In Your Dreams (Falling #4)(37)

“What’s Leap Records?” I ask.

“That’s my studio,” he says, his lip raised on one side.

I stare at him for a few seconds—waiting for him to say he’s kidding—then turn my focus back to the card in my hand. There’s a logo, a phone number, his name. I set the cards down and flip through some of the other things, stopping when I get to a photo of an old gas station with boarded-up windows and busted red pumps out front. I turn it toward him, and he grins, taking it from my hand and laying it flat on the bed between us. He pulls out the roll of blue prints and opens one up, lying it down next to the photo.

“This is the building I want. It’s been vacant for years—since I was a kid,” he says. “I’m going to earn enough to buy it, then I’m going to gut the insides and build out a recording studio. I had the blueprints done a year ago. A guy I know from school, he was studying architecture—he did them. And Houston’s girlfriend, her name’s Paige—she made me a logo and designed these cards for me. She’s got an eye for things like that,” he says, his smile pushing dimples into both of his cheeks.

I watch as he pulls out a few more things, telling me his plans, where he wants to put things, why he loves this building. When he was little, they had to pull over into the parking lot once to look up directions to some office building in the city where his oldest sister had an interview for a scholarship. Casey started wandering around the vacant parking lot, peeking his head through small cracks in the boards to see inside. At the time, he thought the building was just the perfect place to play ditch ’em with his friends. But when he was in high school, and started to get into house music, the studio idea hit him.

“Casey, this is amazing,” I say, picking up each drawing, each scribble of an idea. I continue to look for a full minute before glancing up at him, his happy eyes waiting. His prideful expression turns into bashful, and his cheeks actually begin to redden, which strikes me even more. It makes him human. It makes me like him. It makes me really like him.

“Anyway,” he says, rolling his head to the side and looking down at the things all on display. He rubs his hand on his neck, and some of his happiness begins to disappear, his smile fading fast. “It’s just this stupid dream.”

All traces of the youthful dreamer from seconds before are gone. He begins to roll up the plans and tuck the photos and cards back into the box. The only thing left is a hat with the logo Paige designed on the front. I grab it in my hands before he has a chance to put it away, and when he looks up at me, I stuff it on my head.

He blinks a few times, but slowly, the smile starts to reappear. It’s not as big as before, but there’s a hint of it on his lips.

“That looks good on you,” he says.

I giggle.

“Thanks,” I say, pulling it off and pushing my stray hairs back behind my ears.

I fold the back of the hat into the front and hand it to him, but he keeps it out of the box. After a few seconds, he looks at my brother, a kind of calmness shading his face while he watches Lane build the world’s most complex farm-animal anthem and layer it with old-school Tupac.

“They’re setting him up with hospice,” he says. I can tell he’s still watching Lane, so as badly as I want to look at him, to engage him while he shares this with me, I don’t. I think he needs to focus on anything else in order to keep talking. “That’s what the texting was about. My mom—she wants to have us all over, to have a semi-normal dinner like a family or something…while we can.”

“That…that makes sense,” I say, knowing he doesn’t want to hear sorry.

We both watch Lane, and the few times my brother turns around, we give him encouraging gestures—raising thumbs, clapping and waving. We watch him in silence while my brother’s ears are filled with his own soundtrack. All we hear is his clicking and the occasional overflow from his headset. The quiet doesn’t seem to bother either of us, and it isn’t uncomfortable. It just is.

“Will you come with me?” Casey asks finally.

Part of me knew he wanted to. I have a feeling he’s been thinking about asking me since he walked in and saw me in his apartment. We’ve only spent a few hours together over a handful of days, but already I see how codependent he can be. My mind has been working in the background this whole time to find a way to tell him no when he asked. I can’t take this on for him. We’re friends, maybe. Business partners for sure, but now…maybe friends. And it’s all still new. I shouldn’t be at their table for something so personal when I don’t even have a splinter of understanding. It wouldn’t be fair to any of them.

I don’t answer right away, instead letting my brother turn to me one more time, pull his headphones free and unplug them so we can hear his masterpiece. We both praise him, Casey even going so far as to clap along with the surprisingly spot-on beat my brother managed to build into his strange little song. When the music finishes, he turns back to his computer and replaces the headphones, going in to add more.

Casey’s attention is still on Lane, but I can feel him grow more tense at my side. He’s anxious, and he’s scared. I can’t be that crutch though.

I suck in my bottom lip, breathing courage in through my nose while I form the right words that will let him down easy—words that will give him the strength to get through this on his own, words that are sensitive and full of sympathy, but that aren’t self sacrificing, because I…I’m not that person to him. There must be someone better. Anyone would be better, wouldn’t they?