I lie to myself.

Actually, I lie to everyone.

I just have no interest in trying to sort out my feelings when my head needs to be focused on the farm. Dad insists that I shouldn’t worry—that he and mom will figure it out—but it’s a family problem, and family sticks together.

That’s what I repeat to myself every time my brain takes me back to Tess. I tell myself I’m too busy to text her, which is ridiculous. Even in between chores and family meetings to figure out what we can sell, I have a solid ten minutes to send her a simple hello.

But I don’t, because I’m too late.

I knew that Ian being around would change everything. The whole town is going crazy over him and the rest of the guys, and it’s annoying. Everywhere you go it’s about Relentless. There’s posters, people talking, songs playing from the store radios.

And now he has the one thing I want.

Which probably makes me selfish, because I didn’t always want that. Want her. When I did realize it, it wasn’t worth anything. I made my choices, made my own bed. I had to deal with that, lay in it.

I saw this coming from a mile away—not my delayed realization, but her moving on. Everybody told me it would happen, but why should I care? I thought I didn’t. That I wouldn’t.

If you don’t somebody else will, Ian once told me.

Guess he thought he was the guy for the job after all.

Tess has always loved the music Relentless plays, even when they just did covers during their first few practices. Journey came on? Tess would sing along. Def Leppard? Don’t even get me started.

I swear, Ian would choose to play “Pour Some Sugar on Me” just to see the inner stripper come out of her.

Her parent’s house isn’t that far away from his, so band practice could easily be seen and heard from her bedroom window. Even when Ian and I were friends, she wouldn’t go over right away. She always felt like she was invading on our guy time.

What she didn’t know, what I should have told her, was that I wanted her there. Every. Single. Time. But life is full of should-have and what-if moments.

Next thing you know, you’re screwing yourself over and watching your ex best guy friend kissing your current best friend through the diner window.

Life has a way of kicking a guy when he’s down—a strike right to the balls. And as if that’s not bad enough, it makes you repeat the damn image in your head like a broken record.

Torture. It’s pure torture.

I stare at the cat-shaped chocolate sitting on my desk, my death glare trying to melt it. I found it at the dollar store, and instantly knew I needed to buy it for Tess.

I mean, if there’s something she loves just as much as cats, it’s chocolate. The combination is purrfect. (Jesus, now I’m starting to think like her.)

I debate on taking it back, getting back my whole two dollars and sixteen cents. It’s pocket change, no big money spent, but it’s a reminder of something that I let slip through my fingers.

Again.

It takes me back to the first time I was going to tell her about how I felt. Maybe it was the sappy chick flick she made me watch with her not long before, but I decided to tell her that I liked her and risk it. I prepared a speech that was way cheesier than I’d like to admit, and memorized every word.

But I was still with Sheri.

That made me a prick, I know. How could I be prepared to admit my feelings for one girl when I was dating another? I planned on breaking it off with Sheri, and she knew it.

For months, she’d been on my case about how I felt about Tess. Accusing me of using her as a distraction to get my mind off my best friend. She wasn’t entirely right, but she wasn’t wrong either.

I did like Sheri … at first. Even admitted it to Tessa not long before I gathered the nerve to ask Sheri out. I think it was the redhead appeal, and the fact she had double Ds.

I know, I know. But I’m a dude.

Either way, Tess knew that I liked Sheri. And, in my mind, there was no way Tess could possibly like me back. Hell, she encouraged me to go out with Sheri. Which seemed like a pretty good indication that she thought of me only as a friend.

Even before Sheri, when I voiced interest in Amanda. A girl who was in her grade, somebody I shared a study hall with. That never went anywhere, just like Tess told me it wouldn’t. At first, I thought she just didn’t want me asking her out. Turned out Amanda only dated girls.

So, yeah, my chances were in the negatives there.

It was quick that I learned Sheri was suffocating. The first few dates went well. The first month or two seemed decent, freeing. I had a girlfriend, somebody who didn’t talk about movies or food nonstop like a certain brown-haired girl I know.

