Itwasa joke. I made a kind of corny EP for a friend who was launching a label and needed a record to put on it. No one expected it to go viral.
No one—least of all me—expected it to change my life.
“Help me out here.” Nabil turns to Paige. “Have you heard it? What do you think?”
“Uh...”
“Oh!” Nabil raises a finger in the air. “She hesitated! Now you have to tell us what youreallythink.”
He’s putting on some kind of game show host voice now, looking between me and Paige in excitement. The guy really does not get out enough these days.
“I don’t have to tell you what I really think.”
“Yes, you do!” The game show voice is even more dramatic now. “Did you or did you not enjoy Youssef’s EP?”
Paige stonewalls him for a few seconds, but once he starts humming the jeopardy theme song, she sighs and gives in.
“It was catchy.”
I know how Paige describes music she likes, and it’s not with words like ‘catchy.’
“I was surprised to hear you making big room house, but yeah, it was catchy.”
“You see?” Nabil turns to me again. “Everybody thinks it’s catchy! You’re the next big thing.”
We’re almost at the front of the line now. Nabil and the rest of the group get distracted by the menu posted in the window, but I’m much more interested in Paige than whatever sauce and toppings I’m going to get.
“Catchy, huh?” I lower my voice enough so only she can hear it and smirk. “You hated it.”
“Does it matter what I think?” She pretends to be looking over someone’s shoulder at the menu, but I can tell she’s not actually reading. “It just...It sounded like somethingyouwould hate. It surprised me. It made me wonder...”
I hold my breath as I wait for her to go on. I need her to go on. It’s like I’ve been floating ever since that EP went viral, every achievement and bit of praise just sending me farther and farther away from the earth.
She feels solid. What she’s saying feels real, and I need to hear it.
“Wonder what?” I finally cave and ask.
She turns back to me, and I see it again: that same look from when she dropped the glass in the kitchen. It’s part fear, part defiance, and maybe even part rage, but underneath it all, there’s something so raw, fragile, and above all, familiar that all I want is to pull her tight to my chest and press my lips to the top of her forehead. I want to smell her hair again. I want to feel her heartbeat.
Then she blinks, and her face becomes nothing more than a beautiful blank slate.
“Never mind.”
We’ve reached the door to the restaurant now, and she follows the group inside before I can get in another word. The place is cramped and kind of grimy, the walls lined with white subway tiles that have seen better days and the dining area only big enough for four tables that are all full.
I pick something at random when it’s my turn to order, and a few minutes later, we’re all carrying white takeout boxes over to the metro station square. Nabil has finally started discussing The Cube Room with Paige, so I sit on the end of the same bench as them and shovel bits of beef and noodles into my mouth without really tasting anything.
It doesn’t take them long to make some kind of ‘your people will call my people’ arrangement, and Paige stands up as soon as they’ve got the details sorted.
“I’m gonna get going.”
I stand up so fast I almost spill my noodles, which earns me a weird look from both Paige and Nabil.
“I, uh—”
I don’t know where I’m going with this. I just know I can’t watch her walk away. Not yet. We haven’t even said anything to each other. Not really.
“Are you, uh, walking? I can walk with you. It’s late. You—”
