I just had to keep my inner feline from thinking a dead possum dropped on his doorstep was “nice”.
Luckily on the way in for the concert, I found something he might actually want. With a gentle tug, I led us over to a table where they were selling merch.
Normally, I didn’t bother buying the overpriced stuff at shows. My collection of merch was mostly from friends, people we’d played a set with, that kind of thing. But we’d just had a great day exploring SoMa, walking in the park, checking out the museum of modern art. Moreover, Landon had thought about me and bought us ticketsforthis show.
It felt right to commemorate the occasion.
“What size do you want?” I asked when we got up to the plastic folding table where the shirts, posters, stickers and CDs were all laid out. There was a box behind one of the attendees that had their newest album on vinyl for thirty-five dollars, the same price as T-shirts.
Once we’d told the woman behind the table what style and size, she picked them out of big plastic bins beneath the table and took my card.
She tried tapping it, and when that didn’t work, she inserted it into the reader with a frown. “Do you, ah, maybe have another card? I don’t think this one’s working...”
The bottom dropped out of my stomach, but even if I hadn’t stood there, dumbfounded, with a slack-jawed horror coming over me, Landon would’ve been too fast to beat.
“I’ve got it!” He flicked his card out from his pocket like a magic trick, and we got our shirts.
We wandered out of the way and put them on over the ones we’d been wearing all day.
We were matching.
Fuck, it was cute.
But I was stuck in some kind of haze and I couldn’t feel it. I mean, sure, I’d taken us out to lunch and bought some stuff at the bookstore we’d visited, but—my card wasn’t working.
My card wasn’t working, and Landon had had to buy us shirts so I wasn’t embarrassed.
Smiling—maybe a little too forcedly—Landon took us over toward the stage where the opener was already playing.
At least that was something to do. While I crashed out, I stared at the stage, bobbing my head to the beat and trying not to feel a sharp sting every time Landon glanced my way.
I didn’t realize I’d pressed my tongue into the hollow of my cheek, pushing it out until it rounded and my molars dug in, until Landon poked my face, arched a dark brow, and levied his accusation.
“You’re overthinking.”
I sighed through my nose and shrugged. “Just... feeling a little crummy.”
Henry would’ve told me that the best thing you could do with shame was cast light on it. Speaking it aloud made it fizzle away like nothing.
Whether I was that brave on my own remained to be seen, but Landon’s open amber gaze made me think I might be.
“I haven’t, ah, tried to book any gigs on my own yet,” I admitted. “I mean, solo. It feels—” I wished that it were that it felt like a betrayal of the band or that I was struggling to envision moving forward without my friends at my side, but it was worse than that.
It felt presumptuous.
And if nobody came, if nobody liked my music, if I was performing solo, that wasallon me.
Landon’s lips twisted in a sympathetic grimace, but he didn’t try and finish the sentence for me, didn’t try to explain how I felt.
Instead, he turned fully around to face me and slipped his hand in mine.
“Anyway,” I said, voice choked by my tight throat, “just... things are starting to get a little tight, so I need to get on it. I’m sorry.”
He shook his head. “No need to be sorry. You will,” Landon said. No hesitation, no compunction, no doubt. “But”—he dragged me in with a little tug, then reached up to comb his fingers through my hair. The blunt curve of his nails scraped across my scalp.
The rumble in my chest was far too much like a purr to admit around a crowd of humans pressing in all around us.
“There’s nothing really specific you can do about it right this second, is there?” he asked.
