In Your Dreams (Falling #4) (8 page)

“Hey, hey, trolley, come on pick my brother up. Hey, hey dolly, how’d you like a buttercup?”

Lane laughs, and it’s deep and lengthy, and just the sound of it makes me smile, too. Murphy laughs with him, running one of her hands along the side of his face and cupping his cheek, her eyes raking over him with the most beautiful adoration. Something stabs me internally—I’m pretty sure it’s envy.

“I love your songs, Murphy,” he says, pulling the headphones loose from his ears.

“That’s not my song, Laney. It’s yours,” she says.

“Noooo,” he says, shy and bashful. Her hand still on his cheek, she tilts his head to look at her and nods
yes.

“Did you just make that up?” I ask.

She shrugs, and eventually her hands fall away from her brother. He pulls the headphones back on and goes back to bouncing on her bed.

“It’s part of a song I wrote for him when I was in high school. He had bad dreams,” she says, her eyes flitting to me briefly, then back to the carpet at her toes, which are circling in the threads, pushing them flat into shapes. I sit back down where I had before, on her floor, and try not to stare at her toes.

“What’s wrong with him?” I ask, scrunching one side of my face hearing how my question sounds. “I mean…I don’t mean that in the wrong way, I was just curious.”

“It’s okay,” she smiles quickly, her mouth falling into a soft line—a sweet one. Her lips are pink to match her toes. I swallow and look down at the carpet and begin pressing my hands into the fibers, to make shapes, too. I need to stay away from her lips and toes.

“Lane has Down’s,” she says, and I nod, because that’s what I had assumed. I just didn’t want to be wrong. “That’s why I stuck around the house after graduation. Well that, and I don’t really have a career path.”

I glance up at her just as she looks my direction with nervous laughter, and our eyes lock in a way that makes me feel it in my gut, for just a second. I look back down to the carpet.

“He’s only two years younger than me, but he’s still just a sophomore in high school, and there are just some things that are going to take him a while to get through,” she says, looking up at him with nothing but love in her eyes.

“He seems like a good brother,” I say.

“He is,” she breathes, relaxing her weight into where she sits and turning her eyes back toward me, more certain this time. “You have sisters?”

“Four,” I say, eyes wide. I roll up the right sleeve of the flannel I’m wearing and turn my arm over to the series of marks and scars on that arm. “They’re responsible for most of these,” I laugh, running a finger over the proof of stitches, glass cuts and a burn from the time my oldest sister, Christina, tried to convince me that letting hot oil dry on my skin proved I was a man. All it proves is that yeah, hot shit burns.

“Wow, they seem mean,” she says with one short laugh.

“Nah, I deserved almost everything I got,” I say, rolling my sleeve back down.

“Almost, huh?” she says, her head resting to the side.

“Yeah…almost,” I say, stopping short of unleashing the mountain of shit that is my family life and the disappointment duckling role that’s all mine.

Silence settles in quickly, and soon we’re both poking at the strands of her carpet again. I glance at her toes in my periphery, and it makes me laugh lightly that we’re both nervous now. I pat out the design I’ve been pressing into her floor and lean back on my hands, watching her brother live in bliss.

“What’s he listening to?” I ask.

“Oh, uhm…” she pulls her iPod into her hands and waves at him that it’s okay to keep listening. “Ratatat.”

She sets the device back down and smiles at me.

“
You
like Ratatat?” I ask, quirking a brow in disbelief. I was expecting maybe Ellie Goulding or Ingrid Michaelson—something more girly, I guess.

“I like everything,” she says, a freeing shake of her head. Her hands move to the twists on either side of her head, and she pulls out the pins holding them in place, her long hair falling in slow motion into glossy purple twists that she rustles out with her fingers. I am mesmerized, and when her gray eyes hit mine again, it feels like someone’s taken the paddles to my chest.

She’s in charge now.

“I’ll remember that,” I say, catching my bottom lip between my teeth. Her eyes flicker in question. “That you like everything.”

Her chest expands with a slow draw of air, and she holds it. I don’t look away before her this time. I work extra hard not to, because I suck at losing, and for a while here, I was. This may have just become about more than music. I might be all right with that. I’m sure it’s a bad idea, but I’m also sure I don’t care.

