“Probably not,” I agreed. “Why are you pushing making an album while touring? That seems awfully crunched, and I’m sure it’s not helping the stress.”
“Aspen, our manager, has built us up to this point. It’s our year to take everything we worked hard on and shape it into something epic. And that means constantly pushing out product.”
“Wow. That’s a lot of pressure.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I have no doubt you’ll get there.” It was on the tip of my tongue to offer to help, but I bit it between my teeth, holding it back, not wanting to tie myself to him anymore. When we’d written music together before, it’d been intense and intimate. Putting myself in that position sounded a lot like asking for more hurt and pain.
“Yeah,” he sighed, not sounding convinced. With another deep sigh, he changed the subject. “Where are you tonight?”
“In the Smoky Mountains, skirting the Tennessee border in Georgia. Where are you?”
“What? Not keeping up with our tour schedule?”
“Yeah, right,” I scoffed. “I wouldn’t know if you were in Seattle or Miami.”
“Mmhmm,” he said doubtfully. “We’re in San Diego right now.”
“Good ole California.”
“Have you been?”
“Not yet. But I want to. I’d love to hike the Sierra Nevada.”
“You’d love it,” he agreed.
“You’ve done it?” I asked, jealous but excited to hear his story.
“We did a small hike one day to an alpine lake. Oren and Brogan apparently wanted to skinny dip in liquid ice.”
“Oh, man.” I laughed, imagining it. “Did you do it?”
“Hell, yeah, I did. It was a long-ass hike.”
“I’m so jealous.”
“I’ll take you there someday,” he promised softly, like maybe if he said it too loud, I’d run. And honestly, I kind of wanted to.
His promise sat like an anvil on my chest, choking the air in my lungs. We could avoid talking about anything from the past, but it didn’t mean it wasn’t there, making itself known with the simplest of words. His statement was easy—something anyone would say but came with a wrecking ball of meaning, knocking down the veneer of lies I tried to hide behind.
“It’s a beautiful night tonight,” I whispered, changing the subject.
“Now I’m jealous,” he joked. “I’m stuck in a hotel, and it’s raining here.”
“Ew.”
“Tell me what you see. Tell me about where you are,” he requested. “I’m gonna lie back on the bed, close my eyes, and imagine I’m in the van with you.”
Another anvil. This one lighting a fire up the back of my throat.
Like I had a million times before, I closed my eyes too and imagined his weight dipping the mattress beside me. How many nights had I looked up at the sky and wished he’d been right beside me? How many moments had I closed my eyes to imagine him there, sharing the life we painted when we were kids?
Too many to count.
More than I wanted to admit.
And to have his voice in my ear, it was the closest my dreams came to reality. I just didn’t know what that reality came with. Being faced with it now, I worried it came with more hurt than anything else I’d imagined.
With a deep breath, I swallowed back the fire and opened my eyes to look up at the stars.
“You can see everything. Without the light pollution, you can see everything.”
“Tell me,” he pleaded, almost desperate. “I want to be right there.”
I wanted him to be right here too, I admitted to myself, and that terrified me. It scared the hell out of me how quick these feelings came roaring back and how quickly I wanted to pretend they were all that existed. I knew better. I knew life was more than the fantasy we wanted to believe—more than what lay on the surface. Yet, there I was, only wanting to see this moment and nothing else.
Two minimal conversations over nothing, and Parker managed to shine a light on the gaping space I’d tried to cover. He found a crack in the flimsy wall and pulled loose a brick covering the place in my heart he’d made for just him years ago.
Fire tried to climb its way free, but I refused. I refused.
I swallowed it down, and I forced my eyes open—forced myself to keep pretending the hole wasn’t there. “You think you know how many stars there are, but until you’re here and the sky is almost completely covered with them, you have no idea. And the Milky Way? We learn about it all through school. We know it’s out there, but until you see it, it’s kind of like Neptune. Just an idea. A picture we’ve been shown. But Parker, I see it every night, and it’s beautiful.”
“Yeah?” he whispered, matching my quiet tone.
I wondered if he heard the double meaning. That so many nights I’d looked up, and I saw him—I saw us. Something that had been surrounded by so much youth and lights that we hadn’t been able to see it for what it was. I hadn’t been able to see or understand how much I’d loved him until he was gone and took something vital with him.