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“Yeah? And how’s that coming along?”
Lennon nodded, a small smile lighting up her gorgeous face. “Really good actually. I feel like it’s turning into something now,” she replied, then laughed. “I mean, it was alwayssomething, but I wasn’t totally sure I knew what I was doing. But it’s coming together … I hope.”
She gave me something genuine, and I nodded, understanding I needed to give her something in return.
“I actually really get that,” I said with a sigh. “This album is … it’s got a lot of potential, and I know it could be something really fuckin’ solid. But …” I pulled in a deep breath and tapped my fingers against the counter. “It’s not quite there.”
She had told me once, during one of the last times we’d spoken, that she loved hearing about the behind-the-scenes shit. And I found it was nice to have someone else to tell other than Mom and Dad.
Come to think of it, I just liked talking to her, period. And why I didn’t do it more often, I didn’t really know.
“It’ll get there,” she replied, like she knew what she was talking about.
“I’m kinda starting to worry that it won’t,” I admitted with a humorless laugh. “I was actually thinking earlier that maybe I’m just done. Maybe … I dunno … I lost it or somethin’.”
With her dark red lenses, I could barely see her eyes. But from the tense line of her lips, I took it that she wasn’t amused by my inner monologue.
“What’s that look for?” I asked, leaning in to bump my arm against hers.
“You’re an idiot,” she said, point-blank.
“And how do you figure?”
She shook her head, turning away. “Because you can’t lose a gift like that,” she stated. “It doesn’t just go away.”
“Maybe it can be knocked out of you after you wrap your car around a utility pole,” I offered with a nonchalant shrug.
The sharp inhale through her nose was audible as Scott, wide-eyed and jaw clenched, quietly handed our drinks to us.
“Thanks,” Lennon and I said in unison, the duet of our combined voices surprising us both.
She looked at me, and I looked at her, as if challenging the other in a duel of … what, I don’t know. Then, after a few frozen moments, we turned warily from each other and headed deeper into the jungle of shelves and books.
“You let it control you too much,” she finally said after a quiet ten minutes of aimless browsing.
“What?”
“Your accident.”
I stopped walking as the air in the bookstore rose to a balmy three hundred degrees. My fists clenched in an automatic response while a limb that was no longer there began to ache and throb. I wanted to reach down and grab a hold of it, squeeze and stop the burn that coiled upward and into the jagged, puckered scar left behind.
Who the hell does she think she is?
My head shook as I spat out, “You have no—”
“I’m not criticizing,” she interrupted, unperturbed by the anger I was plainly throwing out there in her direction.
“Then, what exactly is it you’re trying to do by saying some shit like that?” I asked, too aware now of the mechanical leg I stood upon.
“I’m saying it because …” She sighed and ripped her sunglasses off to rub her fingertips against her pinched eyelids. “Because you are so much more than what you’re missing,” she rushed to say before shoving the glasses back on. “And yet you can’t look beyond it. It’s like you’ve let it become your entire identity instead of just adding it to your list of characteristics.”
My nostrils flared as I tried to remember why I had thought it’d be a good idea to see her, only to be ridiculed. All I had wanted was to find a book to read when I should be writing a song about a woman who infuriated and fascinated me. Why the hell would I want to be friends with her, let alone anything else? The guys wouldn’t dare say this shit to me, so why the hell did she think she had the right to open her fucking mouth?
I turned, my hand clenched tightly around the cup of chai I’d lost all desire to drink, and headed toward the door.
“Did you ever think that’s why you’re having such a hard time with this album?” she asked, following behind me.
“The hell it is,” I grunted, brushing past a display of books and nearly knocking it over.
