“Why make someone feel like you mean more to them than you do?” Iasked.
“You don’t know what he feels, Hannah. You can’t. He’s just young. You’re young. Sometimes we meet the right person at the wrong time, but that doesn’t mean that what you felt wasn’treal.”
I laidin bed all night, thinking. When my brain hurt, I grabbed my phone and went to his Facebook page. The last picture he’d posted was from a month ago. A selfie of him on stage at Tipsy’s. I skimmed the comments, most of them from girls commenting on how attractive he was, how pretty his smile was. I rolled my eyes. One girl said she missed him, he commented he missed her too. Jealousy ate me up and I hated it. When did I become that girl? The one who doubted herself? The one stalking someone’s page and getting jealous over other girls? When did I become the girl who gave herself away to a guy who made Max Summers look like asaint?
When I fell in love with him, that’swhen.
As much as I hated it, I loved him. I did. His smile, his voice—until I didn’t. As good as he could make me feel, he also could make me feel terrible. I was driving myself crazy second guessing, trying to make sense of every comment, every smile. Every post from a random girl on his page. The right person at the wrong time or the wrong person at the righttime?
Noah came along at the righttime.
When I needed adistraction.
When I needed to feel alive because I was surrounded bydeath.
But he was the wrong person for me, and as much as it broke my heart to admit it, I knew I couldn’t do that to myself. Loving a man like Noah Greyson was like putting a gun to your head while walking toward the edge of a cliff, one way or another, you were going to kill yourself. It was just a question of which way you wouldgo.
I opened my Messenger and stared at the lone message from him. One message over four days. Just enough to say he tried, but not near enough to say he fought for me. You fight for what youlove.
Maybe he did care about me, but if I really mattered that much, he’d fight, and if he was too much of a coward to fight, I didn’t need himanyway.
35
Noah
The three days I was supposed to be in Nashville turned into seven. Brice wasn’t full of shit after all. The guys had left the studio for a smoke break and I sat in the recording room by myself. I’d managed to get a new phone when I got to Nashville, but I was one of those assholes who never backed anything up to the cloud, which meant I didn’t have Hannah’snumber.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and checked the message I had sent her via Facebook. The little blue circle below the message had turned to her profile picture. She had read it, but not responded.Thanks Facebook for letting me know, I thought as I shoved my phone back into my pocket and grabbed my guitar. I strummed out the first few notes of the song I wrote for Hannah, closed my eyes, andsang.
Halfway through the song, Brice entered the room with a smile on his face. “Tell me that’s yoursong?”
“Yeah.” I rested my arm on the side of my guitar, fiddling with thepick.
Brice scrubbed a hand over his face. “You got anymore?”
“Afew.”
“We could get you an EP together.” He grabbed his guitar from the corner of the room and took a seat on the other stool, strumming out a chord. “Women would eat that songup.”
“I don’tknow…”
He clapped me on the shoulder. “Alright, let’s go over the last bridge again. Once that’s nailed, go back to Alabama and pack your shit. Your life is about tochange.”
36
Hannah
The pharmacy was empty except for Martha checking her blood pressure next to the counter. A little boy came running down the aisle with an action figure clutched against his chest. Seconds later, a frazzled woman skirted around the corner. Shaking her head, she snatched him by the arm. “I’m not getting you that toy,Matthew.”
“But I wannit!” he wailed. I stared at the floor, trying to block it out. My nerves were onedge.
My phone dinged with atext:
Bo: What’s the difference between Yukon Potatoes and BakingPotatoes?
Just get normalpotatoes.
Bo: What’sCulantro?
