Randomly Ever After (5 page)

And then I saw nothing
at all
as the stage lights came on and the crowd stood, one giant wave of cheers.

Roar
.

Liam waved a hovering Charlotte away as the crowd screamed for Random Acts of Crazy. I felt shell shocked, like someone had carpet bombed the nightclub and I was standing in a daze.

What had just happened?

“Sam punched you!” I said, still incredulous.

“I need to play,” he ground out, Charlotte holding a cocktail napkin to his bleeding cheek. He shoved her hand away and stood, staggering slightly, waiting at the stage wings, taking deep breaths so quickly I thought he’d hyperventilate.

Me too.

My vision began to pin point and he took enormous, aggressive steps on stage, a tech handing him his guitar as a new set of lights aimed on stage for his spot. Joe and Trevor stared at the crowd, completely ignoring Sam. I couldn’t see him; the stage set up meant he was hidden to me from this angle.

Even if I could see him, what would that help?

Darla charged over, watching Liam nervously. “He was knocked dead thirty seconds ago and now that boy is on stage makin’ ‘em cheer.” She shook her head slowly and gave Charlotte an eye. “One hell of a showman you got.”

Then she turned her attention to me with a stinkeye. “And one hell of a hothead you got yourself. He canceled your song!” The words came out of her and she shoved one palm over her mouth. Charlotte gave us all a look of disgust.

“I wasn’t supposed to say that.”

“A lot of things weren’t supposed to happen that did,” I muttered. The amps and speakers destroyed our ability to talk.
So did my heart. It exploded into a thousand drops of nothing and I sprinted for the nearest door I could find, blindly running up three sets of metal stairs to find a giant metal threshold marked ROOFTOP ACCESS.
 

I pushed the metal bar and found myself in darkness, a handful of stars peeking out from the night sky, the city lights making it admirable that they could even be seen. The pinpricks of light were so ancient,
billions
of years old, that it seemed like folly.

A pair of chaise lounges were arranged by a wrought-iron table and I stretched out on one, my chest seized with a sob, my body doing its best not to fall apart.

The heavy bass from the second song in the set vibrated the building so well that terra cotta planters rattled on the brick edges of the roof.
Boom boom boom boom
.

A soundtrack for the end of everything.

Ninety minutes can feel like a decade in hell.

Liam managed to play and sing back up for Trevor, and I had to give it to him—he was good. Wound. Supercharged, like me, but in a different way. By the end of the performance I was a rag doll. My heart had been wrung out and used to mop the bathrooms. My hands were raw strings of flesh jelly, useless and spent.

But the crowd loved us.

And here came the words.

Darla marched backstage after the encore, dragging a pissed off Liam. he had a right to be angry.

So did I.

“You were all over my girlfriend, you fucking ass—”

“I thought she was Charlotte, so I—”

We said the same things at the same time, all the words sounding like noise salad to me.

“Hold on,” Darla insisted. “Sam,” she said with eyes that begged me to be reasonable. “Liam came up behind Amy and did that because Amy’s wearing Charlotte’s clothes.”

“Yeah. Right.” That was some bullshit. “Nice excuse.”

Charlotte appeared, red-faced and angry. Her finger got in my face and she too my hand, making me hold the rim of her shirt. “Look at me,” she said. Pointed to her shirt. “Amy’s.” pointed to her skirt. “Amy’s.” Pointed to her shoes. ‘Amy’s.”

Chuck Taylors.

Oh, shit.

“Why?” I barked. A techie wordlessly handed me my ukelele. I held it in my hand like it was a cocktail at a garden party.

“She wanted to look nice,” Darla explained.

“She already looked nice,” I answered.

“For...you know. The song.”

“The song? She knew about the song?” I thundered.

“And the ring,” Charlotte added.

My front pocket was the size of a football field. “THE RING? She knew about the ring?”

No one answered, but it was obvious.

“
Fuck.” Somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind I heard a tiny
pop!
, like someone had pulled the drain plug on my life. All my anger, rage, worry, fear, hope, anxiety—everything—circled in a watery whirlwind, disappearing with a gurgle.
 

