Page 15 of Your Chorus
“So youdowant to fix it?”
He can’t hide the hope in his voice, not from me, and it nearly chokes me to hear it.
“I don’t know exactly what I mean by fixing it,” I finally admit. “I just...want to hurt you as little as possible.”
He’s not one for dramatic sighs, but I can picture the unimpressed way he’s probably tilting his head right now.
“You always do that, Roxy. You go into things thinking hurting me is inevitable.”
“That’s because it is.”
“Roxanne,” he growls.
I pull the dishwasher’s lever down and lean against the counter as the humming and clanking sound I’ve spent way too much of my adult life listening to starts up.
“I’m not doing this now,” I tell him. “I just wanted to let you know that I’mconsideringgoing on the tour. I still have the time booked off, so Icouldmake it work, but I have to be in Toronto on the twenty-fourth, so I hope that works with your schedule because it’s not negotiable.”
There’s a pause followed by some pounding noises so loud I have to pull the phone away from my ear, like he’s typing something on his screen.
“We play a festival in Hamilton on the twenty-fifth, so that should be fine,” he says when he comes back on the line. “What are you doing in Toronto?”
“I have a thing,” I reply, way too defensively.
A beat passes.
“Okay. You have a thing.”
I lift the corner of my t-shirt to dab some of the sweat off my forehead. It’s an actual furnace back here.
“So it’s agreed, then?” I ask him. “If I go, it’s not going to be a sex bender. It’s because this thing is burning us up, and unless we figure it out, there’s not going to be anything left.”
I was hoping that throwing his words from last night back at him would help solidify my point, but all it does is bring back the weight and the tension between us.
“It’s agreed.”
His voice has slipped into that low, gravelly pitch that always makes my thighs clench. I fight to shut that part of my brain off.
“Can I trust you on that?” I ask.
He lets a moment of silence pass, lets his presence wrap itself around me even though he’s not even in the room. I’m asking if I can trust him, but his breath in my ear asks me if I can trust myself.
When he finally does answer, the words make my knees go weak.
“Read my mind.”
The rattle of the dishwasher fades. The echo of every time we’ve said those words to each other feels like it’s pounding in my head as I grip the counter behind me. I can still picture the first time he ever said it, back on the very first day I met him.
* * *
I was freezing eventhough it was summer. My legs were covered in goose bumps where I leaned against the wall of the Montreal bus station, trying to get themauditlighter to work. I squatted down on my heels, thinking that might help with the shaking.
I couldn’t stop shaking. I hadn’t slept for twenty-four hours, and all I’d eaten that day was a ham sandwich from a gas station and a can of Red Bull. I’d fueled myself with energy drinks the whole night before because I was too freaked out about hitchhiking to risk closing my eyes.
Every part of me was wired, twitchy from caffeine and adrenaline and the way I could still feel Phillipe’s hands under my shirt in the kitchen atMaman’s house. My body jerked, and I cursed as I dropped the lighter.
I needed the cigarette. I needed to fill my lungs with something other than panic. I’d asked the truck driver to drop me off at the bus station because that was the only place in Montreal I could name. I needed to make a plan, to figure out where to go next, but first I needed to make myself think, and for that I needed the cigarette.
“You should quit.”
