“I… I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know if I can make it. I might be busy that night.” A non-committal answer is better than an outright refusal, even if the old me would’ve taken that as a denial.
“That’s okay,” I say, trying to sound as if it’s no big deal when in reality it is everything. “I just thought… I wanted to invite you. I wouldn’t have even thought of doing something like this if it wasn’t for you.” And that is the truth.
Before she can say anything else, before she can come to her senses and outright tell me there’s no way in hell she’ll ever show up to mic night, I stand and say, “I don’t want to take up any more of your time. I’ll go. I, uh, hope to see you then.”
Though it’s the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do, I walk away from her. I don’t linger and wait for her reply. I can’t. I leave that house, and as I do so it feels as if I leave a part of me behind, a piece of me only Wren can keep alive.
Chapter Nineteen – Wren
Sloane makes her feelings known about Logan and whether she thinks I should go to the mic night he invited me to. Spoiler alert: she doesn’t think I should give it or him a second thought, but I spend the next few days staring hard at that flyer. I leave it on the small desk in my room and memorize every single detail on it.
It’s two weeks away. Plenty of time for me to come up with an excuse, a reason not to go.
But each time I start to think along those lines, I remember the look on Logan’s face when he came to give the flyer to me, I hear the sincerity in his voice as he invited me. And then, of course, I remember what he sounds like when he sings. That rough, scratchy voice that makes anything it sings sound like an anthem from hell.
Low, melodic, the kind of voice that crawls inside of your ears and infects your brain, and never lets you go.
It should be an easy decision, not to go to the mic night, but it’s not. Seeing as Sloane can’t really help, I decide to pay a visit to my favorite professor during his office hours that next week. Reese will get jealous and convince me not to go, right?
When I get to his office, I knock on the open door before I enter, and he looks up from his desk and grins at me, saying, “Close the door.” That grin, even now, threatens to knock me off my feet if I’m not careful.
I close the door and go to sit in one of the old chairs facing his desk. His office really is small; it’s an older building on campus, so it also has that old-timey smell. The books he has jam-packed in his bookcases don’t help things. Though his office is neat in an overall sense, it’s also pretty cluttered given the tiny space.
The sigh that comes from me when I sit down is loud and it informs Reese something heavy is on my mind. He leans back in his chair, still grinning, and cocks his head at me as he asks, “So, what’s bothering you, Wren?” He’s probably dying to come over to me and kiss me or something, and I can’t lie, that would be nice, but given where we are, it’s probably best not to tempt fate.
We can see each other outside of campus, but on it? Best be professional, at least a little.
“How can you tell something’s bothering me?” I ask, dancing around the subject.
“I know you, and since you’re not in any of my classes, I don’t think you’d want to meet during office hours to discuss our next date, so something must be bothering you.” He folds his hands on his lap, those crisp blue eyes of his zeroed in on me. “So talk to me. Let me see if I can help you.”
“Do you remember Logan?”
It’s a moment before Reese nods. “Yes, he was the one who was working with you on that group project last semester, until the accident. What about him?”
Crap. Maybe this was a bad idea after all. I don’t know how to explain the whole mic night thing without going into our history together. I don’t think Reese would be too thrilled in knowing exactly how far back—and how deeply—our history intertwines last semester.
“Well, I guess I should tell you a little backstory,” I start, not knowing how much to say. “I, um, I used to sing a lot. I loved it. I had stupid dreams about making it big and all that, which I think most kids do, one way or another. I stopped singing after I broke up with my ex, and I didn’t sing again until the night of the accident.”
As if reminding me of how that particular night went, my arm aches with a ghostly sensation, a phantom of pain. It’s like the nerves in my arm remember that night all too well. The shocknumbed the initial impact, and the drugs at the hospital sure helped a lot, but there were times when I thought the pain in my arm would never go away.
Reese doesn’t say a word, waiting for me to continue.
“I sang with Logan on stage,” I say with a shrug. “He was avoiding the stage, too. He’s a singer. He has… a really, really good voice. It was supposed to be part of the project, or at least that’s what I told myself.”
“The psychology of avoidance, I remember.”
“I didn’t exactly tell him we’d be on stage together. He wasn’t happy. He agreed to do one song with me, but he stormed off right after, and that’s when… you know.” I got hit by a freaking car, by what I assume was a drunk driver, probably another student who goes to MSU, who was never caught by police because stuff like that happens a lot around here.
“Yes,” Reese says with a sagely nod, “I remember all this. Why bring up Logan now?”
“He reached out to me the other day, wanting to see me. He didn’t take no for an answer. He came over and… he invited me to a mic night. I guess he’s going to sing again, this time by himself. He wants me to come, but I don’t know if I want to.”
The way he looks at me, I can’t tell what he’s thinking. It’s a while before he says, “You do know, you just don’t want to admit it to anybody, especially yourself.”
I scoff. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you want to go to this mic night and see why he invited you in the first place.” He leans forward, resting his arms on his desk. “I bet you came here hoping I’d have some words of wisdom for you, maybe even convince you not to go.”