Page 81 of Sounds Like Love

Dad took another puff of his pipe. “We stopped booking starting mid-August. Told Mitch to keep the dates open.”

His words settled with a betraying realization. “So … you knew? Formonths? And Mitch did, too?”

“Not officially. I think he probably guessed but we didn’t tell him,” Mom said.

My brother’s reaction to the venue closing—and Gigi’s, too, for that matter—started to make a lot more sense now. But then if they knew before our parents told us, why didn’t they tell me? Or why didn’t Mitch come up with some contingency plan to keep it going? To take on the venue?

Because he didn’t want to. He’d told me as much.

I was the only one who didn’t see it coming, and that was because I wasn’t even here.

Mom and Dad exchanged a worried look. “Heart,” she began earnestly, “we realize now that we probably didn’t break the news like we should have—”

I interrupted. “You didn’t even ask if we wanted it. IfIwanted it. You just decided.”

“The Revelry is our responsibility. It was never yours or Mitchell’s,” Dad said, but Mom’s face had fallen into a pinched, thoughtful look. “We didn’t want to distract you.”

“Distractme?”

“You have a lot going on in LA,” Dad said. “We thought we’d make it easy.”

“Well, you didn’t. Yeah, I have a lot going on in LA, but this is my home, too. You are myparents. I mean—for the last eight months, I’ve been worrying that I should be here.”

“No, heart, we don’t want you to give up—”

I held up my hands. “I know! I know. You just don’t evertalkabout anything. Any of this. You don’ttalkto me about the Rev, or home, or what’s going to happen. And I just feel like you aren’t taking any of it seriously.”

Dad sat up a little straighter. “Of course we’re taking it all seriously. That’s why we made this decision.”

“You have your life, heart,” Mom cut in. “You have your big, lovely life and it’s unfurling in front of you, and I want you to enjoy it.”

I wanted to tear my hair out. “OfcourseI have my life out there right now, because you won’ttellme about home! You put everything off, over and over again, you ignore the things that aren’t easy, and it just feels—really it does—like you ignore me, too.”

And maybe that was selfish to say, and maybe I was just being vengeful and bitter, and maybe the second I said those words I wanted to take them back because they weren’t true. Even though, sometimes, it felt like they were.

“I’m going to go stay at Gigi and Mitch’s for the night,” I said, over my parents’ immediate protests, shame eating at me. I shoved myself to my feet. “I love y’all.”

“But, heart …” Mom began, but Dad put his hand on her knee, and she caved. “We love you, too. More than anything.”

I never doubted that, even as I fled the garden.

I grabbed a night’s worth of clothes from my room, my charger, and my toothbrush, and then I was out the front door, past all the gnomes hiding in the bushes,heading down the sidewalk toward town.

The night was warm, and my brain was buzzing so loudly I couldn’t shut it off, even if I wanted to.

It was so loud that I almost didn’t hear Sasha at all.

“Breathe, bird,”he said.

I curled my hand tighter around my overnight bag. “I thought you wanted some distance.”

“We both know that’s impossible.”He didn’t sound upset, at least. Just a little resigned.

“I … was probably really loud in your head, wasn’t I?” I muttered, feeling awkward.

“A little. I didn’t want to ignore it,”he replied. Not that he couldn’t but that he didn’t want to. That simple change was a comfort, even if he didn’t know it.

Gigi and Mitch’s apartment building was on the next block. It was three streets over from the Rev, an older complex with popcorn ceilings and AC in the windows, but you couldn’t beat the five-minute walk to the beach. I lingered out front for a while, breathing in the warm summer night.

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