Chapter 5 #2
I turn at the sound of his voice and find Liam a few steps behind me. I feign surprise, though if I’m honest with myself, I knew he was up here because I didn’t see him down there when I searched for his face, specifically.
“I never once thought that,” I reply.
He walks forward, points with his beer at the top of Maisy’s head. “Just, what she said. It’s true I hooked up with her roommate last night, but the way it came across painted me as man-whorish.”
“We don’t slut shame anymore. Didn’t you hear?”
Liam’s mouth pulls into a smile. “What I’m getting at is, I don’t lead girls on. I don’t ghost. I’m very straightforward, all the time.”
“That’s great,” I say. “Truly. But also, why do you care what I think of you? We’re not even friends.”
“Ouch.” He puts a hand over his heart.
I fight off a smile. He’s incredibly charming, and I’m not unaffected by it.
“I just meant we don’t run in the same circles. It took us a year and a half to bump into each other again. And considering you and Maisy didn’t work out, we probably won’t ever run in the same circles, will we?”
“I may have followed you into that bookstore, Paige, but we’re both at this party tonight. Our paths were always going to cross.”
“You don’t want me as a friend,” I say. “I’m not very good at it.”
“That seems categorically false.”
“No, really. Just ask Maisy. She’ll tell you the truth, that I’m so introverted she used to have to babysit me at parties like this in high school.
That I’ve always been more of a sidekick type and I’m much quieter than she is, especially in a crowd.
But Maisy sticks by me because of our history, and I’m just trying to warn you not to put yourself in the same position she’s in.
I’ll get too attached to our friendship and refuse to be abandoned. ”
My tone and face read as if I’m joking, but I also happen to be baring my soul to him.
Liam’s eyes seem to smoke. “You aren’t quiet to me.”
“Yes, but the crowd is down there.” I jerk my head at the yard below.
“And it looks like you’ve learned you prefer being up here.”
“I have learned that. I didn’t like myself very much in high school, but I also didn’t know myself. I’ve felt more like a real person since moving here than I did throughout my entire childhood in Bristol.”
Liam’s palm goes to the space of rail between us, his body tilting even more toward mine. “What else have you learned about yourself?”
Do I dare?
But his eyes are so chasmic, and the truth is we hardly know each other. The stakes of this admission are low.
“Music,” I breathe. “I’ve always loved playing music. I grew up playing piano, violin, and flute, but I’ve also been teaching myself guitar. I bought one six months ago with some money I’ve been saving from the restaurant.”
“Music,” Liam says, nodding along. Like he’s mentally deciding it fits me. Like my edges are filling out in his record of me. “Do you ever compose?”
I nod, just barely. My first confession to anyone, ever, that I’m interested in songwriting. That I’ve been teaching myself that craft, too.
I shrug, but I’m so buzzed on my own honesty that it doesn’t carry the insouciant edge I’d hoped for. “It’s my side hobby, I guess. I like piddling around with songs and melodies, and it’s not serious. But it’s fun.”
My oldest sister Maren’s challenge comes back to me. The phone conversation we had right before I decided to leave Bristol and move here: Find out what you want from your twenties and figure out how you get it, Paige. Don’t wait for it to find you, or you’ll turn into Folly, aimless and confused.
Liam is quiet for a minute, studying me. “Let’s be friends, Paige.”
I snort.
A crease forms between his brows. He turns his body to face me, leaning a hip against the railing. “You don’t think I could be a good friend to you?”
I take a sip of my beer, stalling. “Not to pile on after just saying we don’t slut shame anymore, but I think your definition of female friend has an implied with benefits.”
Liam levels me with a look. “Maisy said you had a boyfriend. Do you?”
I shift my hip onto the rail so we’re facing each other full on. “Yes. But if the answer had been no, would I have been right about your intentions?”
“I’m not going to stand here and act like you aren’t desirable, Paige, but I meant friendship completely innocently. We could hang out. Have fun.”
I shake my head, trying to break up the word desirable before it lodges there.
“What would we do together?” I ask.
“Read in bookshops? Talk?” His smile quirks back up again. “I could teach you about baseball, if it’s still true you know nothing about it, and if you were interested in learning. Especially since that one softball season when you were nine didn’t work out.”
“You have a great memory.”
