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“What kind of music do you listen to?”
“Heavy stuff. Melvins. Tool.”
“Yeah, what I play is not that. Mostly, I’ve been writing songs for a girl.”
“A girl.” I popped another beer and handed it over. “Now I really feel bad that you can’t get drunk.”
“Amen,” he said, and we clinked beer bottles. Thanks to his diabetes, Miller was stuck with a two-beer maximum.
“What’s the story?” I asked.
“You’ll just call me a pussy, tell me to fuck someone else and to get over it.”
“Yeah, maybe I will.”
He laughed but it collapsed into a sigh. “It’s hopeless, is what it is. She’s perfect and rich, and I’m a poor bastard without a working pancreas.”
I snorted a laugh.
“Her name is Violet,” Miller said, his eyes on the fire. “When I was thirteen, I passed out in her backyard, pissed myself, and woke up in the hospital to see her sitting there, looking like a mess. Crying over me. Because she cared, you know?”
I didn’t know. I’d never had a girl cry over me. Couldn’t imagine it.
“That was the moment I knew she was it for me. Always.” Miller’s voice turned bitter. “And the same day we swore a blood oath to stay friends. Violet’s idea.” He took off his beanie and ran a hand through his brown hair. “So there you go.”
“Yep. You need to fuck someone else and get over it.”
I was going to stay out of his business like he’d stayed out of mine, but I remembered all the times my mother was ready to take me and get the hell away from Dad and never did. And then one day, it was too late.
“Nah, that’s bullshit,” I said. “You need to tell her.”
Miller frowned. “She’s hellbent on us being friends. She thinks it’d ruin us if we tried to be more.”
“So? Tell her anyway.”
“I can’t. She’d shoot me down, and things would never be the same. Though, I guess they’re pretty fucked already.”
“So don’t talk to her,” I said. “Just…I don’t know. Kiss her.”
Shiloh’s perfect lips rose in my mind. I took a sip a beer to wash the imagined taste of her out of my mouth.
“No way,” Miller said.
“Why the hell not?”
He made a sour face. “Uh, fucking boundaries, for one thing. She’s told me how she feels, explicitly. Friends. I have to honor that.”
I snorted and finished off my beer.
“What can I do?” Miller asked miserably. “I told you, we swore a blood oath.”
“When you were kids. Does she suspect you like her?”
“Not exactly.”
“Where is she now?”
“I don’t know.” Miller kicked at the sand at his feet. “There’s a party tonight. She’ll be there.”
