Page 61 of Second Song

Liam still looks my way. Still doesn’t quite smile. Still watches as if I’m the one who’s haloed. He shifts, responding to something Teo asks, but just as quickly shifts back, and the sun finds him. He’s outlined with gold, shimmering with every soft shade in our classroom chalk box, nothing hard or sharp about him, and I can’t swallow my mouthful.

I have no idea if Liam heard that boyfriend description. Not from this distance. Something crosses his face that feels a whole lot like an answer.

“Ah,” Charles says softly. He rephrases. “Is your boyfriend staying?” He could be asking if Liam will stick around for long enough to share this food with us. He might be wondering if he’s staying for even longer after his demolition is done.

I don’t know. I don’t even know if I’ll be here.

Maybe that’s why I let myself into our classroom later, once the car park is empty and Liam isn’t with me. I shouldn’t be rummaging through a supply cupboard at close to midnight, but here I am, digging through stationery instead of hunting down percussion instruments.

The scroll of paper I take back to the stables isn’t yellowed like the ones in that time capsule. It’s bigger, longer—a roll of the wallpaper that Charles uses for art projects. Now it unfurls across the living room floor where I kneel and try much harder to do what a Polish student did here in the last century.

The clock ticks on the wall behind me, and I pick up a marker pen to get started. Orange to start, detailing happy days filled with music and with magic. I use a blue pen to draw a stave and dot notes along a line that travels from festival to festival, from school to school alongside a steady pink thread, a constant representing Mum that I hate having to cut off halfway along my roll of paper.

I draw wedding rings there, a drum kit, a spotlight, and can’t continue—can’t complete what I have to if I want to be here the next time Liam’s work brings him back to Cornwall.

Be someone he can circle back to when his world is noisy?

Be a constant in his life path from this point onward?

I want that so much.

The clock on the wall chimes twelve times as I clutch a final pen while staring at a gap, a crater, a fog bank, at exactly the same point I gave up trying last time.

I set my pen to paper, but all it leaves is a smudge of stormy purple.

I need to fill this gap.

I have to.

So why the fuck can’t I do it?

24

LIAM

Dom catches me in the car park during the last week of this project. “Liam? I got your message. You wanted to talk about shifting your end date?”

“Yeah.” I grab my tools, pausing over my sledgehammer before sliding the van door closed and leaving it behind. “I had a bit of a rethink about the demo plan over the weekend.”

A bit of a rethink?

I’ve spent the last two days away on another weekend job and spinning in circles. Not literally. Not like Dom’s daughter does now in that outdoor classroom where she pirouettes, if shakily, while shouting, “Look at me!” to her teacher.

Dom pauses at the sight. He also curses softly. “Christ. She’s got zero sense of danger.” He drifts to the right, following her progress as she spins some more, this time with assistance. And with someone to hold her hand, she makes it all the way across one of the plank bridges crisscrossing this outdoor space. But that’s what I’ve done, haven’t I? I’ve crisscrossed several counties, regretting signing so many contracts to avoid Matt’s meetup invites, wanting the whole time to get back here in a hurry.

My reason appears, heading out from the indoor classroom while carrying too many cardboard boxes to see where he’s going. I’m instantly poised to jump in, primed to launch a rescue mission that Rowan doesn’t need and hasn’t asked for.

I still want to stick around in case he needs me.

He doesn’t need help. Or me. His mentor is right there, taking those boxes from him. They sort through them together as Dom keeps following his daughter’s progress. Now she’s busy drawing in damp sand while singing to herself.

She’s cute.

This glimpse of Rowan is even cuter despite his back being to me. I can still see the tips of his ears. They’re flushed, and the last time I saw that was in a bathroom mirror right after sex and before goose bumps made me want to stand in front of whatever cold blast from the past had caused them.

And this is why I should hurry instead of slowing down this project.

Rely on me to stand between blasts and people who matter?

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