and I lifted mine. When his lips almost touched mine, I started to close my eyes.
“No,” he said. “I can’t. I’m sorry.” He released me and took a big step back.
“What are you apologizing for?” Watching his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed, I pretended not to know, pretended not to have wanted him to kiss me.
“I need to apologize for War. He made a mistake last night. He feels terrible,” Bryan said, his voice much deeper now than it had been only a moment before.
Had I only imagined that he’d been about to kiss me?
“If he truly feels terrible,” I said bitterly, “then why isn’t he here telling me that, instead of you?”
“He didn’t think you’d listen to him. Also, he had a commitment today after school.” Bryan’s eyes searched mine.
“I’ll just bet he does.”
“Not like that. With the choir teacher. Mr. Garrett insisted.”
His lids lowering, Bryan’s gaze dipped to my mouth, and my breaths quickened. I gulped in a lungful of air scented with smoke and pine. If War was a deep forest, then Bryan was the alpine meadow high above it.
“The principal?” My mind spun as I watched Bryan’s tongue dart out to moisten his lips.
“Yeah,” he said, easing back another inch, then two.
Did he need space to clear his mind of unmet expectations too?
“Let War talk to you, Lace. Give him another chance.”
“So, this walk is all about War. You didn’t really want to catch up with me after all. My bad.” I moved away from him, the chilled air icier after all his heat.
“Not true.” Bryan jogged to catch up to me, and I ducked beneath the curtain of my hair to hide my disappointment. “I do want us to be friends again. I missed talking to you. War and his bossy shit gets old after a while. Stop, Lace. Please listen.”
He stepped in front of me, and I had to stop. Sliding my hair from the front to the back, he removed my curtain, and I forced myself to look at him.
“Sure, let’s be friends again.” I gave him a fake smile. “That would be great.”
“Thank you,” Bryan said, apparently buying the fakery.
We resumed walking, but it wasn’t as comfortable as it had been before. Not for me. Probably not ever for me with him.
War
“You talk to her?” I asked Bryan, my hands draped over the mic as I glanced at Lace. Sitting behind her keyboard, she avoided my gaze like she’d been avoiding me since I arrived at practice.
“I talked,” he said, turning his head to follow the direction of my gaze. “Not sure she listened.”
Fuck. That didn’t sound promising, and unfortunately, I had to table trying to fix things with her until after band practice.
“You losers ready to play?” I asked, hurling my question at the two newcomers.
“Born ready, ese.” King drummed a beat on his snare.
Sager Reed just gave me a chin lift. He was a quiet guy.
I’d talked to him some, gotten him to open up a little, enough that I now understood why there were shadows in his eyes. He’d been through rough stuff, but this was Southside. We all had.
King had lost a brother. Bryan and I had asshole fathers. I knew from the hint my best friend had dropped that there was darkness in Dizzy and Lace’s past too. We were all a bunch of sad fucks that life had shit on. What we needed was to harness that bad energy and release it into the only thing that reliably made sense—music.
“Lace?” I turned to look at her again. “You ready?”
She lifted her chin. Glittering gold with flecks of fire, her eyes met mine, and she nodded. I might have messed things up with her, but she wasn’t unresponsive to me. I could work with that. I had to work with that.
“What song we doing first?” Dizzy asked.
“A couple of covers to get warmed up,” I said. “Then we’ll play around with that riff I heard you playing when I first came in.”
“Cool.” He grinned.
“First up, ‘Nothing Else Matters.’”
A sharp inhale came from Lace. I could practically feel her presence behind me, I was so focused on her. I knew Bryan loved Metallica. Maybe she did too, or this song had some other significance for her, like it did for me. Another plus was that it began slow and would give the band a chance to feel each other out musically.
Dizzy and Bryan strummed the intro, playing off each other. I pivoted slightly, so I could watch