My cheeks heated furiously, and I shook my head and looked down at my hands folded in my lap. “Hush.”
He did, his grin still in place as he let his left hand hang out the window while the right thumbed a beat on the steering wheel. He used to lean the other way. He used to have his left hand on the steering wheel and the other on my thigh.
He had the perfect playlist on, one I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d made just for today. When Snow Patrol came on, my smile mirrored his.
“Is music still one of your love languages?” he asked as we turned into Ybor. My eyes grew wide, the explosion of color hitting me instantly — candy-bright murals, wrought-iron balconies draped in string lights, a band warming up outside a bar even though it was barely ten in the morning. The scent of roasted Cuban coffee and hand-rolled cigars drifted in through the open Jeep, mixing with the humid Florida air.
“Always,” I breathed, still looking around in awe.
When we stopped at a streetlight, someone pointed at us, and the group of what looked like twenty-somethings jumped up and down before one of them yelled out, “Hey, Coach! Great game on Friday!”
Shane smiled and waved at them just as the light turned green, and they nearly melted down at the acknowledgment.
It didn’t seem to faze Shane, though, who just shifted hands on the wheel and asked me, “Do you listen to the same stuff you used to, or have you found new artists to love?”
“A little of both. I’ll admit I tend to reach for the past, though. I find myself gravitating to Snow Patrol still, and The Fray, Kings of Leon… I don’t know. I’m not sure music hits the same anymore.”
“You took the words right from my mouth,” he said. “Who are the newer ones you like?”
“Hozier, Vance Joy, JP Saxe, Lauv… I’ve really enjoyed Gracie Abrams lately, too.”
“How about Maggie Rogers?”
I grabbed his wrist where it was resting on the console, my jaw hinged open. “Iloveher.”
“She’s incredible. Iknewyou’d like her, too,” Shane said with a grin. “I saw her play live here last year.”
“No! Really? Was she as magical in person as she seems online?”
“More so. Like a little hippie fairy spreading music glitter everywhere.”
“I have to see her one day. Phoebe Bridgers, too.”
“You know, I have an in with Mia Love,” he said, arching a brow in my direction. “She and Phoebe are pretty close. I bet I could get us the hookup the next time she’s in Tampa.”
My jaw was on the floorboard now. “Who the hellareyou?” I asked with a laugh.
Shane chuckled, too, and then turned us into the tiny parking lot of a small building, its stucco walls the color of warm sand. There was a deep red awning fluttering in the breeze that readLa Segunda.
Shane cut the engine and hopped out of the Jeep, rushing around to my door before I had the chance to reach for the handle. “Ready to have the best breakfast sandwich of your life?”
It unnerved me a little, how easy it was to stand next to Shane in line while we waited to order, how natural it felt to point into the case of delicious pastries and laugh when we sat outside on the curb and watched chickens peck away at our crumbs by our feet. We talked like no time had passed. We laughed like we’d parted on perfectly pleasant terms, like we hadn’t had our hearts put through a woodchipper.
It was like the day was too beautiful to sour it with any truths that might steal joy, like we both just wanted to ignore reality for one day and pretend this was normal — that we were just two friends back together after so many years apart.
But wehadn’t beenjust friends, had we? From the first day we met, we knew there was something more between us.
And I felt that stark reminder as our day around Tampa continued.
When we piled onto the TECO streetcar to head downtown and found it packed to the brim, it left us no choice but to sit squashed next to one another.
I slid in next to the window, and then Shane took the seat next to me. We were an appropriate distance from each other until more and more people piled on.
“I’ve never seen it so busy,” Shane remarked, and then he slid toward me, allowing a woman who appeared to be in her sixties to sit next to him.
It happened so quickly, without fanfare, just him scooting closer to me and smiling at the woman before offering her a seat. He continued chatting with her a moment, but I couldn’t chime in, because I was all too aware of everywhere we touched.
We were connected from our knees to our hips, his leg warm against mine. When he finished his chat with the woman sitting next to him, he angled his body more toward me, and for no reason other than he had nowhere else to put it — his arm snaked behind me over the wooden bench seat.
