Page 218 of Burn Bright

Any fucking part of me.

Holy shit.

I am in love with this song. Possessed by the furious, heart-wrenching energy, I immediately go to the drums, grab the sticks, and I play as Tom restarts the track.

It is a blackout euphoria. To pour my emotion onto the drums. All the hurt my dad caused just leaves me with each crack on the snare. Each boom on the kick-drum. Each bang of my sticks.

Don’t worry, I don’t need you to see.

Any fucking part of me.

I don’t need you.

By the end, I pant for air and focus when I hear Tom’s elated voice. “Whoa, Harry!” He comes sling-shotting out of the booth. “That was way better than what I did. You areepic.” He’s applauding hard as he nears. “And?” His grin is huge and magnetic.

“The song is sick.” I shake my head, still awed.

“I know.” His grin just grows.

I roll my eyes, then stand up.

“So?” He wavers a little, maybe seeing I’m not jumping for joy. “Join the band. You and me.”

“Just us?”

“We can make two work. I talked to the label. They’re down for the change.”

“You want me, even when yourejectedme?”

“Because you were seventeen?—”

“Then I turned eighteen, dude,” I retort. “You still rejected methen.”

“We were working with other drummers, and Warner?—”

“Oh you’re going to blame this on Warner when he’s not around to defend himself. Really,Tommy?”

“He didn’t want agirlin the fucking band,” Tom says seriously. “Specificallyyou. He thought you were hot and that it would’ve complicated shit. I would’ve been a hypocrite if I fought him on that point, because I threw out Phoenix St. Pierre as a potential drummer for thesamereason.”

“Phoenix? The drummer for Nothing Personal?” I say flatly. “That band sucks.”

Tom lights up. “See, this is exactly why we’re meant to be, Harry. We both have the same tastein music and recognize Phoenix as trash.”

I shift my weight.

“Listen to the song again.” He urges me to put my headphones back on. “Play it again.”

I want to so badly. “Tom, I’m in college to be a doctor. I can’talsobe a drummer. It’s impossible.” There is no avenue to do both. Attending med school, then entering a residency—it is evenmoretime consuming than undergrad. Being in The Carraways means going on tour around the country, which sounds…unreal. But also, a time suck.

“I’m not asking you to change your life on the spot, this moment, this minute,” he says. “Take days, weeks, the nextmonth if you need more time to decide. But we could create something really special, Harriet. So I need you to know that I want you.”

Is this the first time he’s ever called me Harriet?

He’s serious. He really wants me to be a part of The Carraways. The allure is as luminous as Tom is, and I feed on his energy.

I don’t have to decide now. It lets me bask in this moment. My lips tic up a little as elation flows through me. “Can I play it again?”

“Fuck yes.”