Chapter Twelve #2
“You had a bad audition. I wanted to distract you, but I didn’t know the right thing to say, and I’d never been good at astronomy,” I explained. “So . . .”
“You made up a new star chart?”
“Hey, I didn’t completely make it up. Jupiter exists,” I protested, making Jake laugh.
“I remembered Mom said that Jupiter’s visible here, you know, at some point during the night.
So I just picked the brightest star in the sky and hoped for the best.” He snorted, and I placed my hand over my heart in mock outrage.
“I picked the brightest star, Jake. For you.”
“So we could’ve been looking at any old star?”
“Jake, we could’ve been looking at a Southwest airplane.”
We both laughed at the absurdity of it, our giggles coming in waves until we finally settled. We sat in another comfortable stretch of silence, and then Jake said, “It did, you know.”
“Did what?”
“Make me feel better,” Jake admitted, quiet and honest. “You always were good at that.”
The neon sign across the street behind him buzzed again, creating a shimmering haze that outlined the darkness of his silhouette and shadowed the soft curve of his lashes and the sharp edge of cheekbones.
The glow should’ve made him look untouchable—larger than life and out of this world.
But it didn’t. Instead, it reminded me of something safe and rooted deep in my past. Because this felt familiar—me and him, being open and real.
It gave me courage.
I sent him a sidelong glance. “So, you take maple syrup in your coffee now?” Jake Moody didn’t blush. But if he did, he’d be doing it now. “I thought you hated it when I made some for you to try years ago.”
“I didn’t hate it,” Jake protested. “I just didn’t drink as much coffee back then as I do now.”
I shook my head. “What made you think of trying it a second time?”
“When the Usual Suspects first started, we did a small road trip to promote our EP,” Jake began, eyes looking far away for a minute.
“At five one morning, me and the guys were sitting in a twenty-four-hour diner, because it was the only spot open that early and Marie needed us on the road by six. We were exhausted, because it’d been like that nearly every day for two weeks, and we had late show nights too.
I didn’t even know what town we were in anymore. ”
A veil of violet settled over us from the signs, and I replayed Jake’s words in my mind, surprised that the band spent days on the road being up and then still performing—and rehearsing, I assumed—later at night.
I hadn’t realized how hard the band worked.
Was that how busy Jake was the whole time he wasn’t texting me?
I thought maybe he’d been living it up, and I tended to think of celebrities as having it cushy. But maybe that was not always the case.
“Anyway, the diner coffee was terrible,” Jake continued, making a face at the memory. “Just awful. Like motor oil. I saw a bottle of maple syrup sitting on the table right between the salt and the sugar shakers, and I found myself thinking of you.”
Jake paused, exhaling a breath as I held mine. He hesitated for a moment, like he wondered if maybe he shouldn’t have admitted that last part out loud. But the whole point of telling the story was to explain why he tried my old quirk again, and he likely couldn’t get around that nugget of truth.
He went on. “I grabbed the bottle, squeezed some into my coffee, and took a big sip. Only to see my three bandmates staring at me, like watching me dump maple syrup in my cup had startled them all awake but didn’t make them feel any less disoriented.”
I giggled, imagining their faces. “And you kept the habit?”
“Yeah. At first, it was just to cover up the cheap coffee taste, and because I was homesick. But then I got into it and couldn’t shake it.” Jake shrugged. “When we go on tour and we’re in the bus, I always stash a bottle with my stuff. Sometimes the guys ask me to let them have some too.”
I let Jake’s story sit with me for a minute. I found myself thinking of you, he’d said. Homesick.
So. Jake Moody hadn’t forgotten about me entirely.
“I never expected you to pick up my habits,” I told him honestly. Jake becoming a professional singer didn’t surprise me as much as that.
Jake squinted up at the canopy of stars, looking thoughtful for a moment.
“I feel like I’m an echo of everyone I’ve ever met,” he admitted.
