Page 28 of Seven Lost Summers
The smile’s gone.
Her expression hardens.
That cold, steady stare she saves for me locks into place, and I meet it without flinching.
We hold the stare, tension stretched tight like a wire ready to snap. Something lingers in the space between us, and neither of us calls it out, but we both fucking feel the pull. It shows in the way she challenges me without speaking. In the way I push back without trying. Some twisted line we keep toeing but never cross.
Bianca’s voice cuts through the silence, dragging my attention back.
“I don’t know too many people here, so it’ll be good to jam with someone,” she says, her gaze still fixed on Theo.
Her gaze shifts to me.
“Do you play, Nate?”
I barely get a breath in before Quinn answers.
“Yes to both those questions,” she says, voice smooth, almost sweet, but laced with something sharper underneath. “He plays the drums…and he plays the field.”
And there it is. That bite. That smirk buried in her tone like she’s practically daring me to rise to the challenge. Daring me to deny it.
“I don’t have anything going on most afternoons so I’m free anytime you want to jam,” Bianca says.
“We can do this afternoon if you want?” Theo replies, eagerness creeping into his voice. He rarely sounds like that. Open. Hopeful.
“Yeah, that sounds great. Where do you live, Theo?”
His eyes drop to the table. Fingers twitch at the hem of his hoodie like they always do when something unsettles him.
I am certain of what’s running through his head. He doesn’t want her to judge him or catch the parts of his life he’s spent years trying to outrun.
“Theo lives at Nate’s place,” Quinn answers, as if sensing the shift in him too.
I can’t help wondering how much Quinn really knows about Theo’s life. What they really talked about at those parties, when I’d catch them tucked in some dark corner while I was off drinking and chasing the next girl to fuck.
He told her he taught himself bass. That’s not nothing. That’s a crack.
What else did he tell her? Did he talk about the life he left behind? The shit he never says out loud to anyone.
Does she know about the nights he can’t sleep, when the memories get too loud and too heavy, and he slips into my bed without a word? Just needing to be close to someone. To feel like he’s not completely alone.
“Okay,” Bianca says, turning her attention back to Theo. “So that’ll be bass and drums. Do either of you sing?”
Theo lifts his head and for the first time since this conversation started, the tension bleeds from his shoulders. Relief softens his face, glad she didn’t push and dig into shit he doesn’t want to talk about.
“Nah,” he says. “We both sound like shit. Honestly, I think the neighbor’s dog has better range than us. Hits a solid high note every time the mailman shows up.”
Bianca bursts out laughing, her head tipping back as she gasps for air between the cracks of it. Tears gather at the corners of her eyes, and she clutches her stomach like she’s genuinely in pain from laughing too hard.
“Fuck, Theo,” she says, still wiping her eyes. “You just made my whole shitty day better. Seriously, I needed that.”
Quinn’s laughing too.
Smiling, I turn to look at Theo and his whole face shifts. It’s like her laughter cracked something open in him. He’s not carved in on himself anymore, not bracing for the next thing to go wrong. He’s here. In it. Holding on to the fact that he’s the reason she just laughed.
Fuck, maybe it’s nothing.
But the way he’s looking at her…it sure as shit doesn’t feel like nothing.
