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He looked at me then, his hand stilling on the strings. “I wrote those for you,” he said, so devastatingly blasé. “Pretty much every song I’ve ever written was for you.”
I tried not to think about the dozens of songs he’d written...
“Itwaslike therapy,” he added. “Like I was telling you without telling you. But then to have you sing them was torture.”
Oh.
“Luke,” I murmured.
But he smiled. “This song is much happier. It’s been a while since I’ve written something upbeat.”
“Sing me the song that hurt you the most,” I said.
He stopped smiling. “Why?”
“I want to know how much I hurt you. I need to know so I won’t ever put you through that again.”
He made a face. “It’d hurt less to have open-heart surgery without anesthetic.”
I chuckled. “Oh, good. I’m so glad you’re not melodramatic, but okay.”
“Uh, excuse me, but who was gaunt and dying earlier?”
“Not just dying, thank you very much. I wasdying. Like the open-heart surgery without anesthetic but also whilst on fire. Or maybe it was more like drowning, I don’t know.”
Luke laughed. “You really want to hear the song?”
“The song,” I repeated. Then, so he knew I wasn’t joking, I added, “All the songs that tell me what you went through, what you were feeling when you couldn’t tell me. When we weren’t... on the same page.”
“We’ve been on the same page for like three days, Blake. I have ten years of unrequited love songs. How much time do you have?”
“The rest of my life,” I replied quietly. His eyes met mineand I smiled for him. “Every day for the rest of my life, Luke. It’s yours if you want it.”
His smile was sweet and shy, and he blushed. But he began to strum his guitar before morphing into a haunting melody.
Long and lonely nights
Flights to I don’t know where
It’s three a.m. and your head’s on my shoulder
I wanna stay like that, like that forever
I’m dreaming with my eyes wide open
Wishin’ this was real
You’re in hotel rooms sleeping
I’m in city streets walking
Trying not to think of you
Tokyo lights
Sao Paulo sights
City streets walking
