Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 71698 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71698 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
“Stop,” she groans, but not because she’s pissed at my uncharacteristic lack of eloquence and elegance. “You’re going to make me blush or cry, and I don’t want to do either right now.”
She opens a few more packages. I hold my breath while she swabs my hand with a cold wipe to sterilize it. There’s a sharp sting, but nothing horrible. By the time I fully process it, she’s already taping it down. She steps out of the room for a few minutes and comes back with a fresh sheet. I want to apologize for being such a pain, but she’d just tell me that I’m not. She covers my hand and arm with the folded sheet, taping the fabric loosely in place. After that, she strips off her gloves and packs up her duffel.
I watch everything, peeking over my arm. She’s hung the bag above the bed on one of the hooks Matt put in the wall for hanging up his clothes. He’s particular about his suits and doesn’t like them to get creased. He’s also notoriously paranoid about trusting anyone with his things. We had an incident early on where his guitar and luggage were lost, and it was a shit show. He vowed it would never happen again. When we’re on the bus, he keeps his guitars and things with him at all times. When he absolutely needs to send clothes out to be cleaned because he can’t launder them himself, he half loses his mind until they’re back.
Carissa unzips the front pouch of her bag and takes out a small green hardcover notebook. It looks more like a journal. Maybe she needs to take my vitals and write them down to track how I’m doing.
“I can’t feel the IV at all. It’s not a big deal.” I really can’t. Maybe if I were in perfect condition and not already a trainwreck, it would bother me more.
“I’m really glad.” She kneels down on the floor beside the bed. We’re on eye level. I’ve always known her eyes were a soft chocolate brown, but I had no idea about the lighter brown spirals that trace through them. She holds the book out like it’s an offering, sliding it under the hand that’s not bearing a bedsheet. I tear my eyes away to study the leather cover. “These are yours now. You don’t have to use them, and if they suck, it’s okay, but promise me you’ll take care of them.”
My brain is in such a chicken-fried state—shit. I mean a fried state, from the chicken. It’s hard to process what she’s talking about.
I don’t understand until I crack the cover and turn the pages. And even then, it takes me a few good minutes to process what I’m seeing.
It’s not poems.
Not musings.
Not writings.
It’s songs.
Songs.
Chapter four
Carissa
This is the most insane, terrifying, horror movie shit show of a thing I’ve ever done.
I’m a shit liar, so I can’t just laugh this off. I’ve been imagining this moment for years, and it never played out like this.
“What is this?” His head snaps up from the journal too fast, and he blinks to clear away what are probably black spots. He keeps his breathing even, but grinds his teeth hard. His jaw clenches repeatedly.
I’ve never been so nervous. Ever. I could throw up, but then we’d both be barfers, and we don’t need that. I’ll just have to breathe heavily and get through it.
His eyes drop to scan the page again, and then he turns it and reads the next one and the next. He knows what they are. “Songs,” he says with reverence.
They could be poems, I suppose, but when you give writing like that to a musician, they’re always going to be songs.
“I wrote them, but they never felt like they were meant to be just mine. I want you to have them.” Half of them are about him. Erm, actually, most of them are about him, but there’s no way he can ever know that.
“Why?” he asks. But it’s not a rude question. Not when his hand strokes the page reverently, tracing over my writing. “I write my own songs.”
Gah. The way he says that when he raises his eyes, like he’s open to changing his mind because he sees something he likes in the book, hits me hard.
In all the wrong places.
Well, right places, but they’re wrong for wrong reasons. Or right reasons?
“They’re for inspiration,” I mumble. “If you want them to be. Or for the future. In any capacity. Or none at all.”
“You told me years ago that you don’t play any instruments.”
“That was quite a while ago.” I hope he doesn’t remember the rest of that conversation we had right after I was hired.
He didn’t like the idea of me being around, but he didn’t really get a say in it. He asked me tersely if I played, and I said I didn’t. It was true at the time. Then he asked me if I was a fan of Wilder’s Peril. I knew what he was really asking. He was asking why I was truly there and what motivated me to take the job. I may have received the message about ulterior motives, and I might have said something along the lines of Wilder’s Peril not being the sort of band I enjoyed listening to. I didn’t lie. I wasn’t a fan before I took the job. A job was a job, and it was a great opportunity, and that was the sole reason I applied. I never thought I’d get hired.