Prologue #2
Darcy and I break away, noses still touching as we stare cross-eyed at each other, breaths coming short and sharp.
“Cubby?” the voice repeats, doorknob starting to turn.
Oh crap.
My mum.
We rip apart, plummeting backward off opposite sides of my bed and landing with a loud crash. My head starts to spin, lips tingling and skin scorched with heat.
“Cubby, my love? Are you okay?” my mum says, entering the room in a hurry. She hovers over me, eyes wide as I try to bring her into focus.
“Christ, what happened?” Oliver, my twin, materializes in the doorway. “Sounded like the whole house was coming down.”
“Are you two all right?” M?e, my other mum, pushes past Oliver to look at Darcy.
I’m frozen, wind knocked from my lungs and head still swimming as I blink past a few stars.
From the fall.
Obviously.
Not from the kiss.
It would be weird for my head to still be swimming from the kiss …
“We were practicing a song and got too into it,” I blurt, lurching up like a vampire rising from a casket. “We were, uh, standing on the bed and got too excited and fell.”
“I didn’t hear any music,” Oliver, the delightfully aware menace, says.
“Maybe you weren’t listening.” I give him a warning glare that he completely misses.
“You two are very loud.” He looks between me and Darcy. “It’s more difficult not to hear you even when I don’t want to.” Oliver is autistic and while his honesty and candor are some of my favorite things about him, they’re absolutely drowning me in embarrassment right now.
“Did you need something, Mum?” I turn to her, praying there was a reason for the interruption.
Because it needed to be interrupted.
Obviously.
Not because some weird part of me is furious that we were interrupted.
Mum blinks a few times. “Oh. Right. I was coming to tell you Connor’s here to collect you. He’s waiting downstairs.”
Connor? Oh my god, Connor. How did I forget about my date with Connor?
“I’ve got to go.” I jump to my feet, grabbing my black denim jacket from where it hangs on the chair as I dash to the door. “Love you all.”
“Are you not going too, Darcy?” M?e asks.
Christ, how did I forget about Darcy? What is wrong with me? Why does it feel like my brain is splitting in two?
“Nah. I got caught sneaking out last time,” she says with a flippant wave, already back in her relaxed sprawl on my bed. “Only just got ungrounded. Not willing to risk it to watch a group of boys make farting noises.”
Darcy’s a year younger than me, and her parents keep her on the shortest of leashes, not allowing her to go out at all, tracking her phone and making surprise calls to the parents of whoever’s house she’s supposed to be at and asking to speak to her.
They’re über-conservative, and certainly wouldn’t have picked me, with my piercings and “vulgar” music collection, as their daughter’s best friend.
It’s only because I live directly next door and Darcy and I would burn the entire block down if we were separated that they let her stay here as often as they do.
Darcy regularly jokes that her parents spend their days wringing their hands that my mums will initiate her into the demonic cult of lesbianism, but I see the way their strictness eats at her, leaves her dimmed and dulled some days when they’ve really dug their claws into her.
“Besides, Cubby has herself a bit of a date tonight,” Darcy continues, her voice calm and its usual level of bubbly.
I cut her a warning glance, and she smiles that radiant smile of hers.
She doesn’t look flustered and frantic and blown to bits like the inside of my head does right now.
The only thing ever so slightly off is her lips, a shade redder than they usually are. She’s …
Darcy is unfazed.
Which makes sense. Total sense. Honestly, it’s weird that I’m so frazzled. What’s there to be frazzled about? It was just two friends practicing kissing. It must be my nerves from my date with Connor.
“I’m gonna crash here tonight if that’s okay with you, Mrs. Clark,” Darcy adds, shooting a puppy-dog look to my mums. They melt.
“Of course it’s okay, darling,” Mum says with a smile. “I’ll order you some takeaway. Just tell me what you want.”
“You’re the best mums ever,” Darcy croons. I know she means it. Darcy’s mum, Doreen, makes Cruella de Vil seem like a top-rate caregiver.
A text buzzes on my phone.
u coming or what
“I’ve got to go,” I say, jarred by the fact that I forgot about Connor again.
“Bye, darling. Have a good time.”
“Be good.”
“See you later, Cubby love.” Darcy’s soft goodbye is the one that snags my attention, and I spare one more second to look back at her between the slats in the staircase I’ve started descending.
Our gazes lock, and my stomach lurches in that same way it did before.
“Knock ’em dead,” she says with an exaggerated wink, and I realize any charge was just in my head.
