Page 77 of From Drummer to Gamer

I sighed, thinking about how he would be tomorrow. And just like that, an idea popped into my head. I knew exactly what to do. Exactly what would give him some semblance of comfort on the day that’d been haunting him for the past thirteen years.

MATT

I tossed my restless body on the bed, my back feeling stiff like a brick despite the cloud-like softness of my mattress.

I’d been doing that for hours now, sleep being the last thing on my mind, which was plagued by a dark cloud.

It was expected, considering l’d experienced the same flow of events every year since that day. For a week, I withdrew into myself as sadness swallowed me like a heavy mist.

But once, just once in all these years, the mist cleared. It was momentary, but it was because ofher.

Sadness and Sierra could never be mentioned in the same sentence.

She was joy in a dull midnight sky.

Like a firecracker bursting with colors, those specks of light sparkling up the sky, that was who she was. Not a mere sunshine that shares its light. She was a firecracker, bright, loud, and so full of life.

So opposite the quiet, dull life I led.

Giving up, I pulled my body out of bed to see the faint rays of sunrise peeked through the blinds.

As soon as I stepped outside, a faint smell of spices lingered in the air.What was it?

Frowning, I followed it all the way to the kitchen and came to a stop at the threshold.

“Ama! I’m listening, listening, sorry. But can you please repeat that one more time, pretty please? Your daughter has been studying too hard recently, so her brain is all over the place,” Sierra moaned into the phone she held between her shoulder and ear.

I was one hundred percent certain that the last line was a lie. Sierra Chan liked everything except studying, at least from my observation of her, and I did watch her a lot, so I think I could come to that conclusion. Or maybe she did study. Sometimes she stayed holed up in her room for hours.

Standing up in front of the stove with her long hair held in a topknot by a pencil, Sierra had her face lined with deep concentration as she nodded to whatever her mom was saying.

The breakfast table was filled. Hardly a spot was missing. There were several dishes laid out—steaming buns, some kind of dough sticks, buttered greens, pancakes and waffles, boiled eggs, syrups and sauces of all kinds, my usual tray of green apple caramel muffins that was almost always magically stocked, and a jar of what could be my caramel mocha latte.

The smell wafting through the air made my stomach rumble, and my eyes couldn’t help but follow her as she added cubed carrots and stirred them in.

When the hell did she have the time to do all this?

“Okay, Ama, bye. Love you,” she said, sighing as she set the phone aside and brought the ladle to her mouth. Her pink lips blew out a few breaths before she tasted it.

A smile lit up her face as she happily nodded and put the ladle back inside the pot.

Leaning in, she pressed a button on her phone, and the opening chords to one of our earlier numbers crackled through the air, followed by the heavy arrangement of my beats, but Emmie’s voice never came through.

It was an isolated instrumental piece.

Hmm, I thought she wasn’t a fan, and this wasn’t even our popular number, yet here she was shaking her ass to it.

My breath hitched, and heat pooled into every crevice of my body when she bent lower to retrieve something from the oven. Her tiny boy shorts riddled higher, revealing the creamy curve of her round ass, an ass that I shouldn’t be staring at, but then when it came to her, at this point, I wasn’t really surprised.

As I stood there, I didn’t know what I was more hungry for. The food orher?

“Jeez.” Her eyes widened as she jumped, and the tray she held in her hand shook. I was by her side before she could even take her next breath.

Grabbing a towel, I took the hot tray far away from her before it could cause some serious damage.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, her eyes still wide as her gaze roamed over my body. The pinks in her cheeks deepened by the second as her eyes went lower and lower down my body.

“You’re shirtless,” she muttered in a shocked whisper.