Page 94 of Sounds Like Love

Then,“I’m sorry I dragged down the mood.”

I reached over and threaded my fingers into his, and squeezed his hand tightly.Thank you for telling me.

“Not quite the Sebastian Fell everyone wants to know, am I?”

No, but I was glad of that. He was human. Real, and faulty, and rough around the edges. So much more than the bite-sized pieces I’d been fed for the better part of two decades.The alluring, vapid man I’d met in that VIP lounge had melted into the one I’d seen in glimpses that night, thoughtful and comforting and sharp.

“That guy doesn’t exist,” I replied. “You do, and I see you, Sasha.” I bent close and pressed my forehead against his, staring into those lovely cerulean eyes. Gossip mags andVoguearticles could say whatever they wanted to about those eyes, but they would never be caught in them the way I was. It was enrapturing, his gaze the sky, and I the only thing in it.

I see you.

He picked up our intertwined hands and kissed the back of mine.“Thank you,”he whispered, his thoughts tinged with the edges of sour memories. Was that what grief did? Spoil every soft and good thing it touched?

“I’d like you to meet my mom,” I said after we broke away. “Maybe they did know each other. Maybe she can give you a few more good memories.”

He swallowed thickly. “I—I …”

“I think I’d like that, bird.”

“Then it’s settled,” I decided. “I’ll introduce you.”

He grinned, a glimmer in his eyes. I knew that look. “You’ll introduce me to your parents? No one’s ever done that before.”

“I can’t imagine why,” I remarked wryly.

He seemed unfazed—excited, even. “Can I wear the pink flamingo shirt I got at the shop?”

“No.”

He poked out his bottom lip and made it wobble.

“Fine,” I relented.

He grinned. “I knew you’d say yes,” he teased, and kissed me again.It was then that I realized I could barely feel his thoughts when we kissed. I could barely make out the shape of them. The song itself, the one that had brought us together, was nothing more than a vague echo in the back of my head.

And I wondered, once our connection broke, who we would be without it.

Chapter35(Take Me On) Take On Me

THE RAIN KEPTon.

Throughout the night, and into the next morning, it barely even let up. It didn’t matter—we didn’t go out in it, anyway. I texted my parents to let them know I was alive, and glanced at the text from Gigi. It was short. To the point.

We need to talk, she said.

I guessed we did.

But before I could shoot off a reply text, Sasha excitedly called me back to the piano because he figured out a better rhyme fornight, and I told myself I’d respond later.

We called in an order for Chinese food, and we wrote, and we fed each other egg rolls and watched reruns ofLaw & Order, and we wrote some more. My entire life, I’d created things in a bubble. It had been me, my imagination, and a piano—foryears.Solitary and quiet. Spinning lyrics and melodies into long tracks of perfect notes.

It had always fulfilled me. Made me feel whole.

I’d worked with other artists before—I’d worked with creative directors for ads and producers for jingles, but it was always transactional.

This—bouncing ideas and notes and lyrics and sounds—with Sasha was … different. It was new and exciting, yes, but it was something deeper, too. It was finding someone who could harmonize with your exact level of weird, and go, “Yes, and?” to push me further, create more widely, dream taller—

There were thoughts that I began, half-formed, that he immediately understood. If I didn’t know exactly the pitch I was looking for, he could find it, and if he didn’t know what word to use, I could pluck it from his head. It was creating in a way that was so intimate and organic, it felt like for a moment in time we shared the same spark.

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