Page 191 of Love Felt Like This

He sticks out his tongue. I do the same. But very quickly, Rob, Nana, and Finch revert to worried expressions.

I throw my hands up. “Listen, I don’t know why breakfast is so depressing this morning. Today will be a good day. Are you two almost ready to leave?”

“Almost done with my toast,” Finch says.

Rob smirks. “Are you almost ready to spend the day with your ex?”

My cheeks flare with heat. “Griffin is not my ex.”

“Robert,” Nana chides. But Rob boastfully grabs an entire piece of toast and nearly swallows it whole.

Finch cringes. “Christ almighty. Chew, why don’t ya, kid.”

I toss the remainder of my coffee into the sink. I’m trying to get better about my caffeine intake. It turns out too much caffeine is a one-way ticket to the lonely island of anxiety. Though without coffee, now I’m just exhausted all the time. Working almost one hundred hours per week can do that.

Oh, and hearing the person you hopelessly fell in love with everywhere you go because he’s famous.

That’ll do it too.

Griffin and I text as much as we can. He sends me pictures of Ava in the driver’s seat of the tour bus, and a couple of times I got a spontaneous video call while he was onstage, showing my face to an arena of twenty thousand. There have been late-night texts and then texts once a day and then every other day and then I’m sorry I missed your call and I stayed late at the workshop and Our show ran late and—

We never talked about what it meant to put on the brakes. We didn’t have to. We both just knew.

He has a career that runs his life.

So do I.

I mean, what else is there to say?

We’re friends. Best friends. That’s all we can be.

I love him, but what is that worth if we can’t find any time together?

So today, I will be seeing my best friend, Griffin Harvey, on the set of Birds on the Block. It will be my first time seeing him—not in blurry videos or in tour pictures taken by one of the guys but in person—since March.

And I’m absolutely terrified.

Rob and I make our way to the foyer, put on shoes, and gather our bags. When he rushes back to his room because he left his phone, Nana lays a hand on my forearm, stopping me in place.

“You’ll be all right?” she whispers.

I smile. “Of course. We’re still friends. It’s not like he’s a stranger. I see him all the time. In a way.”

Rob sometimes pulls up compilation videos taken from his tour, and I shamelessly stare at Griffin for the entire set.

Stranger, he is not.

He looks good. He always looked good, though. He’s bulkier now. I bet he’s been working out more. His hair is a little longer, too, but just as wild and gorgeous as ever. And I now understand why people describe his concerts as a religious experience.

Griffin’s only emotion onstage is passion: arching as he belts into the microphone, as his hands pound across the guitar strings, as he presses his forehead against the microphone stand afterward, like the song was ripped from his chest. He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t laugh. He’s pure talent.

Occasionally, rarely, I’ll see a glimpse of the Griffin I knew. In a backstage featurette, he was asked if he still composed songs for Birds on the Block, and if his album, Bird in Hand, was a dedication to the revived children’s show. With the smallest twitch in the corner of his mouth, he simply answered, No.

That interview went absolutely viral.

What did the smile mean?

What’s going on with Birds?