Carter’s voice gave me goosebumps, and my body naturally swayed to its sound. Flashbacks tore through me as he went on, and I couldn’t resist allowing the past to bleed into the present.
All those days at the creek.
All those nights in his bed.
The knocks on his window.
His knocks on mine.
The endless hours at the arcade.
His eyes on mine. Never blinking, never flickering away.
Secret smiles we exchanged.
Jokes we created and endless laughter to be had.
All the while, those unwavering blue eyes stripped me bare; eyes that spoke of need but not want.
Without even realizing it, I could hear the words flow through me, and they weren’t conjured up in my head. They were coming out of Carter’s mouth as he sang lyrics that broke through my thoughts and left me stunned and rooted to the floor.
“You told me goodbye with tears in your eyes,
And I wish I wasn’t so fucked up to admit
You were right, right all along.
And it’s too late, too late to turn back time.
The world keeps turnin’, and my lust is burnin’
For a heart that won’t beat for me anymore.”
Wow.
Wow.
Wow.
That goddamn voice. It sent shivers down my spine. It’d been so long since I’d heard it against a live mic.
His eyes scanned the crowd, moving from one side of the arena to the other. Those blues skimmed over me, and I tensed when he stared a beat longer than usual, and then carried on. He shook his head almost to clear it and clutched the mic tighter as he lost himself in lyrics I was positive stemmed from our experiences together.
I relaxed, certain there was no way he’d catch my face in a sea of thousands of others.
Three
Leah
Mel and I were exhausted on our way home. We should’ve spent every minute talking about the concert, but Mel was shrouded in thought and I was on the verge of tears, discreetly wiping my eyes every time she made a turn that had her head looking the other way.
Stepping out of the building meant facing life again, and the melancholy that loomed over us in that car reminded me of the moment the boys drove off to follow their dreams. Mel had admired my strength for saying goodbye to Carter, but I wasn’t stupid enough to think I was the only one saying a hard goodbye. She’d suffered the “what ifs” too when Rome turned his back on her. More happened than she’d let on, I quickly came to realize, but getting the truth out of Melanie was like trying to create an echo without sound to start it.
Utterly impossible. She was a stubborn beast.
Reality immediately set in when she parked my Jeep next to her sedan in the underground parking lot of our condominium. It took a lot of effort to remove myself from the seat and focus on the now instead of how brilliant that concert had been.
Eventually, with a lot of laughter to be had, we collapsed out of the car and stood up on wobbly legs. Completely shattered, we hooked our arms around each other and walked very slowly to the elevator.
“I may never move again,” I remarked.
She giggled. “Me neither.”
“Well, you danced like crazy.”
“So did you.”
“Yeah, and now my body is broken.”
“Well… it might kick-start with that fine ass.”
I followed her gaze to a nice car that had just parked. Ah, our hot new neighbour. He stepped out, and Melanie moaned in approval. I chuckled at her blatant display of want.
“You can have him,” I whispered to her.
She gasped. “Are you sure? You’ve passed up a lot of guys for me.”
“The only reason I passed up other guys for you was because I was in a relationship.”
Cole was my last relationship. We ended a few months back. He was an engineering student, brilliant and sweet. I got a little freaked out by how serious he wanted things to go. I bailed on the relationship five months in, around the time he told me he had to relocate for a job offer. I jumped straight on that shit, using it as an excuse we couldn’t work with that sort of distance between us. It was actually because I liked him. A lot. And I was terrified of commitment. I couldn’t risk having my heart broken a second time. And Cole, despite being safe and easy, was annoyingly lovable. He was the kind of guy you could see yourself settling down with. Nothing about him at all screamed rebellion.
But still. I didn’t want to love him.
I didn’t want to love anyone.
I didn’t want to love, period.
Oh, how the tables had turned.
We stepped into the elevator with Hot Neighbour, and he nodded in greeting at us. Melanie stood up straighter, giving him her best flirty smile. I shook my head to myself, knowing damn well that screwing Hot Neighbour wasn’t going to erase all her years of pining for Rome.
“Exciting night?” Hot Neighbour asked us, scanning both of us up and down, as we rode up.
Melanie nodded. “Oh, yeah. Saw a concert in the city. You?”
“Just a night out with some buds.”
“Nice,” Melanie said with approval.
“What band did you see?”
“Fatal Rebellion.”
His brows shot up. “No shit? You know those guys are from here, right? They used to sing at a local bar.”
She smiled. “Oh? Wow.”
“Yeah, they hit it big with a fan made video.”
“You know, that vaguely sounds familiar,” she went on.
I held in my laughter as the elevator doors opened and we all filed out.
“I’m Daryl, by the way,” he said behind us as he went down the hall in the opposite direction.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she replied, not even offering him her name in return. Oh, sneaky girl.
“Playing hard to get, huh,” I whispered.
“I like when a man chases,” she clarified. “It makes the build-up so much more fun.”
I rolled my eyes. I wouldn’t know. I’d spent most of my years being the chaser.
When we got inside our apartment, she went straight into one bathroom, and I went straight to the other. I took a much needed shower, scrubbing off the sweat I’d accumulated while being pressed against people. Some of it wasn’t mine. Totally disgusting. But if that was the price for attending the best concert of my life, I could definitely live with that.
When I got out, I joined Mel in the kitchen. She pulled out two wine glasses and filled it to the rim. We clinked glasses and downed that shit.