Page 91 of Resonance
I laid my fork down and pushed my plate aside. I couldn’t read his expression. “I don’t know, maybe occasionally.”
“And this is the best-case scenario you’ve come up with?”
I shrugged and rubbed at a bit of dried egg on the table. “It’s one that rates positively in terms of outcomes.”
He stared at me. “Jesus, when you go down, you go down hard.”
“Yeah, pretty much.” I hadn’t had this kind of internal demon uprising in years, but boy they were raging right now. Fear, doubt, certainty that I’d been put together wrong, that there was an obvious reason my mom had left and my dad never got around to visiting. Why I’d drifted from job to job. Why I couldn’t get on a stage and play my songs. Why I’d never really had a real relationship. I was too much and not enough at the same time.
Dan leaned forward, resting his forearms over the table, palms splayed like he might vault the thing at any moment. “You confuse the shit out of me sometimes. What’s wrong with now?”
I tried to frown, but a lash of pain prevented it. “Now what?”
“Now,us. Now you and me? What’s wrong with you right now? Or shit, what’s wrong withme?”
My mouth dropped open. “I’m deadweight, Dan. I fuck things up. You can’t take a guy like me to the CMA’s or whatever. Watching the live show the other night… you were born for that. Y’all were so amazing up there. And I was looking through those notebooks and god, it’s insane. I had no idea there was so much unpublished stuff in there. It’s really fucking good, too. The lyrics—you and Ryder coulddosomething with that. “
Dan chuckled—not a happy chuckle, though, but a gritty, dark sound I didn’t like—then stood and stormed out of the kitchen. I didn’t even have time to ask what he was doing before he returned, carrying the stack of notebooks I’d set on his bed earlier. He disappeared into the pantry with them, then strode back out, a furrow so deep in his brow it might as well have been a trench.
“C’mon,” he said roughly, and opened the door that led out onto the back patio. I wavered with indecision and cautiousness, catching a glimpse of the container in his hand, before I stood and followed him out.
On the patio, Dan tore the cover from the top of the grill and tossed the notebooks on the grate. The noise of protest I made earned me a warning glance as he opened the white container of fluid and doused the covers before striking a match and tossing it on top.
Flames whooshed up, and Dan took a step back as they licked toward the sky. “Been meaning to do that for a while,” he muttered, then turned in my direction, stalking toward me slowly, fervor and intensity in his eyes. “Goddamn I want to shake you right now. But probably myself more.” He threw the empty carton aside and swiped his hand over the thigh of his jeans as he stopped in front of me, then gestured to the glow of the grill. “They’re just words, Owen. I can write a thousand more if I want to. They’re just old words on old pages that I kept too long. They’re not precious. They’re notanythingto me now.” He raked a hand roughly through his hair. “That life’s not for me anymore. It’s just not. None of it. Doesn’t fit right. You picking up what I’m putting down here?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” I shivered even though I was wearing sweatpants and the back of my neck was damp. Dan lifted my chin to meet his eyes.
“It’s not a one-way street. That’s not how this works. On the plane ride I kept thinking about when we went to Arkansas, and what you did for me, and how I didn’t really properly thank you and I should have.”
“It would’ve made everything awkward.”
“Maybe.” He shrugged, then shook his head, resting his hands on my shoulders. “I can’t love you if you won’t let me, Owen. So I need you to tell me if that’s something you want. If you want it as much as I do. If you’re willing to figure it out with me, because I’m rusty as shit at all this, too.”
I reached behind me, feeling for the chair I knew was nearby, and sat in it. My knees were rickety as a foal’s, and my heart clogged my throat as Dan dropped to a crouch in front of me, those big hands I was stupidly in love with closing gently over my knees.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I whispered. “It’s one thing to knock over someone’s coffee or a record display. Trip over my own feet and tongue. But it’s another to fuck up the only thing I truly give a shit about. I’ll mess it up just like I messed up your shop and your tour. I’ll messusup, or make a stupid mistake.”
Dan took my hands in his, thumbs sweeping slow, tender circles over my knuckles. “You won’t. Or maybe you will. But so will I. I already made one. Shit, more than one.”
I studied him skeptically. “What?”
“Not making you mine after Arkansas. Letting myself pretend I was good at casual with you and that I wasn’t getting all wrapped up in you. Letting you pretend the same.”
“But the shop… how can you not be mad that I… it’s wrecked.” I couldn’t even think about the mess I’d seen when I finally came to without welling up all over again. The broken displays and shattered glass. Dan’s beloved cardboard cutouts of music’s greatest icons rent to pieces. The disarray of record sleeves and CD cases covering the floor. Ru couldn’t understand me at first because I’d been sobbing so hard.
The molten brown warmth of Dan’s eyes gained a keen edge. “Like I clumsily tried to tell you the other night, there was only one thing in that goddamn shop that was precious to me.” A flush crept over his cheeks. It was the first time I’d ever seen him look self-conscious in all the time I’d known him. He cleared his throat, and the self-deprecating smile he gave me made my heart pound. “Rusty, see?” He turned his hand under mine and closed around my fingers, drawing them to his lips where he kissed them. “But true. You make me happy. Just you.”
It was simple, and not flowery, poetic, or at all lyrical, but the words burned through me anyway.Happy. I swallowed hard and tried to look away, but the tears tracked down my face regardless. No one had said anything like that to me in my entire life. No one had called me precious. I’d bounced from one place to another like a penny on a sidewalk, always feeling like an unwanted burden even if no one said it outright.
“I do…” I nodded rapidly as I swiped at my eyes. “I want you to love me. I want to be good for you.” I wanted it more than anything.
“I already do.” Dan cupped my face in his hands, and I closed my fingers around his wrists to keep them there as he leaned in to kiss me tenderly. “And you already are. Exactly as you were made. Exactly as you are.”
I clapped a hand over my mouth to muffle a sob, and Dan pulled me from the chair into his lap, plopping right down onto the cement. He held me close while I buried my face in his neck. His hand caressed the length of my spine, and it was both terrifying and overwhelmingly comforting to let myself collapse against him and be vulnerable.
“We’ve never even been on a real date before. I’ll be all awkward,” I mumbled.
Dan’s chest rumbled against me in a laugh. “Sure we have. We’ve been on plenty, just didn’t label ’em specifically. And you did fine.”