“Maybe!” I offer her a tepid smile.
Liam and I walk in bated silence through the bowels of the stadium and out to the nearest parking lot, where his same old Chevy truck is parked.
“You still drive that thing!” It was meant to be a question but soundsnothinglike one.
“Until it gives up,” Liam murmurs, his smile tentative. “Remember?”
I remember everything.
Immediately my brain flashes to the last time we were in it together—which was also thelast time, in his truck bed, on a duvet, under the East Tennessee stars.
“I just thought it would’ve given up by now.”
Climbing into the passenger side has me leafing through even more memories. I think of the first time he picked me up in this truck from the apartment I shared with Zara.
Every time after.
I’m losing focus, and fast. My emotions are seesawing between years-old frustration and giddy warmth at his nearness.
“Misha said you’re going on tour?”
“Next week,” he says, strapping in.
In closed quarters, the awkwardness between us is stiflingly tight.
Liam starts the truck, pulls out of the lot.
“Do you like your job?” I blurt.
He slants me a look, like he finds my ice breaking more painful than the alternative. “I do. The schedule is insane, and the chaos of live shows drives me crazy every now and then. But I get to be around great music all the time.”
“You seem happy. I mean, from what I can tell on social media, which I guess is actually the worst barometer.” I’m rambling.
He neither confirms nor denies and asks, “Are you? Happy?”
My swallow is thick. “Yeah. I’ve been good.”
“That’s great, Paige. I’m really glad.”
We lapse into silence again.
I glance at the floor, spot an old CD with familiar handwriting.
Paige’s Songs
“What the fuck?” I scoop up the CD and hold it in front of him. “Did you burn this from the voice memos I sent you?”
His eyes flick to the CD, back to the road. “I wanted them all in one place, so I could hear them like an album.”
A switch flips, and now I’m seething. This is a perfect symptom of the same problem we never resolved. I set the CD on the floor with the rest of his collection—his old car doesn’t take an aux cord—and stare moodily out the window.
Liam lets me stew. When we pull over at a food truck with a few benches at a small park in East Nashville, he climbs out and walks to my side. He opens my door, leans his hands on the roof. My eyes catch on the strain of his muscles, my nose on the scent of his eucalyptus deodorant.
“Nobody listens to it but me.” His voice is low, gently placating. He would sometimes use that voice during sex, and now my body is a can of soda bumping down a staircase.
Grudgingly I meet his eyes. “Promise?”
Liam nods.
