away. “You know, whatever it is… Whatever left you feeling so broken… You can probably fix it.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“For what it’s worth… I’m pretty sure he’s broken, too.”
I looked at her. She gave me a sympathetic, knowing look, and walked away. The dock vibrated a little as she walked back up to the path and disappeared through the trees.
Cary. Was she talking about Cary?
Or just making a general, sympathetic statement?
I looked out over the water. I watched a boat drift by in the distance.
Cary. She meant Cary, didn’t she?
Was he broken?
Did he miss me?
Why the fuck wasn’t he reaching out to talk to me?
I pulled out my phone and stared at the text he’d sent me in response to the party invitation.
Cary: Thank you.
I wrote and rewrote my reply in my head a dozen times, and then I actually typed it out and sent it to him.
Me: Maybe I’ll see you at the party. I’m going with Danica and Ash.
Maybe twenty minutes later, while I was still sitting there and wondering if this could ever be fixed, and if I could be the one to somehow fix it, he messaged me back. Just three small words that tore my heart out all over again.
Cary: I’m not going.
I took a breath and texted him back.
Me: I’m sorry to hear that. Everyone will miss you.
He didn’t reply.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Cary
Apparitions
Summer had sped by, autumn had gone and winter was fading in. Now that the Players’ album was finished, the passage of time had slowed to a dull drip. All I could feel was the paralysis creeping in, the fear that the whole world would stop when I gave the okay.
When I handed the album over for final mastering.
So I kept delaying it.
I needed more time to go over it. More time to listen. More time to think.
More time.
But time was running out. I couldn’t speed it up anymore. Everything was grinding to a halt around me, leaving me with nothing to distract myself with. Nothing to bury myself under.
My head was above water again, and all I could think about was her.
“Maybe we need to forget about the title,” Ash said. “Just leave it as it is.” He was lying upside-down on the couch, his black-and-white Vans up on the wall. “Maybe we need to just move forward.”
“Agreed,” Xander said. He was splayed out in a rolling chair, tossing a foam basketball through a hoop on the wall.
I looked at Matt and Summer. Matt said nothing from his seat on the couch, just nodded. They were all in agreement. They’d all told me so, many times. I was the only one holding things up here.
“It’s done, sweetheart,” Summer told me gently. “The title is what it is.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m just not sure about it.”
Xander shot the basketball through the hoop again and Ash kinda groaned.
This was my latest excuse to stall: we still didn’t have a title for the album. We’d considered taking a title from one of the songs, but while “Panic Room” and “Up Your Sass” and “Fuck Me Two Times” worked as song titles, none of them felt right to encapsulate the whole album. We’d tossed around some other ideas, but nothing had stuck.
So far, officially, the album was simply called The Players, and unofficially, The Red Album, because of the mostly-red cover. Which actually slightly sucked because everyone from the Beatles to Stone Temple Pilots to Weezer to Grand Funk Railroad, among others, had an album known as The Red Album.
“What aren’t you sure about?” Matt asked me.
“I don’t know,” I said, and everyone exchanged a look I probably wasn’t supposed to notice.
At least they’d all stopped asking me how I was doing a couple of months back. I’d definitely noticed that.
Ever since I first set foot in the studio, they’d asked me pretty much daily, How you doing, man? And How’s it going? They always seemed to be looking for a progress report. Evidence that I was incrementally getting better, or at least feeling better. I’d tell them I was good, which seemed to make them happy. But after I’d kicked Taylor out of my life, I told them I was shitty and they’d stopped asking.
Good thing. I was still doing shitty. Better than I was on my birthday, when I flipped out on her and locked myself in the studio to have a panic attack. But still shitty.
Therapy was helping, maybe. It was hard to tell anymore, with all the lies I told myself.