I asked Liam to break my heart, and he countered by saying we’ll have to roll the dice instead. Which is certainly the more authentic way to do this, and, as long as I am feelinganything, any real human experience, surely it will be worth writing about.
“I will be okay with any outcome,” I answer him.
Liam nods at me once, his eyes gaining rapid warmth, and moves back to the counter to whisk his eggs. We finish preparing breakfast in contemplative silence, then eat across from each other at a table near a sunny window overlooking the street beyond.
Liam takes a sip of his coffee and sets his gaze on me. “Why didn’t you ever call?” he asks. “I was—waiting.”
Out of nowhere, a tear stripes down my cheek. Something about his tone, those words, the idea that he was always on the other end of a line. “Because I thought of dropping out all the time,” I admit. “That feeling never really went away. And I was worried…”
“That I would have been disappointed,” he guesses, “if you had quit.” After a minute he whispers, “I wouldn’t have, Paige.”
“I wasn’t convinced of that,” I whisper back.
He nods, accepting this. “I need you to admit something before I agree to this.”
“Admit what?” I ask, my nervous system fizzing.
His stare is the edge of a knife at my throat. “Admit to me,” he says, “that I’ve been on your mind. That this reunion isn’t as impulsive as you’d lead me to believe. Admit you’ve thought about reaching out to me every single day since you graduated.”
I could deny it, but what’s the point? I’ve lost my opacity where Liam Bishop is concerned. He hasn’tlatelybeen on my mind. He halfway owns it. Has since the first.
“I almost invited you,” I tell him. “To the ceremony.”
Hurt blankets him. “I would have been there.”
“I know you would’ve. But you also would’ve asked me what’s next, and I didn’t have an answer to that question yet.”
Liam scrapes a hand along his jaw. “As happy as I am that you found a way to come to me, Paige, it bothers me that you needed an excuse to reach out and it wasn’t just about reconnecting because you were ready.”
I was waiting.
“I think,” Liam goes on, “it’s a sign that something is still wrong here. We could try to solve it now, but I’m not sure that’s actually what’s best for your creative process. And given that you’re already writing about me, I don’t want to do anything to interrupt your momentum.”
“What do you suggest?” I quietly ask.
“We could… try to fall back in love before the hard conversations,” he says, in a tone like he’s convincing himself against better judgment. “We’ll just—put that reckoning off until we get more comfortable with each other.”
“Comfortable,” I repeat. “Are you currently uncomfortable with me?”
“In some ways,” he murmurs, eyes dropping to my neck. “In others, no. Don’t tell me it’s not the same for you.”
Liam’s right, of course. About needing an excuse to reach out, and about our comfort levels being undetermined.
His plan does make the most sense where songwriting is concerned, though it’s ass-backward in terms of how to healthily rebuild a relationship. I could fight him on it, but I’m not exactly eager to immediately rehash our worst days.
So, we’ll kick it down the road.
“Break my heart or steal it,” I muse, repeating his earlier sentiment.
Liam’s head tilts as he watches me across the knobby wooden table. A ray of light paints his skin golden. He nods.
“You and I will be… together.” I gulp.
“Three months. One summer. You come with me on the road. You sleep in my bedroom. You eat what I eat, and you go where I go.”
He’s thought about this. Strategized it.
“So, I’ll be a roadie.”
