“Paige.”
She ignores the ‘I call bullshit’ tone of my voice.
“Paige.” I stop, and she stops too, staring up the street ahead of us. “We don’t have to go, you know. I know it’s a lot, especially so soon. It’s just casual, and I told Nabil we’re only going as old friends, but I don’t want this to make things difficult for us.”
She looks at me, chewing on her lip for a second before she speaks. “Idon’t want to make things difficult for...us.”
Us. Just two letters, but hearing them from her makes my pulse race.
“That’s why I wanted to do this in the first place,” she continues. “I want to be, like...normal, but I don’t know if—I’m not sure if—”
The tremble in her voice tugs on something deep in my chest. I see it now: just how much she’s struggling. I didn’t think much about why she agreed to coming out tonight, but now it’s starting to make sense, and the reason is breaking my heart.
“Paige.” I wrap my hand around her good shoulder. “Hey. It’s okay.”
“I just feel like everything’s changing,” she murmurs, her eyes on mine. “Everything I thought was true isn’t anymore, and I don’t know if I can keep up. I don’t have a lot of experience with...normal things. I want to be the kind of person you can take to meet your friends at bars. I want to be the kind of person you can...have...thingswith, and I hate that it’s so hard for me. You must hate it too.”
I slip my arm down to circle her waist and pull her to me as best I can without hurting her arm.
“Youarenormal, Paige, and there is nothing about you I hate,” I say with my nose buried in her hair. “We will take this at whatever pace we need to, okay?”
A knot of anger forms in my stomach at the thought of all she’s been through, everything that’s made her think she’s broken or bad.
“We really don’t have to go tonight,” I say once she’s pulled back a little.
She shakes her head. “No. I want to. I do. I...I needed to hear you say that.”
“Anytime.”
I squeeze her hand and then let go; as far as we’ve come, I don’t know when Paige Rivera will be the ‘walking up the street holding hands’ type. We start moving again, but she’s far less tense now, and I let myself settle a little more too. We both deserve a night out where we can leave everything else behind.
When we’re a couple blocks away, I pull out my phone to see if Nabil has sent any updates. There’s nothing from him, but I do have a voicemail and four texts from Mohammad.
“What is it?” Paige asks after I let out an involuntary sigh.
“My manager,” I explain. “He’s not good at waiting for phone calls.”
We stop at an intersection, and Paige nods at my phone. “You can call him, if you want. I don’t mind.”
I shake my head. I don’t really feel like contemplating my career right now.
“It’s probably just his millionth Nautilus update,” I mutter as I shove my phone back in my pocket.
Paige freezes. “Nautilus? As in Nautilus Records?”
“Uh, yeah.”
The traffic light has already changed, but she doesn’t move or say anything else.
“I might be doing a single with them,” I explain, “or some kind of deal? I’m not even sure at this point. Mohammad is freaking out about it, and the details seem to change every day.”
She seems to reboot herself into motion mode again and leads us across the street.
“So that’s in LA?” Her voice is unnaturally even.
It doesn’t surprise me that she knows where Nautilus is based off the top of her head. I’ve never met anyone as dedicated to keeping up with the music industry as she is. She could give Mohammad a run for his money.
“Yeah, it would be, if it goes through.”