I was empty.

Hollow.

Nothing.

“Where is she?” I whispered, assuming no one would hear me.

“On the roof,” Charlotte said.

Pulling my rag-doll body up to full height, I did the honorable thing.

Three things, actually.

First, I apologized to Liam, who just
snor
ted
and touched his face gingerly, lightly pressing a small bag
with ice in it to the swollen spot that taunted me, a crystal-clear relic of my stupidity
.

Second, I apologized to Darla, who mimicked Liam.

And third, I hauled my sorry ass toward the door to the roof, chagrined to find three sets of stairs to reach the top. If I could make it that far, maybe Amy
and I
had a chance.

If you stare at the stars long enough, you see that you’re really nothing in the grand scheme of the universe and the multiverse and all the cosmos.

You’re less than nothing.

I sat up and pondered this, pulling my legs up into a tight tuck, my stocking feet chilling in the night air. Charlotte’s heels were on the ground next to me, waiting. Just waiting.

So if I’m less than nothing, why do I feel like there’s no present, no future, and like the past is so confusing I don’t even want to think about it?

The music’s done. That means the band is breaking everything down, which means Sam will be done soon. The man I live with. The man who just decided not to sing me a song he wro
te
for me, not give me a ring he bought for me, not ask me the most important question in the world.

I flopped back down on my back. Staring at stars and feeling infinitesimal was so much easier than facing real life.

The bracing sound of metal crunching against metal made me sit up. And then:

Sam.

Carrying a tiny guitar case.

He didn’t say a word, which didn’t surprise me, because Sam’s attitude about life was that words just made everything harder. Quietly, he sat down on the chaise lounge across from me and stared up at the stars for longer than he had any right to.

After what felt like a decade in Hell, he turned to me with those soulful eyes and said, “I’m sorry.”

I winced. “For what? I’m not the one you punched.”

He let out a long, slow breath and rested his elbows on his knees, giving me a long look. “Then why do you look like I did?”

One breath. Two breaths. Three. Four. Each one made me feel closer to him and to the stars, the impossibility of being both a new reality I had to adjust to. “Why did you punch him?”

“Because he had his hands all over you. Like he owned you.”

“He made a mistake! He thought I was Charlotte. It’s understandable.”

“I know,” Sam said softly, but his voice was taut. “But I can’t erase the image of his hands all over you. Like he owned you.”

“No one
owns
me.”

A few heartbeats passed, the silence building between us, making my pulse race.

“
Especially not him,” Sam finally said.
 

“Why are you so fixated on Liam?” I exploded, jumping to my feet, shocked by the cold concrete. “Because I slept with him all those years ago?”

Sam flinched but said nothing.

“That’s it? Any other guy could have grabbed me like that—Joe or Trevor—and you wouldn’t be so angry, would you?”

Sam just grunted.

“I’m right, aren’t I?”

Finally: “Yes.”

“Sam,” I groaned, marching to him and bending down, on my knees and looking into that face. My fingers traces the lines of his strong bones, the planes of his cheek, the stubble that sounded like sandpaper as I brushed against it. “He may have been my first, but you will be my
last
.”

My last.

Words. Too many words in my head, on my tongue, jumbled and frantic.
Amy leaned over, her hand on my face, her cleavage on full display, breasts dangling in her bra cups like sweet berries begging to be picked.
 

With my mouth.

Damn it. Hard again. Why couldn’t I spend one second around her without being so incredibly aroused? When would I stop wanting her every second we were together, stop breathing her in like she was oxygen, stop being captivated by her smile, lured in by those eyes.

Never
, a voice in my head said.
How does
never
work for you, Sam?
 

“I—” The ukelele was in my hand, gripped unconsciously like a life raft. I peeled my aching fingers off it and stared dumbly.
All those lyrics, the chords they guys taught me, my gnarled fingers struggling to move fast enough, timing my singing with my fingers. Playing drums was a fucking breeze compared to the damn ukelele, but you couldn’t get a good melody out of a high hat.
 

