Page 63 of Forever Flames: Padraig & Stevie
“Come see me. See the show. Stay the weekend. Hear the new tracks. We’ll get a hotel and have an entire naked day together.” Padraig’s demeanor changes and he cheeses at me. “I’ll tell you all about the mess when you get here.”
Relieved, I’m already opening the flight website on my laptop. “Let me see what I can swing, I’ll call you back in ten.”
“No—” he says urgently. “Let me stay on. While you do it.”
I rest the phone against my monitor. “Okay.”
We don’t talk while I scroll and click, but he’s there. Breathing. Present. Real. I find a flight that lands Thursday at four. Decide to worry about telling work later. I click book. Screenshot it. Send it. “Got it. Now I gotta make up some excuse to my boss.”
“Thank fuck.” He exhales like he’s been underwater.
“I’ll stay until Monday morning.” I can’t believe how spontaneous I’m being. I hope I don’t get in trouble.
“I’ll pick you up.”
“Okay.”
Another pause.
“I love you,” he says softly.
“I know. I love you too.”
And I do.
I hate how our path is unclear. We’ve changed. Everything trembles with the weight of what’s possibly been lost and what might be.
I’m going to see him. Be with him. Remind us both what it feels like to hold on, even when everything else is shifting.
I click open my intranet. There’s a new DM.
Go get him. I’ll cover for you. —C
My eyes sting all over again.
Next Thursday can’t come fast enough.
seventeen
Padraig
A Few Days Later
TheShowboxbreathes,evenin silence.
By late afternoon, the air throbs with a low electric current you only feel in rooms with history etched into every square inch. Scuffed floors. Freshly painted mushroom pillars. These walls have witnessed thousands of voices rise and fall.
I can almost hear the ghosts of a hundred bands tuning up and their amps crackling to life.
Liam crouches near the monitors, guitar tucked against his knee, his head bent over the strings while he tunes. Linus is beside him, talking low to the house sound tech. The two of them have developed an unspoken rhythm, threading between every look and nod.
Like Stevie and I used to have.
Felicity’s planted at center stage, perched on a stool with the mic tilted toward her mouth, humming under her breath. Her heel taps a relentless beat against the stage, sharp enough to grate on my nerves before we’ve even started.
I sit behind the kit and tap the snare once. The crack echoes through the space. Felicity whips around and shoots me a dirty look. I’ve probably interfered with her “process.”
Deliberately.
