Page 204 of Silver Sweet

Closing my eyes, I try to drift off again, but my brain won’t stop spinning. Defeated, I pull back the sheets and take a quick, blue-lit shower in Tom’s fancy bathroom. The apartment is dead silent. All the Cobalts have evacuated for their tea party.

I’m about to go out for ramen when I get a text.

HARRIET

Want to do dinner?

A while back, I exchanged numbers with Ben’s girlfriend. Tom and I were at her place of work one night—this cool dive bar calledWhere You Want to Be at the End of the World.

She bartends with Ben, and while Tom and I worked on the album, one of my favorite movies played on the bar’s projector screen:The Day After Tomorrow.All about New York freezing over in an apocalyptic superstorm.

Tom’s commentary during the film should’ve annoyed the shit out of me, but I couldn’t stop laughing every five minutes. Remembering how he made me feel actually causes me to turn and look for him behind me.

Right.He left. No one is there, and we’vebarelybeen apart for that long.

“Jesus,” I mutter to myself with the shake of my head. I knew I was attached to him, butfuck.

Harriet is usually alone on Wednesday nights like I am. Before I can reply, she sends me two more rapid texts.

HARRIET

You can say no if you want to, dude. No pressure.

But I’m not saying I don’t want to do dinner with you.

I laugh. When I first met her, she never struck me as someone who overthinks shit. I honestly assumed she wasn’t even interested in being friends with me.

I’ve learned Harriet is tough, independent, and very, very considerate. The girl never slams doors, never leaves her toiletries out, never raises her voice at night.

She apologized to me for taking the last clean towel from the bathroom that Ben, Tom, and Eliot share. “I can stick it in the laundry.” She smelled the towel. “It’s not dirty if you want to reuse it—I mean, I’m not gross.” She cursed under her breath, then scowled so hard like she prepared for me to yell or call her names. “Sorry?—”

“You don’t need to apologize twice, let alone one time,” I cut in. “It’s a fucking towel. Not the last drop of water on Earth. Which I’d probably give to Tom anyway—don’t tell him that.” I rolled my eyes at myself.

She eased so much, her shoulders sunk down and she appeared even shorter. “I’d rather listen to babies wailing for forty-eight hours than stroke Tommy’s ego.”

I laughed. “We have that in common then.” I reached for her towel. “If you don’t care?—”

“It’s all yours.” She handed it over. “Godspeed, St. Pierre.”

Once, when we found ourselves alone in the living room, I asked her what her childhood was like because she seemed so hyper-aware.

She just shrugged and said, “Most of it was just me, my mom, and whichever dickhead she was dating.” Harriet had these defensive eyes, but I pushed because the worst she could do was tell me to fuck off.

“Dickhead how?” I asked.

“He threw shit,” she said. “My mom kicked me out when I was sixteen, but it’s not that big of a deal.”

I nodded in realization. “You don’t want me to make it a big deal, you mean.”

“Yeah, I guess.” She chewed the corner of her lip, and we talked a little more about drums, how she got into them in Pittsburgh where she grew up. I told her most of my friends from high school were into music. Scally, being my closest friend. She recoiled as soon as I said his name and mentioned Nothing Personal.

“You hate their music?” I guessed.

“They’re okay.” She poorly hid a cringe.

“No, you look like you ate a fucking rotten egg.” I almost laughed. “I’m sleeping with someone who calls Nothing Personal their mortal enemy. I think you’re okay to dislike whoever around me. But I will judge you if you have a problem with the Rolling Stones.”

“Sorry to say, they’re in my bottom tier, St. Pierre.”