P.S. I Miss You Read online

  Table of Contents

  P.S. I Miss You

  IMPORTANT

  Description

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Epilogue

  Dream Cast

  Sample from War & Love

  Also by Winter Renshaw

  About the Author

  COPYRIGHT 2018 WINTER RENSHAW

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  COVER DESIGN: Louisa Maggio

  FORMATTING: Alyssa Garcia, Uplifting Designs

  EDITING: Wendy Chan, The Passionate Proofreader

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  PHOTOGRAPHER: Wong Sim

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, including electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or, if an actual place, are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

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  IMPORTANT

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  Description

  Dear Melrose,

  The first time I met you, you were a stranger. The second time, you were my roommate. The third time, you made it clear you were about to become the biggest thorn my side had ever known.

  You sing way too loud in the shower and use all the hot water.

  You’re bossy as hell.

  You make my life all kinds of complicated.

  But no matter how hard I try, I can’t stop thinking about you.

  Truthfully … I can’t stop wanting you.

  I was going to tell you this. I was going to sit you down, swallow my pride, hang up my noncommittal ways, and show you a side of me you or anyone else has never seen before … but then there was a game-changing confession; a bombshell so nuclear it stopped me in my tracks.

  How I didn’t see this coming, I’ll never know.

  Sutter

  P.S. I miss you.

  Epigraph

  She was not for everyone, but she was for me.

  - Atticus

  I’VE BEEN A DOG-WALKER on an episode of Will & Grace.

  A bakery shop owner in a Lifetime movie.

  Ryan Gosling’s kid sister in an indie flick that never saw the light of day.

  Victim #2 in a season eighteen episode of Law & Order: SVU.

  But today I’m faced with my most challenging role yet; a camera-less reality show called Girl with Lifelong Crush on Best Guy Friend starring Melrose Claiborne as … Melrose Claiborne.

  Standing outside Nick Camden’s Studio City bungalow, I straighten my shoulders, smooth my blonde waves into place, and press my index finger against the doorbell. The heavy thump of my heart suggests it’s going to fall to the floor the second he opens the door—but I’m hopeful the butterflies in my stomach will catch it first.

  He has this effect on me.

  Every. Single. Time.

  And that’s saying something because it takes a lot to make me nervous, to throw me off my game. But my crush on him has only intensified over the years, growing stronger with each unrequited year that passes.

  But last night, out of nowhere, Nick called me—which was strange because Nick never calls. He only ever texts. He’s so against calling, in fact, that he has his ringer permanently set to “off’ and his voicemail box has been full for the last six and a half years.

  “Mel, I need to talk to you tomorrow,” he’d said, breathless almost. There was a hint of a smile in his tone, giddiness. “It’s really important.”

  “Nick, you’re scaring me,” I told him, half wondering if someone slipped something into his drink and he was drugged out of his mind. “Just tell me now.”

  “I have to tell you in person. And I have something to ask you, something crazy important,” he said. “Oh my god. This is insane. I’m so damn nervous, Mel. But as soon as you get here tomorrow, I’ll tell you. I’ve been wanting to tell you about this for a long time, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t until now. But now I can. And I can’t fucking wait. This is huge, Mel. This is … oh, God.”

  “Nick …” I paced my bedroom floor, my left palm clasped across my forehead. In nearly two decades of friendship, I’d never heard Nick so worked up before. “Can’t you just tell me now?”

  “Come over tomorrow. Around three,” he’d said. “This is something that needs to be done in person.”

  I ring his doorbell again before checking the time on my phone. Stifling a yawn, I rise on my toes and try to peek inside the glass sidelights of his front door. Knowing Nick, he probably got sidetracked or ran out for burritos and got caught up in conversation with someone he knows.

  Then again … he was pretty insistent about talking to me in person at three o’clock about this “major” thing. I can’t imagine he’d space this off.

  All night, I tossed and turned, trying to wrap my head around what this could possibly be, how I could know someone for so long and fail miserably trying to get a read on them.

  Growing up, Nick lived next door, and the two of us were inseparable from the day he first moved into the neighborhood and I found him by the creek trying to capture bullfrogs—which I promptly forced him to set free. By the end of the day, we both realized our bedroom windows aligned on the second floors of our houses, and by the end of the week, he gave me a walkie-talkie and told me I was his best friend.

