Chapter Twelve
“I don’t like to think of myself as a flirt,” Phillip commented with a twinkling smile.
“I think I’m just naturally charming and love to collect phone numbers.
Everyone needs a hobby. Some people crochet.
” Dear reader, you should know at this point in our interview, his fellow bandmates began making gagging faces behind him.
You should also know that Phillip did, in fact, ask for my number.
When I entered Jackson Motel at eleven fifteen that night, I found Jake in the deserted lobby, lounging in one of the large cushioned chairs, his long legs stretched out and his black boots resting on the low table in front of him.
He seemed indifferent to his surroundings and at ease, a combination that made him somehow stick out and blend in with the run-down nighttime lobby all at once.
Jake’s eyes drifted upward, spotting me. Without breaking eye contact, he rose from his chair. “Hey.”
“Hi,” I replied, glancing around the empty lobby. “Is Leon not coming to talk to Phillip?”
Jake shook his head. “He’s safely tucked away in a suite behind a Do Not Disturb sign.”
“Lucky.”
“Uh-huh. He’s also wearing an eye mask and headphones that deliver ‘soothing ocean noises,’ whatever those are.”
“Zen dolphins?”
“Maybe. Sounds like something Leon would listen to.” Jake checked the time, then looked back over at me, eyes lingering on my sleeveless pale-blue blouse for a second. “C’mon, Cinderella, let’s get you out of the lobby before the clock strikes twelve.”
We headed into the elevator and Jake punched a number on the panel. With the two of us inside, it felt too hot, and I looked forward to reaching his floor, but when the elevator doors opened and we walked out, it still felt stifling.
“It’s stuffy in here,” I remarked as I followed Jake to his room. The summer sun had baked down on the building all day, and though it was cool outside, the top floor felt too warm and full of stale air.
Jake paused, studying me for a minute before swiveling around and walking in the opposite direction. “I have an idea.”
“What is it?”
He turned, looking back at me over his shoulder, eyes dancing. “Trust me?”
“Not a chance,” I retorted. Jake took in my face and smiled. Why was he—
Oh. I was grinning. I hadn’t even realized it at first, not until he looked at me like that.
Jake moved down the hall without explanation, the soles of his boots soundless on the carpet as he turned a corner sharply, leading me down another near-identical hall.
And I followed, because the thing about Jake’s ideas was—no matter how reckless and spontaneous they may be—they’ve always been hard to resist.
“Here,” Jake said, coming to a stop in front of a white door at the end of the hall, with a keypad attached to the handle.
I studied the unmarked door, unimpressed. “Here?”
“Here,” he confirmed, leaning over and thoughtfully running his fingers over the silver numbers on the pad. “Let’s see if this passcode works.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
He gave me a grave look. “Then get ready to run.”
Jake held his serious expression until I snorted, and the faux intensity on his face dissolved into something much softer and lighthearted as his dimples appeared.
“I’m not eleven anymore.” I laughed. “You can’t scare me like that.”
“Hey, if my memory’s right, you were the one who tried this stunt on me that one time with the café’s security system.”
“I was a lovely child. I don’t remember doing anything like that.”
“Hmm. Your smirk says otherwise.”
Jake punched a string of numbers into the door keypad. He’s never going to guess correctly, I thought. What are the odds? But to my disbelief, the light on the door changed from red to green.
Grinning in satisfaction, Jake leaned back against the door and crossed his arms.
Begrudgingly impressed, I asked, “How did you know the code?”
“I watched a motel janitor do it once, back when my mom worked here. It’s just the address of the motel. They never changed it.” Arms still crossed, he leaned farther against the door, pushing it open with his back. “Come on.”
Wondering what off-limits room Jake wanted to bring me to, I peered through the doorway, but was met only with the sight of a plain gray stairwell.
I glanced back at him to question where we were going, but before I could, I caught the way Jake’s eyes were glinting, and the way he tilted his head as he watched me, as if daring me to figure out the answer myself.
It only took a moment before I understood.
Jake wasn’t taking me to a room in the motel.
He was bringing me to the top of it.
“Breaking onto a motel roof?” I questioned in approval as I started up the stairs. I stopped briefly, turning to look down at him, just a few steps below me. “I know I’ve dragged your whole bad boy brand, but I can actually get behind this part.”
“I’ll make sure to tell my publicist. She’ll be so happy.”
