No answer.
She hasn’t even looked at the last messages.
I realize it’s stupid. Silly. Completely pointless. I’ve never even met this girl. I’ve never heard her voice, because unlike me, she’s never sent a voice message. I don’t even know her name. We were writing to each other for three months before it all fell apart. And that was that.
Except those three months felt like an eternity. I guess that’s how it is when you spend every free moment texting with someone. You get used to each other, get to know each other, and when it’sover, it doesn’t matter that it was just messages. It still hurts like hell in a very real way.
“Hey.” A quiet, strangely unsure voice makes me look up. The girl is standing there, a few steps away from me.
“Did you find something?” I ask, but she’s not holding a record or CD. She takes a step closer, biting her lower lip. There’s a nervous gleam in her eyes.
Gray eyes. The grayest eyes I’ve ever seen. Long, dark lashes. A little mole directly on her right cheekbone. A little silver ring in her nose. My gaze drifts automatically to the rings on her fingers. Familiar rings. There are bracelets gleaming on her wrists, peeking out from under her coat. A crescent moon and stars. So familiar.
Adrenaline surges through my body as it realizes who she is before my brain does. My heart beats so hard it hurts as I stare at her and desperately try to understand what’s happening.
I know countless tiny pieces of this girl, and now I know her face too.
“Birdy,” I say, and my voice doesn’t sound like my own. Incredulous and raw, both soft and hard, and completely overwhelmed because she’s actually here in Boston. In this record store, right in front of me.
“Rayne,” she says, and it takes a few beats for me to realize that after nine months, she’s finally told me her name.
Rayne.
The name suits her and her stormy gray eyes. My heart stumbles in my chest, unable to decide what to feel. The skin on the back of my neck starts to prickle as I stare. I’m completely bowled over, and I don’t even know if I’m happy to see her. No, that’s not true: I am happy.
Joy pulses through me, mixed with relief. It makes my heart race and my stomach flip nervously. I just didn’t expect to see her, here, today, ever. How could I? How could I have expected this?
“You’re here,” I say, because that’s all I can say right now. All I can think of. Because somehow, it’s all that matters.
Chapter 2
Rayne
11 Minutes—YUNGBLUD, Halsey, Travis Barker
A few minutes ago
Oh my God.
Oh. My. God.
What the hell am I doing here?
This is a very, very bad idea.
I turn around and walk back the way I came. The Uber dropped me off two blocks away after I convinced myself that I came to the West End for that thrift shop, not for Repeat Records.
It’s raining. It’s been raining all day. Not heavily; more like those fine raindrops that sting your skin like needles and soak you through if you stay outside too long. My face is cold, and I’m glad I didn’t wear makeup, otherwise my mascara would be a mess by now. But despite the rain, and even though the drops feel like ice on my skin, I’m not cold. I’m warm. It’s the excitement, the adrenaline.
My heart is beating much too fast. It’s pounding against thebony cage of my ribs, so hard it feels like it could escape if it tried hard enough.
What are you afraid of, Mockingbird?
Dad’s voice in my ear, asking me that question over and over again because he wanted to know why I didn’t want to go to the meetings with Easton and the others.
You should be there. After all, you found them. Why don’t you want to come?
I didn’t have an answer for him. Not one that made sense, at least. Maybe I didn’t even understand it myself. Because I wanted to meet Easton the whole time.
