Page 19 of Ballads of Lines Blurred

Now I’m back at the start

Worrying you’ll hear every thought

I can’t do it over

I can’t escape what I feel

You haven’t left me since that night

No matter how hard I fight

You’re present in every breath

What you don’t realize is I’ll be here

With an apology on my lips

As fear has me in its grip

That you’ll walk away again

And I’ll forever wonder what could have been

I kept playing as tears built in my eyes. My heart ached at hearing the words I’d written sung back at me. There was no chorus, just endless words I couldn’t form into a song. Reed had tried, but it didn’t fit. It had everything to do with what I felt.

Cody and I weren’t anything. He was pissed at me, and rightfully so. Hell, I couldn’t even talk to Milo on the way home from the party the other day. He offered to come in, but I wanted to be alone with my anxiety and pain of how I made Cody feel.

What Cody didn’t realize was I would love to know what it was like to have him in my arms. To feel his breath against my skin. To press my palm to his chest and revel in the steady beats of his heart.

This wasn’t a line between love and hate with us. It was a line between all or nothing. I didn’t know if I could blur it and have something in the middle.

“Slay,” Reed whispered and put his hand on my arm, pulling me from my thoughts.

“I can’t…”

“Slater,” another voice said.

My gaze snapped up and latched on to Cody standing on the other side of the screen door. I couldn’t move, frozen to the spot. My bottom lip trembled. The last thing I wanted was for him to see me cry. I wasn’t supposed to be like this. I was a fucking guitar player in one of the biggest bands on the planet. One look at him, at those eyes that haunted my dreams, and I broke.

Carefully, I set my guitar on the couch and stood. I wanted to go to him, to fight for something—anything—between us. Instead, I turned and went for the stairs that led to the second story where my bedroom was.

“Slater,” Reed called, but I kept going.

Cody had heard Reed sing. I didn’t need to ask to know the truth. He’d heard the lyrics I’d written about him.

Voices carried up the stairs, but I ignored them and kept moving until I was through my bedroom. In the attached bathroom, I splashed cold water on my face while I willed my mind and body to calm. Reed or Cody would come after me, check to see how I was doing.

The second Reed walked through my door this morning; he saw how much I had beaten myself up. Figuratively, not literally. He embraced me, told me everything was going to be okay. How could it when I did nothing right with Cody? He should be with someone else. Someone like Milo. I wasn’t good for either of them.

I was surprised when it was Reed’s voice I heard in my room a moment before he filled the doorway to the bathroom. “I couldn’t make him leave. He’s downstairs.” Why did it hurt that he’d stayed? It probably would have hurt just as much if he’d left.

“I shouldn’t want him, Reed.”

“You can’t help how you feel. This is about more than his age.”

Lifting my face, I let him get a look at me as water dripped down my cheeks and chin. “You see me. You’ve seen the good and bad. I’m supposed to offer this to him? How? I can barely keep myself together.”

Reed rubbed his hand in circles over my back. “You sell yourself short. You’re not your anxiety or depression. Yes, they’re part of you, but when someone asks about you, we don’t lead with ‘Oh, Slater has panic attacks.’ We tell them you’re one of the best people we know. We say you’re an amazing guitarist. How you help write the band’s songs and keep us together. We’d be lost without you.”

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