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“Okay, okay. Don’t cry.” She heads to the kitchen. “I’ll throw in some eggs and waffles.Ifyou ask Laurel for that song.”
Anything but that.
“I can’t.” I rise from the floor and follow her.
“Yes, you can.” Jelly whips around and points an accusing finger at me. “You don’t want to, but you can. Get us that song. Do whatever it takes.” She steps closer. “I want it. Ineedit. Do you have any idea how many times I’ve listened to that leaked video?” Another step, and Jelly’s feet are bumping my toes. I move back, but she doesn’t relent. “I’m probably half the views it accumulated so far. I even wrote out drum parts that would mesh better with our usual style, and I love the metal tint of the whole piece, and I can hear an entire album around it—” She grabs fistfuls of my shirt, pinching hard and all but pressing her nose against mine, which would be funny in any other case—Jelly is a great deal shorter than me. “Get. Us. That. Song.”
“Okay! Get off me!” I grab her by the waist and stick her on top of the only decorative thing she has in the entire apartment—a carved side cabinet that holds her vinyl records. “I’ll do it. I own half of the copyright, so it shouldn’t be too hard. Laurel was telling me to monopolize the song anyway.”
It will be impossible. How am I ever going to face her?
Jelly doesn’t care about the nightmare I’ll have to wade through. Beaming with excitement, she lets go of me and hops off the cabinet. “Fab! Now, how do you want your eggs?”
“I want sunny side up.” Towel draped around his neck, Link walks out of the hallway leading to the guest bathroom.
“Where the eff did you come from?” I ask, although the mess of the blankets on the couch makes sense now.
“I had a rough couple of days,” he explains, looking like death chewed on him then spat him out—sunken, raccoon eyes and grim pallor. “So I came by last night to hang out and cry, just like you—”
“I didn’t cry,” I tell him, then add for Jelly, “I want my eggs scrambled.”
“I eavesdropped without any shame,” Link goes on. “And I agree with Jelly. We need that song. As for the rest…” He dries his hair some more and makes me wait, of course.
I punch him in the shoulder.
Link chuckles. “You sound like you’re ready to take your head out of your backside. So as long as I don’t keel over from my misfiring brain, we’ll overcome and conquer.”
“Sounds good to me.” Sounds very good to me.
The doorbell rings. Jelly runs out of the kitchen, an apron accentuating her disheveled appearance, and lets Tristan in.
He hands her a fancy pink box of pastries. “Good morning.” Puzzled, he frowns at me and Link.
Jelly pops the box open and sticks an apple fritter into her mouth. “Now that’s how you come to visit the only girl who’ll listen to your crappy problems,” she says through a mouthful.
Link, Tristan, and I laugh at the top of our lungs. Tristan and I exchange a fist bump as we go to the kitchen to help Jelly, but mostly to eat.
“What’s on your mind today?” I ask him. There must be something bugging him if he’s here, with pastries no less.
He climbs upon a barstool by Jelly’s tiny breakfast nook and takes a contented look around. “Not much anymore.”
Track 35
Mischief Buddy
Laurel
I doze off in the afternoon. The escalating rush to get Dad ready for his shows wears me down to the point where I slump in an armchair in the living room and switch off. Two hours and a serious kink in my neck later, I wake up as if from hibernation, bewildered, my temples throbbing. I dreamed about Jace.
It hasn’t happened before. I must’ve been hanging by a tattered thread if my mind took me back to the night we played guitars at his house. In my dream, though, the mood was different. We touched. We kissed. My heart aches so bad from knowing I will never experience those things with him again that I believe I will die. My eyes pour tears as if an entire ocean has been pumped into my tear ducts, and I don’t understand why my lungs care to breathe at all. What’s the point?
Before someone can find me in this perishable state, I stash myself away in Uncle Soren’s closet. The familiar darkness claims me, deepening the darkness within my soul. I curl in on myself and break down at last, after weeks of keeping it together. Sobs ripple out of me, a choked sound I never knew I could make, not that I’ll ever make it again. This is the end of me. Life gushes out of me with all my tears.
I want Jace back. Out of sight, out of mind did nothing for me. Instead, the whole “absence makes the heart grow fonder” rooted in like the vilest of weeds. And I can’t even hope. Jace is the most stubborn person alive. He’s gone from my life.
What if I got angry at him? Would it help dilute my agony? He whispered me into falling in love with him.
I am available.
