Page 79 of So Not My Thing
Chapter Twenty-One
The piano is here!Come down!
It was Miles’s usual afternoon text, and like every other day when he invited me down to inspect a change, I absolutely wanted to see it. But I’d been reeling since my epiphany on the bridge this morning, and if I ran down the stairs right now, Miles would see the truth on my face. How much I wanted him. I didn’t trust myself not to blurt it out.
For the first time in weeks, I texted back an excuse.Can’t today. Dinner plans.
The typing bubbles appeared and disappeared a few times on his end before a sad face emoji appeared.
Driving the causeway had made me an hour late for work, and that had put a ton of pressure on my schedule. Maybe that was why I’d done it; I’d wanted to force myself to be so busy that I couldn’t think.
I succeeded spectacularly and came home exhausted from running between appointments, barely making each. It hadn’t even worked that well. Miles was still the only thing on my mind, and I only knew of one way to deal with this that didn’t end up with me very, very drunk.
For the first time in almost two years, I pulled out my Moleskine notebook from my closet shelf. I’d been keeping song lyrics in it since middle school, but I’d written so few lyrics since I’d deleted my YouTube channel that I still had enough pages for fifty more songs. I hadn’t written in it since college.
I grabbed a pen, turned to a fresh page, and went to work. This was the only place in the world I ever told the whole truth, and I needed to get the words out somewhere because I was never, ever going to say them to Miles.
An hour later, I had half-formed verses and incomplete ideas, and nothing even close to good unless, “I love you, Miles Crowe, but I don’t want you to know” was a masterpiece in embryo.
Ha.
My stomach growled, and I put the notebook away, giving up for the moment. Fifteen minutes later, dressed in shorts and a gauzy tank top as a nod to the heat, I left down the back stairs, skirting the restaurant completely. Only I ran into Miles one block up, staring into the window of a record shop.
“Ellie,” he said, surprised. “Hey. On your way to your dinner plans?”
“Hey,” I said, trying to figure out how to make my face look normal when every muscle in it suddenly felt like it was made of goo. Was I smiling? Was it a friendly, professional smile? HOW DID SMILES WORK?
“You okay there?” he asked, his eyebrows furrowing in concern.
“Yeah, fine.” He nodded, then it fell quiet. “So, uh, I guess I better get to those plans.”
His eyes narrowed. “Yeah. Plans. What were they again?”
“Dinner?”
“Right. Where?”