It didn’t take long to realize that my interest in Sheri didn’t go much past her looks. Again, a dick admission. But a true one.

She was obsessed with her image. How much money she spent on herself, the clothes she bought. She only ate healthy food, and whenever I tried getting her to split a king size candy bar, something Tess and I would always do, she would tell me that she couldn’t eat the calories.

Yeah, she counted calories.

Soon enough, I figured out that our compatibility was practically nonexistent. Everything I wanted to do she seemed to criticize, and not even in a playful way.

I was going to break up with her.

But then it happened.

The bane of all eighteen (almost nineteen) year old’s existence.

She offered me sex.

And, like a total asshole, I took it.

So, yeah, the breakup was on hold. How could I end it with somebody I slept with? I mean, it wasn’t like it was her first time. But it was mine. And it made me feel less guilty to pretend like I was still interested than to end it the day after we hooked up.

I thought I was doing the right thing.

Once again, I was wrong.

Sheri and I started fighting more than usual, and Tess became the popular topic. The night we went to Dylan’s graduation party was the night that I couldn’t take it anymore. I guess she couldn’t either.

“You have to pick,” she informs me, putting her hands on her hips.

I know what’s coming next. An ultimatum.

Her or Tessa.

And she should know the answer by now.

It’s not her.

It will never be her.

I was going to finally tell Tessa the truth. Sheri pulled me away from her as soon as we got to the party, and kept me at a distance. She knew what was coming just as much as I did.

We were never meant for each other. But neither one of us wanted to admit it.

Not right away.

So when I ended it—well, technically she did, with very colorful words and hand gestures—I went to find Tessa in the crowded house. It took me about twenty minutes before I spotted her.

Then I spotted Ian, whose hand was in Tessa’s, pulling her toward the basement door.

My mouth went dry. My fists clenched.

But did I stop them? No.

Because, for all I knew, that’s what Tessa wanted. Why should I stop her from being happy? She let me be happy with Sheri. Well, as happy as I could be.

I left as soon as the basement door closed behind them, because I had no interest in finding out what happened next.

So, yeah, my luck with Tess is about the same luck that my three-legged childhood dog had. And he was hit by a truck.

Picking up my notebook from my nightstand, I open it to a blank page.

The rest of them have pointless scribbles of lyrics that don’t make any sense. Lyrics that are forced from lack of inspiration—ones with no meaning or emotion behind the words. Most of them are crossed out or reorganized to make a decent verse, but nothing ever works.

I think about the song I played at Marty’s; the song Tessa teared up over, the one that was all instrumental. She texted me about finishing it, writing lyrics for it. I can tell that it means something to her, which is enough for me to find the drive to put my pencil to paper.

I glance at my Gibson guitar that Marty insisted I bring back with me. It’s resting against the side of my dresser, beckoning me to hold it. Play it. Create something.

So that’s exactly what I do, with Tessa’s face the only thing I can see in my mind.

Resting the notebook on my knee, I drape my guitar across my lap. I close my eyes, the lyrics filling the space Tess occupies. I can feel the beat, feel the music. I strum the cords, the jarring tone filling my small room.

When the storm is waging,

Deep in her heart

When the fear is raging,

And the damage scars

When the days turn to nights,

And she cries in her sleep

When her smiles are tight,

Yet she still takes a leap

That’s the girl I know,

That pain will always show, yeah

She tries to stay okay,

But it’ll never change

That’s the fight I see,

When her eyes are always beaming,

She fights against the world,

But there is no stronger girl.

When the fire’s dimming,

And her love is low,

Her eyes are swimming,

In the afterglow

When she thinks she’s losing,

But her mind is strong

She is always choosing,

Just to prove them wrong.

That’s the girl I know,

That pain will always show, yeah

She tries to stay okay,

But it’ll never change

That’s the fight I see,

When her eyes are always beaming,

She fights against the world,

But there is no stronger girl.

I stare down at the lyrics, smiling to myself like I just created the next biggest formula since the Pythagorean theorem.

But maybe, just maybe, this will be the formula that mends her.

That fixes us.