“Please don’t say anything to him, okay? Shit, I figured he would have told you. I’m sorry!”
“You know I’m not going to say anything, but, what letter?”
I groaned. “There was this envelope addressed from New Hampshire. It had a letter in it that I didn’t read, but also it had a card addressed to Regan, unopened, sent from Rae Cavanaugh.”
“Shiiiiiiit.”
I’d bet anyone a hundred dollars that CJ’s head was on his steering wheel.
“What did it say?”
“I don’t know. He was going to leave it at the bar. He got shitfaced and walked away. I took it and put it in my backpack.”
“Has he read it?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I still have it.”
“He hasn’t asked for it?”
“No.”
CJ sighed. “Christ.”
“Should I make him read it ... or something?”
“God, I don’t fucking know. But ... if he does ask you for it, stick around while he reads it, okay? He went off the deep end in a flee-the-country kind of way when she died...” CJ trailed off, having expressed more concern over another human being besides myself than I’d ever witnessed.
“I promise.”
“G?”
“Yeah?”
“Regan’s a good shit. Tell him about your mom, okay? He’s just ... he’s a good listener.”
CJ hadn’t ever suggested I tell anyone about anything. I started to protest. “Ceej—”
“Georgia, come on. It looks like your mom is going to do what she’s going to do. You’re going to need support. If Regan is trusting you with something from Rae, reciprocate it.”
“Reciprocate? You okay?”
“Ha ha. Fuck off.” His tone was playful, but a little flat. “Love you.”
“Love you, too. Come back out here soon, k?”
“I’ll try. Bye, babe.”
“Bye.”
I tossed my phone onto the passenger seat and eased my way back onto the highway. It was nearing four in the morning, and I was wired from all of the emotional electrocution. Sarcastic pun intended.
There was only one logical place for me to be at that hour, in this state, and Regan already knew about the bakery, so it was safe. As long as he stayed the hell out this time.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t tell Regan about my mom—that would be the easy part of the conversation. It was the ramifications of that that were strewn about my life that gave me pause.
Maybe it was his music, as Lissa suggested. Maybe it was the unfettered trust he’d shown me, and that I’d shown him earlier in blindly renting him my apartment. Whatever it was, I knew that I had to tell Regan something, so he knew why I wanted to kiss him.
And why I couldn’t. Ever.
Regan
“That was perfect. Do it one more time.” Willow clicked her mic off from the recording room.
I groaned internally. It was four in the morning and we had been in the studio since 9:00 PM due to some scheduling conflicts that presented recording problems. Last year I could have easily kept up a schedule like this, but Ember’s parents and her friends had trained us to operate on a “normal” schedule, as they called it, and this all-nighter was bullshit.
“If it was perfect,” Ember snapped, “why the hell are we doing it again?”
She chose not to groan internally.
“Ember,” her mother, Raven, cautioned.
Ember sighed. Apparently she wasn’t yet over Willow’s attempt at seducing Bo. I didn’t really know the details of it, and I hadn’t mentioned to Bo or Ember that I knew about it, but it was clear that now wasn’t the time to interject my opinion.
“Let’s go, Em. We can do it one more time, even better than perfect.” I elbowed her and smiled.
Bo mouthed a thank you to me as the rest of the Six let out a collective sigh of relief. The track we were cutting was one between just Bo, Ember, and myself. The band wanted to give us some space on the album, to highlight some of their new talent. Their words, not ours. I was grateful for the opportunity and didn’t have any reservations about playing the song for the 900th time.
So, we played the song again. And, one more time.
I’d been drugging myself on rosin and Chopin for the last week. Drowning myself in my craft kept me deaf to the telltale heart thumping away somewhere in Georgia’s apartment. A card. From Rae.
No, I couldn’t do it. Not yet, or, maybe ever.
I was grateful to Georgia for hanging on to it. I assumed she still had it, but I honestly hadn’t given much thought to if I cared what she did with it or not. As usual, I hadn’t seen her much during the days following our talk in her bakery. I hadn’t smelled anything signaling her use of the kitchen in a few days, and I’d long since finished the last of those delicious blueberry muffins. I wanted more.