by Syms, Carly
Just a few weeks ago, I'm pretty sure this would've made me insane with envy even if I wouldn't admit it.
But now...
"Nice to meet you too," I say. "I've heard lots about you and hockey."
Shane grins and smiles at his girlfriend. "Why am I not surprised?" He points to the guitar resting on the floor next to my feet. "You playing tonight?"
"Yeah. Definitely."
"Is Doan coming?" Natalie asks, raising her eyebrows suggestively at me.
I try not to blush but I'm pretty sure it doesn't work. "He's supposed to be here, yeah."
She claps her hands together and gives a little squeal, and Shane smiles and shakes his head before leaning down and brushing a quick kiss against her hair.
"Yes!" she exclaims. "I knew it!"
"I don't even know what we're doing," I tell her.
"I do," she replies. "The look on your face says it all."
I blush again. "I'm gonna put this in the back and get to work. The napkins are looking low."
Natalie shoots me a knowing, triumphant smile as I walk to the back and take a second for myself in the back.
I set my guitar and notebook down along the wall and wrap an apron around my waist.
I look at the guitar resting peacefully and smile.
It's finally going to happen.
Open mic night starts in twenty minutes but I'm not scheduled to play until nine. Doan said he'd come early to hang out and I can't wait to see him. We'd mostly just slept the entire bus ride back to Arizona on Sunday night, and I haven't seen him since.
I push my way back through the swinging door with extra napkins and straws tucked under my arms and walk over to the counter where we keep those goods.
Shane's sitting at a table near the door sipping from a mug and reading a book, while Natalie puts fresh cakes in the glass pastry display. I watch them as I absently fill the napkin dispensers. Every now and then, he glances up from his reading to look at her and smile, and every time he puts his head back down, she happens to look at him and gets the same happy, faraway look on her face.
And that just makes me smile and look to the door, waiting for Doan to walk in for me.
I turn my back so I can stock up on straws when the bells jingle and I feel a tap on my shoulder.
Already smiling, I whirl around, ready to fling my arms around Doan and wrap him up in a giant hug when I have to immediately throw on the brakes.
"Whoa," I say as I hold out my hand against this guy's chest to steady myself. "Uh, sorry."
He raises an eyebrow, then looks down at my hand pressed against him, and I quickly pull it away.
"You're here to sing, right?" I ask, recognizing him now that I have a chance to look at him as the heat in my cheeks fades. He came up to me before the last open mic night, too, to ask about setting up his equipment.
But I hope he doesn't remember me.
Or at least what we talked about that day.
He nods. "Yep. You too?"
I smile. "Yeah."
"How'd it go last time? You were so nervous."
I fiddle with the straw in my hands. "Uh, yeah. It didn't really -- tonight'll be my first time playing here."
Adam -- I have to glance down at Natalie's notebook to make sure that's his name -- raises an eyebrow. "What happened?"
I shake my head. "Too much to explain now," I say with a wry smile. "But it worked out. It's okay now."
"Good. Everyone should always feel good playing their stuff."
"Yeah. I'm excited about it." I look back at the notebook resting on the counter. "You guys are up first again. Set up whenever you're ready."
"Thanks," he says. "Maybe I'll stick around to see you play, too."
I smile. "Good luck," I tell him before turning around and returning my attention to the straws.
I close my eyes for a second and suck in a deep breath.
There's no going back now.
And that's exactly the way I want it.
***
Doan isn't here.
We're six sets in now and it's almost 9:30.
There are just two people left and then it's my turn to play.
I've called him three times. I've sent him text messages.
I can't take my eyes off the door.
And there's nothing I can do about the endless, relentless churning in my stomach.
I'm pretty sure I'm going to throw up.
Telling myself to stay calm, he'll be here, you know he'll come, does nothing for me.
Because he isn't coming.
I know it.
Natalie's giving me sad looks from the table she's sharing with Shane, but I can barely stand to look at them.
It's like staring at a picture that only shows you what you want but will never have.
And I just really don't understand how he could do this to me.
How I'm supposed to get up on that stage and play without him here.
I need him.
And then Natalie's standing by my side.
"I'm sorry, Holly," she says. "But he could still come, you know."
I shake my head, swallowing hard, trying to keep the fast-growing lump in my throat from getting even more out of control. "He won't."
She sets her mouth in a thin, grim line. "I'm sure he has a good reason, though."
"He doesn't need a good reason. It's just who he is."
"What?"
I shake my head and press my fingers hard against my eyes, like that'll help me cram the tears threatening to spill over back in. "I've known it since the moment I met him. This is my fault. I let him fool me."
"No, you didn't. He's a good guy. I've known him a lot longer than you," she says. "If he promised he'd be here, and he isn't, then he's got to have an explanation."
