Page 26 of Strum Me

Hey Si :) didn’t see you at Prom. Sorry I haven’t been answering your calls. I just needed time to think. I’m ready now. Really, really want to see you and talk. Can you come around tomorrow? Thanks, E x

It was sent at 2 a.m. After I’d made love to her, been inside her, fallen asleep naked next to her.

She’d been thinking of him the whole time.

I think I’m going to be sick.

“I…I gotta go,” I say, not specifically to Silas, just out loud. I stagger down the driveway, still carrying what was meant to be breakfast in bed.

“Hey, is that stuff for her?” Silas reminds me.

I walk back and shove it into his open hands. “Yeah. Um, yeah. Have at it. See ya ‘round, man. Have a nice life.”

Once inside my car, my head drops onto the steering wheel as I try to regain my breath. It had all meant nothing to her. Nothing. She’s been wanting Silas the whole time. Even sleeping with me was probably all part of a scheme to make him jealous.

I force myself to start the car and as I drive past, I see the front door open and Silas walk inside.

***

“Do you want the good news or the bad news?” our manager asks us as we all arrive at rehearsal a few days later.

“Good news, then stop!” Marius yells out.

“Okay, the good news is...” Dennis starts, drawing out each word, enjoying the looks on our faces. “The good news is you’re GOING ON TOUR!”

“What?” we all exclaim in unison, jumping out of our chairs.

“You’re going on your first-ever, full-on, blown-out, month-long tour,” Dennis announces, like he’s announcing the winner of a three hundred million dollar lottery.

“NO!” Marius yells and jumps onto Jez’s back, almost knocking him over.

“A TOUR!” I scream into Sebastian’s face and he pulls me into a huge man-hug. “Where? When?”

Dennis grins at us as he lays out the details. “All over France and Switzerland. Turns out they love your ugly mugs over there. I told you some of your songs from your EP have been getting some airplay? Well, they’ve organized an eighteen-stop tour starting in a month’s time. Here’s the bad news though: as soon as you guys can pack your bags I’m taking you to the studio my friends have in Cambridge to lay down some tracks and put in some rehearsal time. You’re gonna need to bone up on your live performances. These venues aren’t going to be like your high school gym.” Our stunned faces just stare back at him. “You stunned mullets in?”

My bandmates all yell “In!” in turn as Dennis asks them one by one.

When he gets to me, all I can say is, “Just tell me when we fucking leave.”

***

It’s a week after prom and I still haven’t heard a word from her. The guys have taken to hiding my phone whenever I’m with them, to stop me checking it every two minutes. And every time I mention her name, I know to expect a hard slap up the side of my head.

I don’t care. Couldn’t hurt worse than when I conjure up her face, and the thought that it seems like already she’s completely forgotten me. If I did mean something, anything at all, she’d have tried to reach out to me already. At least as friends. Because I thought we’d at least have that. The memory of being friends.

“You can’t do this to her,” Marius says walking me home after our last briefing from Dennis before we go.

I grab at a bird-eaten, low-hanging apple off the neighbor’s tree. “Do what?”

“Leave without saying anything. You guys have been friends for years.”

“She did it to me.” I fling the apple down the empty street with all my strength, watching it shatter when it hits the hot asphalt.

“Doesn’t mean it’s right. At least write her a note, man. Do it for you if not for her. You can’t leave it like this.”

“And say what? Give me my heart back, you nefarious bitch?” The last few words come out harsher than I expect, and I cringe, not wanting to feel this way, this anger, this resentment.

“Sure. That’s one idea, or… ‘I’m leaving, come with me?’?”