Page 13 of Live for Me

Once she was planted squarely in the seat next to me again, I handed her my phone with all my music already pulled up for her.

“That,” she said, pausing to laugh, “that isa lotof country.”

“Pay attention to the words in any of those songs and I guarantee all that condescension will melt right out of you.”

When her cheeks turned pink, I figured it was safe to assume that she only wanted to listen toFearlessagain to actually pay attention this time.

Her eyes didn’t move from the screen of my phone for the entire three and a half minutes of that song. The girl sat there and stared straight into her lap with absolutely zero movement. I couldn’t tell if she liked it, hated it, hated me, or had just retreated to her internal hiding place that she kept locked up so tightly. She scrolled through the list of songs and picked several others as the current one ended.

“Are these all love songs?” Memphis asked quietly.

“Not all of them. Some are just about big ass trucks and men who’ll kill people for their women. Occasionally, women who’ll kill men for their friends. Don’t ask about Earl. We don’t talk about Earl.Goodbye Earl.”

“Aren’t those still kind of love songs though?” she asked, smiling that time.

Well. She had me there.

“What’s your music about then?”

“Pain, anger, not knowing how to face your own shit just because it’syour own shit.”

“You listen tothatbecause you enjoy it?” I asked.

She shrugged her shoulders and looked out the window. “Something about not feeling so alone in it is therapeutic, I suppose. If someone famous is singing about it, there’s a good chance that means it’s because there are a ton of us out here who feel that way.”

How was I supposed to sit here and tell this girl, who shielded herself from me, that she didn’t have to be alone with anything ever again for the duration of her entire life without scaring her into leaping right out of this truck just because we knew nothing about one another and hadn’t even known each other for a full year?

For someone who normally took a significant amount of pride in my ability to keep it together under just about any circumstance, nothing about my brain worked properly with Memphis in my line of sight. The intense desire to peel back this protective shell around her to find out what fueled who she really was was quickly taking up a good chunk of my mental capacity. All the questions I wanted to ask every time she opened her mouth to give me a tiny crumb of information about herself were close to cracking my skull open to escape, regardless of how unintelligent that choice might be. She’d retreat further into herself if I got too pushy too fast. That weird fucking line right down the middle felt impossible to keep to with her this close to me. She took that level of calm that I’d let encapsulate my life and she set that shit right on fire.

That was the absolute worst thing about women like this one. First, they gave you butterflies. Then, they gave you mental health problems; with fucking nowhere to escape that crazy train between departure and arrival. There wasn’t a damn thing that anyone could do to prevent it, because while you were busy telling yourself that you’ve been on the crazy train before so you could handle it again, you learn that it wasn’t even a fucking train you were dealing with. You actually boarded an airplane, and leaping to your death suddenly became the only way out.

“Can I ask you something without you making it weird?” she asked.

“Probably not, but you’re welcome to give it a shot anyway.”

“Who are you, Utah?”

“What? Like my real name?” I smirked. “You could at least buy me a drink first.”

“Yeah. There was never even a slight chance at younotmaking it weird,” she said. “I don’t mean your name. I watched you with Triss, with Jersey, with Indy. You said you grew up with kids who had anxiety issues and you wanted to be able to help them, so you learned how. You diffuse panic, but you go out and do the kinds of jobs thatinstillpanic. How do you care about everyone, and also seem to not care at all?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

memphis

It was dangerous territory.

Asking him personal questions.

There was always a chance he’d flip that right back on me and ask about my world next.

Even with that risk, I still wanted to know. It was eating me alive. I should’ve just found what I could on him like I’d done with Jersey back in the day. I’d kept that knowledge from him for years. I should’ve been able to do that with Utah, too.

Except something about doing it to Utah felt uncomfortable, where I hadn’t even thought twice about it with Jersey.

It was absolutely a violation of Jersey’s privacy, and it probably would have destroyed any chance we would’ve had at trusting one another if he’d found out about it earlier in our working relationship. But that didn’t even come close to stopping me. Back then, the need to know what I was getting into ahead of time far outweighed the risk of Jersey deciding that he wouldn’t work with me.

With Utah, though, it felt like some form of betrayal. He felt like the kind of human who would just tell me what I wanted to know if I took the time to ask, and not giving him that chance to tell me himself seemed like it would hurt him. The process of getting to hear it from him felt like it was supposed to mean something all on its own.

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