Текст книги "Seeing Stars"
Автор книги: J. Sterling
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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 9 страниц)
He’s going to think I’m crazy.
“It’s my favorite spot. You don’t hate it, do you? You can’t hate it.”
“I don’t hate it,” I murmured, my mind sorting through the memories I’d locked away tightly all those years ago. Every single one of them flooded over me and I started to hyperventilate. Concentrating on my erratic breathing, I willed myself to calm down. It was only a restaurant and it had been a lifetime ago. Surely I could go eat there with my new friend, and not completely lose my shit over it?
I hoped.
“Madison?” Walker’s voice broke through my semi freak-out, instantly calming me.
“I’m here.” I took a few deep breaths, trying to calm down. Just because I’d had my heart ripped out at that café as a teenager didn’t mean that I needed to act like one now.
Grow up. You need to move on.
“Can we go there? I’d really like to take you there.” His voice was overly chipper and I suddenly wanted to smack him for it.
“Fine.”
Walker sighed. “I have a feeling that when you say ‘fine’ you’re just giving in, but that doesn’t mean you’re happy about it. I promise you’ll be happy about this. Meet me there in an hour.”
“Fine,” I said again, and hung up.
The moment I pulled my car onto Pacific Coast Highway, my chest tightened. Being in Malibu hadn’t made me feel like this in years. It wasn’t the town bringing back all the memories, it was the venue.
Turning right into the café’s gravel lot, my heartbeat quickened. As I pulled into a parking space, I thought about turning right back around and leaving. I’d simply tell Walker that I couldn’t do it. We’d have to meet somewhere else. Shaking my head as I took deep breaths to calm myself, a quick rap on my window caused me to jump and my breath to catch.
Walker’s hazel eyes greeted me through the glass, their familiar color imprinting on me again. I narrowed my eyes as I examined the flecks of green and brown in his, their soulful depths virtually calling me home. Or maybe just to the bedroom.
“You all right?”
I collected my thoughts at the sound of his voice and pressed the button to roll down my window. “Sorry. Give me a second.” I breathed deeply again, reminding myself that I could be here. I could do this. I’d make new memories here, today. Starting now, I’d no longer associate this place with pain from the past. My old remembrance of it would be replaced with memories of Walker and happiness, and how he was there for me when I stood up to my asshole boss and quit the first job I’d gone to college for.
When I got out of the car, Walker’s hands were instantly all over me, one hand tangling in my hair while the other pressed against the small of my back, pulling me into a warm hug. His body closed the space between us and everything in me shot to life. I was hyperaware of every touch of his skin on mine and grateful for the break from my past fears.
“I’m so sorry about your job,” he said. “I want to hear everything.” He leaned his mouth next to my ear, kissing and nibbling at it between words. “I’ll fucking kill your boss if you want me to. I know people,” he joked with a flirtatious smile.
At least, I hoped he was joking.
He dipped his chin and looked deeply into my eyes while caressing the nape of my neck. “So, what happened?”
I shook my head, so many issues bombarding me at once. “I don’t even know. One second I’m blissfully happy, and the next I’m telling my boss what a raging asshole he is and how much I hate the way he runs his business. Then I quit.”
He smiled and gently squeezed the back of my neck. “You were blissfully happy?”
“Really? That’s the part you heard?” I pressed my lips together and raised my eyebrows.
Walker let out a big laugh. “No. I heard the rest. I just liked the blissfully happy part the best. Although I gotta admit, you’re sort of a badass, babe.”
Babe? Sigh.
“Thanks.”
I glanced up at the weathered blue-and-white sign in the nearly empty parking lot, and then back toward the old wood entrance where a surfboard hung above it. In all the years that had passed, the café hadn’t changed one bit. My stomach lurched at the memories shaking their way loose, and I gripped on to Walker a bit too tight.
“Are you sure you’re okay being here? We can leave.” His voice softened but I could tell he didn’t want to.
Too late, buddy. I’m already here. You’ve already sent me spiraling back in time.
“I can’t believe you don’t remember.” The light flecks in his eyes sparkled as he looked at me.
“Remember what?”
“You don’t remember being here with me before? I wanted to wait until we got inside, but I’m afraid you won’t let me get you in there.” He smiled wickedly at me, his hand sliding down to stroke my back.
