Page 58 of Burn Bright

“Vindictive brats could literally describe most people in my family, and I still love them.” Is he saying he loves me too—no.Absolutely fucking not.Don’t be ridiculous, Harriet.Ben isn’t even flustered like he slipped up and confessed deep feelings for me. He just touches the heart-shaped leaf. “This hoya needs more water.”

My head is spinning. He’s a plant expert too?

“It’s not mine. But I’ll let Eden know.”

With the hoya in hand, he passes the couch, just to reach the nearby kitchen. He turns on the sink and waters the plant for Eden. His baby blue eyes drift around the apartment. “I see the sticks.” He nods toward the drumsticks on the coffee table. “But where’s your drum kit?”

Huh?

I’m still mentally attached to the fact that he knows about my bratty email. I wash down the lump in my throat with a gulp of lemonade, then say, “I don’t own one…I’ve neveractually owned one.”

Ben shuts off the faucet. “Then how’d you learn to play?”

“A music store in Pittsburgh.” I watch him return the pot to the windowsill, his eyes on mine as he crosses the living room again. “It was down the street from where I grew up. I used to go in there every day after school and just bang on the drums. The manager could’ve kicked me out—because a ten-year-oldclearlyisn’t going to buy shit—but she started teaching me to play instead.”

Ben looks deeper into me with this powerful comfort that makes sharing easy.Almost too easy. It’s like he sees, understands, and will protect. I stop asking myself if he’s this way with everyone.

I just start believing it’s only for me.

“What was her name?” he asks.

I fight a tiny smile as he sinks beside me on the couch. “Sunny…I can’t remember her last name. I don’t think she ever mentioned it. For all I know, Sunny might’ve been a nickname too.” I chew the inside of my cheek. “She was in her late twenties, and she played in a local band that’d do small gigs around Pittsburgh. Ibeggedmy mom to take me to one of Sunny’s shows, but she always said no.”

He gives me a baffled look while he picks up a drumstick. “Your mom said no to that, but she let you hang out at a music store alone?”

I laugh at my tuna sandwich. “Yeah, she had her moments of being super strict, then times where she totally forgot about me. It was like she had selective amnesia and when she suddenly remembered she was a mom, she wanted to triple-down.” After another sip of lemonade, I put the glass on the coffee table. “It probably had to do with the divorce and wanting to prove to my dad that she was a better mom than he was a father.”

“Was your dad as strict?”

“Not really…but I only ever spent a few summers with him.”

Ben captures my gaze with a softness. “Divorced parents?”

“Yeah, I was only five when they split. He left Pittsburgh without really fighting to have more time with me. Then he remarried and had two more kids pretty quickly after that.”

A whole new family.

I only briefly mention my half-siblings Siggy and Chance. “I have a closer relationship with the pharmacist down the street than I have with them,” I explain. “And I’ve seen the lady at Valley Drugs a whopping single time just to pick up my birth control pills. But we’ve saidhito each other at least.”

I just so casually dropped being on birth control, but it’s not an indication that I’m sexually active. There are a handful of other reasons to take birth control. To help with cramps orPCOS, relieve endometriosis symptoms, prevention for ovarian cysts, clearing up acne. The list is long, really.

What’s weird is that I want him to ask me aboutmy reason.Why, Harriet?I force myself not to groan. My reason isbasic.

It’s to avoid pregnancy.

Why do I want him to know this?

Maybe I just like this feeling. Of being so comfortable with someone that these intimate questions aren’t off the table, but they’re freely given and taken with no judgment and no reservation.

Ben twirls the drumstick between his fingers. I feel him studying my reaction.Ask me about it. Ask me. Ask me. Don’t stop asking me things. Please.

“Do you still talk to Sunny?” Ben wonders.

It’s not the question I wanted, but I like this one all the same.

I shake my head once. “I went to the store one day, and she wasn’t there. I didn’t have her number, but the new manager said she moved to Sedona. Out west.” I frown. “I was fifteen, and I didn’t think she owed me an explanation. People move to new cities all the time. People don’t always stick around.” I think about my dad. “But it did suck…knowing she was gone and she wasn’t coming back.” I swallow the lump forming in my throat. “And I realized that maybe she meant more to me than I meant to her.”

His lips downturn. “Why do you say that?”