I glanced back at the table. Yeah, that was Max, another of Theo’s close friends. I recalled seeing him when I visited Gary in college one time.
Nowthere’ssomeone who looks as if he belongs in this place.
“Cameron?”
I blinked.
Oliver pointed to three pint glasses standing on the beer mat. “Think you can manage those?”
I nodded. I followed Oliver back to the group, focusing on carrying three full glasses without dropping them, on breathing through the weird shake in my hands so I didn’t slosh beer on strangers.Smile, damn it.I told myself my face remembered how.
Back at the table, I slipped into a gap as if it had been made for me, shoulder-to-shoulder with men I didn’t know. If I looked at Theo, I’d fall through the floor, so I didn’t.
I looked anywhere else.
The trick was to be interested in everyone. If you paid attention to people, they usually didn’t look too closely at you.
I asked the quiet one—Sebastian—about songwriting. The guy’s eyes were haunted, the way artists’ eyes sometimes are.When Sebastian answered, his voice was careful and precise, as if he was lining his words up before he let them out. I listened. I liked listening.
I teased the preening one—Julian—about his glitter eyeliner, and Julian smirked and preened harder. I threw a line at the serious one—Milo—about chord changes, and we bickered in a way that didn’t require me to be good at anything but timing. Liam leaned in with that open, earnest curiosity some people never lose; I let it anchor me.
Laughter found me the way it always did if I let it.
I didn’t look left to where Theo sat.
I knew Theo noticed. Or at least I thought he did.
The space where he sat pulled at my attention like a tide. I was aware of Theo’s knee under the table. I could feel him there without looking, the way you can sense a storm building even with the windows shut.
Max kept watching me, not in an unkind way, but as if he was measuring me up. There were questions in the way he rested his chin in his hand.
Who are you to Theo? What do you want?
I wanted to be seen without being gutted. I wanted Theo not to look at me like I was a problem.
I hated wanting that so badly.
Leather creaked somewhere under the music, and the air between us tightened until my skin prickled.
Theo didn’t turn his head. He didn’t move away either.
I kept the conversations spinning because if I stopped, I’d start thinking.
You shouldn’t be here.
I’d taken it like an order even as I’d joked it off. What filled my head were memories of the choir room at sixteen, the way Theo had laid a harmony above my shaky melody and saidbreathe, and the world had widened. I remembered howthat had felt, and I didn’t want that feeling back here, where everything smelled like sweat and new leather.
I didn’t want to be reminded of choices I wasn’t ready to make.
Come on. You can do this.
I was good at this. I could be bright and a little shameless and exactly as cocky as people liked in a stranger. It was armour that looked like flirting.
It worked fine until someone who mattered saw through it.
I felt Max’s gaze again, curious, and that stubborn streak in me surfaced. I took another sip of beer I didn’t want, laughed at a story I’d only half heard, and let the room carry me.
When it was time to go—when I could feel my nerves starting to fray and knew if I stayed much longer I’d say something I couldn’t take back—I stood and thanked them all as if I’d only meant to stay an hour.