We reached the top and pushed open the roof door. A fresh, gentle breeze greeted me, threading through my hair and sending a shiver across my skin.
I closed my eyes and soaked in the nighttime coolness.
The building was only three stories tall, but it still felt like we were far away from everything. Up on the empty roof, with the stars and the midnight sky stretched out above me, all the noise and worries faded away.
Neon lights from the motel’s signs and from the taller buildings across the way splashed across the rooftop like watercolors, mingling together and sweeping over us.
Car engines purred and radios played faintly in the distance, and I stepped out farther, staring out at the lights of the place I’d lived all my life.
It’s funny. When I was little, I used to think the town felt so big, like it was the whole world. Then I hit about fourteen and thought the town was the smallest place ever, that nearly anywhere else on the map was bigger.
Now, maybe it felt a little like both—nowhere near as big as I remembered or as a small as I thought. Instead, it’s something stuck in between.
Sort of like me.
“Hey, I see the new cineplex,” Jake exclaimed in surprise. He stared for a minute before sitting down on the roof, his legs stretching out in front of him.
The lights painted the spot he chose pale blue, like a patch of the sky, and I sat down beside him, studying the way the hue played over our skin for a minute before looking back out at the view.
“There used to be an ice cream shop over there instead,” he said, a slight frown on his face. “My old guitar teacher, Randy, took me out for a cone after a really hard lesson. It’s weird to think it’s not there anymore.”
“It didn’t stay open for very long after you left.
It was empty most of the time I went in, and they had to close.
The cinema bought the lot and tore the shop down.
” Worry tugged at me again. “So many things are different now.” Why did things have to change so much?
Should I have nostalgia this young? “The café’s one of the only old places around now. ”
Everything in town changed so fast—I felt disoriented, like when I turned eighteen. I didn’t remember feeling so off-balance last year.
What if things never got better? What if my leaving made things worse? What if I went away and then had nothing to come back to?
“Hey, The Tiny Tiger’s going to be fine,” Jake said softly, as the sign lights flickered, sending soft emerald across us now. “That’s why we’re talking to Phillip, right?”
“Right,” I said, taking a deep breath and tilting my head to look up. It was a clear night without a single cloud marring the view, and I searched for stars, trying to find the sparks in the sky that weren’t moving airplanes.
Jake mimicked my position, scanning the darkness above, when he stopped and pointed. “Oh, there’s Jupiter.”
“What?” I questioned, bemused. “That’s not—”
Oh. Now I remembered.
Jake glanced at me, just as confused as I’d been a beat before. “You pointed it out to me one night we snuck out, remember? You told me it was Jupiter.”
“Right.” I nodded. “About that . . .”
“Yes?”
“I lied.”
Jake’s jaw dropped. “You what?”
“Hey, I was thirteen,” I said defensively. “I knew nothing about astronomy. They don’t teach that in middle school—I made it all up.”
Jake gaped at me, eyes wide and round. At first, I thought he was horrified by my confession, but then to my shock, he started snickering, his laughter coming out in short, incredulous-sounding bursts.
“Do—” He gasped for breath. “Do you know how many times I’ve been out on a hotel room balcony after a concert, thinking, Huh, wonder if that’s Jupiter? all because of our conversation?”
“I’m sorry!” I raised my hands in a genuine apology. “I didn’t think you’d remember anything I said.”
“I remember everything you said.”
Surprised by his admission, I couldn’t form a reply. Jake fell silent too—as if maybe he himself was surprised by what he confessed.
We both looked away, back up at the dark-velvet black.
After a beat, I heard Jake let out a breath—an action he always did when he’d been holding it, trying to figure out what to say, and I knew before he even started speaking that he was about to ask me something.
“Lucy?”
I turned toward him. “Yeah?”
“Why did you lie?”
A traffic light switched to red, mixing with the pale-blue motel sign and turning Jake violet, coloring the hollow of his throat and catching in the dark locks of his hair. Just a handspan away from him, the light cast me in fiery red, like a burning ember.
I turned away from him again and concentrated on the midnight sky before answering.
“You were sad,” I said quietly.
I could feel the shift in the air and heat beside me, and knew without a doubt that Jake had turned to look at me.
Even after four years apart, I still remembered what it felt like to have his eyes on me, taking me in like I was a complex row of music notes he was absorbed in deciphering.