I take a small step back and wait for claws to jab into my leg. “Is he going to attack me?”
Aspen scoops up the cat and cradles him like a baby. He relaxes in her hold but keeps his ears back while watching me. “No, he’d never. He’s a sweet boy.”
Seems doubtful.
“He was actually a foster, just like us, isn’t that right?” She kisses the top of his head.
“Don’t compare me to a fucking cat.”
“Watch your language around him!”
“You’re kidding.” I blink at her.
She snuggles the big fluff ball before depositing him on her bed. He stretches his back legs before curling up and tucking his paws in close. His golden eyes stay on me the entire time, like he’s sizing me up and ready to pounce.
Am I actually fighting with a fucking cat?
“Well, this is my room,” she says and looks around.
The comforter on her bed is a simple ivory with teal and orange accent pillows. There’s a light layer of cat hair on some of them, courtesy of the bastard still glaring at me. Her walls are a typical renter white but they’re covered in photos in mismatching frames. I walk over to the other side of the room to take a closer look.
I recognize Marley and Sara in some of them, but there’s also many other women, all around a similar looking age, in the rest. Aspen’s smile is bright in each and every one. Photos of her at the beach, in other homes, at birthday parties, and dressed up for Halloween.
“I like to be surrounded by memories with my friends every night,” Aspen says, voice soft.
She doesn’t have to say it. That she doesn’t have any childhood or family photos to hang up like so many others do.
I understand. I know that, too.
“It looks like you have an amazing support system around you,” I say, glancing over my shoulder at her. She stands next to me, looking at the collage on the wall, and smiles faintly. She’s so much shorter than me but she stands tall regardless of the foot separating us.
“Yeah, I do. I’m very lucky to have them all out here.”
“I’m glad you did.” She deserves it.
I tear my eyes away from the pictures and see my guitar—her guitar—propped up in the corner on a small stand.My feet move before my mind catches up, carrying me over to stand in front of it. It’s not the first time I’ve seen it, and hell, it’s the reason I recognized her in the first place.
But seeing it out in the open like this, surrounded by the rest of her things while the two of us are here in this moment, it’s a tether back to a past neither of us want to remember but still have pieces to cling to.
16
Reid
Past
The strings are warm beneath my calloused fingers. This chord progression in the new song we’ve been working on tripped me up all night in rehearsal, so as soon as I got back to the house, I shut myself away in my room to play it over and over again until it was perfect.
I don’t want to let the guys down as we prepare for our show this weekend. One of the local bar owners agreed to let us have a forty-five minute set and to lower the age of admission for the evening. It’s our first big show we’ve gotten to do, and I’ve barely been able to sleep this week as excited nerves course through my body.
I hum along to the melody and let it flow through me, feeling the notes and the beat and not focusing on them individually. The fluidity of playing music is one of myfavorite parts. When I feel it begin in the pit of my stomach and ooze throughout the rest of my body until it comes out through my hands.
A gentle knock of the door rouses me out of the trance and I suppress a groan. If Patrick is coming to tell me to quit for the night, I’ll sneak down to the basement.
“Yeah?” I call out.
“Can I come in, please?” a small voice answers back, and I immediately shout back, “Come on in, Penny.”
The door opens with a loud squeak and Penny steps in the room, shutting it behind her once more. She has a big smile on her face and hair braided in two messy pigtails.
