10. Chapter Ten
Chapter Ten
Evan
Three days later, Miles shoved into my side as we pushed into the dive bar. He had that grin on his face, the one that meant he thought he was saving my life.
"Come on," he said, clapping my shoulder. "You need this. You've been brooding for days."
I shot him a look. "What I need is for you to stop quoting your therapist and start tuning your damn drums."
"I don't tune my drums."
"You should, you're supposed too. Maybe they'd stop sounding like a garage falling down stairs."
Miles pressed a hand to his chest. "You wound me."
"I'm trying."
He ignored me, as usual.
The place was a classic tour stop, the kind you hit when you're tired of hotel rooms and want noise that isn't a crowd chanting your name.
Dark walls, sticky floors, neon signs humming in the windows.
It smelled like lime, spilled beer, and bad decisions that people planned to call "healing" in the morning.
People came here to blur the edges of their lives. I was trying not to admit that sounded useful.
The rest of the band scattered the second we got inside. Some headed for the bar. Others drifted toward a cluster of women already sizing us up, eyes sharp and smiles practiced, scanning the room the way people scan a shelf when they already know what they want.
It was me.
That used to feel good in a simple way. Not clean exactly, just easy.
Attention without history, want without consequence, a phone number scribbled on a napkin, a laugh too close to my ear, someone looking at me like I was exactly who they came for and not who they were afraid of becoming invisible beside.
I hated that I noticed. I hated more that I didn't hate it enough.
I grabbed a stool near the end of the bar and pretended I was fine.
Miles slid in beside me, ordered something with whiskey, and gave me the kind of side-eye usually reserved for injured animals and friends making suspicious choices.
"You know," he said, "there are easier ways to look miserable."
"I'm not miserable."
"You look like someone told you they canceled uncrustables."
"Poetic."
"I contain layers."
"You contain alcohol and poor boundaries."
"And yet, I'm thriving." He took his drink from the bartender and leaned against the bar. "You could try it."
"I'll pass."
"You've been passing for weeks."
I lifted my glass. "Congratulations on noticing time."
Miles turned, look sweeping the room. "Look, I'm not saying you need to go full rock-star cliché."
"Comforting."
"I'm saying maybe stop acting like you're cheating on someone who dumped you."
The glass stopped halfway to my mouth.
Miles saw it and, to his credit, didn't immediately retreat. Unfortunately, Miles had never been great at survival instincts.
"You're single," he said, quieter. "Remember?"
I did.
Every second.
Every lyric.
Every time I turned toward the wings and expected Lila to be there watching with that little nod that used to mean she believed in me more than I believed in myself.
Now she watched from nowhere. Or worse, now she watched from across rehearsal rooms with a guitar in her hands and hurt in her eyes like I had put it there alone.
I took a drink. It tasted like citrus and nothing.
A girl in a red halter leaned across the bar on my other side, straw between her fingers, smile slow enough to be practiced.
"You look familiar," she said.
Miles made a soft sound into his glass. I ignored him.
"I get that a lot."
Her smile widened. "Do you?"
"Sometimes."
"Must be rough."
"Devastating."
She laughed and shifted closer. Her perfume cut through the lime and beer, sweet and expensive and too much.
"Want company?"
I should have said no.
The word was right there, easy and clean and loyal in a way no one would ever know to appreciate. Instead I looked at the empty chair across from me, then back at her mouth.
"Depends on the company."
Miles made a sound like he'd just witnessed a miracle.
The girl laughed and slid onto the stool beside me, close enough that her knee brushed mine, close enough that the red fabric of her top skimmed my sleeve when she leaned in.
I didn't move.
That was the first mistake.
Or maybe the first mistake was liking, for half a second, that someone wanted me without history attached. Without songs. Without the ruin. Without asking me to prove I was sorry before I was allowed to breathe.
"What's your name?" she asked.
"Evan."
"I knew it." Her eyes lit up. "Evan Walker."
Miles leaned around her, grinning. "See? There he is. Evan Walker, back from the dead."
"Shut up," I said, but there wasn't much heat in it.
The girl rested her elbow on the bar. "You're not very friendly for someone famous."
"I'm off the clock."
"Famous people get to do that?"
"No. That's why we're all unbearable."
She laughed again, touching my sleeve this time. Not a grab, not a claim, just fingers on fabric.
I could have shifted away.
I didn't.
Worse than that, I smiled at her.
Not the polite kind. Not the accidental kind. The kind I knew how to use. The kind that had gotten me backstage passes and free drinks and strangers leaning in like I had already whispered something dirty in their ear.
That was the second mistake.
Miles saw it. His grin got sharper, but there was something underneath it, concern maybe, or the exhausted hope of a guy who wanted his friend to stop looking like a ghost with a record deal.
"You're single," he said again. "You don't have to keep acting married to a ghost."
I should have corrected him.
I should have said, Don't call her that.
I should have said I wasn't married to anything except my own bad decisions.
I should have said Lila wasn't a ghost; she was very much alive, three rooms away half the time, singing like she could cut the air open and walk through it without bleeding.
Instead, I tipped my glass toward the girl in red like Miles had given me permission.
"Apparently I'm available," I said.
Miles went still.
The girl’s smile sharpened.
And the second the words left my mouth, I hated them.
Not enough to take them back.
That was the third mistake.
The girl's fingers were still on my sleeve.
Miles saw me not move. A couple of people at the end of the bar noticed too.
One lifted a phone, not fully pointed at me yet but close enough.
The old reflex kicked in before the private version of me could stop it.
Stage smile, easy tilt of the head, a little charm just enough to make the room feel like I had chosen it instead of being trapped inside it.
The girl in red smiled back like she'd won something.
I hated myself, but not enough to stop immediately.
That was the ugly part.