  When we were ten, he gave me a friendship necklace—like the kind girls usually give to other girls. He gave me the half that said “best” and wore the “friend” half but always tucked it under his shirt so no one would give him any shit—not that anyone would.

  Everyone loved Nick.

  It wasn’t until the summer after seventh grade that Nick hit a growth spurt and everything changed.

  His voice got deeper.

  His legs got longer.

  Even his features became more chiseled and defined.

  It was like he aged several years over the course of a couple of months, and I found myself looking at him in ways I never had before. And when I closed my eyes at night, I found myself thinking about what it’d be like if he kissed me.

  Almost overnight, I’d gone from running next door with a messy ponytail to see if he wanted to ride bikes … to slicking on an extra coat of Dr. Pepper Lip Smackers and running a brush through my hair any time I knew I was going to see him.

  Suddenly I couldn’t look at him without blushing.

  Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one who noticed Nick’s head-turning transformation.

  Nick’s door swings open with a quick creak and I don’t have time to realize what’s happening before he sweeps me into his arms and swings me around the front porch of his rented bungalow.

  “Melly!” He buries his face into my shoulder, squeezing me so hard I can’t breathe, nearly suffocating the swarm of butterflies in my middle.

  I breathe in that perpetual Nick scent, the one that always feels like home. Like the faintest hint of bar smoke and cheap fabric softener an
d Irish Spring soap.

  Growing up in Brentwood, the son of a successful screenwriter and composer, Nick could’ve had it all—materially and professionally. His parents had connections that would put Steven Spielberg to shame.

  But all he ever wanted was to be a regular guy who got by on merit, and I adored that about him.

  “Look at you,” he says when he puts me down. His hands are threaded in mine as his ocean gaze scans me from head to toe. “I haven’t seen you in months.”

  Three months, two weeks, and five days—but who’s counting?

  The last time we hung out was on my birthday, and there were so many people at the bar, I barely had a chance to say more than two sentences to him all night. We’d made plans to get together the following weekend, but his band booked a gig in Vegas and I was leaving to film a Lifetime movie in Vancouver the day before he was coming back.

  Life’s been consistent that way, always pulling us in separate directions at the most inconvenient of times.

  “You find the place all right?” he asks as he leads me inside. The scent of Windex and clean laundry fills my lungs, and a folded blanket rests over the back of a leather chair in the living room.

  I chuckle at the thought of Nick tidying up before I got here. He was always a slob growing up. Case in point? One year I tripped over a pair of his Chucks as I entered his bedroom and almost knocked my front teeth out on a messy stack of vinyl records. His empty guitar case caught my fall, but the next day he bought a shoe organizer.

  “I did,” I say, glancing around his new digs. Last time I saw him, he was living in some apartment with four roommates in Toluca Lake. The time before that he was shacking up with a fuck buddy-slash-Instagram model named Kadence St. Kilda, but that was short-lived because the girl ultimately wanted exclusivity, and that’s something Nick’s never been able to offer anyone—that I know of. “When did you move here?”

  “Last month,” he says. “I’m subletting from my drummer’s cousin.”

  The sound of pots and pans clinking in the kitchen tells me we’re not alone, but I’m not surprised. Nick has always had roommates. He’s painfully extroverted. Guy can’t stand to be alone for more than five minutes but not in the clingy, obnoxious sort of way. More in the charismatic, life-of-the-party, always-down-for-a-good-time sort of way.

  I follow Nick to the living room, and he points to the middle cushion of a cognac leather sofa before slicking his palms together and pacing the small space.

  “Nick.” I laugh. “You’re acting like a crazy person … you know that, right?”

  His ocean gaze lands on mine and he stops pacing for a moment. “I’m so fucking nervous.”

  “You don’t have to be nervous around me. Ever.”

  “This is different.” He stops pacing for a second. “This is something I’ve never told you before.”

  Oh god.

  My heart flutters, and some long-buried hope makes its way out in the form of a smile on my face, but I bite it away.

  I’d never admit this out loud, but last night a very real part of me believed this entire thing centered around Nick wanting to tell me he has feelings for me, that he wants to date me.

  The idea is absurd, I know.

  Things like this don’t happen out of nowhere.

