Purple Hearts(47)

Now he was erased from the Earth. Every time I was reminded of this fact, I was shocked all over again, like my whole body had stepped on a tack.

I wiped my eyes on the sleeve of Toby’s giant Longhorns sweatshirt. I was lying on his floor.

“Hey! Hey.” Toby looked down at me. “Are you okay?”

“Just thinking,” I said, swallowing what was left of the tears.

“Family stuff again?”

“Kind of.” I hadn’t figured out how to tell Toby any of it. It felt like explaining Frankie meant explaining Luke, and that felt so small compared to anything else. Where I knew I should feel guilt about lying to Toby, I felt only grief. I had never lost someone before Frankie.

“Well. Get up. Let me cheer you up.”

I sniffed and sat up.

A dissonant chime echoed through Toby’s apartment. Topy looked at me. My phone.

“I thought I’d left it at home again,” I muttered, making my way down the hall. I found it sitting near the front door, on the table where he kept his keys. A number I didn’t recognize lit up the screen. Something’s wrong with Luke. My stomach dropped.

“Hello?” I asked, my fists clenched.

“Cassie?” It was a man’s voice, unfamiliar.

“Yeah,” I said, my mind flipping through the worst.

“This is Josh van Ritter, with Wolf Records.”

Wolf Records? My brain was trying to catch up. Not Luke. Not bad. Good. Very good. “Oh, hi!” I said, trying to make my voice sound normal.

“Yeah, are you familiar?”

Was I familiar with one of the biggest indie labels putting out right now? Uh. Yeah. “Very. I mean, huge fan,” I told him, padding as quickly as I could to Toby’s room, and pointing to the phone, my mouth open in a joyful silent scream. I put the call on speaker.

“So Todd Barker, the manager for Les RAV, sent me your Bandcamp page and I’m interested to see what else you’ve got going on.”

Toby had sat up in his bed and scooted, somewhat undignified, to the edge, and was now riveted. He glanced at me and said, loud, “Hi, Toby Masters here, also in The Loyal. I hope you don’t mind Cassie’s got you on speaker.”

“Hi there, Toby. So I see you’ve got a few singles up. Do you have a full EP as well?”

“Kind of, but we have new stuff, too,” I said, matching his quick words, pacing around Toby’s room. “I can send you our first EP and we’ll probably get more tracks out after the New Year.”

“Tell you what, I’m booked solid until the end of the year, and it’s kind of crucial that our bands tour anyway, so I’d love to see you live. I’m going to fly down for your show in March at the . . .”

“Sahara Lounge,” Toby filled in.

“Right. You play me songs for a full album, we’ll talk. Sound good?”

After exchanging contact info, we hung up happy. My head spinning around with which of the new stuff to play, heart fluttering, walking to the kitchen on the balls of my feet.

Toby followed.

“That was Wolf Records,” I said to Toby, manic. “On the phone.”

Toby’s voice went high. “Cassie. That was Wolf Records as in Wolf Records. Holy shit.”

“That’s the one.” I smiled, feeling my head shake, shocked.

He laughed, and began to talk logistics.

Suddenly, as had happened several times over the last forty-eight hours, my thoughts ran smack into a wall. I could barely move from room to room, let alone think about banging on an instrument in front of people.

I sniffed, trying to make my throat loose again.

“T, I need a second.”

“Okay, no problem,” he said, absent, still flipping through records. “I’ll just find this real quick.”

He held out the album, a preacher with a Bible. “You know how many bands would kill to be considered by Wolf Records?”

I sighed, pushing sleeves to my eyes, wishing his giant sweatshirt would swallow me whole so I could be in darkness and softness and nothingness. “Yes. I do happen to know that,” I muttered.

“They’re one of the only indie labels that puts out Billboard-level stuff. They’ve got great shit going on. And they want us!”

“I know!” I shouted. “I fucking know that!”

He stared at me, mouth open. Tears were coming soon. I clenched my gut hard, keeping them in. I hated feeling like a child, like a kid who’d gotten sick at a sleepover and was ruining the fun. I opened my mouth and took a breath, holding the small, rocky ocean that had started to occupy my stomach whenever I thought about the last few days.

Toby opened his arms. I went to him. Lorraine, Toby’s cat, seemed to understand. She wound between our ankles, purring. “Remember my friend who was in the army?”

“Yeah,” he said, and I could feel him tense under me.

“Well, Frankie died.”

“Oh, my God. I’m so sorry, Cass,” he whispered. “I didn’t know.”

“We’ve been friends since we were little,” I said.

Toby said nothing, waiting, stroking my hair. I let myself remember Frankie as I’d last seen him, at the airport, looking at Elena with total devotion. I let myself remember how he looked when I’d first met him, wearing a Power Rangers shirt with his little belly always hanging out.