“I think it’s time,” she says, tapping her brother on the shoulder, eyes fluttering in fast blinks. Nerves—that’s her nerves.

“So what, I just…” I reach to pull the strip away, but she leaps forward, placing her slender hand on mine, stopping me—stopping everything in me. She’s touching me, and I’ve just ceased breathing.

“No, you’ll mess it up if you do it too fast…just…” she pauses with her eyes on mine. I work to be the last to look away again, to win the battle twice in a row. Her tongue makes a small pass along her bottom lip, and I watch it. Paddles to the chest. I lose.

“Let me do it,” she says.

“Okay,” I whisper.

I crawl up on my knees, and she does the same in front of me, placing cool hands along my face. I close my eyes, because I’m pretty sure I have to. When I open them, I catch her looking at my shut lids, moving her attention quickly to the strip on my nose and her other hand.

“Is it going to hurt?” I ask.

She breathes in slowly through her nose, eyes coming to mine once more before glancing away.

“Most certainly,” she whispers, her mouth serious, and her eyes lost somewhere between worried and maybe a little sad.

“Ready?” she asks. I shake my head
no
lightly against the touch of her hand, and our eyes meet. For a small second, I think we might be talking about something else—I think we might both be talking about the same thing.

Without warning, she begins to pull the strip away, and the tug burns a little. It also wakes me up and helps me focus—my sample, her music, the point of coming here. I need to remember that, but then, she’s done with the strip, and her hands have left my face feeling cold. Her touch is gone and I miss it.

I shake my head, rattled by feeling something other than ambition and drive. It’s not that I’m attracted to her. Of course, I’m attracted to her. I’m attracted to lots of girls. It’s that I’m
more
than attracted to her.

“Well? What’s the verdict?” I ask.

She steps over to her trashcan and pulls her original strip out and lays them both on the small desk near her window and calls her brother over.

“What do you think, Lane? Is his worse than mine?” she asks. I step up behind them, my heart beating hard, because now I’m not so sure I can lie my way into bending the rules, into sticking around longer than she’d like. Even though now I want to more, for even greedier reasons.

“His is gross,” Lane laughs. I laugh, too, but it’s fake. I’m gross…okay, fine…whatever. Does that mean I lose? Does that mean I don’t get time to feel that hand on my face again?

Music. I’m here for music.
I close my eyes as I stand behind them both and try to clear my head.

“Yeah, it is,” she agrees with her brother, sweeping the evidence into her palm before I can see. She throws them both away in the trashcan and thanks Lane, opening the door for him to leave. I’m panicked, because I now have to leave, and I haven’t accomplished a damn thing I set out to by coming here. If anything, I’ve only dug a bigger hole in my chest and made my craving for her that much larger. My hands stuff into my pockets, and I grip my phone.

“Mine was still worse, though,” she says, her voice light and unsteady.

“I swear you’ll like it. Please, just listen…wait…” I stop my begging. “I win?”

I’m all awkward and flustered, and I hate feeling this way. This chick is like my antidote, only the opposite of an antidote. I guess that makes her my poison. Shit.

“Give me the damn song, Casey,” she says, her mouth a hard line. I don’t question her, and I slap my phone into her palm, my eyes on her while she pushes her headphones into the jack on the bottom, pulling them around her ears. Her lip ticks up, and I catch her working to hide it under a different expression. But I catch it—it’s there. She wants to hear this song, and she’s playing me, too.

Let her play. I know she’ll love what she hears.

She holds my phone out for direction, and I swipe to the app and open the file—the one I love best. I can tell by the small flickers in her eyelids that it’s playing, and I can tell she’s reached the best part when her gaze moves up in short ticks to meet mine. The volume is loud—I did that on purpose. She can’t hear me, and she can’t hear the sounds she’s making. Her breathing changes, and it hitches when she gets to the best parts—my favorite a tiny break in her voice where I cut out everything in the background completely, just to leave her sound out there bare and vulnerable. If I hadn’t heard it a thousand times in editing, it would give me chills right now.

Damn, it still does.

