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“I guess I wear it as a badge of honor, don’t I?”
“Little bit,” he said with a laugh, looking down at the floor and back up at me.
“It was hard to choose…. I tried to make some other songs work, but this one seemed to work best.”
“I can see why you chose one of his early songs.”
“What do you mean?”
“Not sure that “Gett Off” or “Sexy Mother Fucker” would have gone over so well with this audience.”
“True,” I said, narrowing my eyes and holding back a laugh. “I guess I’ll reserve those for my underground sessions.”
“Exactly.” He smiled at me, and then his expression changed. He looked conflicted, pained, and I couldn’t figure out what might have caused the shift. “I should, uh…I should go.”
“Oh.”
“Unless…” he said, under his breath.
“Yes?”
“Unless you’d let me walk you home. I know you need your space right now, but it’s late and—”
“That would be nice,” I said. “I just need to change. Can you wait out here for me? I’ll just be a minute.”
“Sure.”
“Great,” I said, biting down on my lip.
“Hey, guys,” Marissa said as she approached. Wyatt and I both greeted her, and she joined me as I walked to the stage door.
“Pretty flowers,” she said, giving me an enthusiastic grin. “It’s nice that Wyatt came tonight.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, I hope it’s okay that I gave him all the details and stuff.”
“Well, sure. He wanted to see you perform.”
Marissa stopped dead in her tracks. “Girl, you’re crazy if you think he’s here for me.”
“What? But you two are—”
“Friends. Just friends. We trade comic books and hang out sometimes at the dorm. But he made it clear to me a very long time ago that friends is all we would be.”
“Wait. Why?”
“I promised I wouldn’t say anything,” she said with a pensive stare. “And I’m going to keep that promise. But I will tell you this. It was the night we ran into you at the video store.”
Nervously, I wet my dry lips. “Really? What do you mean?”
Marissa’s lips curled into a playful smile. “You’re a smart girl; you’ll figure it out.”
A warm glow flowed through me as I let her words sink in. I felt like I was floating on a cloud as I changed my clothes, retouched my make-up, and fixed my hair, my heart pounding just as hard as when we first took the stage.
Nothing could do that to me but singing…and Wyatt.
As I glanced in the mirror one last time, I took a deep breath, knowing that I was ready to let the past stay there. I was finally ready to be vulnerable again.
