Page 39 of Always Been His

Hie runs his tongue across his bottom lip, and I forget the next word of the bridge.

The kid on keys covers for me, holds the chord a half-beat longer, and I come back in on the next bar with my pulse a full step ahead of the song. I drag my teeth across my own bottom lip for him, slowly, on the last bar of the bridge. The corners of my mouth pull, my singing on autopilot as my mind drifts.

I cannot believe he let me kiss him.

He tasted sweet and spicy from his drink. His five o’clock shadow scratched into my flesh, and when he touched me, I almost jumped his bones right here.

His hand on my hip was hot enough to leave a print through my skirt. His other hand at my jaw, his thumb pressing under my ear, holding me to him like he’d been calculating the exact angle for two years and wasn’t going to let me move. My nipples hardened under the cropped shirt the second his palm slid down my ribs, and I felt the small hitch of his breath against my mouth like he was as starved for me as I was for him.

For the first time in two years,with his thumb dragging the line of my jaw, his teeth catching the corner of my mouth and the front of his shirt fisted under my palm, the heat of him radiating through the cotton like he’d been storing it under there for me,I could finally breathe. And all I could think was more. More of his hands. More of his mouth. More of the sound he made low in his throat when my hip shifted in his lap.

I don’t know why I kissed him.

I had a plan. I was going to be cool. I was going to walk in, kiss Iris’s cheek, introduce myself to Dom, hang in the back, do a song, leave. I wasn’t going to talk to him, let alone kiss him.

But then I saw her.

That girl was so close, and flirty and pretty, and he looked so uncomfortable.

His jaw was locked. His hand was on her wrist. He was peeling her off him for the third time when I walked up. He didn’t want her. Every line of his body was telling me he didn’t want her, and the saner version of me would have clocked that and just said hi. I could have diffused the situation, but I wanted her to know that she didn’t stand a chance.

Despite the four years of silence after the bonfire summer, the holidays we couldn’t spend together, the two years of him refusing to text me back, a part of me has been quietly insisting since I was eighteen that Grayson Douglas belongs to me, and I belong to him.

‘Pieces of Me’ bleeds into the last chorus. The room sings it back to me, and on the last note I see Dom whisper into Iris’s ear. She blushes.

“Okay.” I laugh into the mic, breathless. “One more, for the birthday boy. An old song that has never been officially released, and only performed once in Boston two years ago. I guess that night I felt madly in love, and being back home, I feel like sharing the love. Can I share the love?”

The crowd yells back yes. Their cameras up higher. All the lights blind me, but I keep my gaze stuck on the space where I know Grayson is. Nerves growing in my stomach, because he must know that this song is about him.

I turn around and borrow the guitar from the guitarist, nodding to the band to follow me.

“This one is called…” I play the first three chords. “…’Coming Home to Lover Boy’.”

My eyes are still locked on Grayson as I lift the mic and sing.

“Four hours up the coast and a porch light on. Knew you’d leave it burning if I came home, lover boy. Wait for me, oh lover boy.”

His face doesn’t move.

“Maine in my mouth and your smoke in my hair. Six years of bad reasons not to be there. Lover boy, hold still I’m coming home.”

I don’t know what’s happening.

My heart is rushing; I can hear it under the chord change. Even through the blinding lights I can see the warmth leave him. The chill setting back into his shoulders. The line of his jaw going hard. The thin line of his mouth flattening into something I didn’t see until after he visited me two years ago.

Dread clicks in my chest. I knew it.

I never knew for sure why he left that night. I’ve been replaying it for two years and I’ve never landed on a version of the story that holds together, because the only version I ever truly believed was the worst one. That he didn’t love me. That the song I sang for him in front of all those people scared him. That it was too much. That when I told Nicki to bring him out on stage during that number, he refused and left just like she said he did.

I’m an idiot for thinking a kiss means anything, like I was an idiot to think he would love me back then.

Back then, I felt guilty for even thinking that he could be so cruel. I burned it in my own head and never let it back in, because the next morning I texted him. I begged him not to hate me. I apologized for moving too fast, begged him not to disappear on me, and he said: I could never hate you, Birdie.

That was the last message he sent me. Two whole years ago.

But now I know… I was right then. He doesn’t love me.

The realization drops like a pit in my stomach and tears swell in the back of my throat. I push them down. I push them down hard, because I’m not going to cry in front of all these people. I won’t give him the satisfaction.