Page 75 of When the Lights Come On
Paige
DIGGING: Searching through existing pieces of music to select a section to sample in a track
“I go awayfor two weeks, and I miss all this.” Ingrid sets her beer down and leans back in her bar stool. “I still can’t get over the fact that you gothit by a car, never mind all the rest.”
Ingrid texted to invite me to a show when she got back to Montreal. She demanded to get the full story in person when I told her I was too injured to stand in a rowdy crowd. We’ve been spending Thursday afternoon day-drinking in Taverne Toulouse—or rather, Ingrid has been nursing a beer for the past hour, and I’ve been sipping on water since that’s all my pain meds allow. It made drinks with Youssef’s friends pretty uneventful the other night, but ‘uneventful’ was actually nice.
Pleasant, even. Normal. Once I got over the fear of being the weird freak who’d never been introduced to a guy’s friends before, it felt so totallynormalto be out with him, which is crazy considering I didn’t think I’d ever see him again just a matter of weeks ago.
“You know you could have called me,” Ingrid says, turning serious as she leans over to grip the back of my stool. “If you needed someone to look after you, you could have called.”
Her offer makes me feel the way I did when Zach told me the same thing: like there’s this knot in my chest taking up too much space.
It’s ridiculous. It’s like the accident knocked my heart around and made it swell up even worse than my hand. I nod at Ingrid and reach for my water, slamming back what’s left in the glass and wishing for the burn of something stronger.
As if she’s been summoned by my thoughts, DeeDee sashays over from wiping a table across the room and steps behind the huge three-sided bar.
“You’re really going hard on the water, Paige.” She winks. “Another one,ma belle? Or would you like a Coke this time? Ginger ale? Or I could make you a mocktail, on the house! It would give me something to do. It’s so dead in here.”
We’ve been pretty much the only customers since we arrived just after three this afternoon. The alt-rock playlist pumping through the speakers echoes in the empty room, and all the tables are gleaming from DeeDee’s efforts to pass the time by polishing them.
“Sure. Hit me.”
I’m not about to pass up one of DeeDee’s creations; she’s as legendary behind the bar as she is with hair dye.
“So.” Ingrid starts picking at the label on her beer bottle. “Are you and this guy, like, together now?”
I don’t know what we are. We’ve seen each other almost every day since the revelation about the letters. He’ll stop by the apartment with bagels or coffee or whatever his reason to be ‘in the neighbourhood’ is. I’ve even gone over to his place again on the pretense of discussing my shows some more, and now that my arm has healed enough for me to handle public establishments again, we’ve taken walks to the park and gone out to get food together.
I keep waiting for the moment this will all catch up with me, when the impact of my life doing a complete one-eighty will hit me with a brutal case of whiplash.
There has to be some sort of consequence for all this. There has to be a catch.
So far, though, it’s been literal walks in the park. The more we talk and get to know each other again, the more I feel like I’m closing the gap between the past and the present, like I’m sewing them together until all that’s left between us is a seam where there used to be a jagged tear.
I don’t know if that makes us ‘together.’ When it comes to the physical, we haven’t done more than some intense make out sessions. If it weren’t for my sling and splint, I doubt we’d have had the patience to wait, but the waiting is actually kind of nice. Every day, it all feels a little more real, and kissing him gets better and better the more the reality of him seeps into my life.
“I don’t know,” I answer. “I guess we’re like, taking it slow? He’s in Toronto for the next couple days, playing that big show I had booked there. They got him first class train tickets when they found out he was offering to replace me.”
“Damn.” Ingrid sucks in a breath. “Theyboughthis train tickets?”
“I guess they were so stoked to get someone as famous as Youssef that they didn’t want to risk him backing out.”
Ingrid smacks her beer onto its coaster. “I’ve been playing with Code Ventura for years. When’s it going to be time for us to get first class train tickets? You do not want to know what it’s like to tour in a van with three guys.”
I laugh and hang my head in sympathy as she shakes her fist in the air.
“You didn’t want to go with him?” she asks after we’ve calmed down.
“He asked me to,” I admit, “but I have another doctor check-up and my first physio session, and...I don’t know. I just thought it would make me feel shitty to watch someone else play my show, you know? Even if it’s him.”
Ingrid nods. “I get that. It would be torture to watch someone cover my bass parts for me.”
“I’m going with him to Ottawa soon, though. That’s where his sister’s wedding is.”
That’s also part of the reason I turned down Toronto. Despite how great things have been going, I’m still freaked out about the wedding. I could stomach it when I thought I’d just be there as part of a deal, but there’s way more to it now. Being someone’s possible, maybe,actualdate to a wedding is way outside the realm of Things Paige Does—especially when it will be in front of Youssef’s entire family.
I feel like I’m playing a game of chance, like I’ve been handed a limited number of lucky cards and I’ve got to play them just right to make it out of this weird limbo into whatever’s next for us. I didn’t want to waste any cards on a trip to Toronto when I’ll need as many as I can get to survive this wedding. Youssef told me I don’t have to go anymore, but this isn’t a deal between him and me now. It’s a deal between me and myself. If I play my hand right, I’ll win something I can trust.