  I’m not naïve and I’m not an idiot. I know the odds of my best friend going months without seeing me and suddenly professing his love for me are slim to none, but I’ve tried to come up with alternate theories, and none of them made sense because Nick’s never been nervous around me for any reason.

  Ever.

  What else could possibly make him nervous around me other than a heartfelt confession?

  Crossing my legs and sitting up straight, I say, “Come on. Spit it out. I don’t have all day.”

  He cups his hands over his nose and mouth, releasing a hard breath, and when he lets them fall, I find the dopiest grin on his face.

  His eyes water like a teenage girl with a backstage pass to a Harry Styles concert.

  Nick tries to speak but he can’t.

  Oh my god.

  He’s doing it.

  He’s actually telling me he likes me …

  “Melrose,” he says, pulling in a hard breath before dropping to his knees in front of me. He takes my hands in his, and I swear my vision fades out for a second. “You know when we were kids and we used to tell each other everything?”

  “Yeah …”

  “There was something I never told you,” he says, eyes locked with mine. “I guess … I guess I was afraid to say it out loud. I was afraid this thing I wanted so bad, this thing I wanted more than anything I’d ever wanted in my life, wasn’t going to come true. And I thought that by admitting it, I was only going to jinx myself. So I kept it to myself, but I can’t anymore. It’s too big. It’s eating away at me and it has been for years. But it’s time. I have to tell you.”

  He’s rambling.

  Nick never rambles.

  His trembling hands squeeze mine and then he rises, taking the spot on the couch beside me. Cupping my face in his hands, he offers a tepid smile that’s soon eaten away by his own anxiety. “This is insane, Melrose. I can’t believe I’m about to tell you this.”

  My mouth parts and I’m milliseconds from blurting out something along the lines of “I’ve liked you since we were kids, too …” but I bite my tongue and let him go first.

  “You know how I have my band, right?” he asks, referring to Melrose Nights, the band he founded in high school and named after me.

  I nod, heart sinking. No … plummeting.

  “What about it?” I ask, blinking away the embarrassed burn in my eyes.

  “My dream, Mel, was always to hit it big,” he said. “Like, commercially big.”

  My brows lift. This is news to me.

  He was always about the indie scene, always so against the big music corporations that controlled every song the American people were played on the radio.

  “Really?” I tuck my chin against my chest. “Because you always said—”

  “I know what I always said,” he cuts me off. “But the more I got to thinking about it, the more I thought … I just want my songs to be in the ears of as many people as possible. And it’s not even about becoming famous or having money, you know I’m not about any of that. I just want people to know my songs. That’s all.”

  I swallow the lump in my throat and glance toward a wood-burning fireplace in the corner where a crushed, empty can of Old Milwaukee—Nick’s signature beverage of choice—rests on the mantel next to what appears to be a crumpled lace bra.

  Guess he forgot a few things when he was straightening up …

  “Okay, so what are you trying to tell me?” I ask, squinting.

  “We got signed …” his mouth pulled so wide, he looks like a bona fide crazy person right now, “… and not only that, but we’re going on tour with Maroon 5.”

  I try not to let my rampant disbelief show on my face, but something tells me I’m failing miserably. He reads my expression, searching my eyes, and his silly grin fades.

  “You hate Maroon 5,” I say.

  “I used to hate Maroon 5,” he corrects me. “Anyway, the act they had fell through last minute, so they got us. We leave next week.”

  “Next week? For how long?”

  “Six months.” His callused hands smack together. “Six months on the road with one of the biggest music acts in North America.”

  He says that last part out loud, like he’s still in disbelief over this entire thing.

  Which makes two of us.

  “Wow, Nick … that’s … this is huge. You were right. This is some big news,” I say. Everything is sinking. My voice. My heart. My hope. “I’m so happy for you.”

  I throw my arms around him, inhale his musky scent, and squeeze him tight. There’s a pang in my chest, a tightness in my middle, like that indescribable sensation that washes over you when you know something’s about to change and things will never be the same again.

  But I meant what I said. I am happy for him. I had no idea this was what he wanted, but now that he’s shared this with me, I am thrilled for him. He’s my best friend, my oldest friend, and all I want is for him to be happy.

  Plus, he deserves this.

  Nick is insanely talented.

  Music.

  Lyrics.

  Singing.