In Your Dreams (Falling #4)(98)
Her brow furrowed, thoughts sorting behind her eyes, she shakes her head, dismissing me. “The timing was bad,” she answers, barely looking up.
My chest collapses with the sinking of my heart because I know she didn’t bring it up because my life was imploding.
“I’m all right, Murphy. You should call Noah,” I say.
Her eyes flit up to me briefly as she moves to the small chair behind my board where she likes to hide. She scratches nervously at her head, then folds her arm across her body, her eyes not quite making it back to mine. “He’s in Nashville, and I’m not so sure I want to relocate on another whim,” she admits.
“Noah isn’t John,” I clarify quickly. Whatever her apprehension, I’ll find a remedy.
There’s a worry line in her forehead, and I know it’s because I’ve taken steps away from her. I’ve created distance, and she can tell I’m doing it on purpose. If I touch her, I’ll beg her to stay, because I will miss her. Weak and selfish is in my nature, and I need to fight against it. She can’t make a decision based on us—I’ll f*ck that up, and then she’ll be left with nothing. She needs to make a decision based on her heart, and I know she wants this. I read it in that notebook. You don’t write songs like Murphy Sullivan’s without hope that they’ll touch someone who hears them.
“I’ll think about it,” she says, a faint smile on her lips as her eyes will me to drop it. It’s a lie to get me to quit asking, to get me to come close again.
I hold her stare until she has to look away. But I watch longer, taking in every single nervous tick and habit she has until she has no choice but to give in and she locks on me again.
“Why didn’t you tell me about his offer?” I ask, my fingers tight around the cords in my hand, hoping that she says she kept it from me because she’s afraid of taking a risk. I can work with that; I can fill her with confidence again. But if she’s staying for another reason—because of me—
“You sent him to see me,” she says.
“I did,” I say.
“Why?” she asks.
Because you deserve it. Because I believe in you. Because I didn’t get it right for you the first time, and I have a history of messing up your life.
Because I love you.
I think it all, but I don’t say it. I’m afraid if I do it will only make her want to stay here more. She’ll think I’m only trying to make amends, and she’ll dismiss it all as a kind gesture, something sweet for us to build our love on. She’ll stay because of me, but she can’t give up that much. So I shrug and look down again.
The silence drags on. She fills it with my worst fears.
“Maybe in a few months, when things aren’t so…crazy,” she says, suddenly on the other side of the table, close enough that her hands reach forward and cover mine. I want to let her soothe me, to just say “okay,” but I glance up and know—if I let her now, it will never stop. I will take and take.
“He won’t wait forever,” I say, my eyes on her hands. I work hard to keep my tone even, taking a step back to break our touch. I pull my headphones on and turn the other way, because I know if she looks into my eyes she’ll see the truth—that I’m just as afraid of her leaving. Time is her enemy though—my girl needs to be backed into a corner, otherwise she’ll always choose limbo and stay here with me, playing at Paul’s and teaching for pennies while I fill in the role my father vacated and peck away at my own dreams slowly on the side. We’ll both stall, and she’ll never get the spotlight she deserves—the one that is literally waiting for her to stand in it.
I ready my playlists and ignore her while noticing every single breath she takes. It kills me, but I decidedly act, as Houston would say, more Casey than normal. The club begins to fill, and I say hello to people I barely know. I talk to anyone who passes by that I recognize, showering them with my time and attention, giving them what Murphy desperately wants so that it will eat away at those feelings that are tying her to me. At one point, I see her look to the side and run her palm under her eye, and I feel sick, but I keep putting her last so that way I can put her first.
When the lighting switches, I go to work, and Murphy excuses herself to the restroom. I nod. I don’t say a word. I watch her walk away and hate every pair of eyes that falls on her body in the crowd, but I give up the right to be jealous. I surrender it all—and by the time she comes back to my booth, the reason why she escaped in the first place clear with the remnants of red puffiness in her eyes—I’m resolved.
Welcome to the *, Murphy. The one who loves you. He’s sorry, but it’s for the best.
“Hey,” I nod in her direction, urging her to step closer to the board. She bounds up next to me, anxious and full of hope. I crush it in a breath as soon as her eyes ask me “what?”
“You’re not putting off Noah because of us, are you?” I ask.
Her expression switches to puzzled and afraid. Her eyes dart to my work, to the lights and screens and people beginning to crowd around us, the space we’re losing.
“I’m just not…I’m not…not ready,” she says, her stutter stronger than I’ve ever heard. She grinds her back teeth and flexes her jaw in frustration. “It’s not a good time.”
“Bullshit,” I say, making the word harsh and disgusted, as if I’m tired of her excuses. She winces. I die a little more.