"Everyone always says that," I say. "'Oh, I'm sure there's a good explanation.' Well, that's just great. But an explanation doesn't make it okay. An explanation doesn't make me hurt any less right now. An explanation doesn't mean he can't sent a two-word text letting me know what's up."
"Holly."
I turn to face her. "What? You aren't exactly saying anything that's making me feel better here."
"I'm sorry," she says again. "I just don't want you to jump to conclusions. Don't be upset if you don't have to be."
It's all I can do not to roll my eyes and laugh. "He promised me he would be here, Natalie, and he isn't. That's all I know right now. And I think that's a pretty good reason to be upset."
The person on Natalie's list in front of me takes the stage. I glance down at my phone one more time even though I know it's pointless.
I'm right. There's nothing on the screen.
Natalie doesn't say anything as I sulk through this guy's set, not taking my eyes off the door the whole time.
"Please tell me you're still going to play," she says without looking at me.
I swallow again and now I know I've lost the battle with my tears as they slowly slide from my eyes.
"That's all you care about? Your open mic night?" I snap, pressing furiously at my eyes, trying to jam the tears back inside.
"Holly, come on. You know that isn't true. I just want you to do this, okay? For once. And for you."
The guy strums the last chord on his guitar, thanks the handful of people who shower him with a smattering round of applause, grabs his notebook and walks off the stage.
All of a sudden, I feel like the spotlight that doesn't even exist is beating right down on me, hot and unrelenting, and beads of sweat pop up along my hairline.
"Holly?" Natalie says.
I look down at my phone one more time.
Nothing.
Just like I knew there would be.
I look over at the door one more time.
No one.
Just like I knew there would be.
My eyes wander back to the now-empty stage that's waiting for me. The stool with my name on it. The microphone waiting for my words. The music stand that wants
to hold my songs.
I want to do this.
But he isn't here.
And for some reason, I can't.
I need him for this, and I wish I don't. But he promised me.
The sobs come first. They bubble up in my throat and spill out with every heave of my shoulders.
The tears pour from my eyes. I do nothing to try to stop them. I can't breathe and I can't think and I definitely can't play the guitar. I run to the back, pushing my way through the swinging employee's only door to safety, where I don't have to see the stage and feel it calling out to me.
I lean back up against the wall, right next to my guitar, and sink to the ground. Natalie's shaky voice fills the cafe as she thanks everyone for coming out and reminds us we'll be back here again next week, same time, same place.
Fantastic.
My song notebook falls off the top of the guitar case when I bump into it and spills open to the last page, the page with the song I could never quite finish scribbled onto it.
I snatch a pen off the desk and start writing.
"When you said you'd be there
I thought I could believe in you
When you said you cared
I thought I could believe in you
I've been down this road before
And I didn't think you'd bring me back
But now I'm here again
And I'm afraid I'll never get away
Now you're gone
And I know you aren't coming back
They say it's darkest before dawn
But my heart's already cracked
I should've known, should've known should've known
What I didn't know, didn't know, didn't know
But how do you know what you won't let yourself see?
And now I'm scared I'll never be free."
I don't even know that I'm still crying until I look up from the page and see tear splatters smearing the ink.
But I don't care. It's finished.
The song that's haunted me for years is finally finished.
It starts in Pennsylvania and ends in Arizona.
But realizing that shows me how little has really changed for me. Nothing is different at all.
And maybe that scars my heart the deepest tonight.
Because it isn't the ending I'm looking for.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Natalie sends me home without asking me to stay behind and help clean up as part of the end of my shift, and for the first time, I hadn't felt much like arguing with her.
I'm not sure if it's Doan standing me up or finally writing that song, but I'm exhausted when I collapse on top of my bed in my pajamas about an hour later.
I kept my phone off the whole ride home.
Part of me doesn't want to keep checking to see if Doan finally called, because that same part really wants him to have a good reason for not showing up tonight.
I want to believe that there are missed calls from him on my phone, voicemails and text messages. I want to -- and maybe I need to -- believe that he still cares about me. That he ever cared about me.
And then the other part is just terrified that he hasn't reached out at all and I don't want to deal with the inevitable gut punch that'll come from seeing nothing from him on the screen.
But I can't keep my phone off forever and I've got some morbid curiosity, so I reach into the pocket of my jeans, dig it out and turn it on. It takes a few minutes to power up and I turn it over and rest it on the bed next to me.
When it bleeps a minute later, my heart leaps up into my throat and I grab at it, ready for the smile to form across my face as I read his explanation and everything makes sense. I can practically taste the relief I'm going to feel.
But when I turn it over and see a text from Natalie waiting for me -- and nothing, absolutely nothing, from Doan -- I want to punt the phone off my balcony and into the plunging valley below us.
Dammit.