“What’s that?” Amy asked, one side of her mouth crooked up in a smile. The skin around her eyes was puffy and red, and my heart sank. She’d been crying. Of course she had.

Because of me.

“
Ukelele.”
 

“I know what it is, Sam Hinton.” Her voice was filled with exasperation. “Why did you bring it up here?”

“To sing.”

Her eyes widened and I wanted to kiss her so much. Kiss the tears away, kiss my stupidity away, kiss her until she said yes, kiss her until she was mute and all I had to do was slip the
ring
on her finger and then—only then—did just one, single word matter at all.

Yes.

Carefully, with aching fingers, I opened the case. Her eyes sh
one
so bright in the moonlight, the chunk of cheese in the sky blindingly white now that the clouds had stepped aside. A string of white Christmas lights dotted the edge of the rooftop garden and I took in the sight.

A fine place to say
I’m sorry
to the woman you want to spend the rest of your life with.

I pulled the ukelele out and got down on one knee, bent in supplication below, looking up into those big, brown eyes.

A few strums to find the right key, and then it was as if all I were was words. I became the lyrics. Her eyes became the notes.

And we became the space in between silence and love.

I’d heard Sam sing before. He filled in on backups when Liam couldn’t make it, but this was different. The words were for me.

Me.

And
only
me.

I used to think

That silence was my only hope

That if I stayed quiet I couldn’t break my heart

But then you came into my life

And words weren’t enough

Suddenly

You made me want you more than—

The space in between

Silence and love is filled by you

You’re my bridge, my tightrope, my lifeline, my lifeboat

My heart out there

Yes, you....

The tears poured out of me, my heart unfolding like a rosebud blossoming. I wanted to touch him, hold his hand, fling myself into his arms and stay there forever, but I wanted to hear the rest of what he had to say even more.

Too many years

I left you in doubt

And pain and more

Now I’m here to tell you all the words you deserve

I love you, I need you, I want you, I feel you,

I—

Can’t fit them all in the space, the enormous space between

Silence and love...

The space in between

Silence and love is filled by you

You’re my bridge, my tightrope, my lifeline, my lifeboat

My heart out there

Yes, you....

As he strummed the last chord, head bent down, not looking at me, he set the ukelele aside, then tipped his face up.

He was crying, too.

I don’t know who kissed whom, but soon we were a tangle of hands and kisses and apologies and tongues, fingers frantic to connect and reunite. Whatever happened earlier in the night now seemed petty and silly, a misunderstanding that shouldn’t split u
s
apart. We’d done that—let circumstance dictate too much silence, all those years ago.

No more.

“Amy.” Sam’s voice was husky and earnest in the night, a light breeze brushing his auburn hair forward, covering one eyebrow, making those eyes so mesmerizing.

“Yes?” He hadn’t asked a question. Yet.

He chuckled to himself. “Maybe this is for the best. Doing this on stage might have been a disaster after all. I’ll have to thank Liam later.”

“Liam?”

“His
mistake
—” Sam cocked an eyebrow and made a growling sound as he said the word, the gesture so alpha male, so
possessive he seemed a bit dangerous, a little bit bad. Something inside me flared and tingled, thrilled and eager.
 

“His mistake,” Sam said again, “means I can do this in private. Should have done it that way all along.”

On one knee, he reached into his pocket. My hands flew to my mouth, the distant sound of car horns and chattering concertgoers a soundtrack to his proposal.

Moonlight gleamed off the diamond as he opened the flat little box. I gasped.

Sam looked like he was struggling with two different ideas he wanted to express. I only cared about one.

Mrs. Samuel Hinton.

“Amy.” His voice shook with determination. Not nerves. Eyes the green of lush moss on a rocky mountaintop, of fresh grass in a May meadow saw only me in the clear night sky. “I love you more than I know enough words to describe it. You are my lifeline. You are my everything. When I think I am whole I realize I’m actually half a person, a man missing half his heart. And you’re the other half.”