Page 58 of Perfect on Paper

“Is that so?”

“Yes, it is. Like, classic rock, for one. Have you ever heard of Midnight Oil or Cold Chisel? JimmyBarnes?”

I shrugged. Honestly, I wasn’t that interested in what I was missing, but Brougham seemed passionate about this so I let him run with it.

“Jimmy wrote, like, Australia’stheme song,” he said, half to himself, while he started searching on Spotify.

Good-bye, Khalid. You were wonderful to drive to while you lasted.

As predicted, Khalid’s smooth tones were snatched away from me, and they were replaced with some eighties sounding piano chords. “Woah,thatwas a vibe change.” I grinned.

Brougham was unswayed. “‘Working Class Man,’” he said, like that was meant to mean something to me. “You’venever heard this?”

“You know I haven’t—” I started, but the music picked up in pace and volume and Brougham began honest-to-godbopping in his seatto what seemed to be Australia’s take on Bruce Springsteen. I was so stunned my train of thought evaporated.

He turned up the volume for emphasis and started mouthing along to the words, hands fisted and eyes closed. Then he began singing, in an over-the-top gravelly, growly voice to mimic the singer, soft at first but growing in volume, laughing as he sang. By the end of the song he was shout-singing at full volume, and I was giggling so hard I was worried for our safety. He held his hands out to the windshield like he was performing to a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden, chin lifted and face scrunched up with put-on emotional intensity.

“Whoare you?” I howled, gasping for breath. “What ishappening?”

“Musical genius is happening,”he cried over the closing bars of the song.

“I’mterrified!”

“That’s just your mind struggling to catch up with how much it’s missed out on.”

“Oh my god.”

Brougham was out of breath and panting, but giggling right along with me. “Okay, I’m done. We can put on your music again.”

“Thank god, I’m not sure I could’ve kept the car on the road through an encore.”

Khalid wasn’t able to serenade us back to earth for too long before I pulled off the highway and onto a smaller country road. A few more turns, then we’d reached my goal: the base of Mount Tilda.

In all fairness, “Mount” was an overstatement. It was really just a glorified hill, given its dramatic name by some kids at school who wanted an Instagram hashtag for their hiking pictures. But it was large enough to boast its own steep, rocky road winding around and around its body, and that suited our purpose. I started up it, and Brougham gripped the center console with white knuckles, all lightheartedness vanished. “Don’t kill us, don’t kill us, don’t kill us,” he started chanting.

“You sound serious.”

“I’mperfectly serious, Phillips, if you kill us I’m going to kill you.”

“It’s nice to get some emotion out of you, Alexander.”

“Is… terror an… emotion?”

“Of course it is.” I shifted gears, and the car rolled backward barely a foot or two while it adjusted. Brougham’s head hit the back of the car seat and he pinched his eyes closed and moaned.

I took my hand off the gear and squeezed his shoulder briefly. His eyes flew open, and he looked down at my hand in mild alarm. “We’re fine.” I giggled.

“Keep your eyes on the road,” he ordered faintly.

“Yes, sir, sorry, sir.”

We reached the top of the hill, and I pulled into the lookout area. Below us were sprawling fields in a vibrant green, rolling hills, and trees scattered in clusters. The horizon was foggy and grayed out with rain, but, as I’d hoped, it was lighting up every few seconds with sheet lightning. The center of the storm was too far away to make out the thunder, but the lightning entwined with the twilight to produce purple, pink, and yellow flashes across the vast expanse of sky. From here, we could see all of it through the rhythmic back-and-forth sweep of my windshield wipers.

Next to me, Brougham had calmed down somewhat, though his hand was still gripping the glove box like it’d somehow save him in the event of the car tipping over the edge of the hill. At least the color was returning to his cheeks.

“We all used to come here,” I said. “Back when my parents were together. Anytime there was a storm.”

Another flash of lightning lit the sky up in a pale peach, before dimming back down to deep gray. Brougham’s hand relaxed its grip and he drew it back into his chest to massage the tension from his long fingers. Then he looked sideways at me. “Let’s go.”

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