Page 80 of Silver Sweet

My smile fades. “What the hell did he ask from you?”

“I have a curfew.”

I cough on surprise. “You have to be home by a certain hour?”

“Eleven p.m. when I’m out alone.”

“Dude.” I lace my hands on my head, not sure if I should laugh or be irate. Charlie isn’t doing this to help Eliot in any way. This is purely because he’s been aggravated trying to kick out Eliot’s clingy dates. “He doesn’t want to deal with you stumbling home with Regina?—”

“Lara—”

“So he’s putting aneleven p.m.curfew on you and killing your fun? Bars aren’t even alive until midnight.”

“Just more reason to stay out with all of you instead.” Eliot grins at the phone in my hand. “It’s already worth it. Fais-moi confiance.”Trust me.

With my AirPods in and my feet taking me away from Eliot and toward my work, I quickly discover how right he is. I’m rolling in waves of laughter over Charlie’s bitter, dry recitation ofAmadeus.It’s a play that Eliot and I have sincerely loved ever since we were kids.

But Charlie—he sounds over it. Like he couldn’t care less about Salieri’s jealousy with Mozart, or Mozart’s man-child behavior inside his musical brilliance. His rushed, irritated tone says the whole play should just be trashed. I’m almost shocked he doesn’t interject with commentary about how fucking stupid it is.

This audio is a thing of comedic beauty.

And he wasn’t trying to be funny.

It keeps me in good spirits when I enter the control room. I’ve almost forgotten about Phoenix’s text and the jumbled emotion from this morning.

The hurt fragments abruptly resurface when I interrupt his conversation with our producer, Gage Driscoll, at the mixing table.

I’m ten minutes early. “How long have you been here?” I ask him, and in full transparency, I sound accusatory. Because I am accusing him of meeting our producer behind my back.

Phoenix tears his headphones off. “Hi, Phoenix. Thank you for mixing twenty variations of our song for me.How about you open with that?”

“Hi, Gage,” I greet our sandy blond-haired, too-easily-amused producer who wears round wire-framed glasses and loose-fitting graphic tees. He’s as bad as our manager—who thinks these arguments I have with Phoenix are ha-ha funny and not clear signs that we’re a tragedy in the making.

“Tom,” Gage says, rocking in the Herman Miller office chair. “You should hear the mixes. They’re fucking dope. The label might want to release variations of the single.”

I’m staring Phoenix down.

He’s cutting me with his narrowed gaze.

Gage’s chair squeaks. “I’ll leave you two to it. Be back in ten.”

The door shuts. Phoenix bows forward on his stool. His flexed forearms on his legs, hands clasped together. His dark hair curls around his ears beneath a backward baseball cap. “What’s your deal?” he says tightly. I watch his attentive eyes rake up my body and land hard on my face.

I like when he crash-lands on me. I don’t like this feeling rampaging through my body, and I can’t tell where my tumultuous emotions are stemming from. It occurs to me that I might be in the midst of a tantrum, and the thoughtimmediatelyshutters my nervous system. I am shutting down.

Dialed to zero.

“You better talk,” Phoenix demands with heat.

“Or what?” I blink. “You’ll rip the words out of me?” I’m about to add,go ahead and try, but the banter just scalds my throat. Nothing else leaves my lips.

Phoenix rubs his mouth, then pushes off the chair. “I’m not doing this with you today.” He’s on his feet.

It’s a slash across my chest. Surface wound. Heart still impenetrable. A knife can’t sink that deep in me. “Then don’t,” I say.

“I won’t.”

“Fine.”