Page 80 of Jaded

Each shard for a different person

A different version of my broken whole

None see the whole picture

But a shard’s still a shard

A broken piece

Broken, broken, broken

I set the notes beneath each line, my fingers moving faster, faster, as the melody takes shape. My pencil scratches against the page, but I can’t hear it, can’t hear anything over the song in my heart.

Distantly, I’m aware of someone moving across the locker room, stopping beside me. Distantly, I register the low murmur of his voice through my headphones and the song in my soul.

It’s the snap of his fingers that draws me out of the music.

My head jerks up, pencil going down as my gaze lifts.

Olli James stands in front of me, his brown eyes rounded with what might be concern or surprise or amusement or a combination—but all that pales in comparison to a much more important fact.

He’s wearing only a towel, slung low around his hips.

I tear my headphones out of my ears, trying with all my might to keep my eyes on his face, his now-grinning mouth, and not on the display of skin and muscles beneath. It’s not like I haven’t seen him in less, or been in a position to see him in less.

“Hey, Nat.” Olli’s mouth twists a smile. “You seemed pretty . . . lost?”

“Um. Yeah. I kinda was.” Eyes up, Taylor. Eyes the fuck up. “I didn’t realize anyone was still here. Sorry.”

Olli’s eyes drift down—to the notebook flattened against my legs. “That’s my poem.”

“Um.” I snatch the pad back up, but the damage is done. He’s seen it, and now this is another strange thing to lurk in the space between us. Olli steps back to sit on his own cubby. His expression’s neutral, almost unreadable, but his eyes study me as though searching out an explanation.

I sigh, and lay the notebook flat again. So he can see the notes, enmeshed with the words. “I told you I could hear the song.”

“Dang. I thought . . .” His eyes trail down the page. “I thought you were joking. Or making fun of me or something.”

“Why would I do that?” I flip the notebook closed, finished with exposing so much of my soul. Except it’s not just my soul on that page, is it? Not just my inner pieces laid bare. Both of us, tangled together, between the lines and over them, enmeshed, ensnared, entangled.

Just like that night at the bar—

“I dunno.” Olli fiddles with a loose string on the corner of his towel, and this time I don’t bother to stop my eyes as they trail down his long, lean form. “Because I’m . . . me and you’re . . . you?”

I drink in the sight of him—the swells of his shoulders and pecs, the cut of abdominals. No tattoos visible from this angle, no big scars.

“What’s that mean?” I lift my gaze back to his face, trying to read the wrinkle of his brows. I come up empty.

“I’m an introverted loser, and you practically define cool.” He snorts, then scoots to lean back against his cubby. “Guys like you don’t look twice at guys like me. Even in a friendship sense, I mean.”

“What is this, middle school?” I ask, and my voice is soft, not bitter or judging. Teasing. I’m still looking at his face, studying the way he stares at the ceiling, eyes out of focus, unseeing. “I wouldn’t make fun of someone else who loves music. Especially when it’s . . .”

I direct my opened hand towards the notebook. “Creating music in any capacity is beautiful.”

“You think so?” Olli’s head tilts towards me, his brown eyes wide, earnest. That look does something to the inside of my chest, like a hand stretching the muscles too taut, almost to the point of hurting. “Even if it’s lame-as-crap poetry?”

“It’s not lame as crap.” I chuckle, tilt back against my own space so I can more easily not look at him, not let his expression affect the physical function of my body. I don’t want to feel things like that, not with him, not with anyone. “You really think I’d bother to take a poem I thought was lame and put music to it?”

“Well, I don’t know how it works. No one’s ever—” He cuts off suddenly, and when he speaks again, his words drop to a murmur. “Do you do that? Write songs?”

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