Weeks passed, and Ray didn’t come back. Like the true man he was, he still paid all the bills without a moment of hesitation. For me. Everything that man ever did was for me.

Each day that went by was more painful, and Mama was more aggressive and mean. She was obsessed with working me all day and night whenever I wasn’t at school. Seeing Elliott was out of the question, and the only time we were really able to talk was in the hallways before and after classes.

I was tired. I missed Elliott, I missed Ray, and I missed soul music.

At school one Monday afternoon, a knot formed in my gut as I walked past the office and saw Mama shaking hands with the principal. I hurried over just as she was walking out of the office.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“It’s good to see you too, Jasmine,” she replied dryly.

“What are you doing here?”

She glanced around the hallways. “I don’t understand why you were so desperate to go to public school. I hated school.”

“I love it here.”

“Yes, well, now you can say you’ve had the experience. We’re leaving tomorrow morning.”

“What?”

“Unlike Ray, Trevor set up some great opportunities for you over in Europe. He even booked the trip for us and found us a place to stay in London.”

“What?” My heart flew to my throat. “No…”

“Yes. It’s going to be great. We’re meeting with the best studio known to mankind over there. They are known for making superstars.”

“I’m not going.”

“Yes, you are. I just finished the paperwork with your principal.”

What? “How long have you known this was going to happen?” I asked her. “When did you know we were going to be moving?”

Mama rolled her eyes. “Stop being dramatic, Jasmine.”

“How long?”

“A few weeks, almost a month.”

My heart fractured. “You weren’t going to tell me, were you? Until tomorrow when we were boarding a plane? If I hadn’t run into you just now, you wouldn’t have told me we were leaving until it was actually happening.”

“What does it matter?” she asked, appearing confused by my anger. “It’s what we do—we move, we chase the dream.”

“I don’t want your stupid dream!” I cried, running away from her. I hurried down the spiral staircase toward the bathroom in the basement. I slammed my hands against the door and hurried inside, taking deep breaths. Pulling out my cell phone, I dialed Ray’s number, and a sigh of relief hit me when he answered.

“Snow? What’s up?” he asked. “Shouldn’t you be in school? What’s wrong?”

“She’s making us move,” I told him, swallowing hard. “She said we’re going to London to work with Trevor, and I don’t want to. I don’t want to go, and she’s trying to make me. Please, Ray, don’t let her take me. Please ask her to let us stay.”

“I was hoping it wasn’t true…”

“You knew?”

“Yeah. I just thought she wouldn’t go through with it. I’m so sorry, Snow White.”

Tears flooded my eyes as I shook my head back and forth. “I want to stay here. I want to stay with you. Just let me stay with you. Mama can go on her own for all I care. I want to stay here. This is the closest thing I’ve ever had to a home, and you’re the closest thing I have to a dad, Ray. Please, let me stay with you.”

There was a long pause. Each second that passed made me cry even more.

“There’s nothing I’d love more than that, Snow White.”

Yes…

“But…” he started.

No…

“At the end of the day, I don’t really have a say in that choice. I don’t get a say, because I’m not your father.”

I wondered if those words hurt him as much as they stung my soul.

I hung up the phone and left the bathroom. As I was walking the hallways, still on the verge of more tears, Elliott was standing up after being pushed around by Todd and his friends. Ever since Elliott had punched Todd, he’d been getting harassed more and more.

He never mentioned it to me, and whenever I brought it up, he’d say he was fine and change the subject.

“Jazz? What is it?” Elliott asked, walking over.

“I…I…” Tears started falling down my cheeks, and I shook my head. There were still three hours left of the school day, but I knew I couldn’t make it. I was too heartbroken to keep going to class that afternoon. “Run away with me?” I asked him. “Just for the rest of the day?”

“What’s wrong?” he asked again.

“Everything.”

He glanced down the hallway and then held his hand out. “Okay. Let’s go.”

* * *

I sniffled nonstop as Elliott and I sat on top of the closed dumpster in the alleyway of Frenchmen Street, listening to the music playing in the bars we weren’t allowed to step foot inside. We’d been there for hours, watching the sun start to fade into night.

“You’re really leaving?” Elliott asked, his voice low as he fiddled with his fingers. His round, thin-framed glasses sat on his face, hiding the hazel eyes I loved, and his lips were turned down.

I nodded, unable to stop looking at him, even though he couldn’t bring himself to turn my way. “Yes.”

We hardly knew each other, but we knew enough.

My year in New Orleans had come and gone too fast. Each hour felt like minutes, and each minute felt like seconds. Time—that was all we wanted. We both craved a little more time, and there was never enough of it.

We’d spent so much time behind those bars, listening to different types of music and making promises we couldn’t keep—promises of futures and dreams, of us keeping in touch, of forever.

We were only sixteen years old, but our hearts felt older whenever we were together. Before I met Elliott, I thought loneliness was a thing I’d always feel. Then he found me with his music and everything changed. If I’d had it my way, I would’ve stayed with him, but, as life taught me, sixteen-year-olds didn’t get to make those decisions.

We were simply supposed to follow wherever the adults led us.

“Where are you guys going this time?” he asked.

I hated the feeling in my gut. I hated how I felt so unimportant to Mama. I’d been homeschooled my whole life, and it wasn’t until Ray got the contract in New Orleans that I got a glimpse of what a true life could feel like…what it felt like to have a bed in the same place, to go to an actual school…what a best friend looked like, what home meant—and now I was losing it all.

“London. We’ll be over there for a while.”

He turned toward me, searching for a bit of hope in my eyes. “And then you’ll come back here?”

I frowned. We never went back.

I shrugged. “Maybe.”

He frowned too, because he didn’t believe me. “How much does it cost to call overseas?”