“That people’s quirks and actions, and their good and bad habits, all become a part of me, and I take on the echoes as my own—like the way you made your coffee and slow blinked at cats to befriend them, or how my eighth-grade English teacher underlined book passages if they helped him through a bad time, or how my mother still clips coupons and has to watch The Wizard of Oz every spring. ”
I held back a smile, trying to control it for a minute, before giving up and letting it bloom across my face.
Jake watched me curiously. “What?”
“Nothing. You just sound like a lyricist.”
He rolled his eyes, as if I were teasing. “Stop.”
“No, I mean it,” I said. He always had a way of seeing the ordinary and turning it into something beautiful. “I’ve never met anyone else who phrased it that way. Or even put it into words at all.”
“It’s true, though,” Jake said after a moment.
“We’re made up of everyone who’s ever meant something to us.
And then, one day, we’ll mean something to someone, and they’ll take that trait from us that we borrowed from someone else, who learned it from yet another person. Like a string of never-ending echoes.”
“That’s why the band’s tried maple syrup in their coffee.”
“Yeah, but you’re missing the important question,” Jake said, voice taking on a crooning, teasing tone.
“Oh, the important question. Okay, I’ll bite. What is it?”
“What trait did you save from me?”
Across the way, the light changed. We were rose-tinted now.
I fell in love with all the different music genres you introduced me to, and still play them on loop.
And every single US song too, I thought about telling him.
Including “Lovely, Aren’t Ya” just because the melody’s so pretty it never truly stops spinning around my head.
Sometimes, when I feel everything crashing down, I turn the volume way up, dance around my room, and simply let go.
I forget about the problems suffocating me, just for a while, all because of a tune you dreamed up.
Even though we never speak and you could be halfway around the world, somehow you’re still touching me.
And, apparently, I’m still touching you.
But I didn’t say that. It felt too vulnerable. I didn’t know what scared me about it more—how raw and real it felt, or the fact that, if I told Jake, I’d have to face the truth. And the fact that I might not stop telling the truth.
And while those things were true, I still knew better than to let him break my heart again.
So, instead, I only told him part of it. “I still listen to ‘Iris’ because of you.”
Genuine surprise took over Jake’s face. “My favorite song to play on my guitar? Really?”
“After you left, I missed hearing it, I guess,” I admitted with a shrug. “It’s catchy. I have it in a lot of my playlists.”
Whenever it played, I felt like I was eleven years old again, hearing it for the first time.
It’s fascinating, how music can transport and transform you, taking you to a different time and place.
I didn’t think of where Jake was at the moment, or even who I was.
I simply remembered snapshots of the first day I heard it.
The Creamsicle–colored cat that purred at our feet.
The dark-pink corduroy jumper I wore. The rain falling against the café’s windows and Jake’s voice floating over the rhythm of it as he strummed his guitar with stumbling fingers, promising the song sounded better when played by someone other than him.
He lied, though. I’ve never heard it sound better than it had right then.
“That’s awesome,” Jake said now, sounding happy—happier than I thought he’d be. “Can’t believe you picked that up from me.”
“Well, I can’t believe you picked up my sweet-tooth coffee habit.
Not just as an occasional thing, either, but an every morning thing,” I teased, grinning over at him in the dark.
The idea he’d copied a little piece of me every day still made my mind spin.
“So, what I’m hearing is, you’re stuck with me. ”
“Yeah,” he agreed, and it was just one word, but his voice radiated so much warmth, it made me feel like we sat beneath the sun and not the moon. “You’re with me. Forever.”
I stared, caught off guard by Jake’s words, by how easily they’d slipped off his tongue. Sitting in that halo of light made it hard to remember I was over him, that I still hid so many of my feelings.
Maybe even from myself.
But what if I didn’t? What if I actually accepted why “Lovely, Aren’t Ya” got under my skin, and put a name to it?
What would Jake’s reaction be if he found out?
Would we chalk it up to nostalgia, laugh it off, and move on?
Or would something else happen? Something entirely different.
Tempting, but dangerous. Would I want that?
Would it be wise to?
I held my breath, dared myself to open my mouth, and then—
The phone rang.