Um, you and Riley were obsessed with each other. I'm one gazillion percent certain there's a song about you." She shrugs, pretending she's indulging in casual speculation, which I know she is not. "My guess is 'Until You,'" she says.

I frown. Surely Jess is messing with me now. I probably have a song-not the song. The lead single. No fucking way. I'm surely relegated to the second to last track or something. The filler. The one that barely made it onto the album.

"I'm sure 'Until You' is about that guy," I say.

Jess looks incredulous. "Her ex-husband, Wesley Jameson? He's an Emmy-nominated actor, collective crush of the internet. He's not 'that guy,'" my sister informs me witheringly.

"Whatever. Him," I say, feeling my face heat. I definitely know exactly who Riley's ex-husband is. I don't know why I insinuated otherwise. "The song is about him. Isn't that what everyone is saying?"

It's not like I seek out gossip headlines. When it comes to Riley, however, they're hard to miss. Riley has shot to the kind of stardom that makes speculation about her love life a national pastime. Everyone online is saying the biggest hit on the album is about Wesley, Riley's husband of three months.

Had it surprised me when Riley married one of prime time's hottest stars? No, absolutely not. Riley is . . . everything. She's gorgeous, smart, quick-witted, uncompromising. She'd want someone who could complement her. Who could keep pace with her own relentless incandescence.

Jameson made sense. He's machine-pressed handsome, with sharp, planar features, his eyes squinted ruggedly in every one of his numerous...

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Verlag
Penguin Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593638646
ISBN 13 
9780593638644
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
352
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

Friedensallee 273
Hamburg
22763
Deutschland

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