“Because it’s going to end. I have to go home sometime. Things have to change.”
“Says who?”
“It’s the rules. It’s the way things are. Nothing good lasts forever. Not even birthdays.”
A greater heaviness weighed down the quiet murmur. What should have been a whisper hit him with the force of a thousand steaming freight trains. He reached for his coat.
“Well, it’s still your birthday for another hour.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means the good stuff isn’t over yet.” He tossed her the coat she’d stolen from him all those weeks ago, the coat she’d never returned and wore constantly. “C’mon. I want to show you something.”
Chapter Eighteen
Hangman’s Hill rose out of the outer edges of Oxfordshire. The unfortunate name didn’t actually come from hangings; those were always performed in the town square. The name actually came from an old English song about a man who hanged himself on a hill to be closer to his love, who’d died and gone to heaven.
Daniel’s poetic nature seeped into all things, including where he liked to do his stargazing.
Cars technically weren’t meant to drive up through the brush climbing up the grassy hillside, but he’d broken the rule so many times he’d cleared a path large enough for his small car to squeeze through. As always, he parked between two great fir trees and left the headlights on, giving enough light for them to see each other by as he rummaged through his back seat. His box of tapes had to be in here somewhere. This night called for just the right sound.
Finally, he found it and popped it in, retiring the colorful cassette case back into its place between Stevie Nicks and Bennie Goodman.
He eventually resurfaced to find Sam leaning against the car’s body. The pose baffled him. She could be surrounded by so many stars—stars so dense and so close they could have swum through them or used them as stepping stones straight to the moon—and still stare so intently down at the ground. They’d spent the entire day together laughing and enjoying her birthday. Couldn’t she go an entire day without hiding herself again?
“This is my favorite place in the world,” he said, trying to yank her into the splendor around them.
“It’s beautiful.” She nodded but made no effort to appreciate the beauty. “Why are we here?”
“Well…” He ducked into the car and turned up the volume, letting the first song of his mixtape ring out. A moment of silence followed, as it always did, where he held his breath and wondered if the car would suddenly give out, then David Bowie’s “Heroes” shook the speakers. “I thought we could dance.”
“Oh, Daniel.” She groaned, practically jumping away from him.
“What?”
“I have to tell you something,” she said, wincing with something like guilt.
“Okay.”
Daniel held his breath.This is where she tells me she’s got webbed feet or is one of those card-carrying American gun nuts, isn’t it? Well, the webbed feet I could live with; the gun thing is a massive deal-breaker.She wrung her hands, the shoulders of his coat shifting on her shoulder as she did so.
“I don’t really like music.”
If this were a movie, a record scratch would have sounded, and the camera would have panned in on his stricken expression.I don’t really like music. He understood quantum physics better than he understood those words.
“Huh?”
“I don’t really like music.”
“Yeah, I heard you, but I don’t understand those words in the order you put them in.” This was like hearing someone didn’t like pizza or sunshine orairor anything else necessary to sustain human life on earth. “Who doesn’t likemusic?”
“Music is sort of symptomatic of a bigger problem, don’t you think?” She stepped back from him until she wandered into a nearby tree trunk. He didn’t pursue her. “Like… They tell us love is this incredible, forever thing and it’s a heap of crap.”
For weeks now, he’d been wondering when their first roadblock to happiness would present itself. He’d assumed it was going to stem from her close-hearted ways or the Animos asshole who hung around and constantly intimidated them both. Those were small potatoes compared tothis. How could he love a woman who didn’t love music?
Okay, he realized the melodrama as soon as he’d thought it. But itwasshocking. Love songs were written in his veins, they were how he communicated with the world outside of his own skin, how he built his future. He’d devoted his life to writing songs to inspire love in others… How could she be so dismissive?
“You can’t believe it’s all crap,” he said, more hope and prayer than statement of fact.
