All Strings Attached

40. Chase

“Cheers to surviving Amped.”

From his adjacent balcony, Chase didn’t miss the bitter swallow that punctuated Zak’s words the morning after their defeat. Though she was trying her best to appear content, he’d been through his fair share of squandered victories. The narrow losses were the most devastating of all, especially when placed at the mercy of a referee call.

This was supposed to be his loss as well, but it was difficult to feel anything but gratitude for the way of life Saint of Spades had shown him.

Passion sprouted in his heart where there had been a barren wasteland only a few short months ago. For the art of music, for the people he shared it with, and especially for the incredible woman sitting across from him.

Chase raised his coffee mug. “Cheers to us.” That wasn’t what he’d meant to say, though it was exactly the sort of thing he wished he could say. “To the band. The long way you’ve come and the distance we’ll go. It’s not over. Don’t forget that, alright?”

Zak leaned back in her seat. The tip of her nose was flushed from the crisp breeze. Under the cover of the upper story balconies, they were both perfectly dry in the stormy weather, but the humidity still made her dark hair frizz wildly at the crown of her head.

“Just the band. There is no us.”

He sipped his coffee. “Sure there’s not.”

There was no missing the way her eyes lit up like a flare, through the gloom of sadness and confusion, when he’d made his blunder.

Their last East Coast sunrise was abysmal. Chase remembered every one of them, and this was the worst yet. A dreary gray sky harkened the coming winter months, dulling the autumn colors. The trees were partially bare now, their leaves shaken loose by the fat, sporadic plops of rain dropping from looming clouds.

Zak fidgeted in her chair. She crossed one leg over her knee, then switched to the other, then put both feet back on the ground. When she turned her head to look at him, there was conflict written in the tension between her brows.

There were any number of things she could be anxious about saying. She had actively avoided unpacking her thoughts about her father and his sudden reappearance. She had bypassed her usual stages of ranting, then panicking about what to do next, after last night’s finale. Merely shrugging off all the niceties and offering the other band her congratulations before holing herself up in her room.

They would be bound for the airport in one hour, and no one could predict what awaited Saint of Spades outside the controlled chaos of Studio 7.

“Hey, what were you about to say backstage before Izzy showed up yesterday?” she finally asked. “Something about helping you understand…”

“Oh.” A nerve panged in Chase’s chest. “I don’t remember.”

Which wasn’t really a lie, because he didn’t know how to phrase what he was trying to say when he was trying to say it, let alone the next morning after a whole night spent talking himself out of rehashing the same futile point.

Help me understand how this is any better. Help me understand how this is any different, because it’s too late for me not to fall in love with you. It was always too late.

“I think you do.”

He looked up, thinking, in earnest, about what to say. All while her gaze lazily unraveled fibers of truth from where he’d kept them wrapped up tight and tucked away. Exactly as she’d asked him to do.

“If there was no band,” he ventured, “would there be an ‘us’?”

She seemed to envision that alternate reality, and for a moment he allowed himself to indulge in it with her. There would always be music, if not for him, for her.

Chase supposed if he had never joined the band, he wouldn’t have been the sort of person she would be with anyway, but in this fantasy world, she didn’t flinch at the word “date.” She kissed him goodnight from the other side of the mattress instead of from the other side of the doorway. She admitted that all their time spent together meant more than ordinary companionship. That chemistry like theirs could never be only physical.

“Does it matter?” She shattered every illusion. “There is a band. And there won’t be an ‘us’. Ever.”

Chase had prepared himself for that response from the moment he decided to ask. It was the most likely one, but he had grown so accustomed to her saying the exact opposite of what he expected.

“What makes you ask?” She sounded less self-assured. Like she worried about him being too fragile to stomach the rejection.

“Curiosity,” he said simply. He didn’t feel like smiling, but it was never difficult to smile for her. Even now. “It’s fine. Like you said, it’s easier this way. No need to complicate things.”

She gave an unconvinced nod. “I’m glad we met again, Chase.” She had made his name sound like so many things before. A challenge, a secret, a song, a plead. Now, it sounded like a consolation prize. “I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done for all of us. But mostly, for me. I need you to know how important you are to me.”

Just not as important as the band.

And that would have to be enough for him. He could never ask her to do anything to threaten the very source of her spark, the very core of who she was.

This had to be enough.

“You’re important to me, too.”

It was the barest, simplest version of the truth. But, for now, it was enough.