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“Play it for the pub, please,” Jack says.
It takes me a moment to understand what he’s said. As soon as I do, I realize the song I’ve been playing is the one I let Jack listen to last night.
“Please?” he says again.
I’m so overwhelmed—by the way he asks, by having my guitar again—that I don’t hesitate. “Okay.”
Jack’s eyebrows raise in surprise. “Really? You mean it? You’re sure.”
“I’m sure.” And in this moment, I am.
Jack doesn’t say anything else, so I keep on strumming. It feels so good, so so good to have this guitar in my hands, to finally feel likemyselfagain, that after a few minutes I have to set the guitar down because I start crying so hard I can’t play.
“Is something wrong with it?” Jack, who has been quietly watching, asks.
He sits beside me on the couch, and I turn my face away to wipe at my eyes with the sleeve of his hoodie. “No, it’s... perfect. I’m happy. These are happy tears.” I try to hold them back, because I must seem like an absolute disaster human after all the crying I’ve done in the last twenty-four hours. “Thank you, Jack. You have no idea...” But then the tears threaten to overwhelm me again, and I can’t finish my sentence. I get to my feet, needing to put some space between us before I say or do anything else embarrassing.
I set the guitar in its case and run my fingers over the strings, hesitant to close the lid. I never want this guitar out of my sight again. “I’m sorry,” I say. “God, I’ve cried, like, what? Three times in the last forty-eight hours?”
“There’s nothing wrong with that.”
I feel his hand on my arm but don’t turn to face him. “Don’t look at me. I’m a mess,” I say.
“You’re not a mess.”
I laugh. “How can you say that? Look at me!”
“I thought you didn’t want me to look at you.”
I cover my face with my hands. “Oh, you know what I mean,” I mumble.
Jack takes me by the shoulders, and I don’t fight it when he turnsme around. “You’re not a mess,” he says, and gently pulls my hands from my face.
I can’t meet his gaze, so I look away, eyes landing on the gallery wall. All those beautiful drawings. I’ve spent a lot of time looking at them over the last few weeks. Not all of the subjects are beautiful—but the drawings... they always are. I’m not sure how he does it. How does he turn everything into something beautiful?
I want to believe what Jack says about me, but it doesn’t fit with what I know. I think of all the times I’ve been told to be quiet, to calm down, to stop being so sensitive, to act my age. I think of all the times I’ve tried to be like everyone else and failed. I look down at my hands and notice I’ve picked a loose thread on the cuff of his sweater into an unsightly snag. I let go of the thread with a sigh and tug the sleeves over my hands so I can’t do any more damage.
“It’s okay,” I say. “It’s not personal or anything. I know who I am. I’m a mess. I overreact, even to good things. I’m too sensitive.”
“You feel a lot. Why is that a bad thing?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I just know that it is. I just know I’m too much.”
“Raine, look at me.”
I shake my head, eyes on my hands hidden in the sleeves of his sweater.
“Ciaróg.” He takes my face in his hands. The quiet between us is something tangible, as deliberate and meaningful as a rest in music.
His eyes roam my face before meeting mine again, and the way he looks at me makes my chest ache. He wipes the tears from beneath my eyes, then cradles my face in his hands. “How can you think you’re too much, when I can’t get enough of you?”
That’s the look, I think. The one I’ve always wanted. He looks at me as if I’m his favorite person.Me, this crying mess of a human being. “Jack...”
“Hmm?”
“What is happening between us?”
He pauses for a moment before answering. When he lets go of my face and leans away, all of me is waiting for what he’ll say next.
