Chapter 4 #2
When the song ends, Folly offers me a pitying look. “And yet you say you have no songs about having your heart broken?”
“It doesn’t count,” I grind out. “We weren’t really together.”
“That’s your best song, Paige,” Harry says.
“Yeah,” I say bitterly.
“It’s a heartbreaking song.”
“Yeah.”
He grabs my shoulders. “You know I love you, right?”
I nod.
“I wouldn’t tell you to do this if I didn’t think you could handle it.”
I nod again, watching him.
“I think you should write more songs like that one. And I think you should do whatever it takes to write them.”
Whatever it takes.
Could I put myself through that? Falling in love, just for the sake of my music?
For the sake of writing songs about the giddiness of a crush, the weighted swooping in my belly as it turns into something more meaningful, the painful ache once I’ve offered all of myself to someone and it doesn’t work anyway, because it was never going to?
Which would certainly happen if it’s Liam we’re talking about; he doesn’t keep long-term partners and never has, present company included.
Is putting myself through an entire relationship cycle for twelve to fifteen songs insane?
It is.
It’s objectively insane.
I think I have to try.
The clouds part, and a plan begins to form. Ever since I answered Paul’s phone call this morning, I’ve been operating on autopilot. Act now, think later. With my two favorite free spirits in the room to guide me.
“I need to go back to CMA Fest.”
Finding tickets online is an expensive breeze. Ground floor tonight instead of the nosebleeds, since Liam works near the stage. In the photos he or his friends or coworkers post, he’s always down in the thick of it, wearing a headset and a heart-stopping grin.
“Yeehaw!” Folly shrieks while Harry cackles behind us, bringing up the rear.
The three of us race through the football stadium concourse, two of us wine drunk, all three of us effervescent. We each chugged something before we pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps and bolted out the door.
“This is nuts!” I shout, still running. “I should just text him!”
“Texting does nothing for the plot!” Folly shouts back. “This whole scheme is for the plot!”
“Should you be running in your condition?” Harry calls to her.
“I’m supposed to do what feels good, and this feels exceptional!” she calls back.
I giggle, running on, shoving my doubts in a closet in my rib cage.
We make it to the breezeway and skip down the stairs as music cascades across the venue.
The sky is glowing periwinkle, brightened by all the flashlights on cellphones above us.
I feel like I’m racing through the cosmos, a tiny star among thousands.
When we reach the ground level, my feet stumble and I nearly trip before I catch myself. Harry collides with me from behind.
“Where now?” he asks.
“Maybe we descended too quickly,” I admit. I’m just north of five six and every shadowed figure is blurring together.
“He’ll be at the front of the crowd,” Folly reasons. “I’m going to stay back here, just to be safe, but you guys keep going.”
I squeeze her hand, catching some of the brightness in her eyes.
Harry grabs mine and pushes forward. We haul ourselves through the crowd of song-drunk fans, weaving into the dense throng.
Eventually, we make it to the metal fencing that blocks general admission from VIP, and on the other side of the barrier, the bodies thin.
Security guards are spaced every twenty feet along the fence.
“Do you see him?” Harry asks.
My eyes search.
It should have taken me longer than it does to find him. My eyes shouldn’t have gone to him so naturally, but they do.
His neon vest is only part of it.
Liam Bishop.
His smile, that voice, brown hair, rough hands—it’s all marked, a dark and expansive tattoo, permanently inked somewhere inside of me. Every word memorized. Looks we exchanged, innocent at first, but curiouser and then downright hungry near the end of it.
It serves me now as my memories find their metal, magnetize, and pull me straight to him.
Beneath the vest, he’s in a purple staff T-shirt and jeans, standing with another man close to the stage, his arms crossed over his chest, posture relaxed.
Liam’s body seems to have softened since college.
He’s still toned and athletic, no doubt, but now he lacks the intense muscle his baseball training required.
His hair is a bit shorter than I remember, tickling his ears.
Brown curls, tuggable. The headset is firmly in place.
I only catch his shadowed profile, half aimed at the stage, half aimed at the crowd.
Liam turns his head, and we lock eyes, and I’m not exaggerating when I say all the air between us gets sucked away. So does the light, and the sound. My whole world narrows to the look on his face, just as surprised as my own.
All I had to do to find him was show up. All he had to do to find me was blink.
For the first time in four years, Liam smiles at me. It’s soft, unsure, but I can see it plain as a rocket flare across the darkness and distance between us.
I try to jump the fence.
“Woah, we’ve got a breacher!” the security guard shouts. He grabs me by my waist and pulls me back to the general admission side, locking my wrists in a vise behind my back.
“Ow!” I shriek, and behind me, Harry screams, “Let go of her!”
The guard twists me out of Liam’s view, starts to march me away. “Escorting the breacher outside,” he says into his earpiece.
“Wait, wait”—I strain against him, but the guard’s grip only tightens—“you don’t understand, I was just looking for someone.”
“Someone famous?” the guard mocks.
“Wait a minute!” Harry says, trailing us.
“Hey, hey, STOP! Vladimir, STOP!”
Liam.
“Vladimir?” I ask. “Cool name.”
“I am Russian,” the guard says, spinning me back around.
Liam is at the fence, chest heaving from exertion. Worried lines crease between his brows as he leans into his palms.
“She’s mine!” he calls out. And then, like he’s correcting himself, “She’s with me.”
My chest pinches at the sound of his voice.
“What the fuck did my boss tell you guys about VIP guests, Liam?”
“They go in and out through the front gate,” Liam says, wincing. “Sorry, Vlad.”
Vladimir lets go of my wrists.
I catch my breath, roll out my shoulders. With a glance to my right, I see Harry wink and then vanish into the crowd like a dramatic fairy godmother.
Liam’s jaw tightens. His eyes catch on mine, and he raises an arm. With two fingers, he gestures for me to come to him.
I walk the handful of steps back to the fence and start to pull myself over again.
Liam’s arms come to my waist when I’m sitting atop the barrier.
He hauls me over it and right against his firm body.
The touch singes me. I’m a block of ice baking in the hot June night.
His grip is tight, almost viselike around my back.
I breathe in the smoke and sweat and incense of him as my forehead grazes his neon vest.
It isn’t a hug. More like an approximation of one. But Liam’s hand cups the back of my head, tilting it sideways.
“Paige,” he says into my ear, his voice softening the way it used to only for me, and that’s the version of it I want to write about so there’s no way I’ll ever forget it again. “Is this a coincidence?”
I shake my head against his body.
“Okay,” he says roughly. “Okay. What are you doing here?”
That’s when I pull back. His face searches mine, hungry with a confusion he’s desperately trying to satiate. He looks like so much more of a man now, with those filled-out shoulders, his stubble, the handful of smile lines by his tired but iridescent gold-brown eyes.
But he also looks like the person I knew. Confident and warm, steady and attentive.
Liam has always been a straightforward guy. He’ll appreciate the truth from me, no fluff.
“Liam Bishop,” I say. “I need you to break my heart.”