“There’s your book,” Liam says.
If this is his idea of platonic, then I am terrified to see him flirt. Equally terrifying is the realization that with one brief touch to my shoulders and another against my hand, Liam Bishop managed to activate more of my visceral want than I have felt possibly ever. And I genuinely believe he didn’t intend it.
Shock rolls through me as I contend with the fact that for the first time in a year and a half, I’m questioning my desire for Evan.
I’m questioning if I ever actually had a desire for Evan, or if I just assumed it to be there, so I never inspected to see if it was.
The book is a young adult fantasy novel I’vealsoalready read, but I can’t bear to say it. Instead, I pull the book off the shelf, wordlessly drag Liam back into the other aisle, and say, “Your turn.” He obliges me, and I repeat the performance, albeit more clumsily than he managed it. Liam winds up with a historical fiction romance adventure on the high seas.
We settle into the same two armchairs where we first met eighteen months ago. I put on my headphones and pull my knees up to my chest, propping up my surprise book. Liam hunches over with his forearms on his lower thighs and pushes open his novel’s flimsy paperback cover.
He thinks I don’t notice, because I’m (actually) listening to music and (supposedly) focusing on my first chapter. But when a laugh pushes past his lips and his head shakes once in amusement, or maybe disbelief—not at the first sentence of his book, because he’s still on the title page, but something else going through his mind—it’s in my direct line of sight, just over the brim of my hardback.
That day, I notice everything.
Chapter 8
June, Now
All night I dream of him, and when I wake, there are lyrics on my tongue.
Found you in a crowd without trying
Did you search faces, or did you just find me?
Blearily, I push out of bed—still in last night’s outfit, which is also yesterday’s work uniform—and hum it under my breath. Stumbling to my knees on the carpeted floor, I crawl to where I’d propped my acoustic in the corner and fingerpick a tune.
It’s not even new lyrics to an existing song.
It’s anew song.
Soon, a pad of paper and pen join me and I’m scribbling lyrics as fast as I can. Exhilarated, but also petrified this rush of inspiration is temporary. I’ve experienced the high of songwriting enough times to know. When everything’s working, when youfeelyou have something extraordinary in your grasp, you can’t let distractions in until the foundation has been laid.
In forty minutes, I have the first verse, then the chorus, then a bit of the second verse.
I’m losing steam, getting stuck on the rest. The words aren’tcoming as fast as they were when I woke up. I need coffee, need to pee, maybe need a different color felt-tip pen.
When I glance at my phone, it’s 8:55. Liam is supposed to pick me up in five minutes. Drunk on my own creative sprint, I take the fastest shower of my life, scrubbing down my skin and washing my hair while I hum the new song some more. It needs a faster-paced bridge. It needs a final verse that feels like the last word of a prologue.
I throw on a T-shirt and jean shorts and grab my bag, whipping open the door to my bedroom to find Folly and Liam, together.
Chatting.
“Eventually, I started teaching surfing lessons,” Folly is telling him. “In a city called Todos Santos. I’d do that in the mornings, then water plants and walk dogs in the afternoons.”
“Sounds incredible,” Liam says.
“It was. I’m going back just as soon as the little one’s born.” She rubs her belly fondly. “They’re going to grow up by the ocean.”
Liam’s seated on our blue velvet couch looking perfectly at home, one ankle propped on his opposite knee and a cappuccino cupped in his palm. Folly’s standing by the espresso machine in a literal onesie. When she hears me, her eyes cut over and she smirks.
“Sorry!” I say, a blanket statement.
Liam puts the clay mug on our coffee table and stands. His eyes cut from my damp hair to my Birkenstocks. He comes to me and grabs my hand, flipping my palm up. The skin-to-skin contact feels like an appetite being whetted.
“It’s already working,” he mumbles, his thumb tracing over my raw fingertips. The rub of the guitar strings is still pressed into my skin.
Itisworking. The plan isworking, and we’ve hardly set it into motion. The time span was basically negligible—a single night’s sleep—between when I saw him again and when a song came to me, begging to be heard.
