“Sully texted,” Bolan says, seemingly oblivious to my train of thought. “Just checking in when he couldn’t reach you. I told him your phone was in your bag, that you were napping. But that we were okay. That we’d be back in London for dinner. Together.”
“Okay. Thank you.” I smile a little at the possessive inclusiveness in that ‘together.’ Sully and Bolan are going to have to navigate their own relationship now instead of just continually shoving Armin or me in the middle of it. But I’m glad Bolan wants to make the effort.
I catch myself staring at him again. And he, seemingly happy, stares right back. So I force my gaze back to his notebook. “You’re writing?”
“Playing around. It’s something old … that I …” Bolan swallows, dropping his gaze to the open page of the notebook as he teases notes from the guitar. Almost as if he’s nervous. Thenhe looks up at me with that serious expression etched across his face again. He’s not nervous. He’s worried.
“Can I … play it for you? It’s rough, but … ah … it’s for you. Always meant for you, but … trapped in the pages of this notebook.”
I understand the worry now. I reacted badly the last time he attempted to play for me, during the epically awkward matchmaking formal presentation of gifts. I close the space between us, lowering myself into the dusty burnt-orange armchair across from him with the notebook-strewn steamer trunk between us. I tuck my bare feet under me, pulling the T-shirt quilt snugly around me.
A smile ghosts over Bolan’s face. His still newly dyed black hair falls over his brow as he settles his cobalt eyes on the lyrics and musical notes scribbled across the page sitting open before him. Without looking up, he starts playing. Louder now that he’s not worried about waking me.
He works through the opening bars twice, as if still getting a feel for them. Then he starts to sing.
I’m in a magical trance
A mystic charm has filled my every sense
It’s a mystery to me
But all I see
Is her
I’m instantly frozen in place, but not in a suffocating way. No, I’m warmed from within, hanging in the moment and barely wanting to breathe for fear of it ending.
She cast a powerful spell
Every wall I’d built trembled and fell
Crumbling into dust on the earth between us
Me and my magic girl
The song is about me. He said it was so. A love song from teenaged him to teenaged me. Almost forever doomed to be hidden within the pages of an old notebook.
Because he didn’t kiss me back.
And no matter that he regretted it, he had let me pretend it never happened. He let me protect myself.
And we lost all those years.
We lost all those years and … maybe … maybe even Armin.
My magic girl manipulates time
I’ve seen it stop with a wink of her eye
My magic girl reads my mind
She knows my heart better than I
And now I find she’s made me blind to everyone but her
I confess I’m happily possessed by my magic girl
Maybe … maybe I was supposed to be more for both of them. Stronger, stable. Maybe I could have held Armin in this life.
