“Good-bye, Bliss.”
I felt surprisingly numb, like a wound that had been cauterized. Maybe it would hurt more later. Or maybe I was just learning that even the good things from our pasts still only belonged in the past.
“Good-bye, Cade.”
Spencer walked the two of them out, and I was left alone with Max. I took a deep breath and sunk back onto the couch.
Max stood above me and said, “I don’t even know what the hell just happened, and I’m depressed.”
I laughed, which all things considered was far better than the variety of reactions I could have had. “It was depressing, wasn’t it?”
“You okay, Golden Boy?”
I lifted my chin to look at her, and took the hand that was dangling by her side. I pressed a quick kiss to the back of it, and then let it fall back to her side. “Thank you for that. You didn’t have to. And yes, I’m okay. Moving forward, right?”
“That is the goal, boyfriend.”
“We’re getting pretty good at pretending. Maybe you should be an actor, too.”
She laughed. “Not in a million years. I don’t like acknowledging my own emotions. Why would I want to pretend to have more just for a lousy paycheck?”
“You don’t seem to have any problem expressing emotions when you sing. You’re pretty damn great at it, actually.”
She looked away, uncomfortable, and said, “To each his own, I guess.”
Time for a subject change. I stood, and tried to stretch some of that heavy, melancholy feeling out of my limbs. “Let’s go pack up your stuff, Angry Girl.”
“Oh, you don’t have to help. I was just giving you an excuse . . .”
“Don’t be stupid. You know I’m going to help you.”
“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.