Page 70 of Play The Game

“Why haven’t you? I know you’re still fussing with our song, but the rest have been done for months.”

Fuck it, I climb into his lap. He groans in frustration when he can barely hold me, and I do my best to avoid pressing on any raw patches.

“I’m thinking about leaving my label. Don’t tell anyone that, not even Ash. He’ll have a fucking aneurysm at me over it. But they keep interfering and I’m just… I write and play to get shit out of my head. Because I love that I can turn that darkness and mess into something that’s my design, that I can hand off to someone else. The band’s agent wants me to clean up the lyrics and go more mainstream. He didn’t like the new songs, he said they’re too raw.”

I frown at him and say, “Fuck him. The entire album is amazing. They’re the best songs you’ve written so far. I should know; I’ve heard them all.”

He quirks an eyebrow at me, playful again. “You haven’t though, have you? You never did open my present.”

Fuck. I hadn’t.

I shake my head and he smiles at me. He cups my face gently, pushing my hair away from my face and kissing me sweetly.

“I was so pissed that day. I’d put my fucking heart in that box and you wouldn’t open it. I can’t blame you, I’d been such a fucking dick to you, but I had put myself out there and hoped you’d see it… see me. It doesn’t matter, Star, I have you now. My little muse. My sweet nightingale, pretty and sings so sweet.”

He starts to ramble, my crush only getting worse as he begins to describe all of his favorite parts of me, most of them naked body parts, but some of them immensely more intimate, like the scar from the bullet of Diarmuid’s gun, and the soft patch of skin on my shoulder they all seem to be obsessed with.

I wait until Avery heads to ballet the next afternoon before I dig out the package Blaise sent me last year, untouched and hidden in my duffle bag stashed under my bed. I’d been tempted so many times over the summer break but it was like Schrodinger’s box. What if I opened it and it was just candy, something small and meaningless? Or, more terrifyingly, what if it wasn’t?

Now I know it’s his heart, I have to see what it is.

I use my knife to slice the tape open and my hands shake as I lift the lid. I find a notebook and an iPod older than the one we now share.

I grab the notebook first and find poems, lyrics, stories, etchings in the margins and gold ink accents everywhere. The lyrics are all of his new songs, things he’s written in the last two years, but they’re all just a little different from the polished versions he’s given me to listen to. I read the entire notebook, cover to cover, in disbelief.

It’s about me.

The whole thing is a love story about me.

The drawings are of my hands, the scars on my leg, the dark shadows of my eyelashes on my cheeks.

The plump curve of my lips.

The songs have my name in them, over and over again, the longing and worship on Harley’s face is reflected in the melodies of Blaise’s songs. I can’t breathe to read them, my lungs squeezing tight until I feel dizzy.

Thank fuck I didn’t open it last year.

I would have had a stroke and died.

When I finally move away from the notebook, every word and image seared into my brain for all of time, I turn the iPod on to find it full of every single Vanth Falling song, even the covers Blaise recorded and released before he was famous. There are songs I hadn’t ever heard him sing so I know they’ve never been made public because I followed his every move online back when I lived in the Bay.

Fuck.

It’s every little piece of him I’ve always wanted, and I’ve been hiding it under my bed for months.

TWENTY-ONE

Avery is fussing with her already perfect hair, and I’m busy trying to figure out why the fuck we’re being forced to a ‘Formal Family Dinner’ at Hannaford if none of us have family attending, when a booming knock sounds at the door, like there’s a battery ram here for a siege.

I frown, motioning for Avery to stay in the bathroom, and move to open it.

Illi and Odie grin down at me.

Holy Jesus, this cannot end well.

“Le Loup, I am so happy to see you! When Johnny told me he was coming up to visit, I insisted on coming too! He said you’re the top of all your classes, that’s incredible! Oh, I’ve missed you,” Odie gushes in French, wiping at her eyes delicately.

She smiles sheepishly at me and I sigh, holding my arms out so she can hug me. She doesn’t realize I’ve had my family slowly teaching me to be normal, to tolerate all of the touches that happen between friends, and her eyes widen a little before she gives me a quick but warm squeeze.