“I—” He sounds hoarse, and he stops to clear his throat. “I just—I saw your set.”
I force myself to nod. “Okay.”
“You...I...” He reaches up to scratch the back of his neck, and the gesture is so fucking familiar, a piece of him I locked away without even realizing I was holding onto it.
He could be seventeen again. He could be standing next to my locker, scratching his neck and thinking up a reply to whatever smartass comment I just made.
“I don’t know what to say,” he finishes, one side of his mouth turning up like he’s testing the waters for a smile.
He’s still so beautiful.
I don’t smile back, but I don’t stop looking at him either. I could recognize him in a crowd of thousands, but the longer I stare, the more changes I start to see.
His hair is shorter, too short for the waviness of the black strands to really show. There’s a new leanness to his face, the lines of his cheek and jaw a little sharper. His shoulders seem wider, stretching the sleeves of his gray t-shirt, but he still has that lean, loping look I noticed the second I first saw him.
He’s got the start of some stubble. It looks like he could have an actual beard now if he wanted, not that patchy thing he tried to grow for a few months in high school.
I let the facts sink in. I’m twenty-three, so he’d be twenty-five now.
Twenty-five.
There’s so much between eighteen and twenty-five, so many moments and feelings and sunsets and triumphs and hours spent lying in bed, thinking and dreaming, fighting and losing. It’s a whole lifetime, in a way.
A whole lifetime I wasn’t there for.
I want to tell myself I don’t know him anymore, that nothing about him is the same, but even without us exchanging more than a word, I can tell it’s not true.
His eyes haven’t changed: deep, dark brown—almost black unless they’re in the sun. They still watch the world around him with that expression it took me forever to place. They still watchmethat way.
I’d still describe it just like I did back then: his eyes always look like he’s in the middle of making music, like he sees it everywhere and in all things.
I fight as hard as I can to keep from trembling again.
“I’m not sure if there’s anything to say.”
I don’t know if I’m being harsh for him or for myself. He flinches again.
“I just...I saw you, and—”
He stops when DeeDee comes charging down the hallway again, this time with a tray full of dirty glasses in her arms.
“Paige, we are going to—” She freezes when she spots Youssef. Her eyes dart from the broken glass to me gripping the sink for dear life before landing back on him. Then they narrow. “Excuse me, mister, but what the hell do you think you’re doing back here?”
I try to clear things up. “DeeDee, he just—”
“Is he messing with you?” She doesn’t wait for an answer before setting the tray down on the counter and getting right up in Youssef’s face. She manages to have him terrified and backed against the wall even with her pink water wings still on. “Écoute, you. I have kicked more assholes out of this bar than I can remember. You will not be the first one or the last one, but I will make sure that you—”
“DeeDee!”
She turns her head to me but keeps her finger in Youssef’s face like she’s holding him at gunpoint. “Yes?”
“It’s okay. I...know him. He just surprised me, and I dropped the glass.”
“You know him?”
“Yeah.”
She looks back at Youssef. “Hmm. Are you sure?”