My heart pounded, raced actually, as the memories I’d pushed back since that summer over ten years ago flooded through me. Thoughts of me and my summer crush sitting in the sand, arms wrapped around each other as the sun set. Watching Scotty surf at dawn, and then staying all afternoon when he could, which wasn’t often enough since his mom got sick. Saying good-bye here, in the parking lot of what had become “our” café.
And my overly dramatic teenage heart feeling like it broke in two as I had to leave him when the summer ended.
• • •
I flipped over, reminding myself that it was time to tan my back, and undid the strap of my bikini top. No one wanted tan lines and I agreed. Propping my head up on top of my fists, I watched Scotty out in the ocean, his arms paddling hard as he moved to catch the oncoming wave. He pushed himself from his knees to his feet in one swift motion, and I envied the smooth, efficient way the surfboard tilted and cut through the water in response to a slight shift in his hips.
Surfing came so easily to him, but when he had tried to teach me yesterday morning, all I accomplished was perfecting my tumbling skills. When I finally did stand on the board in the water, it lasted all of two seconds before my balance slipped away and I landed in the freezing ocean again.
Scotty could have teased me mercilessly, but he didn’t. He reminded me that it took most people years to learn how to surf well . Still, I was pissed I hadn’t learned in a single day. Ever the perfectionist, I nodded my head at him, but secretly wished I was more athletic.
Ice -cold water droplets rained down my back, pulling me away from yesterday and back to today with a shock. I moved to jump from my towel, but thankfully remembered that my top was untied. Instead I quickly turned my head to the right, seeing Scotty standing above me, ringing out his wet clothes.
“Stop it,” I whined as I retied my top.
He placed his cold fingers on my back. “Leave it untied.”
My eyes met his . Recognizing the lust-filled hormones raging behind them, I pulled the bow on my top tight and pushed up onto my knees, facing him. “I’m not letting this entire beach see my goodies.”
Scotty glanced around from side to side . “Lucky for you, no one’s looking. Just me.” He folded his arms across his bare chest.
“Nice try,” I teased.
With his towel next to mine, Scotty lay down on his side and ran his fingers along my hip. “Need me to rub some suntan lotion on you?”
I swatted at his hand. “Oh my gosh, Scotty! Is sex all you think about?” Only fourteen and still a virgin, sex talk made me nervous. I hadn’t felt about any boy in my hometown the way I felt about Scotty, but I knew the summer was ending soon and most likely, so were we.
He shrugged and closed one eye . “I think about music too.” His laugh filled my ears as he leaned down to kiss my lips. “But mostly sex. What can I say? I’m a teenage boy and my loins are needy.”
This time it was my own laughter that filled my ears. “Loins? Your loins are needy? Sounds serious. You might want to see a doctor for that,” I suggested with a coy smile.
“Wanna play doctor?”
• • •
I looked up into Walker’s eyes, suddenly realizing why they’d looked so familiar in a more meaningful way. “Oh my God. Oh my God.”
My mouth instantly felt dry, as if I’d eaten a bucket filled with sand, and I choked on my words, my thoughts, my memories. My head spun as I tried to keep myself standing upright. It didn’t work and I crouched down, wrapping my arms around my knees as I lowered my head, my shoulders wracked with my sobs.
Walker instantly squatted in front of me, frantically stroking my hair and rubbing my arms, touching me, consoling me in any way he could.
Shaking my head, I looked up, my vision blurred with tears. “Scotty?”
“Scott Walker Rhodes,” he corrected gently.
“Is it really you?”
“Was I really that forgettable?” He smirked at me, but I didn’t miss the moisture that suddenly filled his eyes.
“It is you, isn’t it?” I choked out. “You look so different.”
“I finally lost all my baby fat,” he said jokingly, but it was true. “And grew about a foot since you last saw me.” He flexed his arms, making the muscles press against the sleeves of his shirt as he smiled. “And I’ve been working out.”
I half laughed. It was amazing how much he’d changed since that summer a decade ago. He was much taller now, his body lean and muscular, a far cry from the shorter, pudgier teenage version of him. His hair was now close-cropped and nearly black, very different from the long, wavy sun-bleached dark brown locks that were always falling into his eyes when he was a teenager. And his face was now the face of a man, all chiseled and lean; no remnants of his once-full cheeks remained. But those eyes, they hadn’t changed a bit.
We were just kids that summer, but looking at him now, I felt so stupid. I wanted to smack myself for not seeing it before. It seemed so blatantly obvious that the man across from me was Scotty, my summer crush from when I was only fourteen.