But with a sigh, I open Natalie's message.
Just want to make sure you got home okay :)
I want to type back in all caps and tell her that her checking in on me has only made me feel more miserable, but I know she means well. I type out something quick and boring and useless to let her know I'm home and thanks for asking, and send it back, hoping she gets the hint not to send me another message and get my hopes up again.
I'm not sure I can take that.
I put the phone on silent and place it on the pillow next to my head and crawl underneath the covers, sure that I won't get any sleep tonight.
All I can see is Doan, Doan, Doan. It's like I'm watching the movie of us with no power button.
There he is, grinning at me, his tan, strong arms dangerously alluring as he teases me about speeding down the road on my first day in town.
And again when I spin over in my pool chair and find him spraying me down with sunscreen like some kind of weirdo. I'll never forget that tangle of emotions I felt seeing him again at my dad's house; the confusing appeal of realizing that I loved knowing he wasn't totally lost to me, that he wasn't going to be nothing more than a meaningless encounter one summer afternoon.
There's pepperoni pizzas and baseball practice and batting cages and mini golf.
Mini golf.
The first night I ever really felt like I could be myself around him. The appeal, the attraction, had been there all along, that much I can admit. But that was the very first time I ever let myself consider that maybe something could be there with us, and even then, I remember being skeptical.
But I was right.
It was.
Even if only for me.
There's coaching and turtles and oceans and pools and water gun fights and promises that hadn't fallen on deaf ears, but had been made by false tongues.
And then there's that first night he came to Gemma's, when I'd been set to play my music without any help from anyone.
He'd been so eager, so optimistic, so -- I don't know. But he wanted us to be friends.
And I believed him.
I just wish I could know what happened now.
Because not knowing if my heart is supposed to be broken might be worse than having a broken heart at all.
His words and his smile and that damn twinkle in his eye keep floating in front of my closed eyes and I'm sure I'm no closer to sleep than I was after my fourth coffee of the day.
With a nervous pit in my stomach, I give in and peek at my phone screen one last time.
Still blank.
And the crack in my heart gets a little bit deeper.
Because honestly?
I'm not sure I can come up with a single good reason for what he's doing.
And if I can't justify his behavior, then how can I let myself keep falling for him, even if I want to forget this whole thing ever happened?
It's a question I don't have any answers to.
But I really wish I did.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I wake up in a pile of used tissues with my eyes practically sealed shut from the dried up tears I couldn't get to stop coming last night.
Eventually, I'd fallen asleep, still crying, but I have no idea when and no idea how.
And I'm pretty sure my dreams were even crueler than reality.
In them, I'd had the chance to perform at Gemma's, the chance to play the songs I wanted to sing to people for the first time.
And Doan had been there, in the same seat he'd taken when he came to the cafe uninvited for the first open mic night.
Each time I'd looked out into the audience, I saw him smiling back at me, nodding, tapping his foot to the beat.
And whenever I saw him, it only made me want to keep going, to keep singing.
But now I guess I'll never know what that's like.
I look at my phone, and while there's still nothing from Doan or anyone else, a calendar alert pops up reminding me that we have a baseball game today.
My heart drops.
Baseball.
&
nbsp; And Doan.
I'd known that I'd see him there, of course, but it hadn't exactly been something I'd given a lot of thought to, and I definitely hadn't remembered that we have a game this morning.
I glance at the clock and realize that I need to be at the field in half an hour. For a second, I consider staying in bed and wallowing, but then I think of Justin and Dad and my other teammates, and how we all really do want a shot at the postseason tournament and silly pig trophy even if they don't mean all that much, and I know I'm not going to let them down by not showing up.
So I drag myself into the shower, dig out my baseball uniform, find my bat and glove, and force myself into my car.
I think of nothing but Doan the whole way to the field.
I'm not sure what he's going to say to me, but I know now that I won't breathe a word to him.
This is his decision. He's doing this.
If he didn't show up last night because he wants nothing to do with me, then I'm not going to go crying to him about it. I'll let him have what he wants, which is none of me.
And if he didn't come because he's got some great reason I can't think of, then he should be sprinting over to me first thing to throw himself at my feet and beg for my forgiveness.
Or something like that, anyway.
But this is all on him.
He did this to us, and if he wants to fix it, he knows exactly where to find me.
I pull the car up alongside the diamond and notice that Doan's pick-up truck isn't in the parking lot. I'd promised myself I wouldn't look for it, but who are we kidding?
I'm a freakin' mess.
Justin and Dad are both in the dugout and greet me cheerfully. I'm pretty sure my brother has no idea what happened, and I hope my eyes aren't as red and gross as they were an hour ago.
"How was work last night?" Justin asks.
"Oh," I say, trying to keep my voice light and airy. "It was good. What'd you do?"
