AllFreeNovel
Share Us
All I could do was not be a part of it.
“I’m gonna go get some coffee,” I said, making my way to the kitchen to grab one of the many cups Shale had brought with her.
I didn’t want to listen to Junior dissect Lexy’s life. For some reason, I didn’t want to know details that she herself didn’t want to tell me.
Did it seem like Lexy was closed off and hard to get to know? Yeah, for sure. Somehow, though, that only made me all the more interested in having her tell me shit herself. There was something to be said for being trusted like that.
I mean, if I ever even saw the woman again, that is, I reminded myself as I quickly slipped past everyone to go back to my room.
I had a list of songs burning a hole in my pocket.
After popping another few ibuprofen to keep my headache at bay, I sat in bed drinking my coffee and listening.
And, for once, hearing.
And, most interesting of all, feeling.
She’d been right.
About how hard it was to open up to people.
And how cathartic it was to hear your own thoughts and feelings in someone else’s voice.
It made you feel understood and seen.
It made you not feel so alone.
By the time I was done, I found myself adding her number to my phone, then shooting her a text, begging for more recs.
I didn’t know if I expected her to respond.
But she did.
Almost immediately.
With a whole new list of songs to fall into.
Later, I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep that night.
And for the first time in a long time, I was glad to wake up, to get up, to get moving, and—perhaps most of all—to give Lexy my thoughts like she’d demanded when she’d sent me the list.
I wasn’t going to pretend to understand what had changed, why there were suddenly cracks of light in my dark world.
I was just going to fucking enjoy it while it lasted.
CHAPTER SIX
Lexy
“Let it drop,” I grumbled as I picked apart a bagel and put tiny bites into my mouth. So far, so good. The food was staying down, and, little by little, the rolling in my stomach was settling.
“You looked super cozy on that couch, that’s all I’m saying,” Lottie said as she gathered her long hair in one hand, then pinned it back with a claw clip that immediately started to sag with the weight of her heavy hair.
I had hair just like hers. Thick and heavy and often hard to contain. Which was why I’d chopped so much of mine off last year. Best decision of my life.
Lexy had crashed on the other side of my bed the night before, refusing to leave me alone in case I might need her.
I tried to insist that I was fine. And, objectively, I was. Sure, I was dealing with the symptoms of the concussion, but I knew that was going to be for the long haul, so I was trying not to get too upset about it.
The thing was, I didn’t want her to go.
There was no one in the world I was okay feeling like I relied on. Except for my sister. Maybe that was only because she relied so heavily on me that it felt like a fair exchange. Or it could just be that she was the only person I’d ever met who could put up with my often surly ass without getting annoyed by it.
“You can fool everyone else, Lex,” she’d say, “but I know there’s a gooey caramel center under that hard candy shell.”
Sometimes I worried she was right about that, about other people finding that out.
Because, I mean, it wasn’t really possible for someone to be so into music without having lots of big feelings inside. If you didn’t have those emotions, you wouldn’t be able to appreciate what the artists were putting out there for the world to hear.
That was probably why I loved my job and the people there so much. Because we were all cut from the same cloth. We got one another without having to open up.
I could pass Andrew a new track I’d heard, and he could listen and understand what was going on with me without me having to say it.
Music was a form of communication.
And the only one I felt comfortable with.
When the text from Finn had come through the night before, I’d been half-asleep and glad for it because that meant the migraine was finally loosening its grip on me.
Still, I’d shot up in bed, and tiptoed out of my bedroom and downstairs to look through my shelves to send him another, longer, list of songs I thought he would relate to.
I didn’t know the guy.
And, yet, somehow, I did.
Because I’d been down in that hole in the past.
I understood the way depression acted like your own personal dark cloud overhead, dimming everything in your life, but you couldn’t make it go away. And you didn’t know how to explain to people around you who were basking in never-ending sunlight what it felt like to never feel those rays on your skin.