Old friends of my family had plans to tour Europe that summer, so they had asked my parents if we would watch the house and take care of their dogs. My parents, both teachers, jumped at the idea of spending the summer in Malibu, and I was overjoyed. Just the thought of spending the whole summer in the Johnsons’s huge beach house steps from the ocean thrilled me. I had no idea I’d leave my heart there in the sand when the summer ended.
“I–I can’t believe it,” I stuttered as I tried to form rational thoughts. “How long have you known? You’ve always known it was me, haven’t you? That was why you were trying to find me.” I spoke rapidly, the pieces of the puzzle finally clicking together.
“You look exactly the same, Madison,” he said as his fingers twirled my hair. “I mean, you’ve definitely changed,” his gaze roamed along the curves of my body, “but you still look the same.”
“Why didn’t you say anything at dinner? Or at my condo?” The wind picked up, blowing my hair into my eyes, and I brushed it back, not wanting to miss any expression on his face while my mind still struggled to put all the pieces together. Not that I was confused any longer, but I did feel overwhelmed.
Walker shrugged, suddenly looking unsure of himself. “I needed the right time. And part of me kept hoping something I would say would trigger a memory and you’d remember on your own.”
“I’m really bad with placing faces, and you’ve changed so much.” I shook my head wildly. “Plus I blocked it all out. I’d been too hurt after we lost touch. I forced myself to forget about you, pretend there was no you.”
He winced as his breath whooshed out of him. “That’s harsh.”
“It’s reality.”
“For you maybe.”
I looked up at him. “What does that mean?”
“That means that I never fucking forgot about you.” He lifted my chin with his fingers, forcing me to lock eyes with him. “Ever. And the fact that you could erase me from your memory makes me absolutely insane when I could never shake you from mine.”
I sucked in an unsure breath, my entire body overloaded with emotion. “I’m not saying that I ever really succeeded. I’m just saying that I tried.”
“Stop trying,” he said softly, just before his lips pressed against mine.
We had been relaxing on the beach, the sand cool and damp against my bare skin as we’d sat cross-legged next to each other, watching the sun drop through a fiery sky into the ocean.
“I wrote a song about you last night,” Scotty said as he wrapped his arm around my waist and attempted to pull me closer.
“About me?” My young heart leaped at the idea of a boy writing a single sentence about me, let alone an entire song.
“Yeah. But it’s not finished yet.” He planted a damp kiss on my cheek and my face warmed.
“Is it romantic? What’s it about?”
Scotty laughed and then shook his head. “Not telling you anything until it’s finished.”
“Not even a hint? The chorus? A lyric?” I looked at him, my best puppy -dog eyes on display.
He turned his head to face me and kissed me with all the skill and passion a fifteen -year-old boy could muster. “It’s about the first girl I’ve ever loved. And how I hate the idea of another summer without her.”
My eyes instantly filled with tears as the rest of my body went numb. “You love me?”
We hadn’t said those words to each other, although God knew I’d loved him for half the summer already. As a young teenage girl, my heart was open and willing for him. It waited to be taken, to be claimed.
His fingers splayed across my hip, digging into my skin as he prepared to say the words I so nervously wanted him to. I knew I loved him, but I never wanted to say it first. What if he hadn’t loved me back? I couldn’t stand the humiliation. It would take everything in me to not pack my bags and beg my parents to take me back to the valley.
“I think I do,” he said. “You’ve made this summer perfect. You’re perfect.”
In that moment I had known I’d never find another boy quite like Scotty. His mom being sick had made him more vulnerable and sensitive. I had felt that every moment I spent with him, I was seeing a side of Scotty that no one else got to see.
“I think I love you too,” I said breathlessly.
But I didn’t “think” I loved him. I knew.
• • •
Interrupting my thoughts, Walker leaned his forehead against mine, dragging me back to the present. “I almost had a heart attack on that platform when I first saw you at the concert. I kept trying to convince myself that it wasn’t you. That it couldn’t be you. But deep down, I knew. And that headband, the way it sparkled above your head, drew my eyes to you. You looked so beautiful, like you stepped out of a fairy tale.”
I plopped down on the ground, feeling light-headed from squatting so long, and scooted closer to him. My eyes wanted to drown in him as my brain struggled to memorize every feature so that I’d never forget again. How could I have ever forgotten in the first place?
“Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to keep singing after I saw you?” He barked out a laugh and shook his head. “Holy shit, babe, I wanted to jump off that platform, take you in my arms, and run away. You know, give the tabloids something to really talk about!”
I laughed for the first time that day. It felt good to smile, even if my thoughts were racing at a breakneck pace.
“And after the show. When I realized you didn’t leave your number like I’d asked, I fucking lost it.”
“Lost it how?”
He shrugged and rolled his eyes. “I might have broken some things. No big deal.”
I looked away, suddenly embarrassed. “I thought you asked for every girl’s number. I mean, I just assumed you wanted to add me to your never-ending list of conquests. It pissed me off when you asked.”
Walker leaned forward and wiped the tears from my cheek, then cupped my face with his hand. “Only my girl would get pissed off when a celebrity asks for her number.”
My girl?
Lord, have mercy. I promise to hang on to this boy and never let him go if you let me have him. I don’t even need him wrapped up with a bow. I’ll take him just the way he is. Please.
“No number,” he went on. “And still no last name. But I was older this time and had more resources. There was no way I was letting you slip out of my life twice.” He leaned toward me, his lips meeting mine, and I melted into him, wanting to forget everything that ever existed before he sang his way back into my life.
Walker’s words and actions caused more tears to fall. I’d been so heartbroken after the summer ended and we eventually lost touch. No one had ever warned me that first loves could have such an impact on you. I wasn’t sure I’d ever fully recovered, although I’d definitely tried.
Sitting here now in the parking lot of this café, pain shot through my chest with each breath I took, a clear reminder that the scars left by those lost first loves never truly heal. At least, not without permanent damage.
His warm breath rustled my hair. “I’m sorry about losing touch.”
“I was just thinking about that. What happened? I tried your cell, but it was disconnected or no longer in service.” I remembered the robotic female voice on that recording as clear as day, taunting me as if she knew something I didn’t.
He picked up one of my hands and pressed it to his lips, then looked into my eyes. “I took my cell phone with me everywhere. I never wanted to miss a call from you because I never knew when one was coming. I even brought it to the beach when I surfed.” He glanced up at the sky, as if pulling memories from the clouds. “It got wet one day after I’d been in the water. Completely fried the thing. It wouldn’t even turn on.”
“And you never got a new one? You couldn’t call me from your house phone?” I asked, suddenly feeling fourteen again, recalling pacing the floor in front of our home phone while I willed it to ring.
“I didn’t have your phone number written down anywhere. It was only in my cell phone. And yes, I got a new one. Eventually. But my parents made me work around the house to earn the money to pay for it, so I didn’t get another phone for almost three months. But your number was gone forever by that time.”
“I left you voice mails,” I said softly. “So many voice mails. Until your phone stopped taking them.” The memories still felt fresh, my teenage self crying into the phone and asking him why he wasn’t calling me back. Thinking back, it seemed like I was nothing if not overdramatic. But I remembered being so truly heartbroken at the time, I’d convinced myself that I would never get over him. Eventually I had, but not before crying until the tears would no longer fall. Every emotion, especially love, was so amplified when you were a kid. Hell, I didn’t even know what love truly was at that age, but I thought I felt it for him.
“Those messages broke my damn heart, Madison. Especially when you never left your phone number in any of them. I heard them all back-to-back when I got my new phone turned on. It took everything in me to not smash the damn thing to pieces.”
“That would have been counterproductive,” I teased, trying to lighten the mood.
“When I got to the last voice mail you left me, I knew in my heart that you’d given up.” He squeezed my hand.
I sighed. “I think I actually said that in my message, if I remember right.”
“You did. But I didn’t want it to be true. And you never called again.”
“Well, you stopped calling back. I just assumed the worst. You know, that you were sick of me calling you and that’s why you changed your number. Or that you found someone new. But it all went back to you being over me.”
His face pinched with pain. “I hate hearing that. You have no idea how much I hate hearing that right now. I tried to find you. I looked everywhere I could but there was no Facebook then. No social media like there is now to stalk people effectively.”
“There was MySpace,” I reminded him.
“But you didn’t have one.”
“You didn’t either.” I recalled a conversation we’d had on the beach one afternoon where we confessed that we weren’t obsessed with computers like our friends were.
He laughed and my face flushed. “Not that I would have had much luck trying to find Madison from the valley.”
I listened to the surf breaking nearby and felt numb, as if everything inside me had disappeared. I was certain my heart wasn’t beating, my lungs weren’t working, and whatever else in there was either broken or gone. This was all so surreal, I still couldn’t believe it was happening.
