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“Yeah,” he replied with a nod as he began to softly strum the guitar. “They’ve done a lot of nice shit for me. Probably more than most parents do for their kids.”
“Our parents have that in common,” I said, thinking about everything my own had done for me over the years.
“They do,” he agreed. Then, he added, “I’m going to get my own place when I get back though.”
“Wow,” I said as he played the chords of a song I knew and loved. What a surreal moment—to be sitting across from him in his house while he played it. “Where are you gonna go?”
“I’ll stay local,” he said, almost as a promise. “But my parents wanna get out of here. They’re too old and tired to maintain a house this big on their own, and they just don’t wanna do it anymore. They won’t let me hire someone to help, so …” He shrugged. “I’m leaving the nest. Again.”
There was something Dylan didn’t know, and with the topic shifted toward moving out, now seemed as good a time as any to tell him.
“I moved in with Peter,” I confessed in a rush, just to get the words out.
He stopped playing abruptly. “Yeah?” he asked, already skirting the edge of anger. “And how’s that going for you?”
Every time I spoke to Tarryn, my parents, or my brother in the two weeks since I’d moved in, I was asked that question. And every time I answered, I said it was great, we were happy, and things were going fine.
But with Dylan, I wanted to be honest.
“It’s an adjustment,” I admitted with a melancholy shrug. “It sucks, just sitting at home alone all day, so I have my mom pick me up. And Peter is really set in his ways, so trying to adapt to living with someone else is difficult for him, I guess,” I told him. “I’ve been working on my second book though. So, that’s keeping me busy at least.”
Dylan grunted a sour reply before changing the subject completely. “How’s the publishing thing going?”
“Um, not so great,” I said, laughing at the shambles my life was suddenly in. “I didn’t realize how expensive self-publishing would be. I mean, I knew it’d cost something since I’m taking everything on myself, and it’s what I want to do, but, my God, it costs a lot of friggin’ money.”
“Lennon.” Dylan scoffed a little, shaking his head. “I have money—you realize that, right? Just tell me how much, and it’s yours.”
The offer brought me pause as I blinked away the shock, then pressed my eyes shut. “No. Dylan, I can’t … I can’t accept that. We’d be talking several thousand dollars at least, and I-I can’t let you—”
“It wasn’t a question,” he cut me off. “I’ll give you the money. And if you don’t want to accept it as a gift, then consider it a loan. Pay me back after you make your millions.”
My hands clenched on my lap as I narrowed my eyes at him and his generosity. “And what if I never do? What if I never make enough money to pay you back?”
Dylan shrugged, lightly tapping his hand against the body of the guitar. “Then, it’s my choice to make that gamble,” he replied casually, as if thousands of dollars were nothing more than a drop in the bucket.
But for him, I guessed it was.
In disbelief, I shook my head as I said, “I just don’t understand why you’d want to do this for me.”
“Because you’re my friend,” he said, saying that word too easily. More easily than I ever could. “And because my parents took the same kind of gamble on me. Instead of sending me to college, they took the little bit of money they had saved and spent it on recording our first EP. It might have gone nowhere, but that’s not what happened, and I paid them back as soon as I could. Now, I want to pay it forward by doing the same for you. All you have to do is tell me how much.”
It was obvious he wouldn't take no for an answer, and all I could do was thank him quietly while pretending to pick at a fleck of lint on my shirt.
Dylan resumed his strumming, a different song now. One I didn't recognize. It was beautiful and bittersweet, inspiring the same type of feeling a kid got when lying in bed on Christmas night, when Santa was long gone and the presents had all been opened. My chest was heavy with an ache I hardly recognized as I listened, and when he began to sing, my throat tightened around the emotion.
“And when you’re alone and he’s no longer home and I’m thirty-five hundred miles away,” he sang softly, “I hope you’ll think of me, and all of the chances you foolishly threw away.”
Those lyrics … it didn’t take a genius to know what—orwho—they were about, and the ache in my heart was split with a surge of anger. From where I sat across the small room, I couldn't see his expression, nor could I tell if he was even looking at me. But I felt his stare, spearing violently through my chest to my bleeding soul.
“Dylan,” I warned, speaking around the clot of pain and sadness lodged in my throat.
He was supposed to stop. He wassupposedto hear the plea in my voice, and he was supposed to knock it off.
But he ignored me and continued to sing, “Because I could love you better than him, I could love you more than he will. And when you come back to me…”
My eyes glazed with a coating of hot, wet tears and the urgency to dosomething. But all I could think to do was stand, springing onto legs made of rubber.
“I need to leave,” I announced abruptly.