“Yeah, and that,” he says, tipping his beer at me, “is the sign of a good friend.”
I can’t help but smile back. “I feel like you’re trying to prove something.”
“I feel like you’re trying to prove something else.
” He leans in, smelling like bonfire smoke and sunscreen.
“I told you I’m straightforward, and I meant it, Paige.
” He looks around the party. “I like this scene as much as the next guy, but it gets old, and you seem…” He drifts off, rubbing a thumb over his lips.
“I think we could be good for each other. To each other.”
“I give you a more wholesome image, and you help me build my street cred?”
“Why does there have to be an agenda?” Liam asks.
“Because there always is.”
He sighs, looking at the stars, his mouth tight and his palms on the rail. “My dad died a year ago. From a heart valve complication.”
All the playfulness leaves my body, nothing but skid marks left behind.
“I’m so sorry,” I say.
“Thank you. It was really hard.” His eyes drop to the tree line but don’t move in my direction.
“He was my role model, but he was also my best friend. Even once I came to college, we talked every day. And it’s not that I don’t have friends on the team, or in my classes. I do, and they’re great, but—”
Finally, he looks at me. His voice comes out gruff.
“Sometimes, I feel like you have to set the tone for a friendship at its inception, and once you do that, there’s no changing it.
Right now, all my friendships are just variations of this.
” He makes a throwaway gesture around the party.
“But I need something”—he swallows—“different. So, I guess I do have an agenda, and that’s what it is.
I want a friendship that’s different than this, and I want it to be with you. ”
We watch each other for a few moments.
“It’s dawning on me I just used my dead dad to accidentally guilt-trip you into being my friend,” Liam says.
“You’re giving me big shoes to fill,” I say.
Liam groans, rubbing a hand through his hair. “That came out all wrong.”
I laugh, swatting his arm away from his face. “I don’t feel guilted into anything, I promise. And I do understand what you mean about friendships being defined a certain way at the outset.”
It’s in fact exactly how I’d describe my and Maisy’s friendship—with roles that are defined. How accurate those definitions are twenty years in the making? Less certain.
Liam’s smile creeps back in. “So will you? Be my friend? Honestly, Paige, I just want the chance to get to know you.”
My whole body heats. If I wasn’t positive this man didn’t find me any more or less physically attractive than the other girls at this party—because he seems like the type to find beauty in all human beings—maybe I’d think his words leaned romantic.
But he went on a date with Maisy and hooked up with her roommate in subsequent school years.
If that’s what I know, imagine what I don’t.
I wouldn’t trust him with my feelings as far as he could throw a piano.
But the truth of the matter is I don’t think I’m capable of saying no to him. I don’t think I want to say no. My community is small, maybe even narrow, and if Liam’s offering me a chance to expand it the way I’m likely expanding his, it’s probably in both of our best interests to take it.
“I was going to hang out at the bookshop after I get off work on Wednesday evening,” I tell him. “If you were serious about that, we can do a trial run.”
Triumph surges into his dark eyes. “What time?”
“I usually get cut at five o’clock when the shifts change.”
“I’ll be there,” he promises.
I nod, amused. “So are you actually a reader? Or did you just pretend so you could ask for Maisy’s phone number?”
Liam barks out a laugh and tilts his head. “I promise you, Paige. I did not pretend to read near you so I could ask for Maisy’s phone number.”
“You finished the book?”
He nods. “I finished the whole series. Zara and I talked about it for almost thirty minutes the next time I ran into her on campus.”
“And then she told you I wasn’t a student?” I guess.
“No.” Liam takes a swig of his drink. “That was Maisy.”
I look back down at her in the yard below us. She’s still in her element.
“So, do we have a deal?” Liam asks.
“A deal?”
The space between us has crossed over to borderline dangerous. “If the trial run works out, then I’ll teach you about baseball,” he says, voice low, “and you’ll teach me to play an instrument. And we’ll see if we become friends along the way.”
“Oh,” I say. I hadn’t expected him to want to learn an instrument, but it’s probably a good plan to give our friendship some equal benefits. Structure.
I think we could be good for each other.
I smile back at him. “Okay. Deal.”
Only then does Liam lean away, relinquishing my oxygen back to me. “Maisy Morgan better watch out, Paige. I’m about to be the best friend you’ve ever had.”