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As she catches it, her face drains of color. “Um, I’m not going to sing for you.” She chucks the microphone at him. Instead of catching it, Sage skitters out of the way and it ends up crashing against the symbols.
All three of us stare at it as it threatens to topple over.
He rips his focus off the vibrating metal. “Why not?”
Lyric glances at me for help, but I have no idea what to say to her. I’ve never heard her sing. Hell, she barely lets me hear her play the guitar and she rocks at that. But I know she does it all, sings, plays, writes lyrics.
“I’d really like to hear the answer myself,” I tell her, shifting the guitar off my lap. “Because I’ve been really curious for a while.”
She glares at me, and I shrink back. “I already told you I have stage fright.”
Right. She has told me that. Maybe I’m higher than I thought.
Sage flicks his hand at her, waving her off. “That is totally curable.”
Lyric crosses her legs, and her gaze glides across Sage’s facial piercings. “And what’s your cure? Should I dye my hair and pierce my skin to make me believe I’m a true rock star?”
Sage points at his chest. “I’m not a rock star. I can’t sing at all, but I can play the drums like a badass.”
Lyric folds her arms across her chest with a sway of attitude in her body. “So can I.”
I catch Sage peeking at her cleavage popping out of her shirt. That’s when I realize the S word he was about to drop when Lyric walked in was probably sexy. It pisses me off, and my reaction is surprising as shit.
But Lyric isn’t sexy. She’s fun, ridiculously happy, effortlessly beautiful, life-saving, and mind-blowingly amazing. Sexy doesn’t even begin to sum her up.
“Yeah, but our band doesn’t need a drummer.” He scoops up the microphone from the floor and presents it to her like it’s a bouquet. “We need a singer.”
Lyric folds her fingers around the mic as she takes it from him. “I can’t. I’ll seriously throw up if I even try.”
He holds up a finger as a slow grin curves at his lips. “I have an idea for that.”
When he disappears through a door at the back of the room, I say to Lyric, “You don’t have to do it. Sage just gets crazy about this stuff. He lives and breathes music and thinks everyone should do the same.”
“I live and breathe music, too,” Lyric reminds me, anxiously chewing on her bottom lip. “I just can’t do it in public... You really think he’s got some magical cure for stage fright?”
I line my fingers against the guitar strings and strum a chord. “Probably not. But if he does come out with a brownie, please don’t eat it.”
“I won’t, but I think I might be a little bit high already.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
A nervous giggle escapes her lips then she relaxes back on the sofa and kicks up her feet on the stool. “So, can I ask you something?”
My fingers tense and I miss the next chord. “I guess so.”
“It’s about the other night … about the … kiss.” She pauses, and an enormous lump wedges in my throat. “I think it might be the weed talking, because I promised myself I wasn’t going to bring it up, but now I suddenly feel like I need to.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. I still have my head down so she can’t see my face. Thank God, or otherwise, who the hell knows what she would see.
“I just wanted to make you feel better about that asshole stealing your first kiss,” I say, messing around with the knob on the bottom of the guitar. “It was the only thing I could think of to do.”
Liar.
In the darkness.
You are.
The biggest.
Liar I’ve ever seen.
Pretend it doesn’t exist.
Like everything else inside you.
She cracks her knuckles. “So it was just a friend kiss, then? Because Maggie has a theory that our friendship might have blossomed into love.” She laughs like she thinks the idea is funny.
Me, I find it terrifying.
Love.
The word souls burn for.
People die for.
Live for.
Breathe for.
But for me, it’s simply poetry, lyrics, an emotion I’ll never understand.
Can’t.
I swallow hard and force my voice to be equally as light. “Yeah, of course. And I really think you should stop listening to Maggie. It’s what started the whole thing with William to begin with.”
“Hey.” She cups my chin and forces me to look up at her. “I’m totally cool with you kissing me to cheer me up, just as long as we stay friends. I never want anything to get weird between us.”
“Of course.” I bob my head up and down. “I want the same thing.”
“Good.” She smiles as she reclines back in the seat.
The scatteredness in my head begins to clear. This was my problem—it had to be. I was so worried I’d lose her as a friend that it fucked with my head. Thank God, I’m cured.
“You and I”—she points back and forth between us—“we’re going to be one of those people who are still friends when we’re super old, like our parents.” A laugh bubbles from my lips and her smile expands. “You know, I always feel so special whenever I get you to smile. Like I discovered some sort of rare gem.”
I want to kiss her right there, eternally seal my lips to hers.
Okay, maybe I’m not cured.
Maybe I can’t be cured.
Of anything.
“You’re special, Lyric. You should know that by now.”
“So are you.” She pats my leg then rises to her feet when Sage strolls back into the room.
“So, what’s your huge plan to cure me?” she asks him.
He holds up a brownie in his hand. “This will cure all your stage fright.” He draws and X over his heart and winks at her. “I promise.”
Shaking my head, I set my guitar down and rise to my feet. “No way.” I push Sage’s hand back. “How about I blow off practice and we do something fun,” I suggest to Lyric. “Nolan isn’t even here anyway.”
“He’s always late,” Sage intervenes, munching on the brownie. “He’ll show up in like ten minutes or so.”
“I was kind of hoping coming here would cure me of my stage fright.” Lyric stares at me with hope in her eyes. “I don’t know why, but I thought it would help somehow, like maybe being around you and seeing how much fun you guys have when you play would force me to conquer my fear.”
I rub my jawline, trying to conjure up an idea. I remember when I was afraid of the dark, how I used to cover my ears and shut my eyes to block out my surroundings. It didn’t cure me, but it got me through the night. Now I use music and that silly nightlight Lyric gave me forever ago.
“I have an idea,” I say, my voice unsteady from a memory long forgotten of me as a small boy begging to be let free. “But it might be a little weird.”
She smiles excitedly. “Lay it on me. Whatever it is, I trust you, Ayden.”
Her words crash into my heart, more than in a just-friends way. I wonder just how much of a lie I told her when I said that it was just a friend kiss. It doesn’t matter, though. Lyric is the sunshine in my world. She keeps me going when things get really dark. I’m not even ready for a relationship. I can barely handle myself right now, even something as simple as kissing her sent me into panic attack after panic attack.
I suddenly realize something makes my scars throb, that I’m not ready to handle the emotions clipping their way to the surface. That even though I have a new life, the cuffs and chains are still there, trying to pull me down into the darkness of memories, begging to haunt me. Of myself. My brother. My sister.
What was done to me? Stuff I can’t even remember, but can somehow still feel the fear connected to the experiences.
And I’m not sure if I’ll ever fully be able to escape them.
