Rye

"Are you sure," my manger asks for the fifth time on this phone call. "I thought this is what you wanted," she says. "I don't think they'll ask again."

"I'm sure, " I tell her. "I'm going to go in a different direction."

"You'll run out of money one day Rye. You Shouldn't turn down opportunities like this," she warns, but I'm tired of the manipulation.

"You'd be surprised how far I can make money stretch and with what's coming in now, I'm going to be fine until the day I die. Anything on top will just be bonus," I tell her.

I'd been able to pay off the house and settle on my dad's debts with the tour money that had been paid out after Justin's heart attack. I'm currently being asked to join Free Pony as their drummer on Justin's come back tour, but I've decided that isn't the life for me.

"I play every Friday at the bar by the cabin," I tell her.

"I love you and appreciate the opportunity to manage your career, and I cannot stress this enough—I won't be traveling to some small city with a lake to watch you waste your talent in a dive bar," she says. If she was actually mad at me she would have ended our contract, but I think part of her doesn't know what to do with a young musician that's willingly walking away from it all as his star is rising.

"Open invitation," I tell her. "The weather is beautiful this time of year."

"I'll pass," she says, but I don't believe for one minute believe there won't be a night in the future that I'm looking out at the crowd and spot her in it.

It had taken an entire month to clean up the financial mess my dad had made. It took even longer to start believing that I could be a better man than him. And it took turning down the opportunity offered to me by Free Pony to realize I'd stopped the cycle. I choose a simple life filled with family pictures I'm actually in. Any records in my home will be vinyl and played on my great grandfather's record player in the bonus room of the cabin I purchased last month. I had made the owner an offer he couldn't refuse, and now I spend many nights writing songs on the old dock from my childhood.

Even with all the things I've sorted out, my life is missing something vital. I want the girl who had laid beside me that summer to let me fulfill that promise I made. There's one last loose string to tie up—I want to drink a beer with her and Jagger in celebration of finally dethroning "Baby Girl" from its long over-hyped place in our collective memories. I think we all need that to heal from the shared trauma of our lives as the children of rockstars.

I pull up our old text thread from this summer. My last text to her about her father's heart attack sits delivered but she never responded.

Me: Come to the cabin this weekend

I don't send it right away. I stare down at the words on the screen, nervous to once again be left on read. I contacted Parker and let her know about the cabin, but she never responded. And Launi is a ghost these days on social media so I can't get a read on how she might feel about the song or if she hates me entirely from potentially pulling her back into the gossip. It was the risk I was willing to take to complete the promise.

Finally, I click send. It's the last time I'll reach out. Loving her means letting her go if that's what she wants. It doesn't take long before her message pops up.

Launi: I'll be there.