and opened the flap again. This time I reached inside and pulled the framed record out, staring at the engraved words, my jaw dropping further and further open with each letter I read.
“Holy crap!” I said, when I’d read the name of my favorite band in the whole wide world. The band that spoke to me alone in my room when I was big and lonely and had no friends. The band that kept me company at night when I had no one to talk to, and the band whose posters had been up on my walls and ceiling. My first crushes. The band I had tattooed across my lower back, and refused to change, even though it was a crap tattoo, because they’d gotten me through the darkest times of my life. I read the words out loud.
“Presented to Step To That, in recognition of 1,000,000 album sales.”
I smiled. Who knew Mark was such a fan that he’d bought himself a novelty album? I shook my head. No wonder this was hidden away. He was probably embarrassed by it. I put the record down and reached into the box again; might as well go for it now that it was open. A pack of photos caught my eye. I hadn’t seen photos like this in years, the printed kind. I started flipping through them and it took me a few seconds to realize what I was looking at. And when I did, I gasped and dropped the pictures to the ground.
“What the . . .” I picked them up again and stared. These were photos of Step To That. The band. They were photos of them backstage, hanging out at a hotel, on a tour bus and . . .
The thought hit me and then left me. It was such a crazy thought that my brain wasn’t able to process it. But then the thought hit me again, and again, and again as I stared at the face on the photo looking back at me. I brought the picture in closer, until it was almost touching my face.
No, it couldn’t be . . .
Could it?
Brown eyes peering through yellow-lensed glasses.
Bleached white, spiky hair with a red and white bandana tied around the front.
Surely, it couldn’t be?
A slim body wearing an oversized red baseball shirt.
Baggy jeans with silver chains hanging from the pockets, big purple platformed sneakers.
Large, silver loop earrings in both ears with matching silver necklaces.
Or could it?
Kneeling down on one knee, arms outstretched, fingers beckoning you through the photo.
Smoldering, yet innocent and intense look on face . . .
Could. Not. Be.
Could.
Not.
Be!
I heard a noise and looked up to see Mark standing in the doorway. His eyes dipped down to the photo in my hand and then a look washed across his face. It was easy to read. I did not need to be a facial expression reading expert to know what I was looking at.
Horror.
Absolute, eye-popping, jaw-dropping, red-cheeked horror.
CHAPTER 55
“What the hell are you doing here?” Mark asked angrily, his voice loud, almost a shout. I’d never heard it like that and it unsettled me.
“This is you, isn’t it?” I held the picture up and scrambled to my feet. “This is you, right?” I waved the photo back and forth in the air.
“This is an invasion of privacy. What are you doing here?” he asked again, his voice getting even louder. He walked up to the box I’d been digging in, grabbed the platinum record and shoved it back in.
I waved the photo even more. “You are M.J. from Step To That, aren’t you?” My voice was shaking now as I looked at him carefully. He looked very different now. Older, completely different style, longer hair, slightly bearded today (God, that suited him), but his eyes were the same chocolate brown that I’d stared into when I was young. It was him. My teenage crush. The voice I’d listened to over and over. That I’d swooned to and cried to and danced to and turned to in my most lonely moments. And my moments had been so lonely. On some days it had felt like his voice was the only voice that had said anything kind to me at all. It was him!
“M.J.,” I said.
“Mark!” he corrected sternly.
He met my eyes for a moment, holding my gaze with an intensity that made my hairs prick up. And then, he broke it. It felt like he was ripping something away from me that, until that moment, I hadn’t known