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“Oh, Nick.” She scolded him playfully. “You’ve got to earn the ending, rock star. All the bad stuff makes the good stuff sweeter.”
“That doesn’t mean I have to suffer through Scrooge being such a dick.”
She laughed. “That’s fair. But I think George Bailey and Rocky have a lot in common.”
“If you say so.”
Hayley realized she’d been pacing the porch. Phone conversations tended to get her moving; she needed an outlet for her energy when she wasn’t interacting with somebody in person. She’d been so focused on Nick that she couldn’t remember getting here from her chair. It would be impossible for him to find himself on the opposite side of a porch without thinking about it.
“So,” she said, willing that thought to go away, “how can I be of service, Mr. Freeman?”
“Oh.” He sounded embarrassed. “I can let you go if you’re busy.”
“No, no,” she said quickly. “I just assumed …”
“Since I’ve never actually called you before.”
“Well, yeah.” She grinned. “Which is weird, considering that flip phone of yours can’t do much else.”
“I don’t know how to break this to you, but the flip phone is no more.”
Her eyes widened, and then she was grinning from ear to ear. “No way.”
“Yes way. I upgraded, so you’ll have to find something else to make fun of me for.”
“You broke it, didn’t you?” She leaned on a porch rail. “You know those things only have so many flips in them.”
“Nope,” he said. “Just been doing a lot more texting lately.”
“Sounds like a pain in the ass.”
“Yeah, some woman won’t leave me alone.”
She laughed. “Nice of you to call her anyway.”
“Nice of you to listen.”
Something in his voice triggered an echo of an emotion. Hayley slowed her steps, then stopped completely as she tried to bring a pang of recognition into focus.
She remembered the last month or two at Icarus. Rushing into the building with coffee in one hand and her purse in theother as her castmates asked how it was going. Standing at the theater doors after a show, smiling wide for patrons who wanted to know how fun it must be to work there. Eating quick lunches with Kevin in between rehearsals, the two of them scarfing down sandwiches as he asked, “How’s the day looking, babe?” Over and over again, she’d wanted, then ached, then needed to say three words.
Ask me more.
Don’t let me get away. I can’t ask you for help, because I don’t know what I need. I can’t say I’m scared, because I can’t explain my fear. I can’t tell you about the dread I carry around like a weight settling in my chest, because I don’t know how to make it go away—but maybe if you dig deeper, I’ll be able to attach words to whatever’s wrong with me. Then the two of us can see it and name it and map its shape. But I can’t drag it into the light myself, so ask me again. Beg me to tell you more.
Nick wanted her to ask. Maybe he didn’t know it, or maybe he survived his pain by not giving it a second glance, but she felt it now, the same way she used to walk into her house after school and know instinctively when her parents were home. For the first time, Hayley had a chance to give something she so badly wanted to receive.
“My friend Denise told me about the book,” she said.
“About the high school girl.”
“Yep. We used to make a game out of finding cheap paperbacks at the used book store, and we’d trade them.”
“Did she send you this one?”
“Nope, just texted the title.”
A pause. “Do you miss her?”