“I can’t believe it’s you. I can’t believe you’re here.” I turned my head to look out at the ocean across the sand. “We made so many memories together at this beach.”
He nodded. “It’s why I brought you here. To this day, I can’t come here and not think of you.”
“It’s why I didn’t want to come,” I said softly, still struggling to regain some sense of composure.
His eyebrows lifted and his expression brightened. “Was that why? I wondered, but of course I couldn’t ask.”
“I never come here. The last time I was here was with you. That day we said good-bye.”
“Don’t remind me. That was one of the hardest days of my life. Even now, when I add up the days in my life that have royally sucked, like this morning, it still ranks up there at the top.”
• • •
“You’re leaving?” Scotty had asked, his hazel eyes etched with pain that even as a teenager I could recognize.
My heart had constricted so tightly I could barely speak, so I had nodded instead as tears flowed freely down my sun-kissed cheeks. The breeze whipped my hair, causing strands to stick to the wet tracks on my face.
“Don’t cry, Madison. We’ll still talk. I’ll call you every day. And we’ll figure out a way to see each other again. I promise.” His words were insistent and determined, as though he believed them.
“I don’t want to go,” I choked out through my sobs. My hands reached out to stroke back the wavy sun-streaked strands that the breeze stirred in front of his eyes.
Scotty wiped at my tears, plucking my own stuck strands free and tucking them behind my ear before pulling me into a hard hug. “I don’t want you to go either. I’m not ready to say good-bye.”
“I’ll never be ready,” I said solemnly.
“This has been the best summer of my life. You hear me? The best.”
Reluctant to leave, I pulled away from his embrace. “I have to go. My parents are waiting for me.”
“I–I,” he stuttered before looking down at the sand. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” The words slid effortlessly from my teenage lips.
“This isn’t done between us. You and me,” he said, his breathing ragged. “We’re not over. You believe me, don’t you?”
I had nodded, wanting with all my heart to believe his words. Then he had kissed me. His tongue had stroked desperately in and out of my mouth, his awkward and rushed movements proof of his inexperience.
• • •
The memory faded as Walker’s voice filled my ears and his face came into view. “God, Madison. I looked for you. The following summer.” His eyes glistened, and I knew I’d lose it even more if he cried.
I willed him not to. Not here. Not in this moment when I so desperately needed to pull it together and not fall apart.
“You never went back to the beach, did you?” he asked.
I thought back, recalling how distraught I’d been when I lost contact with him. How desperately I wanted to be in touch with him and how hopeless I’d felt. My mom and best friend both told me to forget him. They insisted that he’d long since forgotten about me and I needed to do the same. I didn’t want to believe them, but I eventually stopped ignoring the obvious message his silence contained.
By the time the following summer came around and we ended up on the beaches of Malibu, I made sure to never go near our beach again.
I shook my head. “I couldn’t. I didn’t want to go back there. Too many memories. Plus, my best friend had me convinced that you had moved on. She asked me how I’d feel if I saw you with someone else. I knew it would kill me, so I never risked it.”
“Actually, I did the exact opposite.”
I leaned toward him, looking up into his eyes. “What do you mean?” As his thumb idly circled the skin on my hand, I thought about how I never wanted it to stop. I never wanted him to stop touching me. Ever.
“Almost every day the next summer, I went to that particular spot at the beach looking for you. I was obsessed, wanting so badly to see you again, that I convinced myself you’d know I was waiting. That you’d be able to sense me there.” He paused. “I needed to find you, but you never came. And eventually I stopped going.”
Shocked, I leaned away from him, my back pressing into the hard steel of my car as I allowed the realization of his words to sink in. He’d gone back to the beach to look for me? He had wanted to see me again?
“I figured you were done with me,” I whispered. “Forgotten all about me. We were just kids.”
Walker tipped my face up and snared my gaze with his. “I could never forget you. You’ve always held a piece of my heart, Madison.”
More tears fell and I quickly brushed them away with the back of my hand.
“Let’s go inside and eat,” he suggested. “Think you can handle being back in our café?” He pushed himself from off the ground and extended a hand to me.
“As long as I’m with you, I think I can handle anything.” I reached for his hand and he pulled me up effortlessly before yanking me against him.
“Looks like you’ll be unstoppable because I’m never leaving your side again.” His hands splayed across my back as he dipped his head so his lips could meet mine.