“Probably a lot.”

“This is good, though. It’s going to help your career.”

“I don’t want a career,” I told him, speaking honestly. “I just want to stay with you.”

“I want you to stay, but if it’s good for you, I want you to go.”

“Don’t make logical sense,” I stated softly. “I hate when you make logical sense.”

“Just think, if you make enough m-money, you can move back h-here and buy a big house with big trees, and you can sit on the porch drinking iced tea. Your own place… a home of your own…”

I sighed. “Yes.” I lowered my voice and looked down at my hands. “But I don’t want to leave you. You’re my only friend. And Ray is my only family.” The only family that cared, at least.

Elliott took note of how my body reacted, how my hands shook a bit, how my voice slightly cracked. He sat up straighter. “Do you think this will really help your career?”

“My mom does.”

He inched a bit closer to me and kicked his feet back and forth. “That’s not what I asked.”

“Yeah, I know.” I raced my hands through my thick, black hair that matched Mama’s. “But that’s all that matters.”

Elliott looked at me and smiled, though his eyes appeared so heavy and sad. “You want to run away with me tonight?”

Yes.

Please.

Anywhere.

Let’s go.

“I wish,” I whispered.

He turned away from me and went back to fiddling with his fingers. “Me too.”

“Will you tell your sister I said bye?”

“Of course.”

“Thank you.” For a few minutes, we sat on that dumpster, pretending our lives weren’t about to change forever. We sat and listened to the music blaring in The Jazz Lounge. We listened to the rhythm and blues over at Jo’s Catz. We smiled at the sound of the bluegrass at Mikey’s Tavern. For a few minutes, we lived in the moment.

“You’re my favorite person, Jazz,” Elliott told me in such a low voice, I wondered if I’d heard him right. I loved that he called me Jazz, because it was his favorite kind of music to play. Yes, Ray was a great musician, but no one could play a saxophone like Elliott could.

“You’re my favorite person, too. I’m going to miss your music.”

“I’m going to miss your voice.”

My lips parted to speak, but no words came. What else could I say?

It was crazy how much my heart hurt that night. I hadn’t known Elliott for long at all, only a few months that felt like forever. We were complete opposites in so many ways. I was the popular new girl, and he, the bullied shy boy. Where I was outgoing, he was tame. Where I was lost, he was the roadmap home.

And now, we had to say goodbye.

“Jazz?”

“Yes?”

“Make me a promise?”

“Okay.”

Elliott scooted closer and moved his hands to my cheeks, making me turn to face him. “If she ever makes you feel like you’re not yourself…” I closed my eyes at those words, and tears started to fall down my cheeks. Elliott’s thumbs wiped them away each time they fell as he kept talking. “If she ever hurts you and you need to run, run back here. Run back to me and I’ll take care of you forever. I’ll always take care of you, okay?”

“Okay, I promise.”

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a set of keys. He took one off his keychain and handed it to me. “This is a spare key to my family’s house. You should keep it.”

“Why?”

“In my family, whenever we go through good times or bad, we give each other a key. It stands for a reminder that you always have a place called home, no matter what. Plus, whenever you’re having a bad day, you can hold the key and remember that you aren’t alone, not really. It’s your st-strength on the hard days. It’s a reminder so you know you always have a home to come back to.”

I held the key tight in my fist. “Thank you, Eli.”

“Always, Jazz.”

We sat behind the bars that night until the music faded away. After the sounds were gone, we sat a bit longer, wanting to stay in the same place until the music grew loud the next day.

Then, when we ran out of time, we both stood up.

Elliott wrapped his arms around me, and I pressed myself against him.

He pulled away slightly and combed my hair behind my ears. Our eyes locked—his zoomed in on my brown eyes, and I studied his hazel stare. I loved his face. I loved every part of him, really, but my gosh did I love his face.

We didn’t say it, but we felt it that night.

Love.

He was so skinny and fragile, and I swore I weighed three times as much as him, but he loved me just as much as I loved him. He was all bones, and I was all meat. His skin was painted caramel, and mine was white as cream. We were polar opposites. We weren’t meant to fall for one another, but when we blended together, we were some kind of beautiful.

If it weren’t for Elliott, I would’ve always thought love was supposed to be jaded. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have ever learned what it meant to be young and free. All my life, I’d been caged, and Elliott opened my door and allowed me to fly.

“We’ll email each other,” he swore. “All the time, we’ll email each other.”

“Okay.”

“Jazz?”

“Yes, Eli?”

“I’m going to k-kiss you now?”

I snickered, a chill running down my spine. “Is that a question?”

He shook his head. “No.”

Tears rolled down my cheeks and I closed my eyes. “I’ve never been kissed.”

He raised an eyebrow. “But…”

I nodded. “I know. It turns out all the guys before you weren’t interested in kisses,” I said with shame in my voice.

“It’s okay,” he promised. “I’ve never been kissed either.”

I nodded, my stomach filled with nerves. “I hate that our first kiss is also going to be our last.”

“No. This won’t be the last time. The next time we see each other the first thing I’m going to do is kiss you for everything we missed. The next time I kiss you, it’s going to mean forever.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

And I felt his promise, too. I gasped lightly as his lips brushed against mine. He kissed me so gently, yet I felt it from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. It was sweet, and sad, and happy, and real.

So, so real.

So that’s what it’s supposed to feel like. That’s how my heart is supposed to beat.

This is love.

Even though I was leaving the next day, I believed I’d be okay. I’d be okay because Elliott had shown me what true love was meant to feel like and taste like, and nothing could ever steal that feeling away from me. Even when life got dark, that feeling would sit in the back of my mind.

Elliott Adams, his love, and his gentle kisses that promised me forever.