“No.” She held out her hand. “C’mon. While we’re there, you can buy me some Pepto-Bismol. You know, since you have to start paying me back and all.” She rolled her eyes.
He grinned. “Is this what our life together is going to look like?”
“If we’re lucky.”
An hour later, they stared at the two pregnancy tests lined up side by side on the bathroom sink. “Well,” she said, turning away. “That settles that.”
Without saying anything, he gathered her in his arms.
“I shouldn’t have wanted it to be positive.” She pressed her cheek against his chest. “Right? Tell me I’m wrong to want that. It’s a mistake. The timing is horrible.”
“It’s not the best,” he agreed.
“But I wanted it just the same. I never let myself believe it could be true, but I almost willed those two lines to show up. And they didn’t.”
He tipped up her chin and caught her single tear with his finger. He couldn’t sort through everything he was feeling, not yet. Not today. “No. Not this time.”
“When do you have to go?”
“Soon.” He swallowed hard and turned his cheek against her hair. “Will you come with me when I tell the rest of the band that I’m going to Visions? They’re waiting downstairs.”
“Sure.” She was already walking away, her unshakable mask slipping back into place.
“Jazz. Wait.”
She glanced over her shoulder. “Yeah?”
There was one thing he didn’t have to sort out. One truth he wasn’t willing to deny her for any reason. “I was willing those lines to show up too.”
Her smile only made her tears more poignant as she offered him her hand. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Then
Jazz stepped off the bus and tucked her secondhand iPod in her pocket. The ink on the shred of paper gripped in her other hand would probably run soon. Her palms were so damp she couldn’t stop wiping them on her jeans.
Just do it. One foot in front of the other. Keep walking.
She dug out the address and made her way to the end of the block, biting her lip the whole time. She should’ve called first. A landline phone number had been included in the listing, so she should’ve used it.
I could call from outside.
No, she didn’t have many minutes left on her phone and she wasn’t going to be that much of a coward. It had been two years since she’d seen him, but that wasn’t all that long in the scheme of things. Only seven hundred something days. Barely a blink.
When she stood beside the patchy lawn of the home Gray now lived in, she flexed her fingers and imagined limbering up for a lengthy session behind the kit. It was about mental endurance as much as anything else. Playing on past the point of pain and frustration and exhaustion, even when the notes wouldn’t fall right and nothing sounded the way it did in her head. She never buckled, never stopped.
No matter what greeted her on the other side of this door, she would be fine. Unbreakable. Fucking granite.
Then he opened the door, his dark, wavy hair falling past his bare shoulders—he’d lost his shirt somewhere along the way—and his jeans hugging lean hips, and she forgot all about being stone. One glimpse was like hot lava, melting her on sight.
The cool frost burned away in his eyes, leaving only heat. “Jazz.” Her name sounded like a prayer.
“Yeah.” She smiled and adjusted her knapsack over her shoulder. “You look good.”
“Thanks. So do you.” He rubbed his hand over his mouth. “Uh, do you want to come in? You look hot. I mean, thirsty. It’s brutal out there. Want a drink? Not alcohol. Like lemonade.”
When she started to laugh, he grinned. “Fuck this noise.” He locked his arms around her waist, hauling her straight off her feet and over the threshold. She laughed harder and locked her arms around his neck, wondering how it could still feel this right. Nothing had changed. He was the lock for her key. The hand for her glove.
Fuck it, he was her everything. Still. Always.
He finally set her down, though she doubted her feet would ever truly touch the ground again. “How are you? What are you doing now?”
“Not much. I’m working at the waffle house. What about you?”
“Teaching music theory to some kindergarten kids as part of an internship.” The corner of his mouth lifted. “I still have one year left at Berkeley.”
“That’s awesome. And you’re no longer living with your parents.”
His face closed down. “No. I haven’t since it happened.” He held up a hand. “Don’t ask me how they are, because I don’t know. We don’t talk anymore.”