First Verse (A Perfect Song Duet #1)

Prologue

prologue

EVA 15 | WILDER 17

L ate afternoon sunlight dances among leaves in the giant sycamore tree, polka-dotting Wilder’s dark, messy hair and broad shoulders with flares of gold. His face is downturned, his focus on the open notebook in his lap. As I watch, he pulls a pencil from between his teeth, scratches a few words onto a page, then tucks it back in his mouth.

This has been going on for ten minutes. Write-chew-write-chew. The anxiety of not knowing what he’s writing, coupled with the fact I can’t seem to look away, makes me feel like I’m being sunburned in the shade.

I can’t take it anymore.

“Stop chewing on my pencil. What are you, five?”

“Better than chewing my nails,” he mutters without looking up.

I tuck my hands discreetly under my crossed legs. “Whatever. Are you done yet?”

Speckled green eyes lift from the notebook. He pulls the pencil from between his teeth, the wet eraser briefly depressing his lower lip. My breath catches and my thoughts turn hazy.

“Why do you care what I do with my mouth, Evangeline?” he asks teasingly.

Snapped out of my trance, I glower at him. “I care about my pencil, dumbass.”

He wipes it off on his chest, then offers it to me.

I make a face. “Forget it. It’s yours now.”

His grin is a sunrise that begins in his eyes and spreads across his face, so bright it scorches my cheeks.

“I’m done,” he says lightly, tossing the notebook into my lap.

Seizing the distraction, I flip to the page of lyrics we’re working on. He left most of them untouched but rewrote the chorus. When I read his messy words in the margin, my stomach flips.

I look up to find him smirking, his eyes narrowed as he waits for my reaction.

“No way. I’m not singing this.”

His brows lift. “Why not? Besides, we’d sing it together.”

A breeze skips around us, rustling leaves and shifting the paths of sunbeams. My gaze bounces between the words and him. He’s not looking at me anymore, his face upturned to the lush, arterial beauty above us.

“It’s…” Incredible, I think. But what comes out instead is, “Cheesy.”

His eyes cut to me sharply. “You think it’s cheesy?”

Instant regret fills me. I clear my throat, shaking my head. “No,” I say softly. “I don’t know why I said that.”

But I do.

The words are unlike any he’s written before. I don’t know how to feel about them—or maybe they make me feel too much. I’m surprised. Flustered. Curious. My heart is racing. There’s a knot in stomach I can’t explain.

I read the lyrics again.

Baby, this is destiny

I’ll follow you into the sea

I’ll come for you, you’ll see

Set us free — You and me

Dead or alive

Someone definitely inspired this. Does he have a crush on a girl at his school? Is he going to ask her out? Has he already? Is that why he canceled last weekend?

Normally, the fact we go to different high schools is annoying, but I’m suddenly grateful for the distance between our houses and everyday lives. I don’t want to see his sunrise smile aimed at someone else.

I refuse to analyze why.

Swallowing the questions clogging my throat, I remind myself that Wilder and I aren’t the kind of friends who share every little detail of our lives. Our bond is music, and it transcends the trivial and mundane.

After reading his words a few more times, I close the notebook and drop it to the grass.

“I still like my chorus better.”

He scoffs, his gaze drifting past me. Around me. Never landing directly. Silence falls between us, vibrating with words in a language neither of us knows.

I stretch out my legs, then recross them. Chew on a hangnail. Rip out my ponytail and redo it. Pick up my guitar, tune it halfheartedly for a minute, then lay it back in its case. I look at my phone to check the time and am bummed to see my parents aren’t picking me up for another half-hour. I can’t even text them to come sooner because they’re probably already on their way.

Wilder’s exaggerated sigh snaps my head up. Frowning, he studies my face. “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

I blurt, “Who are the lyrics about?”

His eyes widen. “ That’s why you’re being weird?”

My body boils with embarrassment, but I shrug like I don’t care about his answer.

Wilder shakes his head slowly. Then he laughs, a burst of disbelief. “I was thinking about you , Evangeline.”

My ears ring. “W-what?”

He drags a hand through his hair, shoulders twitching in agitation. “Why is that a big deal? You know you’re my muse. It’s always been this way. It will always be this way.”

When I don’t say anything—I can’t even breathe—he huffs and glares at me.

“It doesn’t mean I want to see you naked, so stop freaking out.”

“I’m not freaking out.”

I’m definitely freaking out.

A cloud eclipses the sun, dimming the world. Darkening his eyes from a sunlit glade to a shadowed forest. Despite the warmth of the air, the next gust of wind lifts goosebumps on my arms.

“We aren’t a love story.” His voice is low. I feel it beneath my skin. In my bones.

“I know,” I whisper.

His head tilts. “Do you? Girlfriends and boyfriends are temporary. Background noise. We’re neither. We’re more .”

I nod, but it’s a reflex, my mind disconnected from the action. The ground suddenly doesn’t feel solid under my hands. My hands don’t feel solid.

Wilder leans forward, one finger connecting with the cover of the notebook. His eyes are maelstroms sucking me into depths unknown.

“Tell me you understand. Swear to me that no matter what happens, we’ll stay the same. You and me—forever, Evangeline.”

After a second that lasts a lifetime, I echo, “Forever.”

* * *

That afternoon, in the dappled shade beneath the sycamore, I swore to Wilder we’d always stay the same. That background noise would never come between us. Never infect our art.

We both lied that day.

It wasn’t the first time. Or the last.

Maybe the lies started earlier that summer, when we accidentally brushed against each other in the pool, then jerked away like we’d been electrocuted.

Or maybe they started six years before, when he held my hand as my dad dug a grave in our backyard for our family cat, Pickle. As I soaked Wilder’s shoulder with my tears, I asked him to swear he’d never leave me.

Maybe it’s my fault for setting the precedent for impossible promises. Or his fault for believing we could fight gravity by pretending it didn’t exist.

Wilder was right about one thing, though. We weren’t a love story. We were something better and immeasurably worse.

A perfect song.

- Journal of Eva Sullivan