Maybe I could do something to show her. Some sort of grand gesture or whatever the hell guys were supposed to do in situations like this. I could write her a song, or even just the lyrics, like a poem.
Would that be enough to show her how I felt?
A shock went through me, like being splashed with cold water. It threw me totally off-balance.
What the hell had I just been thinking?
Writing her a song? Writing her apoem? That was the kind of cheesy shit guys did in stupid romcom movies. That wasn’t the kind of guy I was.
If Grace couldn’t understand me, if she couldn’t accept me the way I was, then maybe I didn’t need her.
I shouldn’t have let myself get so attached. I should have known better. Sooner or later she would have found a reason to walk out on me for good. I already knew she was the type to run away.
She was always going to leave me, for one reason or another. No one ever stayed. Not for long.
The only people who stayed were my friends and bandmates. They were the only ones I could rely on.
I couldn’t believe I had let myself get pissy with Finn over something so stupid as a hangover. He was my best friend. I loved him like a brother. And here I was, about to let some girl make me doubt him? What the hell was that?
A kind of stubbornness rose in my chest. That was it. I wasn’t going to think about this anymore. I didn’t need Grace. All I needed were my bandmates and the music.
I pulled out a folder with music sheets and began to strum along with the notes. It was a song I had been working on for a few weeks. It was a sort of melancholy kind of tune, the kind of moody emo shit Kaylee laughed at me for. I hadn’t written the lyrics yet. I hadn’t known what I wanted to say yet. I hadn’t known what the song was about.
I’d been so focused on Grace that I’d been putting my music aside. I was disgusted with myself. I’d let a girl get in the way of my art, of my career.
But as I stared at the music sheet, I still couldn’t make any words form. The melody was there, but the words weren’t. I’ve never been the best lyricist, but I could usually come up with something good enough for Anya to work with. She was the writer of the bunch, and she could always take my random scribblings and turn them into something brilliant. The same way that Micah took my messy music sheets and turned them into pure genius.
A few words floated across my mind. I took out a pencil and started scribbling notes in the margin. They weren’t full-fledged lyrics, but rather more like random words and phrases here and there.
I scribbled for what seemed like hours. It wasn’t until my stomach rumbled and I realized I hadn’t had breakfast yet that I stopped to look at what I’d written.
That sinking feeling returned to my stomach.
Even without real lyrics, phrases likesorrowful ocean eyes, andberry-flavored lipswere scattered across the pages.
This song was about Grace.
I tossed the music sheets back in the folder with a frustrated groan.
Even after I told myself I was going to forget about her, she was still on my mind.
It was stupid and sappy of me to have written a song about a girl I’d only known for a couple weeks. But these lyrics told me plain as day.
Finn was right.
Grace had gotten under my skin.
Twenty-One
Grace
I knew Zain and his friends were rich. I knew they all lived together. I knew they had a practice space in the basement.
Knowing all that, I expected that his house would be big.
What I hadn’t expected was the behemoth of a mansion standing proudly before me.
Open-mouthed, I tilted my head back so I could look up, and up, and up, until my gaze reached the top of the ‘house.’ It must have been four floors in height. It wouldn’t have been a stretch to consider the thing an apartment complex, honestly. I could easily see the place being broken down into five or six different living spaces.