Her bottom lip pulls loose from her teeth with a tiny puff of air, and her eyes sweep shut. I’m standing in front of her and I feel like I should touch her, hold her hand or dance or…I don’t know. I also feel a little voyeuristic—like I shouldn’t be watching. She’s listening to herself, but she’s also hearing me—the
real
me. She’s hearing what I’m capable of. The reason I found courage to tell my father
no
, the reason I let my family down to choose my own path, the reason I don’t care how much it disappoints them. This girl is the key to everything I want to do. She’s barely swaying in front of me, her eyes closed and my phone clutched in her palm, my dreams held right along with them.

“I know you like the song, Murphy. Please just trust me,” I whisper. I know she can’t hear me, but her eyes fly open and match mine. My fingers twitch, and I press my thumbs against each fingertip one at a time trying to work out the sensation.

A full minute passes, and I know the song is almost over as she moves her hand up to the cans of her headphones, cupping them and sliding them down against her neck. Her eyes blink slowly, her gaze off to the side, and her lips not giving away a damn thing. She’s an enigma.

She’s beautiful.

If my music had a physical form, I think it might just be her.

“This label, or studio, or whatever it is,” she says, eyes flashing to mine. She knows what it is. She’s pretending to be aloof. I’m going to let her.

“It’s both. John Maxwell—he’s both. He’s…he’s big,” I answer fast.

“And you work there?” she asks, her expression still unchanged.

“Yes, Murphy. I work there,” I answer, suppressing the inner voice adding that I’ve been there for three days, and so far have sat in on one very intimidating meeting and have pulled tapes and samples from old hard drives in a dirty basement.

“Okay,” she says.

I nod, not really sure what
okay
means. Okay, you can pitch my song, play my demo, make her famous? Or, okay, good for you for getting a job Casey, now get the fuck out of my house?

“When will you know?” she asks, her mouth moving slightly upward. It’s almost a smile. It’s enough of a smile.

“I’ll pitch it this week. And then we’ll just see,” I say, my heart beginning to pound on adrenaline.

“Alright,” she says, her voice breaking with a small giggle. That sound—it’s her getting excited. That’s her giving me a shot, her own hope on the line.

“Alright,” I repeat, my right side of my mouth leading my left one into a full cheek-aching grin.

“Oh my god,” she breathes out, bringing her hands to cup her mouth, my phone still held in them.

“You can call me Casey,” I say, causing her to roll her eyes. It also makes her relax, her shoulders falling back into place. I reach to her hand, and she gets stiff before realizing I’m reaching for my phone.

“Oh, yeah. Sorry,” she says, handing it to me.

“Don’t be. You’ve made my day, Murphy Sullivan,” I smile. Our eyes lock briefly, the awkward pause making her cheeks turn red. I can’t see myself, but I think I might be red, too.

“No pressure,” she giggles again, stepping closer to her door. I know I should leave. I’ve gotten what I came for, but now that I have it…

“Dinner,” I blurt as I reach her door. “I…I was planning on grabbing a bite when I left your house, if you’d like to come. We could talk about the song, oh…and I should probably get a better recording of the original to mix. We should meet in the studio, maybe tomorrow. Or at my place—I have equipment. That might be faster—”

“I’m not interested in you, Casey,” she cuts in, her rejection swift and harsh. I’m at a loss for words. The paddles are back on my chest, but this time it’s not for explosions and fireworks. This time, I think I just died. I’ve never really felt foolish before. My dad—he’s made me feel small; he’s made me feel scared, or like a screw-up. But right now—I feel like an idiot. “We’re just partnering on this song. That’s…that’s it,” she stammers out.

Her eyes flit from me and dance around the room. She swallows away about a thousand pounds of tension as she takes a nervous step back.

“Right,” I say, a slight shake to my head. The heat around my face is intense. “Uhm…I only meant business. I want to pitch the best quality recording, and I ripped that one from the YouTube video, so…”

“Right,” she blinks and laughs nervously. A minute ago, I thought her nervous laughter was cute, but right now—my chest still heavy with the brakes she put on me—I kinda resent it. “Recording is probably smart. Tomorrow is okay, after I’m done with class. Just tell me where,” she says.

I think she might feel bad. I’m pretty sure I feel worse, though. Maybe I was just taken with the song and her dream. Maybe that’s it. Maybe I didn’t really feel butterflies at all.

“What’s your number?” I ask, back to all business. I can’t look her in her eyes anymore. And I can’t really smile. I’m shit at faking it.