Don't Kiss the Messenger (Edgelake High School, #1)(22)

“It’s okay?” Aisha said, unbelieving. She studied my profile. “What’s with you?”

I laughed. I honestly couldn’t explain it, because I didn’t even know what I was feeling. Something light. Something hopeful beginning to grow. “Today, everything’s okay,” I said.





Chapter Seven


Emmett


I headed to the back of the music store. I clutched a guitar handle in one hand and music notes in the other. Two hours of dancing with Bryn had given me a week of writing material. I had spent the night memorizing her face, from the gentle folds of her ear, to the arch of her eyebrows, to the supple curve of her neck. I could still feel the way her body reacted to my fingers, like she was an instrument I could play. For me, the night had bordered on spiritual.

It had taken all the willpower I had to hold back from kissing her. I didn’t want our first kiss to be a generic hook-up story at a party. This girl was too special. It needed to be more intimate, more spontaneous than that. I wanted a slow build up, escalating to a climax. Like a song.

“How’s the music coming?” Josh asked when I walked up to the counter. I grabbed a pencil and signed in. Music students had required practice hours to log every week.

“Great,” I said, a little too enthusiastically.

“Then it probably sucks.” Frank’s unmistakable voice rose behind me. He walked around the counter next to Josh and pulled a violin down from the ceiling hook. His black gloves inspected a loose tuning peg.

Josh picked up a Spin magazine off the counter and started leafing through it. “Just ignore him,” he said. “Everybody else does.”

“It shouldn’t be fun or easy or, god forbid, great,” Frank said. He turned and looked at me. “It should be torture. It should be eating away at your insides. It should be breaking your heart. It should be exploiting your soul. Unless you’re writing pop rock?” He raised an eyebrow at me.

“The melody’s a little light,” I said. “Lighter than my music usually sounds.”

“Light transitions can be good,” Josh offered.

I shook my head and sat down on a high chair next to the counter. “It’s all light,” I admitted.

“You mean happy?” Josh asked.

Frank grimaced like he was going to throw up.

“What’s wrong with that?” I asked him.

“There’s no such thing as happy,” Frank said. “Happiness is just an illusion. And any attempt to achieve it is the ultimate cause of your plight.”

Josh blew out a sigh and flipped a page in his magazine. “Feel free to walk away at any time,” he told me.

“No one likes happy music, unless you’re drunk in Cancun over spring break,” Frank informed me. “And then all you want is horny happy music.”

“Is that a genre?” I asked.

“You’ve never been to Cancun,” Josh said. “You’ve never even been drunk, Frank.”

“Well, I think I’d have to be drunk to enjoy that crap.”

“That’s definitely not the sound I’m going for,” I told Frank. “It’s just where I’m at in the song right now. It’s all high notes, smooth transitions.” It was all Bryn.

“Here’s your problem,” Frank said. “You’re not telling both sides of the story. There is always a dark side, there is always a doubt, a desire unfed, a gamble you risk losing. Life is constantly teetering between bearable and tragic and the tiniest misstep can make your perfect little concoction blow up in your face. Go write about that, Brady.”

Frank grabbed the violin and headed down the hallway. I heard the office door open and shut a few times.

“Let me rephrase that in a way that’s socially normal,” Josh tried. “Whatever you’re writing about, you need more. You’re only looking at the bright side. Flip it over and get the dirt underneath, you know?”

I nodded. He was right. All I knew about Bryn was surface level. It was all too perfect, too light, too easy. I needed to dig deeper with this girl. I needed to know her flaws. I needed her to open up.

...

After spending two hours in the studio, I jogged over to the McClain center so I could grab a sandwich before football practice. It was early and the place was empty except for one person. CeCe sat by herself at a table next to the window, leaning over, poring over a book. Her breakfast tray was already empty.

“Reading for fun?” I asked as I slid a tray down across from her and sat down. She blinked at me with surprise, like she momentarily forgot where she was.

I pulled the book out of her fingers and studied the cover of Contact, by Carl Sagan. I flipped through the pages.

“I’ve seen the movie,” I said.

“The book’s infinitely better,” she said. “I reread it every year.”

“Why?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I love putting myself into the position of the main character and trying to decide if I would choose to go into space for the rest of my life, give up my friends and family, just to see the truth of what was out there.”

“Would you?”

She smiled. “It depends on the day.” We heard voices and I glanced up to see Mac and a couple of football players heading to our table.