Page 36 of Save Your Breath

Before long, we had almost finished the bottle of cider, the time creeping past midnight and into the early morning. New York City was still bright with life outside the windows, and even though I knew I needed to get some sleep, I didn’t want to. It felt like being a kid again, like Aleks had snuck down to my room after Mom and Dad went to sleep so I could tell him gossip and he could pretend not to care while we played Uno.

“That was pretty intense today,” Aleks said when he poured the last of the bottle into our glasses. “All the fans, the screaming, the flashes from the cameras.”

“Like you don’t get that, too.”

“I do,” he said, handing me my freshly topped-off glass. “But not like that.”

I shrugged. “It’s not too bad. I’m used to it, I guess.”

“Does it ever feel like too much?”

I frowned, considering. “Sometimes,” I mused. “But I asked for this, you know? I dreamed of it.Prayedfor it. This is what I’ve always wanted, and only a tiny fraction of musicians ever get to experience this. It’s a privilege.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to love every aspect of it,” Aleks pointed out. “No way in hell do you find itfunto have horrific names screamed at you from crazy fans.”

“I don’t love that part,” I admitted. “But did you see the happy fans? Did you see the ones crying because I took a picture with them, the ones who couldn’t speak as I signed their albums? Did you see the little girls all dressed up to see me?” I shook my head, heart filling with wonder over those statements just like it had the first time they happened. “That’swhat I focus on. That’s what I see more than the bad.”

I took a sip of my cider on another shrug.

“Honestly, what bothers me more than anything is the comparison trap in my own mind. The fans are wonderful. It’smewho beats myself up.”

Aleks frowned. “What do you mean?”

“It’s hard not to let things like that article from Garrett Orange get to me.”

“Fuck that guy.”

I smirked. “Yeah, but also… people listen to him. They respect his opinion. And that makes me wonder sometimes if all the shit he says about me is true, and I’m just surrounded by people who love me and are paid to build me up, so I don’t see it.”

“Your team would build you up even if you didn’t pay them. You don’t pay me or your parents, and we love your music.”

“They’re my parents,” I said, deadpan. “And you don’t listen to my music.”

“Yes, I do.”

I laughed, but when I looked at Aleks, his jaw was set, eyes serious as they held mine.

The laugh died in my throat.

“Mia, I’ve listened to every album you’ve ever released, front to back, at least a hundred times.”

I opened my mouth, but my throat was too dry to respond.

He listened to my music?

“I don’t know why that surprises you,” he said, reading my expression with a grin. “Like I wasn’t your test dummy for every song you wrote in high school.”

“Yeah, but that was different. You lived with me. I forced you to be my test dummy.”

Aleks threw back the last of his cider. “Well, now you know you didn’t have to do much forcing.”

Something about that made my stomach flip, and I smiled to myself, taking another sip of my cider. It felt so nice to be withhim again, to just sit together and talk. It’d been so long since we’d done this.

And the last time I’d tried…

I lifted my eyes from my glass to Aleks, thinking about the Fourth of July two years ago when we were at my parents’ house. I’d been with Austin then, and Aleks had been…

Not himself.