"Is this where you tell me you're trouble?" she asked.
"No," I said, moving closer than I needed to. "This is where I disappoint you by being boring."
"I don't believe that."
"You should. I have references."
"Good ones?"
"Depends who you ask."
Miles snorted, but it came out wrong. Thin.
The girl's thumb touched the inside of my wrist, bare skin, a fast quiet contact.
I should have moved then.
Instead, I let her hand stay there.
Her thumb moved once, a slow little arc over my pulse, and my body betrayed me in the smallest possible way. I looked down at her hand. Then at her.
And I smiled again.
That was the fourth mistake.
The unforgivable one, maybe, because it wasn't confusion. It wasn't grief moving faster than sense. It was me putting on the mask and letting another woman touch what Lila used to hold like it mattered.
"Careful," the girl said softly.
"With what?"
"Whatever you're trying to prove."
The words landed too close.
I laughed anyway. "Maybe I'm done being careful."
Then I felt it.
Not magic, nothing that pretty. My body just knew before my brain had time to be stupid about it.
I looked up.
Lila stood near the entrance.
Jeans, vintage tee, hair tied up like she didn't know she was the only thing in the room my body had ever learned by heart.
She froze when she saw me.
For one second I couldn't move.
Then her gaze dropped to the girl beside me, to the hand still touching my wrist, to the drink in my hand, to Miles's vanished grin, to my face still wearing that careless, cruel little smile.
And God help me, I didn’t pull away fast enough.
Not because I wanted the girl, no because I wanted Lila to see.
That was the mistake with teeth.
The one that drew blood.
I watched her understand the worst version of the scene. And for one uglier second, I let her.
Because some part of me wanted her to.
Not because I wanted the girl in red. Not because I wanted to hurt Lila in any clean, planned way.
Because I was tired of being the only one haunted.
Because she had looked at me in the green room like I was another door the world had opened for me and slammed in her face. Because she got to leave and still act wounded. Because she had Finn at her side, a band behind her, and a story where she was brave enough to choose herself.
And I got a song everyone loved for the wrong reasons.
For one second, I wanted her to know I could be wanted out loud.
So I did the worst thing.
I turned my wrist under the girl’s hand instead of pulling away.
Barely anything, in anyone else story this would be almost nothing, but in ours, it was enough.
Lila saw it, and her face changed.
Not anger, no that would have been easier.
Disappointment, small and fast and worse than a slap. Like I was exactly the heartbreak she'd been trying to outgrow. Like every warning she'd given herself about me had just stood up in the middle of the bar and smiled.
Her whole body went still, then the hurt disappeared behind something smooth and awful.
She turned and walked out without looking back, without giving me time to explain.
Which was fair, because I wasn't sure which truth I would have picked.
The girl at the bar meant nothing.
That was true.
The girl at the bar had meant nothing for ten pathetic seconds.
That was also true.
But I had used her anyway.
And Lila knew it.
I stood so fast my stool scraped the floor.
Miles's grin was gone. His face looked pale under the bar lights.
"Evan."
I didn't answer.
The girl in red blinked up at me, her hand finally falling away. "Everything okay?"
"Sorry," I said.
It was not enough, it was also all I had.
I pushed away from the bar. Miles caught my arm once I'd taken two steps.
"Man, wait."
I pulled free. "Don't."
"She saw?"
I looked at him. He had the decency to look like hell.
"Yeah," I said. "She saw."
He swallowed. "It wasn't anything."
I laughed once, it sounded ugly.
"Wasn't it?"
Miles didn't answer.
Good.
I didn't want him to lie to me too.
I made it outside before the bar could suffocate me.
The night air hit my face, cooler than the room, damp with old rain and asphalt heat. Music thumped through the walls behind me. Laughter spilled from the patio. Someone shouted for an Uber. A bottle clinked against concrete.
Lila was gone. Of course she was. She'd always been good at leaving once she decided the scene was over.
I stood under the neon sign with my hands flexing at my sides and the ghost of that girl's fingers still irritating my wrist. I rubbed at the spot until the skin went red. Not because it felt good. Because I wanted it gone.
I should have followed Lila. I should have called her name. I should have done literally anything other than stand there like a guy waiting for someone else to write the next line.
Instead I walked. No destination, just movement, desperate and pointless, as if I could shake her face loose from my head. The flash of her hurt clung to me, not dramatic, not poetic, a splinter, small enough to ignore until you touched anything.
I ended up in the gas station parking lot two blocks down, leaning against the side of the tour van like a man who'd just watched the best part of his life walk out of a bar and maybe had no right to chase her.
The asphalt radiated leftover heat. A car pulled up to the pump, filled up, and left. Somewhere across the lot, a radio played something tinny through open windows, a song that didn't matter.
I pulled out my phone. Opened her contact.
Twilight
Still saved that way. Still cruel. The last text between us was mine.
Congrats on graduation. I'm proud of you.
She never answered. Maybe that was fair.
My thumb hovered over the call button. I wanted her to know.
I wanted to tell her the girl at the bar meant nothing, and that wasn't the whole truth.
I wanted to tell her that for ten pathetic seconds it felt good to be wanted by someone who didn't need me hidden.
I wanted to tell her I hated myself for it.
That I hated her a little too. That both things were true and neither one made me stop loving her.
I pressed call.
One ring. Two. Three. My thumb hit end before the fourth.
The word landed without drama. Accurate things don't need flair.
I watched the screen until it dimmed.
Twilight.
Behind me, the bar door opened somewhere down the block. Music spilled into the night, followed by laughter and a woman's voice calling my name. The girl in red, probably. Maybe someone else. It didn't matter as much as it should have.
I didn't turn around. Not right away.
That was the part I hated most. Not that I wanted her. I didn't, not really, not enough. For one awful second, I wanted to want someone else.