I roll my eyes and bound down the rest of the stairs to the guy I like waiting below.
This “date” is a lot like all the other times I’ve hung out with Connor outside of school or band practice: awkward, loud, and sparse on much interaction between us.
I’m extremely aware of my limbs and how I have no clue how to arrange them in a way that seems cool and alluring while I watch Connor chug beer bought by his older brother, then chuck the bottles at a low wall in an abandoned lot, his mates cheering from the side when they shatter.
At least Harry’s here. He’s also in our band, having moved to our town from Dublin several years ago. He’s one of the best pianists I’ve ever heard, and it helps that he doesn’t suck like most people in this village.
“You look nice tonight, Cub,” he says, sidling over to me. “Is that a new shade of black you’re trying out?” He gestures at me from head to toe.
I scowl as I give him a light shove. He knows I’d rather die than introduce a color besides black into my life. “Piss off, O’Connell.” He laughs. Harry always laughs with me and it always creates a glow in my cheeks. We watch the guys throw rocks and bottle shards in quiet comfort.
“We still on for practice tomorrow?” he says after a bit.
“Unless the world ends, I suppose so.” Our band—we’re in between names at the moment—is the central part of our lives.
Harry, Darcy, Connor, and I are all very different people, and I’ve often wondered if we would even talk to each other if it weren’t for music binding us together, the sounds we create weaving between us like shared DNA.
We practice every second we can because we want it—that elusive it. That creation of a sound, a story, that takes the jumbled mess inside your head and turns it into something beautiful. Something others connect to. We want to be heard, and we’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen.
“I’ve been fiddling with that transition to the bridge on our new song,” he says. We’ve been pulling our hair out for a week trying to perfect this melody. I give him an excited look.
“Well, go on, then,” I say, expecting him to hum it for me.
He smiles, grabbing my hand and propping it up so my forearm is parallel to the ground. He places his fingers on me like I’m a keyboard, pretending to play as he intones what he’s come up with. He ends with a flourish, swiping across my arm like he’s hitting every key, making me laugh.
I squeal, throwing my arms around his neck. “I love it! You’re so right. We needed that major there to give it the—”
“What’s this, then?”
Connor’s voice is a physical thing, knocking Harry and I apart.
I blink for a second, not sure why I’m so startled. “Connor,” I say, coming back to myself. “Connor, you have to hear this. I think Harry figured out the part we’ve been stuck on. Harry, go ahead—”
“Come on, Cubby. We’re leaving.” Connor’s voice is devoid of any inflection, face stony and jaw working as he stares at Harry. Harry looks down at his shoes. I don’t know why, but the tension is thick and dark as it looms over us.
Connor reaches out and grabs my wrist, tugging until I stumble next to him. He starts walking, hand moving to lace with mine in a too-tight grip as he tows me away. I trip as I look over my shoulder at Harry, who’s still staring at the ground.
I’ve known Connor long enough to understand that when he gets in one of his moods, it’s best to let him shake it off in his own time.
He’s one of the most charming guys I’ve ever met, but he has an artist’s soul, one that’s deeply sensitive, prone to moodiness.
He’s so brilliant, it’s best not to push him, instead letting him linger in his emotions as he needs to.
It’s where the best art is made. We all know at this point to let him ride out a dark cloud.
But this is wrong. Different. I can’t parse out why.
He continues to hold my hand as he marches me home, but when we’re a few blocks away, I dig in my heels.
“Connor, what’s wrong?” I pull on his arm so he’ll stop.
So he’ll look at me. He turns, jaw set, and I flinch at the thunder in his expression, taking a step back.
I return his stare, apprehension ticking at the back of my neck.
After a moment, he curses, dragging a hand over his mouth. “I just don’t like the way he looks at you.”
“The way who looks at me?”
“Harry.”
I blink at him. “Harry? Our friend Harry?”
“Yes, our friend Harry,” he snaps, mimicking my voice in a high-pitched tone. He shakes his head, glaring off to the side.
“How does he look at me?”
Connor’s gaze flicks to me, lip curled, eyes dark, and I watch his face change—melting from stern and angry to something wolfish.
My pulse picks up. He continues to look at me, his eyes tracing up and down my body, slow like honey, like an animal sizing up its prey.
Heat flashes through me, making my skin prickle and my muscles tense.
“Like that,” he murmurs, taking a step toward me, backing me up till my heels touch the lamppost behind me.
“Harry definitely doesn’t look at me like that.”