Page 15 of A Wish for Us

“And your dad?”

“Are we done here?” I snapped. We weren’t going anywhere near my home life. I pointed at her scrawl on the notebook. “Seasons. Lots of instruments. Mixed tempos. Probably going to be a piece of utter shite, but it’swhat we’ve got. We’re done.”

Bonnie sat back in her seat. Her mouth was open and her eyes were wide. I had a flash of regret on seeing her face turn pale, but I frosted over again, like always. I’d gotten good at it now.

“Yeah. Whatever, Cromwell,” she said warily, pulling herself together. “I can take it from here.” I got up and threw my ten-dollar bill on the table. My chair scraped on the wooden floor, I got up that fast. The whole coffee shop looked over. Before Bonnie could offer to drive me home, I got the hell out of Dodge.

I walked down an alley, which brought me to the park that led to the campus. My muscles were jumping. I pulled out my cigarettes and sparked up, ignoring the shitty looks from the mums out with their kids. By the time I arrived at a large field, I’d inhaled three of the things and was suitably nicotined up. I sat down beside a tree and looked at the guy doing some kind of tai chi in the distance.

He looked like he belonged in a postcard.

I glanced up at the sun. The wind was still, and I laughed with bugger-all humor when I heard birds singing above me in the branches.

Birds.

“Seasons,” I muttered under my breath. What a crock of shit.

But even as I sat there, trying to push the lame and done-too-many-times concept from my brain, I pictured a flute in short sharp bursts introducing the piece. I saw a single violinist bringing in the main melody.

Spring.

Yellow. All the shades of yellow on the spectrum.

I opened my eyes and curled my hands so tightly into fists that my fingers ached. Turning my torso, I sent my fist into the tree trunk I’d been leaning against. I pulled back my hand to see blood seep from the cuts the rough bark had caused.

I shot up from the grass and made my way back to the dorms, the blood dropping on the path back home. I needed my beats. I needed my mixes.

I needed to forget.

I threw the headphones that had been hanging around my neck over my ears and let the high volume drown out the colors and thoughts and imagesplaguing my head.

I pressed on a new playlist on my phone and lost myself in the heavy sound of garage and grime. It wasn’t the music I made. I didn’t even like it. I just needed to get my head away from Lewis, my parents, and Bonnie Farraday and her questions.

Easton was lying on his bed when I walked into our room. I took my headphones off. Easton stood and whistled low, shaking his head. “What have you done to piss off my sister, man?”

“I was just my usual charming self.” I moved to my laptop and started back up what Bonnie had interrupted. But I saw Bonnie’s shocked, hurt face in my head, and it stopped me in my tracks.

Easton lay down on my bed. He was throwing an American football in the air and catching it again. “Yeah, well, if your intent was to have her seeing red, good job.” He stopped throwing the ball. “So you’re having to work together?”

“Looks that way.” I added the faint sound of a violin over the tempo dip I’d been struggling with. A violin. The sound worked perfectly. I’d never opened my file of actual instruments. Never added them into my mixes before.

I took a deep breath.

Until now.

I forgot all about Easton beside me, too focused on the fact that I’d added in a bloody violin to my mix, until he said, “I get that she can be feisty, but take it easy on her, okay?” His words sank in, the warning clear in his tone. “Not sure she can handle your kind of crazy.” He shrugged. “Small-town girl and all that.”

He swung his legs off the bed. “We’re going to a bar tonight. And this time you’re not getting out of it. Jet lag’s gone. You’ve been miserable long enough. Now you’re just being an unsociable bastard. And I can’t have that. I have a reputation to protect.”

“If there are girls there, I’m in.” I couldn’t believe that I’d actually agreed. But I kept seeing Bonnie in my head, and I knew I needed her gone. I needed to get laid. That’s what all this was. Why she was getting to me so much.

“Finally!” Easton said and clapped me on the back. “I knew I likedyou for a reason.” He threw the ball across the room into a basket. “Just bring your fake ID. You’ll be the perfect wingman.” He rubbed his hands together. “I’m gonna see the maestro at work. Been waiting for you to show me the way.”

“Not sure you need my help.”

Easton pretended to consider it. “Sure as hell don’t, but you and me, bro. We’re gonna be on another level with the chicks here.”

I moved to my closet, took out a clean T-shirt, and raked my hands through my unruly hair.

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