Even in the dark interior of the bus, I could feel the beet red flush of his skin. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Come on. Not a single memory?” LJ leaned forward over the top of his seat, grinning and looming over Keyton.
He flung his arm across his face, covering his right ear, and slapped the other hand over the left. “Stop it. I hate you both.”
I chuckled along, trying not to let the feeling of missing out sour the fun everyone was having. Other than Spencer and Felicia, I hadn’t kept in touch with anyone from college. It was hard to be friends with people when every interaction started or ended with them asking for something. Felicia was doing her professor thing in New Orleans. She and Ethan had both scored positions. Spencer had cut a demo a year ago and touring seemed to be going well.
Keyton, on the other hand, had a whole team of peers, guys who’d gone through a lot of the same things he had and could be there to lean on.
It amplified how much I’d missed out on growing up with people like them around me. Peerless, they’d said in Rolling Stone when my last album released. But that wasn’t always a great thing.
“Holy shit.” Marisa jumped up, staring at me wide-eyed. “You’re the girl.”
Everyone’s confusion meter spiked straight off the charts, even mine. Normally, this kind of reaction happened when the pieces clicked into place and they realized it was me, not after we’d already been introduced and it had been established I was, in fact, that singer.
Jules bounced in her seat, clasping her hands over her mouth before dropping them and grinning wide. “You’re the one Keyton drew all the time in college.”
Berk and LJ turned to me, assessing me with new eyes. This wasn’t the stranger fan gaze I was used to, but a you-mean-a-lot-to-someone-I-care-about gaze. It was one I hadn’t encountered before.
He’d drawn me enough during college that the people around him recognized me. It rocked me to my core. Our time together in LA had been so quick. Only a blink of an eye when held up against the past six years and the four we were in college, but it had left an unreadable mark on me. It seemed it had on him too. Did he still think about me as much as he’d thought about me back then?
Did he still draw me?
So many of my songs were about him, and there wasn’t a day I didn’t think about him. But it felt like he’d moved on, determined to move past what we were. Now I was left wondering what we could be.
I focused on not squirming in my seat.
LJ spoke first, snapping. “It was your guitar he was always walking around with.”
“You walked around with my guitar?” I turned to Keyton, who’d dropped back into the shadows of his seat across from mine.
Keyton’s words were rushed. “Not all the time. Sometimes I’d take it to a luthier to see if they could fix it. Or I practiced on other guitars to make sure I didn’t fuck it up more than I already had.”
“You fixed my guitar?” My heart squeezed even tighter. “I thought you’d paid someone else to do it.”
He ducked his head. “Most people said it was a lost cause and there wasn’t anything they could do, so I did it myself.” A shadow shoulder shrugged.
“It had to have taken a long time.” I wanted to reach out and take his hand. Run mine over his like the splinters and cuts would still be visible.
“It took far too long. It took a long time for me to gather up the nerve to even try.” He stared at me, his gaze slicing through the darkness. This wasn’t about how many hours he’d hunched over the broken pieces of wood to piece them back together.
Berk rested his elbow on his leg and propped his chin on his hand, looking straight at me. “I can’t believe I never noticed you were the sketch girl.”
Marisa leaned forward, resting her chin on the seat back behind me, less than a foot from my head. “He wasn’t exactly waving that notepad around all the time.”
“I didn’t only sketch her.” Keyton broke in, discomfort coating every syllable.
I tried to shift the focus. “Do you still draw?”
He broke off his tense glare at his friends, who were doing what friends did best, embarrassing the shit out of him. “I do. I paint sometimes, as well.”
Marisa leaned forward this time with a menacing accusation. “You’re painting and you didn’t tell me.”
Keyton laughed. “It’s not exactly gallery quality. I keep telling you, no one will pay for these.”
“They might for charity.” She shot back.
“They’re nothing special. Just something to do to relax.” The shyness was back.
I dropped my head back against the seat. We’d spent so many hours in his room or mine, him drawing and me scribbling in my notebook, both of us lost in what we created, but not needing to hide from each other. “You always had a way of capturing a moment with only a few pencil strokes.”
LJ dropped his arm around Marisa’s shoulder. “You’ve seen him draw other things? He’ll barely show any of us.”
Keyton’s deadpan stare was directed at all his friends. “I can’t imagine why I wouldn’t want to.”
But I wanted them to know he was talented. I wanted him to know too. “If he’s kept it up since high school, then they’ve got to be gorgeous. He’d sketch everyday things and capture the thing that made them special.”
“I just drew what I saw.” A sidelong glance was all he chanced.
Berk inched forward, taking Jules with him like they were attached at the hip. “If I’d gone to high school with Bay, I’d start every conversation with that information.”
“My first album didn’t come out until after we’d graduated college. No one would’ve known who I was back then.”
Keyton’s gaze flicked to mine and I felt it skim across my skin. Now I was the one happy the dim interior of the bus provided enough shadows to hide every flush. And his gaze told me he’d known who I was. He’d always known.
“How are things going this season?”
Marisa and Jules groaned. “Don’t get them started. From the second Keyton’s trade announcement was made before last season, everyone’s been hyped for every practice, every game. I swear some of the guys have already cleared space on their shelves for another championship ring.”
“No pressure.” Keyton mumbled under his breath.
“Everyone’s really sure about you.” I ducked my head trying to catch his eye. “That must be an awesome feeling.”
“More like scary. I don’t want to let my team down. I especially don’t want to let these guys down, but there’s nothing I can do when I’m not on the field.”
“Just keep putting out those good vibes.”
The conversation drifted from topic to topic as the ride progressed. Movies. The season. TV shows. Regular things I’d taken for granted once.
“We were watching House Hunters International and someone wanted to know if their 19th Century Paris walk-up—”
“Had a garbage disposal.” I piped up.
Marisa smacked the back of the seat. “Yes! How insane are these people?”
“My budget is $3000 and I’d like an oceanfront beach house. I sure hope you like cardboard boxes.”