“Yeah, I do.”
I followed the sway of her hips across the room. She stopped when she got to the closed door, and turned around.
“I need to ask you something else. Do you want to grab a drink with me after we’re done here?”
“A drink sounds like the best idea you’ve ever had.” I smiled. “Though that isn’t saying much, considering the kind of ideas I’ve seen from you.”
I expected her to laugh. She didn’t.
She just smiled and said, “Yeah . . . right.”
24
Max
I convinced Cade that we should head back to Center City to get our drink, so we’d be closer to where both of us lived before the subways closed.
He said, “Fine by me. I was going to insist on walking you home anyway.”
I laughed. “Of course you were, Golden Boy.”
This also gave me the entire walk to the subway station and the ride to convince him to keep pretending to be my boyfriend.
He said, “So, I’m guessing you don’t want to talk about your fight with Mace?”
I raised an eyebrow at him but didn’t comment.
“I’m guessing you don’t want to talk about that girl getting engaged?”
He sighed. “I guess that leaves your music. How long have you been playing?”
I buttoned my coat all the way up to help block out some of the cold. “Since I was thirteen. Around the time that my sister died.”
It shocked me how easily that kind of thing fit into normal conversation with him. With anyone else it never would have come close to leaving my mouth.
“And when did you know that it was what you wanted to do for your career?”
I smiled, remembering. “The first time I was able to play a song all the way through from memory. That was the first time singing really transported me to a different place, you know? It was the best five minutes of my life. I forgot where I was, who I was, and I existed only in the music.”
“I get that. I feel the same when I’m onstage. I get to step out of my skin and be someone else for a while. I get to live someone else’s problems, which usually get resolved in a much quicker and easier fashion than my own.”
I’d never even had a friend that I could talk to like this. I’d lived so long as an island that I’d forgotten what it felt like to have this kind of connection.
“You ever get tired of being yourself, Golden Boy?”
“Sometimes, yeah. What about you?”
He was so honest. He made me want to be, too.
Inhale.
Exhale.
“All the time.”
The silence between us was frail, but easy, as we walked the neighborhood streets that led to our subway stop. I surveyed the buildings around us, the uneven sidewalks, the lit up windows for apartments on the second and third floors. I’d walked these streets more times than I could remember, but I’d never really looked around me.
Life was funny like that.
I asked, “Do you think everyone feels that way? Or is there something wrong with us?”
He thought for a long moment, his boots scuffing against the sidewalk as he walked. “I think everyone does. Even happy people. They may not admit it to anyone, but I think they feel it. I think they close their eyes, or go for a run, or take a long shower, so that they can forget just for a second who they are and what they have to do day in and day out. Living is hard. And every day our feet get heavier and we pick up more baggage. So, we stop and take a breath, close our eyes, reset our minds. It’s natural. As long as you open your eyes and keep going.”
I watched him as he spoke. His eyes scanned the sky, and his breath puffed out as smoke in the cold air. He believed what he was saying. And that made it a little easier for me to believe it, too.
I should have asked him then, but he’d just given me this precious, perfect thought, and I wanted to hold on to it for as long as I could before I had to ruin it. We stayed silent for the one more block it took to reach the subway stop.
We waited about ten minutes for our train, still not saying a word. We sat together on a bench, sharing the silence, and it didn’t feel awkward or unnatural. I didn’t want to run or fill up the void or do anything other than what I was doing.
It was . . . nice.
When the train pulled in, we took two of the seats beside each other, and it felt so routine, like we’d been doing this for ages.
I said, “I have something to ask you, but I really don’t want to.”
He turned slightly, and his knees touched mine. “That sounds interesting.”
“It’s insane, actually.”
He waited, and I tried to just spit it out, but really there was no good way to say it, so instead I buried my face in my hands. I groaned and said, “Money is stupid. It ruins everything.”
He hummed. “Tell me about it. I made a promise that I would be home for Christmas, but I get paid so little for my work-study job that I’ll be lucky to afford ramen in January if I do.”