“That’s what I thought. But who wrote them?”
I smiled at him. “You did.”
He looked up at me, his jaw dropping open in surprise. “Wait—what?” But before I could explain more, our number was called, and we collected our trays and headed over to the tables outside the restaurant—a little bit tucked away from the bustle of the crowds, so we could eat our hot dogs in peace.
I took a bite—really good, it would be a close call between this and Angry Dogs—and then looked across the table at him. “Every time we’ve hung out, something has inspired you. It’s never the same thing twice. And you always write it down, usually in your black Moleskine notebook. But since I knew you weren’t going to remember, I just wanted there to be some record of it all.”
His eyes were wide as he looked back at the paper. “This is mental. I was just thinking these lyrics were great. I didn’t realize I was the one who came up with them!”
I laughed and ate one of my french fries. “I mean, I suppose that’s better than thinking they were terrible.”
He ?nodded? as he picked up his hot dog. “You make an excellent point.” We ate in silence for a moment—I was hungrier than I normally was, but Ihadbeen running a lot more tonight than I usually did. “So,” Freddie said, setting the hot dog down and wiping the corners of his mouth. “We must have…spent a lot of time together. For you to know all these things. For me to come up with all these lyrics.”
I gave him a smile that I knew I wasn’t quite keeping the sadness out of. “We did.” I looked across the table at him, struck once again by the dichotomy of it. Freddie was someone I knew so well—and he didn’t know me at all. “It was the best,” I said simply. “In the beginning, I told you everything that was happening—like now. You were the only person I told actually. The one person who understood. But then, more recently, we just…bumped into each other. And walked around for a bit. We got ice cream and talked.”
Freddie leaned across the table, his eyes finding mine. “And did we…Did we ever…”
I shook my head. “No. I mean, there were vibes—”
“Ohwerethere,” he said with a grin, raising an eyebrow.
“But—no. Nothing happened.” The wordyetseemed to hang in the air between us for a moment. I looked away and ?finished the rest of my dinner quickly—I could feel that I was blushing.
Freddie tossed his napkin on the tray and looked at his phone. “I actually need to get going. Not that I want to leave—it’s that we have the show tonight.”
I took a breath. “Right. About that.”
The smile slid off Freddie’s face. “What?”
“It doesn’t go well,” I said, not able to stop myself from wincing.
Freddie stared at me in horror. “But there’s a manager coming to the show tonight….”
“Oh I know,” I assured him.
“What happens?”
“Well, Alfie gets food poisoning. Onstage. He eats some—as you say—dodgy prawns.”
“Alfie,” Freddie groaned, running his hands over his face.
“And for a while I was thinking I could stop it. If I stopped him from eating them as soon as possible. But he ate some at the restaurant, too—there’s really no stopping it. And then, when we stop him from playing, the whole thing just doesn’t work without a guitar player.”
“Oh my god,” Freddie said. He’d turned very pale, like he was picturing it all in his mind.
“There’s more,” I said grimly.
“There’smore?”
“It’s Niall,” I said, knowing that I had to work my way into this.
“What about Niall? Does he eat the prawns, too?”
“I wish,” I wasn’t quite able to stop myself from saying. “No, he—sabotages you.”
“He what?”
“He puts something in your water. Something that gives you an allergic reaction. Because he knows about the manager coming and doesn’t want it to go well for you. I know,” I said quickly, trying to get in front of Freddie’s denials—he was already shaking his head. “I know he’s your best friend. But I’ve seen it happen, over and over. And once, you didn’t drink the water he gave you and nothing happened. And then you drank it in front of me to prove it and…”
