I'm sick of being called Junior. Sure, I'm William Nicholas Martens, Jr., but I just want to go by Nick. I'm sick of my boyfriend mismatching his socks on purpose. And I'm sick of being in the closet.<br><br>All this changes when my band Taking Back Nick lands a record deal. My friends Casey, Kennedy, Levi, and I are about to make it big. In one night I come out to my parents and break up with my boyfriend. And then the hard part starts. Casey is my oldest friend, and I move in with him after my breakup. But things ... start to happen.<br><br>We skyrocket to fame, but Casey finds himself in the middle of some serious addiction issues. Combined with him showing me so much affection, I start to worry there's more going on than just the stress of success. Will Casey be able to overcome his addictions and find happiness? More importantly, will that happiness be with me?

Porch Light

“So, Casey and I wrote that song about this girl we’d gone to school with who killed herself a few years after graduation. She was a beauty queen, prom queen, homecoming queen—all the queens. She was on student council, super popular, and actually really nice about it. She was never pretentious or snobby to anybody.”


I nodded thoughtfully. “She really was. I remember one time she was having a hard time opening her locker, and I was walking by. She asked me to help, and I totally tried, but it didn’t work. She ended up being able to open it herself, and I felt all embarrassed. But she just laughed and said I’d warmed it up for her.”


“She was in college when she did it. Her friends thought everything was fine, her family too. But she left a note talking about all the struggles she was facing, the expectations she was being held to by herself, and the general feeling it was all too much.”


Chapter 43