Page 17 of Sounds Like Love

Mitch scratched his chin. “Now? The band’s about to come on.”

“It won’t take long,” Mom soothed, and asked Gigi to sit, too. She did, and we all faced Mom and Dad on the other side of the counter. I squirmed nervously, but both Gigi and Mitch looked more morose than anything. Like they knew what it was. Mom took Dad by the hand and squeezed it tightly. “Your father and I have been thinking about this for a while, but I think it’s the right choice. You might not agree, but it’s for the best.” Then Mom took a deep breath and said without a shadow of a doubt, “At the end of the summer, we’re closing the Revelry.”

Chapter6Running Up That Hill (With No Problems)

THE CURTAINS ONSTAGEopened, and the Bushels walked out to the applause of the crowd and launched into a ghostly wail of “Wuthering Heights.” The synths were so loud, they rattled my beer bottle. I grabbed it and planted it firmly on the counter, but my head was spinning. All of a sudden it was too loud to say anything in reply, which, knowing my parents, was surely by design.

The last summer of the Revelry?

The last summer that we would all be—

Behere.

Gigi rubbed her face with her hands and muttered, “Fuck.”

I barely heard her over the music.

My chest began to constrict, and I rubbed at it absently, taking a deep breath.

It’s fine, I told myself, because Iwasn’tgoing to have a panic attack here at the bar in front of all these people. I’d never even had a panic attack before, but I heard they felt like this. Like a heart attack.Like something invisible is squeezing you tighter and tighter and all you can do is try to breathe as you tell yourself,It’s fine, it’s fine—

Mom’s hands came forward and enveloped mine. My gaze shot up to her. She said, “It will be okay, heart.” Then she reached over to Mitch’s forearm and squeezed it tightly, too. She looked between the two of us. “Sometimes change is good.”

But all Mitch could say was, “They’re playing the song you hate.”

She smiled. “We endure the things we must, jackrabbit.”

“Are you sure about this?” I asked, and my voice was too loud in my ears. More angry than upset. It was in sharp dissonance to the Bushels’ howling encore. My mouth felt dry, the taste of metallic dread coating my tongue. “Can’t we talk about it?”

Mom and Dad exchanged a quiet look.

Then Dad said, “This is our decision. We want to concentrate on other things after this summer.”

I slipped off the barstool, feeling my chest tighten. I rubbed at it, but it didn’t help. “I need some air,” I said, pushing myself away from the bar, and fled toward the emergency exit.

AFTER THE BUSHELSplayed their encore, my parents went home.

I sat out on the loading dock in the back, bumping my heels against the cement ledge, staring out toward the ocean. After a while, the Bushels came out the back, their instruments in tow, and said their goodbyes as they loaded their things into the Revelry’s van, and Mitch drove them away.

“Mitch already gone?” Gigi asked, poking her head out of the door to the loading dock, and I nodded. She sank down onto the ledge beside me. “I’ve closed out and everything. Lockbox is in the office.I’ll run the cash by the bank tomorrow before we open,” she supplied, talking aloud more to herself than to me.

I stared straight ahead. “You didn’t know, did you? About …”

“No, Jo. But I had a feeling.”

“Oh.” We sat quietly for a minute, and then she hopped off the ledge. “Well, I’m heading home. Gotta move my car before the laundromat opens in the morning and calls the tow on me again. I can drive you home.”

The thought of going home now, having to face my parents after I fled from the bar …

No, I didn’t want to go home quite yet, but I couldn’t stay here, either, unless … I motioned to the keys in Gigi’s hand. “Can I borrow them?”

“Oh, sure,” she said, and tossed them to me. I caught them in one hand. “I already locked up, so you gotta go around the front.”

“That’s fine.” I twirled them around my finger. They were heavy, since there was a bear claw attached to them, and an AirTag because my parents lost anything that wasn’t nailed down.

“Wanna … chat about all this tomorrow?” she asked unsurely. “I think I need to sleep on it.”

“Yeah,” I replied thickly. “Me, too.”

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