“So, we’ve spent this entire time talking about me. Your turn. Tell me something about you.”
Me? What’s to tell? “I wear a size eight shoe.” Gah, that was lame. Now I’m thankful for the cold. Otherwise my cheeks would ignite, turn my skin to ash.
“While I appreciate that imperative piece of information, it’s not quite what I had in mind. Try again, this time make it real.”
Real?
Real.
I’ve never spent much time trying to get to know myself. I’d actually avoid myself, if it were physically possible. Except, there is this one thing . . . “I love music.” My heart contracts. I miss music. “Singing actually, though I do play a couple instruments. It’s kind of like my outlet. My way of expressing emotion? When I’m sad or lonely or scared, and I find the perfect piece to describe that feeling, it’s like the artist climbed inside my head and wrote the song for me. Or when I don’t know what to say, I sometimes find it easier to reference a particular lyric.” I twist the hem of my shirt. This is the most anyone has talked. Ever. “Dumb, huh?” I tuck a stray hair behind my ear. My right leg jiggles. Stop fidgeting, will you?
“You are many things, Ember, but dumb is not one of them.” Ky slouches against the bench. Tilts his head back. Closes his eyes. “Sing to me,” he croons.
My heart stops beating. Literally. His reference to one of my favorite songs ever catches me so completely off guard, gives me déjà vu like he wouldn’t believe.
“Well?” He taps his toe.
“What, you mean now?” Breathe in, breath out. Let it go.
“I’m sorry, was there another time you had in mind?”
He’s so infuriatingly sarcastic, it’s almost endearing. “What do you want to hear?”
“Singer’s choice.”
Out of habit I begin humming the melody to one of Joshua’s favorites, one we played often during our afternoon jam sessions. But the sound falls flat, a generic cover of my past life. Nothing’s ever as good as the original.
Or maybe it’s not the song. Perhaps I need to change my tune. Joshua always picked the playlist. It didn’t really bother me, mostly because it meant I didn’t have to make a decision. They were always made for me. Whatever he chose, I sang.
But not tonight.
I clear my throat, start again, this time choosing an oldie Mom used to sing when I was little. I still remember the first time I heard “Smile” by Charlie Chaplin. It was the first day of kindergarten. I didn’t want to go, didn’t understand why I had to be separated from Mom for four whole hours. Then she started singing.
“I want you to remember these words,” she said. “Sing them until you can’t remember why you were sad to begin with.”
And I did. Mom couldn’t get me to stop singing after that.
My voice shakes a little during the first verse since I haven’t warmed up, but when I reach the chorus, the melody comes easily. I’d almost forgotten how much I love this. I close my eyes, letting the lyrics flow, thinking only of Mom and how I’d give anything to see her smile again.
The thought forces my own lips to curve.
On the final note I open my eyes.
My grin fades, and all air flees my lungs.
Joshua is standing on the inn’s porch. Teeth clenched. His gaze acid. It’s almost as if my eyes float out of my body, watching from above, taking in the whole scene. Ky’s arm around my shoulder. Me wearing his jacket and singing to him, a pastime Joshua and I shared. Something special and so very much our own.
Oh no. He’s got the wrong idea. I reach out, but Joshua turns his back, strides into the inn’s shadows, and slams the door. The sign rattles on its hinges, echoing the shake of anger beginning to rise in me. What’s his problem? He made it clear he wants nothing to do with me. I just sit there, staring where he stood. I control my urge to move. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it is over. It’s better this way. Easier.
Don’t feel. Don’t care. Don’t—
I close my eyes, clamping my lashes against inevitable tears. If it’s easier, why does it feel as if I’ve just attended another funeral?
TWENTY-TWO
Wishing
The turning point came two years and seven months after we met. Or, I should say, my turning point. It surged up on me, a stealth wave sweeping me away.
“We’re going to get in trouble,” I hiss through nervous laughter. “We could be arrested for breaking and entering.”
Screech. Bark. Clang.
I start. Even the everyday hits on Manhattan’s playlist make me jump.
Joshua smirks. As if doing a magic trick, he waves his hand. With a flourish, a shiny key appears between his thumb and forefinger. “Not if we didn’t break in.”
I gape. No way. “Where’d you get that?”
He swings his arms and knocks his fists together, mock innocence lighting his face. “Let’s just say I know a guy who knows a guy who just so happens to be the stage manager.” He releases a hot breath onto the key and rubs it against his plaid shirt. He flips it in the air as if performing the coin toss at the Super Bowl, then catches it on the back of his hand.
Show-off.
I quirk one eyebrow and plant my hands on my hips. “Seriously?”
“It’s the truth.” He’s a horrible liar. “But if you don’t want to go inside—”
“Oh, I’m going, but if we get caught—”
“If we get caught, which we won’t, I’ll take full blame as the responsible adult.” Joshua stands at attention, raising three fingers in the air, an overgrown Boy Scout.
I give him a light shove. How does he make it so easy to be myself around him? “You call breaking into the Gershwin on a school night responsible?”
His expression turns serious. Is he going to say something about the touch? I’ve been hinting since my seventeenth birthday, trying to show him I want more, that I’m no longer a kid. He never responds to my prodding. Is he ignoring the obvious, or is he just the average clueless guy?
“You’re on spring break,” he says. “It’s not a school night for you.”
He’s always teasing. Was it ever not this way? I can’t remember the last time I felt awkward around him. “But you have finals coming up. Shouldn’t you be studying?”
“It can wait.” One more mischievous grin, and he ducks around the corner, consumed by the alley.
I take half a step. Pause. Breathe. What will tonight bring? Could I finally get my very first kiss? I look around, absorbing every inch of my surroundings. I don’t want to forget a single thing.
A woman in outrageously tall wedge-heels drops a cigarette butt, then stomps it out with her clunky toe. She hails a cab and ducks into it, her miniskirt riding up her bronze thigh before she closes the door. I still taste the smoke on the air after she’s gone.
On the corner two teenagers walk so close together they look like conjoined twins. The boy stops and pulls the girl into him for a spontaneous kiss. I stare unabashedly, replacing the girl’s face with mine, only without the birthmark. I imagine the boy is Joshua, his lips soft, tender. He opens my mouth with his—
“El, are you coming or not?” Joshua pops his head around the corner.
Thank goodness it’s dark and he won’t see how my temperature’s changed, how my blood has rushed to my head. “Yeah.”
The alley is the same as any other, stinking of sewage and alcohol. Half a dozen cigarette butts lie in a pile by a metal door. Joshua sticks the key in the lock, turns it, and pushes down the chrome handle. The door swings toward him.