This from the guy who’d stopped talking to me for years? I scowled. What was he playing at?
But Chet was drinking the Kool-Aid. “You’re like Dr. Phil, you know that, Jerry?”
It wasmyturn to roll my eyes, and even Jay laughed self-deprecatingly.
“Uh, no. My sister told me just today that my communication skills suck. I’m more of a cautionary tale than a role model, Chet. Don’t be like me.”
“Wait, you talked to your sister today?” I demanded. “Speaking of shitty communication skills?”
Jay bit his lip apologetically. “Yeah, she called while you were in the restroom, and I meant to mention it, but I, ah… forgot? She’s okay, though.Reallyokay.”
“Yeah?” I smiled tentatively in relief, and he smiled back.
“She sounded exhausted, but she’s as sassy as ever. Said she needs to talk to both of us and explain some things. Apologize?” He shrugged, then glanced back at Chet and said quickly, “She also said you should tell me everything about… you know. Everything.”
“Everything about everything, huh?” I snorted. “Sure she did.”
But I was surprised to find that I wanted to just tell him. None of the reasons I’d kept Aimee’s secrets made sense anymore, anyway. It had all been for Jay, in the beginning. To help my best friend.
And now—I shot a glance at Jay’s handsome profile—well, now I was using the secret to shore up the wall between us, with the handy excuse of respecting Aimee’s wishes, when I honestly wasn’t sure keeping her secret was in anyone’s best interest anymore.
And the wall that kept me from wanting Jay back in my life was crumbling with every minute we spent hurtling down the highway in the kidnap van.
“Hey, listen to this, Tom!” Chet leaned into the front seat to turn up the music. “Pretty Girl’s my favorite song on the album. I added on a killer intro.”
“Yeah?” My voice came out gravelly with emotion, more like Jay’s than my own. Trying to lighten my mood, I teased, “Lemme guess. This one’s about a guy who falls in love with a girl who’s not justpretty, she’s also really nice and a decent actress, even in thoseScarlet and the Moonmovies?”
“Scarlet and the Moon? Oh, you mean Olivia Merry?” Chet’s whole face wrinkled up when he frowned. “Good Lord, no. This song’s about how the whole world tells Jayd he should be with a pretty girl like Olivia and have the pretty future they want him to have, but he can’t do it. He ‘can’tlove a pretty girl.’You know,” he said loftily, “nobody who really listened to this track was all that surprised when it came out in the tabloids a couple weeks ago that Jayd’s bi or gay or whatever, ’cause it was right there in the song all along.”
“Oh, yeah? Right there in the song?”
I cut my eyes toward Jay, expecting to share more hidden laughter over this wacky interpretation, but Jay wasn’t looking at me anymore. In fact, he was staring straight ahead, face flushed and fists clenched tight, looking nearly as stunned and terrified as I’d felt an hour ago when I’d inadvertently admitted I’d been attracted to…
Uh.
Wait.
My breathing went shallow. Jay’s eyes cut to mine for half a second. Just long enough for me to read heat and longing and utter, utter vulnerability there.
Oh sweet fucking God.
Chet chattered on and on about the intro and the various guitar chords, but it sounded like white noise. I forced myself to pay attention to the road, but my brain buzzed and my stomach swooped as I remembered Jay’s words from earlier.
“It’s like you decided that I changed, and you started interpreting everything through that lens. But maybe I haven’t changed as much as you think.”
I quickly replayed the lyrics to “Pretty Girl” in my head, and when I got to the part about “legends and liars,” it was like I’d unlocked a cage around my lungs and I could finally breathe deeply for the first time in years, because I would bet money he was singing legends andlyres, as in the name of the constellation we used to look for, and…
Oh. Oh, shit. Oh,God.
I was a fool. The biggest fool! The fuckingemperorof fools.
He’d named his albumConstellationseven though stargazing had never been Jay’s thing, because it had beenmine.
Because he’d written those songs—thoselovesongs—about us.
And now that I recognized the truth for what it was, I could have kicked my own ass for being so willfully ignorant. The truth had been sitting right fucking there all along, the most obvious item in all of Obviousville, waiting for me to get over myself and see it, but I hadn’t.
All. This. Time.
