P.S. I Like You - Kasie West Page 0,67

house?” She laughed and pulled me up by my arms.

“A shack in the woods. A hut on a mountaintop. A submarine ten thousand leagues under the sea.”

“All things you’ll never have?” Ashley said. “Come on. Let’s go out for pizza. I’ll tell Mom and Dad.”

Getting pizza with Ashley did help. I didn’t confide in her about Cade and the letters, but it was nice to get out of my head for a while.

The next day, I no longer cared that there wasn’t a new letter under the desk, even though I had seen Cade again in the parking lot that morning. It’s for the best, I told myself. He was doing me a favor by cutting off the letters cold turkey.

Maybe Sasha had told him that I was writing the letters, and he’d freaked out. It was me, after all, with the awkwardness and the crazy family and the weird clothes. Letters were one thing, but his reputation might not survive more than the occasional parking lot conversation with Lily Abbott.

I collected my two letters that were still in place. Mr. Ortega was passing out the final and I tried to forget about letters and everything else and concentrate on the test.

The letter exchanges were really and truly over. The end.

I stood at the counter in the music store waiting to hear the verdict on my guitar’s fate. I had gone home after detention, collected its carcass, and met Lucas at the store. Now he stood in another section checking out guitar straps while I was watching the worker in front of me carefully examine the break.

“Wow. What happened to it?” she asked. She was pretty, with tattoos on her arms and black-framed glasses.

“A little brother,” I explained.

“Not cool,” she said with a sympathetic nod. “When the neck is broken like this, the integrity of the entire body is messed up. Too bad it didn’t break up here.” She pointed to the top where the headstock was. “That’s much easier to repair. That said, this isn’t completely lost. I can’t guarantee it will ever sound like it used to, but we can try.” She turned it over. “Do you have every single fragment of the splintered wood?”

“I don’t know. I gathered as much as I could.”

“Well, I can try.”

Her words gave me hope, but …

“How much will it cost?” That was the magic question.

She studied the guitar again. “It just depends on how much time it takes. A couple hundred dollars at the most.”

I swallowed the lump that immediately sprang into my throat. “Okay. I’ll have to think about it then.” I collected the broken pieces, laid my guitar back in its coffin, and buckled it closed.

“Here’s my card if you decide you want to go ahead.” She handed me a plain white business card. I shoved it in the back pocket of my jeans and headed for the door before I cried.

Lucas could meet me outside.

A few minutes later, he did, carrying a plastic bag.

“You okay?” he asked.

I shrugged because speaking wasn’t an option given how tight my throat was.

“What happened?”

My guitar case felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.

Mom’s minivan was parked in the front row of the parking lot so I nodded toward it and we headed there. Next door to the guitar repair was an In-N-Out and a stream of cars were waiting in the drive-through line. I opened the back of the minivan, set the guitar down, and sat in the open back myself. Lucas sat next to me. I just needed a minute before I could speak. He seemed to understand this and thankfully didn’t say anything.

I watched the line of cars at the drive-through, trying to think of lyrics like I normally did when I observed things. But I hadn’t been able to think of decent lyrics in a while. And it wouldn’t matter if I did, anyway. That contest was out of reach for me. I needed to accept that.

When my throat had loosened I said, “She’s not sure she can fix it. And I’m not sure I can spend the money on the hope that she can.”

“Bummer.”

“Yes. It is.” I wanted to talk the tightness out of my chest but I couldn’t. As I stared at Lucas I realized how little I knew him, how little he knew me. I didn’t feel comfortable sharing more than I already had.

“You want to go get something to eat?” he asked, nodding toward the In-N-Out. “Get your mind off of this?”

A few weeks ago,