Chapter 9 #2
You just need to trust me, don’t make me ask twice
And if you want to stay here, I can’t, though I tried.
I picked it because sonically, it’s the most complete of all my songs. Possibly the best one so far. But it’s also the most emotional, the rawest of them.
When I finish, Liam barely waits for me to flick my eyes up to him before he moves the guitar to the coffee table and hauls me into another hug.
“Paige,” he whispers. “That was so good.”
My heart thunders at the praise. My arms are pinned to my sides, my face smushed against his shoulder. “I’m sorry it was depressing,” I mumble.
He pushes me back, searching my face. “I’m sorry that’s how your dad made you feel.”
I glance away as my face flames with embarrassment.
“My dad’s abroad right now. Sold our childhood home and everything.
I’m happy he’s found his second wind, because I think he wanted to leave Bristol as soon as Mom left him.
But he stayed there for us. I’ve never even found it in me to be angry at my father, not when he’d been abandoned just as I had and was left to raise five girls. Hurt, yes. But never truly angry.”
Liam frowns. “Do your other sisters feel the same way about him as you do?”
I bite my lower lip. “I think it’s different for Maren and Candice, the two oldest. They were eleven and ten when Mom left and have the most memories with her, but they never talk about her and are incredibly protective of our dad.
When they were high schoolers, Maren and Candice took up the mantle of keeping us fed and the house in order when Dad would work twelve-hour shifts.
Even to this day, they’re both hyper-independent. ”
“What about the middle one and Zara?” he asks.
“Folly,” I say. “She’s sort of in the wind right now. Left Bristol around the same time Dad did, except he went to be an agritourist in Europe, and she ran off to Portland with a guy. I haven’t seen her in about a year and a half.”
I don’t mention that Folly has largely ignored our attempts to stay in touch with her outside of letting us know she’s alive and well. It’s too embarrassing to admit another member of my family doesn’t have an interest in keeping up with me.
“But Zara and I,” I say, crossing my fingers with a smile, “we’re like this.”
“Then Zara’s my favorite.”
I nod in agreement. My pulse starts to regulate. “That wasn’t so bad,” I say. “Playing for you, I mean.”
“Yeah?” He smiles softly. “Will you play it again?”
“Why?”
“I want to record it.”
I balk. “I repeat, why?”
“So I can listen to your song whenever I want,” he says, like this should be obvious. “Alone, I mean. I promise not to let anyone else hear it. Not even Zara, and especially not Maisy.”
“You’re very funny,” I grumble.
“And you’re a really good singer,” he retorts. “We play to our strengths, it seems.”
I sit with that for a minute. Obviously, Liam’s the first person to tell me I’m good at this. He’s the first person I’ve shared it with. But still, as self-deprecating as I acted earlier, I think part of me has known for the last year that I’ve been onto something with songwriting.
“How’d you get into this?” he asks. “Is it new, or something you’ve always loved?”
“I’ve always played,” I answer. “Piano, violin, and flute in school bands and orchestras, though we only learned the classics. But when I was a senior, we spent an entire semester in AP English developing an original poetry anthology, and that’s when I realized all my poems were set to a rhythm in my head.
Once I moved to Knoxville, I started meshing the two hobbies. ”
Liam hums in the back of his throat.
“Do you think we only like what we like because we’re good at it?” I ask.
He shoots me a wary look. “If I ever stop being good at baseball, I’ll let you know.”
“I think when you love something, and you just want to do it all the time—it’s because it makes you happy. Even if you aren’t going to go down in history for it.”
Liam nods, rubbing a hand underneath his chin. “That’s true. Baseball makes me happy. But I also like how happy it makes other people.”
I tilt my head. “What do you mean?”
His eyes flit over me. “The fans at a baseball game,” he starts.
“I like how excited they are to be there. Not necessarily to see me, but to see the team, the game, the whole atmosphere. It’s like…
” He drifts off, his lips hitching up. “I don’t know, my form of art?
I can’t paint or design or write songs, but I can offer someone a slice of happiness by throwing the ball well for nine innings.
And I think it makes the people in the stands feel the same way art would. ”
“I love that,” I say after a minute. “It’s a very I-just-hope-both-teams-have-fun mindset.”
“I’m competitive, though,” Liam allows. “My dad was too, but in a healthy way, if you know what I mean. I got it from him.”
“What else was he like?” I ask.
His eyes dip, even though he’s still smiling, just slightly.
“He was so steady. Even-keeled. Everyone in our community trusted his judgment and followed his lead. Neighbors, family, clients. He would’ve been equally happy with me being a barefoot marathoner as a pitcher.
So long as I was happy and giving it my all. ”
“I have a feeling you’re giving it your all,” I say, “but are you happy? Not just with baseball, but everything else?”
He nods softly. “More so the longer I spend here.”
Here, in this apartment? Here, in this city?
“What about if you stopped being good at baseball? What then?”
He considers, doing that same scratching motion beneath his chin. “I’d have to find something else I could be part of that makes people feel the way America’s pastime does.”
“Maybe a concert,” I suggest. “Lots of people, big open space, cheering, clapping, a performance of talent. You could figure out how to work at concerts.”
Liam smirks at me, more out of amusement than outright agreement. “Yeah,” he says, his voice indulgent. “And I bet you’d be happy there too.”
Together is the unsaid implication.
I glance down at the places our bodies are touching. My knee against his thigh, his shoe on the floor bumping mine, his hand behind my elbow—all leftover remnants of that last hug we never fully pulled away from.
Oh, that’s dangerous.
I get it now.
When I find his eyes again, Liam’s trying to read me. His hand moves up my elbow to my shoulder, featherlight.
“Paige,” he says, but it’s a question.
“You said you needed this to be different,” I remind him.
“I do need that, and it is different,” he says, eyes dilating. He swallows. “Tell me what you want. I’ll be whatever you want.”
My eyes snap closed when his thumb rubs at the fabric over my collarbone. It’s easily the most erotic thing I’ve ever felt.
“I don’t know how Maisy would feel about it.”
He leans in. Whispers, “That’s not an answer.”
But in the next second he’s up off the couch, and when I peel open my eyes, he’s grabbing a peach, biting into it with his back to me. Like he needs something else to do with his mouth.
We’re quiet for a few minutes. Eventually Liam tosses the pit and rinses his hands, then comes back, sitting farther from me this time. He hands me my guitar and pulls up the voice memo app on his phone.
“Play the song again?”