“I don’t need secondhand therapy.” Noah’s hand flexed and tightened on the steering wheel.
“Yeah, well, you’re going to get it. You can’t be alone tonight, Noah. You’re going to go do something stupid.”
“I won’t.” He swallowed. “I promised Kit.”
“There are plenty of kinds of stupid, and I bet you can find a loophole of stupidity.”
Noah wanted to disagree, couldn’t. “What do you want to do?”
“Go do something stupid together.” Stretching out in the passenger seat, Abe grinned. “Let’s go have an impromptu party at Fox and Molly’s. We’ll shanghai David and Thea along the way.”
“You shanghai Thea. I’m not feeling that stupid.”
Abe laughed and Noah felt his lips twitch. It was good to have friends who gave a shit.
And friends who laughed and joined in with their plan for a party, complete with junk food Abe and Noah had picked up along the way. Noah ended up with a guitar in his arms. He always had one nearby. This one had been in his car. Not one of his more expensive ones in case it got stolen, but a solid model. Feeling the strings thrum under his fingertips, he found a calm that was so often missing in his life.
It was Fox who’d given him music, having already had a basic command of the guitar thanks to his grandfather. He’d taught Noah the beginnings of it the week before their lessons properly started. Noah had found a sweet salvation in the strings. When he played, he could forget for a while, go to another place.
Kit had once called it a meditative space.
Noah didn’t think of it like that. He thought of it as escape.
So he played for his friends and with them, and when David drew Thea into a dance, he increased the tempo and the rhythm while Fox took a pair of drumsticks David must’ve had on him and drummed out a beat on a side table. Abe, meanwhile, had Molly in his arms, the two of them swaying together with the ease of friends.
Noah had wanted to dance with Kit for so long, to feel the music through her body. He’d never permitted himself the pleasure, never allowed himself to put his hands on her. Because whatever he touched, he destroyed.
Continuing to play when Fox broke off to grab Molly’s ringing phone to pass to her, he segued into a romantic little ballad that let David twirl Thea. Schoolboy Choir’s usually sharply dressed publicist was barefoot and in an at-home outfit of white shorts and a cherry-pink top, the straps fine against her honey-gold skin, her black hair sleek down her back.
I could do what David did, win my girl.
It was a tiny whisper, from the boy he’d once been. Noah ignored it. If he tried to be with Kit, he’d mess her up so badly nothing would ever put her back together again. Friendship was all he could aim for, hope for.
Coming back into the room after having taken her call by the pool, Molly went back to dancing, this time with Fox. Abe relaxed in the armchair next to the one where Noah sat and, after a short pause, began to sing.
Abe didn’t have Fox’s ferocious vocal cords, but he had a bluesy tone to his voice that was perfect for this night, this moment. And the words he sang, they were gentle, undemanding, yet compelling all the same.
“You could go solo,” Noah said when the song ended.
“So could you, dipshit.”
Lips curving, Noah shook his head. “Me? I’m just a pretty face.”
“And I’m just a schmuck piano player.”
Fox, having caught their conversation, spun Molly to hold her from the back, his arms crossed over her waist. “And David’s just the drum guy, while I can sing some. We are who we are together.”
“We’re better than who we are alone.” David sat down, tugging Thea onto his lap, her long legs hooked over the arm of the chair as she wrapped one arm around his shoulders.
“You aren’t better,” Thea said with an arched eyebrow. “You’re phenomenal. Split you up and you’d be good, perhaps even great, but it wouldn’t be this magic.”
“I’m too lazy to go solo anyway,” Abe drawled. “At least this way, I get a breather during concerts when you showboats take over.”
“Fuck you,” Fox and Noah said in stereo while David fist-bumped Abe.
And he was okay. For tonight, for this instant in time, he was okay. As long as he didn’t think about the fact that some other man was probably putting his hands on Kit right now.
Chapter 12
Kit crawled into a cold bed and stared up at the ceiling. She’d had fun with Terrence, but when he’d kissed her good night, all she’d felt was a keening, horrible pain. Because it wasn’t Noah, wouldn’t ever be Noah.