“What the fuck do you mean? A part of the process?”
Cam and Sean smiled and waved, but I’d given up all pretense as I turned around to face them. In my mind, I knew it was ridiculous to be having this conversation here, in the middle of our Championship victory parade, but I couldn’t help it. I had to feel some sort of closure. I had to get some sort of answers.
And these fuckers seemed to think they had some. So they were gonna speak up whether they wanted to or not.
“Well?” I prompted, when neither of them spoke quickly enough.
Cam almost smiled, and the urge to hit him no matter where we were got a little stronger. “I mean that just because you’re broken up now doesn’t mean you’re broken up forever. I think the real tough stuff, the stuff that has to happen, sometimes needs a rocky road to build the foundation.”
I squinted my eyes and my head spun. Before I knew it, I was turning to Sean with a scowl on my face.
He laughed.
“He’s saying that after breakups can come makeups. Your girl is scared, dude. But are you sure she needs to do the thing you’re pushing her to do?”
I thought about it. Hard.
Pushed past the heartache and the pain and really laid out the facts in my mind.
Gemma had the voice, the look, and the star quality. But beyond that, she had the passion. I never, ever saw her light up the way she did when she was onstage anywhere else.
God, even when we’d shared quiet moments at home together, I’d never seen her look more at peace, more herself, than when she was fiddling around with her guitar and writing lyrics in one of her numerous notebooks.
Music was her fucking life, whether she wanted to admit it or not.
My answer was confident as I recited it back to them. “She was born to do it.”
Both of them shrugged, shared a look, and then turned back to me. “Then you know what you have to do,” Cam said.
“No,” I said with a laugh. “No, I don’t.”
“When did you set up the performance for?”
“Tomorrow night.”
“Did you cancel it?”
“No.”
“Don’t,” Cam said, clear and certain.
“What do you mean, don’t? What exactly am I supposed to do if she doesn’t show up?”
“I guess you better work on your performance skills, then,” Sean said with a laugh.
Ha-ha, very funny. “I’m serious.”
“So am I,” Cam said frankly. “Give her the chance. Give her the opportunity to come through when someone believes in her even more than she believes in herself.”
Give her the chance.
Turning around to take my position on the float and wave to the crowd, I thought about their words and ran them through my mind like a carefully sorted conveyor in a factory.
I had the tools to give Gemma the confidence she needed. But until she got there, I just needed to be the one to have the confidence for her.
Sure, it might be a shitshow if she didn’t show up, but I knew, by the time the parade ended, I knew I had to give it a shot.
Pulling out my phone and dialing a number I couldn’t even believe I had, I waited as it rang.
Abby, an apparent phone ninja as well as apartment squatter, answered nearly immediately.
“It’s about time you called me,” she greeted, and just like that, I felt affirmed that I was doing the right thing. She’d put my number in her phone for a reason, and she’d known Gemma even longer than I had. If the two of us thought this was right, it had to be.
“I’m not canceling the performance tomorrow night,” I told her simply. “Tell Gemma that I’ll be waiting for her, and that I can’t wait to hear her sing.”
“Anything else?” she said, a smile in her voice.
“Tell her…just…make it clear I believe in her. And well…make it clear I love her.”
My eyes bugged out as I realized what I’d just said, but it was entirely too late to take it back. It wasn’t the most romantic way to out your love for someone, but it sure as shit was the truth.
“Don’t worry, Romeo,” Abby said with a laugh. “I’ll tell her. And for the record?”
“Yeah?”
“Both of those things are more than clear to me. But if I have anything to do with it, you’re going to have the chance to tell her yourself.”
I’d felt off all day. Nauseated, panicky, and incredibly anxious.
And I’d done everything I could to distract myself.
I went for a run across the Brooklyn Bridge.
And, it should be noted, if you haven’t “gone for a run” in two years, the Brooklyn Bridge is the very last place to start. By the time I’d gotten back to my apartment, I was panting like a dog, the muscles in my legs had congealed, and I was calling myself every name under the sun.