Poe chuckled, shaking his head at Allyn’s exuberance. They’d met a few times and got along wonderfully, almost better than she and I did.
His gaze was warm as it settled on the cell in my hand. It was also full of mischief. “Tell Allyn I say hi,” he whispered loudly, clearly hoping she would hear him.
“Wait. Is that Poe?” Allyn asked. “Did you convince him to come?”
He shook his head, but he smiled. “I’m not going.”
“Did you hear that?” I asked Allyn, not returning his grin. “He said he’s not going because he doesn’t like all-expense paid trips to Aspen.”
“But if y’all were going to Hawaii . . .” he sucked in a breath between his teeth, moving his head back and forth in a considering motion, making me laugh again. Even though Poe was from Tennessee, he had almost no accent. However, the occasional y’all did slip out from time to time.
Allyn asked, “Do your parents have a place in Hawaii?”
“No! I mean, yes. But we’re not going to Hawaii. We’re going to Aspen to drink hot beverages while wrapping ourselves in warm blankets, avoiding people, luxuriating in silence, and that’s that.” Once again I tried to glare at Poe. Once again I ultimately failed.
He stood. “I’m just saying, if you wanted me to come, you’d go to Hawaii. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Next time go to Hawaii!” Allyn urged. “And tell him we’re holding him to his promise.”
Poe captured my gaze, one of his eyebrows raised in a slight challenge, his lips faintly curved. I felt my stomach flutter.
Another topic we never broached: the possibility that—if we gave it a good try, and if I’d ever get myself together and move on from the impossibility of Abram—there might be something worth exploring between me and Poe.
Unthinkingly, I touched the outside of my front pocket again, my finger tracing the outline of the folded envelope. Move on, Mona. How many times had I told myself that? The X-axis was now approaching infinity.
I’d followed every mention of Abram for over a year after leaving Chicago, obsessively checking sources for music news, hunting through social media for information from his shows, pictures, videos, snippets of stories. An interesting byproduct of my investigations was that I’d learned a great deal about him, things I didn’t know, most of it definitional in nature.
Where he’d gone to school: Melvil Dewey High School, where he’d been voted most talented his senior year even though he’d dropped out before graduating.
Why he’d dropped out of high school the last half of his senior year: To pursue music full-time after receiving an offer to play bass guitar on tour for an (at the time) up and coming indie rock band named Cyclops Ulysses.
What jobs he’d had: Dishwasher at fourteen for his uncle’s restaurant; construction jobs at sixteen and every summer with his dad’s old company (which explained his lean yet broad build); bass guitarist for Cyclops Ulysses at eighteen until they’d disbanded; bass guitarist for another, equally promising band named Ink Revolution at twenty-one; bass guitar for hire and solo artist at twenty-three.
His self-professed musical influences: Victor Wooten, Marcus Miller, Carol Kaye, Eddie Van Halen, Tal Wilkenfeld, John Lennon, Tupac Shakur, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, and Kendrick Lamar.
Shortly after I left, right after I’d written the letter, he’d been photographed with a remarkably beautiful woman. His arm was around her shoulders. In one photo he was kissing her neck while she grinned at the camera, a cigarette held aloft. Seeing that photo had hurt. A lot. It had hurt like being punched hard in the stomach. I’d lost my breath. Admittedly, breathing had been difficult for a while after that.
But I got over it. Or rather, I kept telling myself there was nothing to “get over.” Move on, Mona.