Page 21 of Sounds Like Love

And just like that, my protestations died in my throat.

She left out the back door to the garden, and I sank down into the breakfast nook again and watched her out of the bay windows as she put on her gardening gloves and started to prune a tomato plant.

I took a deep breath, told myself it was all fine, and stared down into my coffee. My head throbbed. I massaged the bridge of my nose, hoping that the hangover would go away. How much whiskey did I really drink last night? I remembered sitting at the piano, in my feelings, and then—

That voice.

Well, I guess hearing voices wasn’t theworstthing I could have done. At least I didn’t strip naked and sprint down Main Street. I propped my head up on my hand, closed my eyes, and tried to soothe the throbbing in my brain. Talking to an imaginary voice seemed rather tame, all things considered. It was a nice voice, at least from what I remembered of it, and it itched a familiar part of my brain, like I’d heard him before. What was the saying—when you had a voice for radio? A backhanded compliment about not having a face for TV, but I imagined dark hair, chiseled cheekbones, soft lips—the kind of guy who held the door open for you and remembered that you didn’t like alfalfa sprouts on your sandwiches.

Someone dreamy, and nice, and very much not real.

“Well, about that …”said the same deep, soft voice in my head.

Chapter8(I’m) Never Going Back Again

I SHOVED MYSELFback from the table, coffee sloshing.What the …

“Good morning.”

“No, no—no.” I looked around wildly, rubbing at my ears. This had to be Mitch playing some sort of prank. “Mitch, where are you? Is this a joke? If it is, it’s areally bad one, even for you.”

“Not so loud, yeah?”the voice said with a wince.“I’ve been up all night trying to figure out how you’re in my head.”

“Ha, you’re a bad liar. Where’s the speaker?” I rifled through a few cabinets before I heard footsteps, and turned around triumphantly—

Only to find Dad in the kitchen, pouring more coffee into his Stanley mug. He had on a tan baseball cap with a neck flap to keep the bugs away, his sunglasses pushed up over the brim. He was sweaty and covered in grass from mowing the lawn. My face fell when I saw him.

“Oh, it’s just you,” I said.

He screwed up the lid to his thermal cup, looking affronted. “Good morning to you, too, daughter. Who were you expecting?”

The voice in my head said,“You don’t remember last night, do you?”

I perked. “Do you hear that?” I asked Dad urgently.

He blinked. “Hear … what?”

“And I assume you don’t remember the sing-along last night on your way home, either?”

“I didnotsing on the way home,” I hissed, and Dad frowned.

“I dunno, I was asleep when you came in. Are you talking to someone on your AirPod?” he added, motioning to his own ear. “Am I interrupting?”

Helplessly, I stared at him. “I … don’t know?”

Dad nodded. He looked around and found my mostly untouched coffee at the breakfast table, and walked it back over to me. Then he pulled up one of my hands, placed the mug into it, and patted the back of my hand gently. “I get it, you’re still used to West Coast time. I’m going back out to trim the gnome bush.”

Wordlessly, I watched him leave the kitchen and then looked down into my cup of coffee. I was either going crazy, or there really was an annoying voice in my head. I didn’t like either of those possibilities.

“Youjustsaid I had a nice voice,”he pointed out dryly.

My ears burned. “You heard that?”

“I think we can hear most of each other’s thoughts, actually.”

“I didn’t hear anything when I woke up.”

“Because I’d dozed off. I woke up a few minutes ago when you were saying how you hoped I was too handsome to have a ‘voice for radio.’”I could feel the quotation marks around my own quotation marks, and that made the blush around my ears crawl all the way across my cheeks.

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