I nod like it’s no biggie. “If Kristen’s there, I’m going.” I pull off my boots and flex my toes on the worn carpet. “This is my bucket list challenge, and I’m not failing.”
“I’ll go with you.”
I shrug. “Maybe you aren’t invited.”
“You told the receptionist I’m your guest,” he says. “Sounded like an open-ended arrangement to me.”
“It was room-specific, and I feel like you know that.” I stretch my legs out and lean back on my hands, trying to look more relaxed than I feel. The truth is, I want him to come so badly it scares me. That wanting is what I need to keep in check.
He studies me but doesn’t appear the least bit offended by my rudeness. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s figured out my attitude is a sad attempt to distract him from the real issue.
“I can’t figure out why she matters so much to you,” he says finally, and there you have it, friends. “You’re clearly cooler than she is.”
“Cooler?” I laugh. “Like this is high school?”
“I bet you were prom queen.”
“I didn’t go to prom.”
He shakes his head, casual, like we’re discussing the weather. “I don’t believe that for a second.”
“I was a rebel.” I say it with mock gravity that usually makespeople laugh, but Jensen just raises one thick brow. “Rebels don’t go to prom.”
“What kind of rebellion are we talking about? Let me guess—you drank under the bleachers?”
“I drank everywhere,” I tell him with an eye roll. “Which is why I didn’t make it to prom. I got so drunk beforehand, I ripped my dress climbing over a chain-link fence running from the cops. Completely shredded it beyond repair.”
I keep my voice breezy. It should be a funny anecdote after all these years, not a memory that still stings when I poke at it. Me as a seventeen-year-old girl, standing in her ruined dress in someone’s backyard at midnight, mascara running, date long gone, knowing she’d just confirmed every low expectation her parents had ever set for her.
Jensen is quiet for a beat, and I know he heard all the things I didn’t say. He’s infuriatingly good at listening to the silence between my words and finding the real story hiding there.
“What about your prom?” I need to redirect before he can dig any deeper. “Were you too cool for school?”
He shrugs, but his expression shutters. “Junior year, my mom was in the hospital. Senior year, I was too busy trying to make it in music and keep my brother from falling apart to think about things like dances.”
Oh God.
I am an idiot.
What the hell am I doing, trying to deflect with a self-deprecating little tale about a ruined dress and teenage rebellion, while this man spent his prom nights at his mother’s bedside and parenting his younger brother because no one else was going to do it.
The distance between our versions of missing prom is so vast that I could fall into it and never hit the bottom.
“Jensen—”
“It’s fine.” The words are automatic and practiced,and I recognize the tone. I’m nothing if not fluent in the language ofI’m finewhen things are decidedly not fine.
“It’s not, though.” I pull my knees up and wrap my arms around them, studying him across the small room. “You were a kid, carrying things no kid should have to carry, and that’s not fine even if it’s what happened to you.”
He’s still leaning on the dresser, but his stance isn’t casual anymore. A muscle jumps in his jaw as I watch him deciding whether to let me in or keep the door shut. Maybe it’s how much he already knows about me or the sheer exhaustion of the past few days that tips the scale. His shoulders drop an inch as he lets out a long exhale.
“She was a good mom,” he says quietly. “She also had terrible taste in men, and it broke her heart over and over. Jamie and I had front-row seats to the whole thing.” He looks at the ceiling like an answer might be written up there. “I promised myself I’d never let anything matter that much. Holding onto music is safe, you know?”
I think about using my grandmother’s trust fund to buy the bookstore so I could build a life around things I can control. Inventory orders, reading lists, and the comforting predictability of a well-organized genre section.
“I do know, but songs can’t wrap their arms around you.” His eyes snap to mine, and for a second I can almost see the invisible thread shimmering between us.
“No,” he agrees. “They can’t.”
