Page 78 of The Chance

Just a phase? Was I really about to say that to myself?

The thing about phases is that you never really know it’s not permanent until one day you wake up and realize you’re stilllistening to the same type of angsty music, or wearing all black, even decades later.

I tip off my hat—its worn out nature an icon of my exact thought pattern with its faded black tint and the missing Trapt logo from the front—and run a hand through my hair.

I’m infatuated with the drummer of a band not too different than the very one that made me love rock music.

I mean, what teenagerdidn’tenvy all the musicians of every band they listened to?

A tingling sensation runs down my neck and I blink myself back to the room.

Except it’s full of people that are already busy entertaining each other.

“I’m gonna do a walk,” I say to no one in particular and spin back to the door.

The boards underfoot creak the moment I step out it, the scent of fresh outdoors filling my lungs with each step that leads me around the back of the house.

Toby’s on the patio with Ma, their heads scrunched together.

“Ma, I need a favor, and you can’t say no.” I hear him say as I pass and shake my head.

“If that’s how you’re asking, then the answer should probably beno,” the woman answers and I snort to myself and keep walking.

Before I realize it, I’m standing in a clearing with only one tree breaking up the grass, staring at the bottom of a treehouse built into its sturdy trunk, a ladder leading up into the belly of it beckoning me.

It’s already open, a glow illuminating the inside as I climb up.

The first thing to hit me is the haze of smoke, then the scent of burning weed as I breach the floor and vault myself up to sit with my legs dangling through the opening.

“You shouldn’t be in here.”

“Hey to you, too, Vida.”

Mac snorts and blows a plume of smoke through his nose. “I’m smoking. Get out.”

I shake my head. “When did you even come out here?”

“You were too zoned out to see me walk right past you.”

My jaw grits.

Shit.

“Has it hit you yet?” he asks me from his perch on a beanbag and sucks in another hit from the joint pinched between his lips. It makes the cherry flare bright orange under the twinkle lights that cast shadows on his face.

“Where’s the black eye from?”

“Dare,” he answers easily, too easily, and I stiffen.

“What?” I snap out with a heat I can’t explain taking over my chest.

“Got too close while he was wailing on his set.Your turn.”

He takes another hit, and my jaw remains clenched at the prospect of Mac being anywhere near the other person, especially close enough to get hit. The very same person that stepped out on the stage that night I flew thousands of miles just to see Mac with my own two eyes and shattered the reality I thought I knew. The one I’ve ignored the existence of, if only in hopes that he’s not real. Not close to my drummer. Just a pawn in the game of promo and reputation.

“That sounds like bullshit,” I force out.

“And that sounds like deflection.Has. It. Hit. You.”

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