In Your Dreams (Falling #4)(12)

“Jeanie?” I ask.

She stretches out her hand and about a dozen metal bracelets slide forward on her wrist as our fingers meet for a firm grip and shake.

“Eli, glad you made it,” she says. “Hope it wasn’t hard to find.”

“Not at all,” I say, silently repeating Eli in my head to remind myself to answer to it for the rest of the day.

“So, what exactly are you looking for?” she asks, folding up the few notepads she had out on the table and tucking them into the bright orange canvas bag slung over the back of her chair.

“Nothing much. An apartment or studio or something simple like that. I could do a house, but I would need to find a roommate…” I trail off as I realize how far I’m taking this lie.

“That’s not what I meant, dear,” she says, sliding a pair of black-rimmed glasses down from her head to the tip of her nose.

“Oh, I guess…you need my price range? Or…” I begin to answer, but stop when the right side of her lip curls.

“Honey, you’re too young to need a realtor. And I saw you drive by the first time. You weren’t dropped off, and you can’t keep this lie going, so how about you tell me what this is really about?”

Witch. That’s it. She’s a witch.

I suck in my bottom lip and nod with a small laugh.

“Okay, my name’s Casey Coffield…”

I don’t need to say anything more, because Jeanie is full-on belly laughing at me now. She lets her laughter go for several seconds, stopping only for a drink of her coffee with her other palm flat on the table, finally regaining her composure after nearly a minute.

“And there he is,” she says, leaning back in her seat, her tongue pressed in the side of her cheek. Her eyes twinkle like a gypsy, and taking her in now completely—her long skirt and silky shirt with sleeves that flow around her arms like she’s a fortuneteller—I’m starting to think my witch theory might hold up. “You know, she said she made you up,” she interrupts my thoughts. “But I knew better. I looked in her old yearbook.”

Her eyes linger on me in a way different from before. I think this expression might just be suspicion.

“Not made up,” I say, eyebrows rising as I adjust myself in my chair. I miss the Jeanie from the phone. This Jeanie, she makes me nervous.

“Not made up indeed,” she chuckles, the sound deep. She stops laughing only to sip her drink again, pulling the lid off when she’s done to add another packet of sugar. I notice all of the empty packets on the table. That must be the sweetest drink on earth.

“I was hoping I could maybe talk…with Murphy?” Even saying her name feels weird. Foreign. I don’t know her. But it seems I’m a very popular topic in the Sullivan house.

“Wouldn’t that be a hoot,” Jeanie laughs, her voice raspy.

“I…guess?” I respond, my hand coming to the back of my neck. I feel like there’s a joke happening, and I’m the victim. I really wish the cameras would come out or someone would yell surprise.

“You know, she won’t tell anyone the truth about that song, but damn if that’s not the one that’s a hit,” she says, reaching forward, her fingers grazing my chest with a gentle punch. “I think it pisses her off, that that’s the song people like? What’s your story, Casey? Are you really just nobody like she says?”

Fuck…nobody? I mean, yeah…I’m nobody. But the way she says it sounds less like Murphy and I are strangers and more like I’m an *.

“I guess that’s something Murphy would have to answer,” I say.

My response makes her hesitate, and she leans forward, letting her glasses slide halfway down her nose, her eyes taking me in above the rims again with a quirk in her brow. Her lip ticks up with a single short laugh.

“You’re just as cagey as she is,” she winks, taking one final swig of her coffee. “So what brings you here then, if it isn’t to solve the mystery of why you’re starring in my moonbeam’s lyrics?”

Moonbeam?

Witch. That’s it. Witch.

“I’m working with a record label,” I start, regretting that beginning and wishing I had a redo. It’s too late, though, because Jeanie has already seized the key words and is standing, her eyes lit up with hopes and dreams for her daughter.

“Oh my god; you’re kidding me? You want to…what? Like…sign her?”

Jeanie’s hands are fumbling in her giant orange bag, searching for her phone, which finally lands in her grasp, one swipe away from a phone call that would probably only make this misunderstanding even more impossible to explain away.

“No,” I say, holding my hand out toward hers. She stops. My heart drops from the shot of adrenaline. Talking to this woman is going to kill me. “I just want to talk with her. Maybe work with her. I do mixing, and sound. Recording and whatnot, and I thought maybe I could help.”

I thought maybe your moonbeam could be my big ticket, actually.

Jeanie nods, then looks at her phone in her palm, I presume to check the time.

“She’s at the school, where she teaches. It’s summer session,” she says.

I nod in response, as if I know all of this information. Thankfully, she keeps talking.

“She’ll be home a little after one. I’m sure she’d love to see you,” she says, that sly grin showing again for a brief second. I’m not sure what it means. I’m afraid of what it means. It makes me swallow and second-guess this half-hatched plan I’m on.