Page 83 of Smoke and Glitter

Do you want me?

My chest goes tight. I had an answer. I still let her walk out without it.

"Christ."

Bex stays quiet.

Since she left, I've been carrying around this stupid fucking grievance that Autumn had nine days and never came through the door. I've been telling myself she knew where I was, that she could've sat at the end of the bar and made me deal with her one more time.

She already had.

She walked back into Vibes after hearing me reduce months of us to something casual and easy. She went upstairs with me, stood in my apartment and asked me directly for what she needed.

Then I told her I couldn't do it. I drag both hands over my face.

"And after that I sent her a text about the tour."

Bex makes a sound somewhere between a sigh and a curse.

"Fuck."

This time neither of us says anything for a while.

The club keeps moving outside the office. Somebody opens a bottle. A laugh cuts through the music. Five minutes ago all of that felt like something I needed to deal with.

I keep seeing Autumn upstairs with her coat on, giving me the chance to say something different to her face. I didn't.

Chapter fourteen

Chapter Fourteen

Autumn

The reporter has been talking about the album for twelve minutes, which means he's almost ready to ask the question he came for. Nix knows it too. She's sitting across from him with one ankle tucked behind the other, water untouched on the table beside her. Six hours ago she would've glanced toward me by now. Nothing obvious, just enough to make sure I was still in the chair off to her left before she walked into whatever came next.

She hasn't looked at me once.

The reporter closes the notebook resting on his knee but leaves the recorder running.

"There are people who think you've spent a lot of time talking about how young you were and not enough talking about the person you hurt. Do you think that's fair?"

Nix's fingers tighten briefly around the arm of the chair.

I keep my pen against the page.

We've done this question in three different forms. She has an answer for it. There are phrases we spent half an afternoon getting right because one sounded defensive and another sounded like a lawyer wrote it. Nix doesn't use any of them.

"I think I've been angry about being asked to answer for something I said at nineteen for so long that sometimes I forget there's a reason people keep asking."

The reporter leans forward slightly.

Nix takes a breath and keeps going.

"What I said was shitty. I hurt somebody, and being nineteen doesn't make that less true. I also don't think anybody should have to spend the rest of their career pretending the worst thing they said as a teenager is the only true thing about them." She shifts in the chair, but her eyes stay on his. "I have to own what I said without letting it own everything I've done since."

My pen stops.

That's better. It isn't cleaner, but it sounds like her.