mine, that’s cool. I won’t be offended. But don’t pretend like I’m saying whatever just to hurt your feelings. I know how important your music is to you. I wouldn’t fuck around like that.” He pulled his keys out of his pocket and tossed them in the air before he caught them in his palm. “You aren’t going to run me off just because I told you the truth. I’ll leave you alone to practice, but I’ll be back to pick you up in a couple hours. This place is sketchy as hell.”
“No. I’ll get a ride home with Joey. I don’t really want to see you right now.”
He grinned at me before reaching out and flicking the end of my nose with his finger. “Too bad. The last time you told me you didn’t want to see me when you were mad, you disappeared for two years and pretended like I ceased to exist. I’ll be back.”
I glared at his broad back while he walked around to the driver’s side of the truck.
It was impossible to win an argument with him.
It was also really, really hard for me to admit he was probably right about the songs.
They were similar and simple. They didn’t sound anything like they did when I played them by myself. I thought I adjusted them for the other instruments, but maybe he was right, and I’d dumbed them down so they were easy to play. They lacked depth and intensity.
Maybe that was the reason why he didn’t seem to know each and every one of them was about him.
Ry
“I RAN INTO Aston today.”
I looked at my cousin’s face on the other end of the video call and could tell by his expression that he was debating whether he should share that information with me.
Zowen and I looked a lot alike. We could pass for brothers, minus the fact he inherited his mother’s odd eye color combination. The genetic heterochromia iridum gave him one blue eye, that was the same winter color as mine, and one caramel brown one that was a few shades lighter than his mom’s single, chocolate-colored one. He was also a couple of inches shorter than I was, but since he was a bit younger, there was still time for him to catch up to my towering height.
“Oh yeah? Where did you see her?” I was honestly curious because my sister hadn’t even seen Aston since the breakup, and the two of them were usually attached at the hip.
“My bike needed a tune-up, so I went to the garage, and she was there working the parts and merch counter. She said she’s working through the summer until it’s time to leave for college.”
Zowen’s dad and Aston and Royce’s dad were business partners. Her father operated a custom car garage and a custom motorcycle shop. My Uncle Rome was big into Harleys and had Zowen and Remy on the back of his bike from the time they were really young. My cousin kept with the tradition of preferring two wheels to four, but he liked to go fast rather than cruise. He rode around on a foreign death machine that sometimes seemed like it might be able to break the sound barrier. He spent a lot of time at the motorcycle shop, so it wasn’t a surprise they bumped into one another there. Aston had had a part-time job there for as long as I could remember, as had Royce, before he left to live with his mom. If I wasn’t preoccupied with how pissed Bowe was earlier, I would’ve guessed that’s where the two of them crossed paths.
“How was she?” I held the phone out in one hand and leaned on the steering wheel of my truck. I had no clue when Bowe was going to be done with practice, so instead of going back to her house, I decided to wait for her in the parking lot. I knew good and well she wasn’t going to call and tell me when she was ready to leave the disastrous practice. And after the way that lilac-haired guy grabbed her, I was leaving nothing to chance.
Zowen shrugged and lifted the bill of his baseball hat up on his forehead. “She seemed sad. Sadder than you appear to be, that’s for damn sure.”
I lifted my eyebrows at him and questioned, “What’s that supposed to mean? I was the one who was dumped, remember? How could she possibly be sadder than me?”
“I dunno, dude. You