Page 17 of Jaded

“Dingoes don’t have the budget for that.” I snort. “And that’s assuming Coach would even want to put up with more of me. Which I guarantee he doesn’t.”

Back when he was coaching Day River High, Ethan tolerated a lot of my shit. I repaid him with alcohol, drugs, a dumb-ass fight, and a flatlining career.

I don’t know why he even lets me into the locker room, let alone pays me to sharpen skates for the Dingoes. It’s practically charity.

“Oh, come on.” Charlie mutters. “He don’t keep you around ’cause you’re that good at sharpening skates.”

The words prick goosebumps along my skin, warping the ink on my arms into tiny hills and valleys.

“All I’m saying”—Charlie shrugs again—“is pick a lane, Nat. You’re going in five different directions and getting nowhere.”

I don’t have a response to that because it’s true. Because even after all these years, I’m still puttering around in neutral. Still walking the same path, stuck in the same rut.

That’s the problem with an all-encompassing dream—even if it never feels like more than a pipe dream. When you lose it, you lose your sense of direction.

My thoughts cut off when Syd nudges through the door of the townhouse. “Hey, Dad. Hey, Uncle Charlie.”

“Yo.” Charlie waves from his armchair. “Syd.”

“Don’t you have practice?” I lean forward to deposit my guitar on the magazine-littered coffee table. They’re all Syd’s—makeup and hair and clothes. I see them every day, and yet it still leaves an ache in my chest, that she has to learn this kind of girl shit from magazines in lieu of a mom.

“Practice? Nope.” Syd drops her backpack by the door and kicks off her shoes. “Got an excused absence to work on some stupid history project with Maggie.”

“Come play guitar with me first?” I ask, trying not to sound hopeful, bordering on desperate. Obviously Syd plays hockey—everyone in this town does—and obviously she plays it better than most. It’s in her blood.

Doesn’t make me not notice how her guitar in the corner of the living room has been gathering dust for months.

“Maybe.” Syd beelines for the kitchen to pull open the fridge. “I’m meeting Maggie in a little—did you eat my yogurt?”

“No.” I shove down the weird wave of hope tinged with forthcoming disappointment. “I just didn’tbuyit.”

She huffs and closes the door. Stalks into the living room on socked feet. And then, to my complete and utter shock, she retrieves her guitar from the corner.

With a martyr’s suffering sigh, she plops down onto the worn leather beside me. “What are we playing?”

I almost don’t question it. Almost just let it be for what it is, let the music engulf us, just like it used to. Like when she was little, and I was so much more broken, but somehow, settling her onto my lap, arranging her tiny fingers over the strings, somehow, that made the world make more sense.

Quieted my restless demons.

That’s why music exists, why art exists, right? To give life meaning.

Shit. Why can I hear his melted-caramel voice like he’s whispering the words against my skin, into my soul. Maybe it’s because I felt them, because they burrowed in so deep I might never be rid of them.

“So, I know you’re only doing this because you want something.” I swipe my own guitar off the table, settle it onto my lap. Beside me, Charlie chuckles.

“I do not—”

“Play with me first, and then you can ask.” I lift a brow in her direction. “Deal?”

She sighs, tucksher own guitar in. “Fine. But we’re playing System of a Down. ‘Toxicity.’”

“No argument here.” I grin. Girl definitely got her taste in music from me, not her mother. “Ready?”

“So ready.”

I need to escape my own thoughts. My uncertain future—and Syd’s.

Syd grins, and for a collection of blissful, beautiful moments, it’s just us. Me and her and the music. The world, put to rights. As it should be. Syd’s hardly my little girl anymore, but with the music woven around us like a chain of unbreakable threads, it’s so much easier to imagine she’ll always be my girl.

---