The Beats in Rift Read Free

lucky girl, Jess?” she asks about my lyrics.
    I grin; her innocence is so adorable. I want to kiss her and snuggle her at the same time. She’s had a hard home life and that has made her tough. She learned from me how to handle herself. I taught her self-defence after I went to pick her up from her house one day and her Mom’s boyfriend had his son around, and he was pushing Beats around for being frigid. I kicked his ass but wanted her to learn how to do it herself.
    She’s close to me and my brother, but she’s more like me. She shares my personality, we’re two sides of the same coin. We love the same music and films, we like to push boundaries and when I manage to get her to open up her inner minx, she follows me into whatever adventure I cook up for the day. One time I convinced her I could drive the digger that was left on a work site at school. I hotwired the machine and she rode that digger with me even when I admitted I couldn’t control it, and we ended up in a ditch and had to run from site security. She’s bright and works hard at school. She’s relying on getting a scholarship so she’s reluctant to let her wild side out too often. I have to coax it out of her most of the time but when I do, she’s fantastic.
    “What makes you think it’s just one?” I smirk, and she slaps my shoulder and rolls her eyes.
    “You will leave a wake of broken hearts in this school, Jared Jacobs,” she mutters.
    I tap out a few beats as she turns on her heels and hurries out the room.
    “Beats,” I call just before she closes the door. She turns to me. “I’ll take your heart with me when I go.”
    Her laugh rings out into the room. “You better. I can’t be left here bleeding in your memory.”
    Damn, that chick can write lyrics that go straight to my heart. The door clicks shut behind her retreating form.
    “Dude, put your tongue away. Just ask her out already.”
    My head snaps round to Luke. I had almost forgotten my band members are even here; no one has ever caught on to the fact I have feelings for Meadow. They think I see her as a sister of sorts and even with my subtle hints, like telling her I’ll take her heart with me, she just shrugs it off like I don’t mean anything real behind it.
    “What?” I ask, my voice shaking slightly.
    “Drake. He has a thing for Beats. He almost drooled on his guitar.”
    I snap my eyes to Drake who’s flipping the bird. “Eat shit, Luke.”
    “Man, you’ve been drooling over her for long enough. Ask her out.”
    “She doesn’t date,” I state.
    They both look up at me. “She might now. No one’s had the balls to ask her out since she told Mason no in front of the whole cafeteria, but that was years ago. Things change. Drake, you should ask her to the dance.”
    My heart races erratically, even though I’m confident she won’t accept his invitation. The small possibility that she might has my head spinning and my body tense. I know Drake likes her, but I never worried about it before now.
    “Can we finish up here? I’m starved,” I say, trying to change the path of the conversation.
    “Yeah, me too. Come on, let’s see what lyrics she changed.”
    Meadow is my co-writer; she always knows how to make the right changes to my lyrics. We’re a team and when she’s ready to date, it will be me she dates.
     

     
    “HEY,” I CALL as I open the front door to our house.
    I love our house, and Mom takes great pride in keeping it immaculate. The plush cream carpets are steam cleaned once a week to keep their color. The white kitchen and bathroom are always spotless and the living space is hardly ever used as there are just too many rooms to use them all, but the rich warm colors on the walls give the vast space a homely feel.
    “Hey, baby.” Mom smiles.
    She hasn’t been herself lately. She and Dad have been arguing more often. I found a bruise on her wrist last week. She swore on her life it wasn’t from him, but his temper has been flaring more