“You’re trying really hard not to smile, aren’t you?” he says.
I nod before letting my face split open. “Oh my God. She was so nice? I love her? Did I sound too ridiculous, or just a normal amount of ridiculous?”
“You were fine,” he says, grinning. “And you’re going to perform?”
Oh. Right. “I got caught up in the moment.”
“I think it’s a great idea.”
And maybe it is, or at the very least, not a terrible one, because I, human-cloud Rowan Roth, am suddenly making my way over to the hipster at the counter holding a clipboard.
“It’s a light night,” the guy says when I ask if there are any open slots. He’s wearing Seattle’s official flag, a plaid flannel shirt. “You could go up next, if you want.”
Voice trembling, I tell him my name before meeting Neil back at our table. He asks if he can get me water or a soda or anything, but I’m not sure my stomach would be able to handle it. As I remove my notebook from my backpack, my fingers graze my new signed books. I wrote the first few chapters by hand before typing them up, and I’d rather read off paper than a phone.
I can’t picture the best-case scenario, and so I don’t let myself brace for the worst, either. This doesn’t have to be scary. I let Neil read. Neil, my rival and nemesis, who used to tease me relentlessly about the books I love. And I’m proud of what I wrote. Why is that so hard to admit, even to myself?
“Give it up for Adina,” the emcee says, his boots making the floorboards bounce and squeak. “Always a treat to have her back here.”
The room applauds for the violist. I was so in my head, I hadn’t realized she’d finished. I clap along with everyone else, my stomach performing an impressive gymnastics routine.
Adina and I cross paths as she leaves the stage, long dark hair tumbling down her back, a swipe of red across her lips. Her cheeks are flushed from the performance. She might be the most beautiful person I’ve seen up close.
“That was amazing,” I tell her.
She does something strange then. Instead of brushing off the compliment the way someone else might, she gives me a half-smile, as though she knows exactly how amazing she was.
“Thank you. Have I seen you here before?”
“First time,” I say.
Her smile gets wider. There’s an ease to her, an effortlessness. “I’ve been coming here for a few years, mostly on breaks from school. It’s a good crowd.” She glances behind me toward the audience. “Your boyfriend seems really excited for you.”
“Oh, he’s not—” I start, but I’m not about to recite our history to this stranger, and the word “boyfriend” is doing strange things to my heart that I don’t want to think about before I get up on that stage.
“You’ll do great,” she assures me.
The emcee’s voice: “Next up, we have a newcomer, so let’s give an extra-special Bernadette’s welcome to Rowan!”
I make my way up to the stage, watching as Adina joins a short-haired girl at a table in the back.
“Hi,” I say into the microphone. “Thank you.” The lights are too bright. It takes me a few seconds to spot Neil, and then I wonder why he didn’t stand out to me right away because he’s grinning that genuine grin, the one that crinkles the corners of his eyes in this adorable way. And damn it if it doesn’t soothe some of the nerves in my stomach.
And there’s Delilah, giving me her full attention, as though she’s truly interested in what I’m about to read.
“This is coffee, by the way,” I say, gesturing to my dress, realizing under the lights just how brown the stain must look. “A hazelnut latte, to be exact. Not, um. Something else. It’s been a very weird day.”
At this, the audience laughs.
“I’m going to read from the opening of a novel I’ve been working on. It’s short, and all you really need to know about it is that it’s… a romance novel.” A couple people whoop at this, and one person whistles. Maybe it’s Delilah. Maybe it’s Neil.
“Here it goes,” I say, and then it becomes easy.
* * *
Neil’s waiting for me outside, leaning against the brick building across the alley. When I finished, he held up his watch and stuck a thumb in the direction of the door. My heart is still pounding, my head buzzing. Woof, the adrenaline is wild.
“I fucking did it,” I say as I race over to him.
He’s beaming. “Yes you fucking did,” he says, matching my enthusiasm. “You were amazing.”
When I reach him, I fling my arms around his neck in a hug that clearly surprises him, given how his body jerks back at first. But then he relaxes, as though his body needed a moment to process what was happening, and his arms come around me, his hands resting against the small of my back. I’m grateful for the hoodie—I’m sweating like mad underneath it.
My face fits in the space below his ear, where his jaw meets his neck. Have we hugged before? This might actually be our first one. I move my hands to his shoulders, lingering on the soft fabric of his T-shirt. I wonder if he’s cold. If I should return his hoodie, the one I’m still wearing. He smells like a combination of rain and boy sweat—not entirely a bad thing—and underneath, something clean and comforting. I fight the urge to inhale deeply, to avoid sounding as though I am literally breathing him in.
“They didn’t hate it.”
His pulse shudders against my skin. “Because it was good.”
Slowly, we pull back from the hug, and I can’t believe I just did that, and I can’t believe Neil McNair was here to see it and that he’s happy for me. If we’d been friends instead of competitors, I wonder how many more hugs we’d have had.
It was a rush unlike anything I’ve experienced, getting to read my words in front of people. It might have been even better than hearing Delilah read. She listened to me, a complete nobody hoping to one day become a somebody.
“And Delilah’s following me on Twitter now,” I say, in part to distract myself from how badly I want to hug him again. “She flagged me down before I left, and she just took out her phone and asked for my handle, and oh my God, what am I supposed to tweet? She’s going to see everything. Maybe I should delete my account.”
He lifts his eyebrows. “Is this what I was like when I met your parents?”
“No. You were worse.” I grab his arm to look at his watch. “What time is it?”
I have a phone I am perfectly capable of removing from my pocket, but there’s something adorable about the anachronistic way Neil checks his watch.
“Just past eleven,” he says. “We got the next safe zone message while you were up there.”
We read it together.
SENIOR WOLF PACK, LISTEN UP
HOW’RE YOU FEELING? HAD ENOUGH?
IT’S TIME FOR US TO GOLF WITH YOU
SEE YOU AT SAFE ZONE NUMBER TWO
The message links to a mini-golf course that isn’t too far away and asks us to meet there at 11:30.
“I need to sit down first,” I say, still shaky with adrenaline.
Since we have some extra time, we make our way over to a bench in the adjacent park. The cold seems to hit me all at once.