And so my appointments continue, three times a week.
It’s not that hard to find our girl lately, there are really only a few places she continuously gravitates to. At the moment she’s sitting on the porch again, her knees up, a blanket wrapped around her. She’s got her phone out, thumb moving in furious, short jabs, probably working on new lyrics.
She’s still healing, but nobody explained how a woman like her is supposed to keep still when her career’s in question, her whole life history compressed into the scarring on her vocal cords.
She stares at the screen with a tight, razor-sharp focus, the kind of intensity that used to level Tristan to the ground when she was pissed. I always loved that about her. It’s different now. Like watching a lioness in a cage. She claws at the world, but it’s all glass and reflection.
I hover in the middle of the room because if I stand too close to the sliding door she’ll feel my shadow, and that makes her twitch. She hates the worry. Still, I’m not gonna let her spiral into whatever black hole she’s trying to write herself out of tonight.
The full moon hangs stupid-bright over the Atlantic, making everything cold and lit up and a little too vivid. The sand stretches in silver stripes all the way to the tide line, and the light highlights her silhouette in a way I’ve never seen it before—her hair in a high, haphazard bun, neck too thin, jaw set. She looks breakable from this angle. Never thought I’d use that word for her.
I crack open the sliding glass. “If you keep writing like that, we’ll never finish compiling the music to go along with your file of songs,” I tease, stepping out. The air is so sharp I can taste the salt on the breeze.
She glances at me and gives a one-shoulder shrug. She doesn’t talk much outside of the strictest therapy context, and when she does, her voice comes out rough, like it’s filtered through gravel. The doc said not to push, but I wish I could hear her say something to me. I miss the way she used to rip my heart out with just a laugh. I miss hearing her emotions in her voice, her passion. The tone of it doesn’t matter at all. I’d love her voice even if it sounded like a ninety-year-old lifetime smoker.
I plop onto the chair beside hers, stretch out my legs, and immediately start picking at the wood grain with my thumb. “You need a break,” I say. “You’re turning into one of those haunted house statues. Eyes that follow you around the room, scaring off all the potential boyfriends.”
She snorts, then goes right back to staring at her phone.
I have to up the ante. Bet. Challenge accepted.
I reach over to the table between us and grab the mug she’s barely touched. “Either you’re drinking lighter fluid or this is one of your new masochist herbal teas.”
She tips her head, a faint smile ghosting her lips. I notice how pale they are, how she’s been biting at them nonstop with nerves. I want to brighten her night; I’m just not sure how.
“Hang on,” I say, suddenly getting an idea. I jump to my feet, pretending I just remembered something crucial, and point my finger at her. “Don’t move. I mean it.”
She cocks an eyebrow, not moving at all. It’s as good as a yes.
Inside, I root through the front hall closet. When we first moved in, this place seemed more like a perfectly put together holiday beach house fit for a travel magazine than a lived-in home. At least that’s what I thought when I saw the brand new kite left forgotten on a shelf in here.
I snatch the package and hurry back, finding her where I left her, but now she’s watching me with that wary, amused look that says she’s expecting something only I can give her… something equal parts idiotic and brilliant.
I hold up the kite. “Therapeutic,” I announce. “Doctor’s orders. All geniuses need at least one pointless activity per day, or their brains melt. Something like that. I read it on the internet.”
She looks at the kite, then at me, and her mouth quirks again before staring up at the moon drenched, night sky. I know what she’s thinking. “Trust me, you don’t need the sun to enjoy flying a kite. Come on,” I coax, with what I hope is my most irresistible smirk. “Let’s see if we can get this thing into the air.”
I hold my hand out and lick at my lip ring, waiting to see what she’ll do. It’s honestly a gamble at this point; she’s as likely to brush me off and walk inside as she is to cave to my whims.
She hesitates, but stands, letting the blanket fall, and I see her shiver in the spring wind. I grab it and swing it around her shoulders, anchoring it like a cape. When my hands brush her skin, she flinches at the cold, but then she leans in like she needs the touch more than she wants to admit.
We cross the deck and pick our way down the sand dune. My boots are useless, and her sneakers get filled with sand instantly, but she doesn’t complain. The moon is so bright we’re able to walk easily without any other light.
At the shoreline, the wind picks up. I stop and survey the scene, holding the kite at arm’s length. “You ever flown one of these?” I ask.
She grimaces and shakes her head. It doesn’t surprise me, her parents didn’t seem like they spent much time with her outside of the church, and she didn’t get a childhood once she stepped under the spotlight of fame.
I grin and wiggle my eyebrows. “I’ll show you how it’s done by the masters.” I step upwind, wait for a gust, and toss the kite skyward. The first two tries, it nose-dives into the sand like a dead bird. On the third, the wind catches and it jerks upward, a blur of stripes against the night.
I play out the string, giving it a steady tension. “See, it’s all about the feedback loop,” I say, loud over the breeze. “You gotta know when to let go and when to hold tight. Like most relationships, honestly.”
She gives me a side-eye that could melt tungsten.
The wind shifts, and the kite pulls hard, a vibration traveling down the string as it holds tight. I hold out the spool to her. “Wanna try?”
She bites her lip for a moment, hesitation clear in the way she eyes it, then nods. I step behind her, close enough that my chest brushes her back, and guide her hands to the string. She’s got slender fingers, trembling a little from the cold or the effort of holding in whatever words are trapped in her head.
“Don’t fight it,” I say quietly, mouth right at her ear. “Just feel for the rhythm.”
