“Do I? Music is life. What’s your fave?”
I wasn’t going to let her turn the conversation on me. “This and that,” I said. “What do you like?”
“I’m a dance and techno gal.” She frowned. “But funny… I can’t think of anyone I listen to.”
“Hold on,” I said, pulling out my phone and earbuds. I quickly scrolled iTunes for popular dance songs. “Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga popped up first.
“Try this.” I gave her the earbuds and hit play, bracing myself.
Instantly, Thea’s face broke into pure joy and she began to bob her head, eyes closed, listening to her favorite music for maybe the first time in two years. “Oh my God, this is amazing,” she cried. “Here. Share.”
She took one bud out and gave it to me. We stood in the heat of the afternoon, face-to-face. She was lost in the music and I was lost in her. I’d never seen anything so beautiful in my life. She swayed like a willow tree, slender and delicate, while I was the oak rooted in front of her. Between her and the world, protecting her as best as I could.
The song ended and Thea took out her earbud. “I want your love… Love, love, love…”
I stared. That’s the song, you idiot. Not her.
Thea laughed and gave me a playful shove. “I love it, but I can tell it’s sooo not you. You are not a dance house, club kid kind of guy, am I right?”
“Not really.”
She tapped her fingers on the muscles of my forearm. “I can’t picture you on the dance floor. You’d be the bouncer at a club, making sure everyone behaved themselves. A Marc Antony. Have you heard of Marc Antony?”
“Sounds familiar.”
“Marc Antony was a general who fought with Julius Caesar during the civil war. After Caesar died, Antony was put in charge of Egypt, where Cleopatra was queen. They had an affair that nearly started another war. He was Cleopatra’s love. Strong. Noble. A soldier, but he fought only because he had to.” She raised her eyes to mine. “You look like you’d fight, but only if you had to.”
“Only if I had to.”
I’d fight for you.
Our eyes held another moment, then Thea drew a deep breath. “Oh my God, Jimmy,” she said, her arms out wide. “I feel so awake.”
“Yeah?”
“Like I just drank six Red Bulls or something.” Her smile turned warm and flirty, and she tapped my phone. “You got one more song in there for me?”
“I have hundreds.”
She raised her crystal blue eyes to mine and for one precious moment, something deep in her connected to something deep in me so hard and fast that my chest constricted, trying to hold on to the air that had been punched out. Thea’s eyes widened and so did her smile. The radiance inside her burst through the cracks of her broken mind and I saw her. This girl whom, if we had longer than five minutes, I’d make mine.
But no sooner did I get a sweet taste of mine when the familiar confusion rolled through Thea’s gaze. She was resetting. I was resetting, going from protector to threat. From friend to stranger. From Jimmy to…
No one, Doris finished. You’re no one.
My hands itched to grab Thea and hold on, so I didn’t vanish.
She took a step back. “Who…?”
“Jimmy,” I said. “My name’s Jimmy.”
We did that scene three times that afternoon. Three times, I waited for the curtain of her mind to close and open again and we started over. Actors in a movie, reading a script, but the cameras and crew were hidden from sight. The same words, take after take.
Every time, the confusion swept across her eyes, wiping everything away. Erasing our five minutes. Erasing who and what we were to each other.
Nothing. We can’t be anything to each other because she has nothing to give. No way to give it.
Eventually, we made our way back inside, each still with an earbud in our ear, listening to a dance song together. We sat at Thea’s table, still tethered, a techno beat thrumming in our ears.