My body leaned into his as my mouth opened, accepting him, wanting him. I reached around his neck and lightly raked my fingernails down the length of it before stopping at his shoulders. Our tongues took turns moving from one mouth to the other, every stroke, every touch making our hearts beat faster.
Walker pulled back. “We need to stop or I’m going to end up throwing you down right here in the parking lot and having my way with you,” he said with a teasing tone.
I burst out laughing. “The press would have a field day! Could you imagine? Let’s go eat. Suddenly I’m starving.”
“Me too.” He licked his lips. “But not for food.”
The café’s teenage hostess had a mini breakdown before seating us, fanning her face with her hand and shakily asking Walker for his autograph. My heart, which had miraculously found its way back into my chest, swelled with appreciation. I’d been absent for so many years from Walker’s life, but I suddenly felt like I hadn’t missed a day.
Once we were seated in our booth, I looked over at him, so proud of the man he had become. And I knew his mother would be too. Now it made sense why he had asked me last night if I remembered her being sick. Of course I had. His mom had been diagnosed the summer we met. I’d always thought that going through that together had bonded us in a deeper way. I never truly imagined how right I was.
• • •
I had been sitting in the sand playing fetch with one of the Johnsons’s dogs when I’d found myself mesmerized by the surfers in the water. The way they paddled out on their boards, moving in a particular direction before I even noticed any inkling of a wave forming, was beautiful to watch. When they would rise to their feet and maneuver the board like it was attached to them, cutting through waves doing tricks I couldn’t even imagine doing, I wanted to stand up and applaud.
One of the younger guys rode a small chopper until it ended at the shoreline. He tucked his board under his arm and jogged up to sit in the sand next to me. I almost asked him what he wanted when I noticed a pile of clothing sitting there.
“Hey,” he said, and I turned to see the hottest pair of hazel eyes staring back at me.
“Hey, yourself.”
“Local or tourist?” he asked as he lowered the zipper from his wetsuit and shimmied it halfway down his body, revealing his bare chest.
“Um…” I hesitated, unsure of how to answer. I wasn’t from Malibu, but I wasn’t a tourist either.
“Do you live here or are you from out of state?” A towel now sat wrapped tightly around his waist as he pulled the rest of his wetsuit free.
Hiding my nervousness, I looked away as I said, “I’m from the valley, but we’re staying here all summer.”
From the corner of my eye, I watched as h is tanned feet stepped into a pair of board shorts and he pulled them up just as the towel fell away. “Which house?”
“The Johnsons’s.” I offered up the information freely, not pausing to consider whether it was safe to tell him.
“Cool. I live two doors down.” He pulled a black T-shirt over his head and tossed his wetsuit across his board.
My face lit up at the idea of having met a friend already. And the fact that he was a totally hot guy didn’t hurt either.
“What’s your name?”
“ Madison. My name’s Madison.”
“I’m Scott. I’ll see you around, Madison from the valley,” he shouted over his shoulder as he carried his surfboard away.
“Wanna stay and hang out?” I called out, hoping he’d stop walking and come back to me.
He stopped and turned around. “I can’t. My mom’s sick and I need to get home. Just wanted to catch some waves before she woke up.” Then he waved and turned to head home.
“Oh, okay. See you around.”
I didn’t realize at the time that his mom was terminally ill. Being so young, I’d just assumed he meant she had the flu, or something harmless like that. It never occurred to me to think otherwise. A typical teenage girl, I was naïve and unaware.
• • •
My throat parched, I reached for the water on the table and downed the entire glass.
“You have a thing with water.” Walker smirked, his eyes searching mine, and I wanted to climb across the table and hop into his lap. “I still write songs about that summer, you know.” He bit his lip and my mind suddenly filled with all the naughty things I could do to that lip. And all the naughty things I would do to it.
My overactive imagination snapped back to reality with a thud. “What did you just say? Which songs?”
A rosy color crept over his cheeks as he looked down at the crumpled napkin he held. “‘The One Who Got Away’ and ‘That Summer,’ obviously,” he said as he tore at the napkin, placing bits of crinkled paper around the table as his eyes avoided mine. “And then, ‘Where’d She Go and Disappear.’”
I almost choked on my water at the mention of the last song. I was obsessed with it when it came out, hitting repeat on my iPod constantly so I could hear the haunting lyrics and melody one more time.
She said good -bye that day
But I never knew she meant it
I always wanted her to stay
