What do you do after the best and worst day of your life?

Apparently, you listen to everyone in your life nag you with eighteen different iterations of “What did the label scout say again?” and then you go to work.

One single shift and a double. Sixteen hours straight in the studio to nail four songs. Two skipped classes you don’t mention to your mother. Several hundred ignominiously borrowed dollars from your father to pay for said studio time. Add all that to putting up with a lifetime’s worth of muttering about how the only song specifically requested was the only one that didn’t include his voice, and maybe it’s understandable if you end the weekend by attempting to strangle your lead singer with a dish towel.

When the record label calls to set a meeting after only two days, it’s worth it. Everything is worth it, and I hate that even in the midst of the best news I’ve ever had, I can’t stop thinking about Jacob. Most nights, I stay up writing songs with Danny just so I won’t have to go home and face the darkness of my own windows.

By Friday, I’m so exhausted I don’t even remember going to sleep. One minute, I’m going cross-eyed trying to concentrate on my homework while I count down the seconds until our meeting with Amp Records, and the next I wake up with freezing legs and pain bulleting through my back. An abandoned textbook and an afghan cover my chest, the bottom of the blanket kicked onto the floor.

I stretch my neck, wincing at the kink it always gets from sleeping on the tiny couch, with its armrest that's just a couple of inches too tall for comfort. Afternoon light streams through the shades on my brand-new window, but if a sound woke me up, I hear no trace of it now.

I lift my textbook and peek at the page number to check how far I got. Not far enough. Groaning, I drop the book back down and rub my eyes. I have a deathly feeling there will be a quiz on these chapters tomorrow. I'll just lie here for another minute and then I'll take a shower and get ready for the meeting. I pull the blanket back up over my legs. Granna’s old afghan has a comforting weight to it, all the yards of yarn cuddled around my body. I don't even realize I've started to doze again until a shuffling sound outside the door rouses me.

Who would be out there so close to the door without ringing the bell?

My heart lurches and I’m suddenly fully awake. Every day since the concert, Jacob has left something on my porch. The first morning, he returned my phone, hiding it under my newspaper so no one would steal it. He erased Andy’s ancient voicemail and left a new one in its place. I stared at Jacob’s name gleaming on my screen, every letter curved, gentle with no sharp edges, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that if I listened to his voice, I’d crumble. I’d go chasing after him and pretty soon, I’d be ditching band practice to work on cars, spending Friday nights with his old baseball teammates instead of Jax and Danny.

The best way to keep from losing myself again is to keep from trying altogether.

I just wish he’d stop tempting me. The second day after the concert, he left me another voicemail, two text messages, and knee socks with drums all over them. The third day, soup.

Gluten-free lentil soup.

It was the only item in Jacob’s grocery cart when he was pretending to shop so he’d have an excuse to run into me. I tried not to read too much into that but really, what else could it have meant? It’s not like he’s concerned about me needing a low-carb, high-protein diet.

Except what kind of guy would realize the symbolism of something like that, and even if he did, how could he have known I took note of what was in his basket before he put it back?

Something scratches from outside, then something almost...crunchy. What the hell is Jacob doing? Is he waiting out there?

I rub my eyes, grimacing. “Yeah right, Jera. One kiss and he’s camping on your doorstep, for sure.”

Obviously, I need some caffeine to help rein in my fantasies. Still, I'm not imagining the sounds from outside. They are distinct, and distinctly bizarre.

I toss away the one corner of the afghan that still covers me and retrieve the textbook that dropped between the cushions, marking my place before I lay it on the floor. Combing my fingers through the tangles in my hair, I pad over to the door and squint through the peephole.

Nothing.

I lean my forehead against the cool wood of the front door. There’s no way it’s anyone but Jacob, even though it’s way past newspaper-delivering time. I texted him once, to say thanks for bringing back my phone, and sorry, for everything. I don’t dare do more, because I don’t want to lead him on and I already proved I’m not capable of being just friends. But it’s only been a week, and every part of my body is sore from the effort of not responding. From pretending it will stop hurting as soon as he stops trying. As far as he knows, he’s making no progress. But when I’m up late, my willpower melts with the stroke of midnight and I end up typing his name into Google. 

He is, possibly, the only student enrolled at Portland University who doesn’t have a Facebook page or Twitter account, and I still haven’t located the pictures of him drunkenly playing soccer on top of the Earth Sciences building. Mostly, the world has taken notice of him through the sports section. I’ve read the articles about different baseball games so many times that I know his stats by heart, even though I still haven’t worked up the motivation to Wiki my way into decoding them. I know enough to understand he could have had a career in the major leagues without even a passing glance into a college classroom. There are articles about his parents’ car accident but that feels too morbid, so I haven’t opened those.

A scrabbling noise from outside yanks my head up. That sounded like claws.

I undo the lock and open the door. Something disappears into the bushes with a flash of movement but I don’t catch what it is, because my attention is too focused on the...thing...on the porch.

Next to my newspaper is something white and chunky, with smears of darker liquid clumped into the wreckage. I edge a little closer, squinting at the white stuff. Some of it is melting and yes...okay, that's ice, but what is the rest of this junk? Against my better judgment, I pinch a little between my fingers and it crumples easily. Styrofoam.

I drop my hand, mystified as I stare at the wash of destroyed Styrofoam and ice stretching across my concrete stoop and down both steps.

Then I notice a slice of chocolate-covered almond in the midst of the melting goo. The pieces start to make sense all at once, and a smile breaks across my face. 

Jacob told me he was going to make it up to me about the ice cream that liquefied in my trunk while we were in that coffee shop. I refroze it and we tried to eat it when he brought his record collection over but it was pretty gross and we made do with M&Ms instead. He must have decided to follow through on his promise. He bought a foam cooler, filled it with ice, and nestled a half gallon of mocha almond fudge in the center.

I start to laugh. Somebody forgot to tell dear Jacob that in this neighborhood, we have raccoons. And they happen to be quite fond of grand gestures that involve mocha, almond, or fudge.

Still grinning, I go to get the trash can from the kitchen. When I get back, I find most of the carton in the bushes with the edges nibbled and a lot of ice cream still left inside. I pick it up gingerly, wondering if you can get any diseases from touching raccoon-licked cardboard.

A glimpse of pale yellow catches my eye as I go to drop the ice cream into the trash. I pause, setting down the trash can so I can turn the carton in my hands. The yellow is a miraculously undamaged Post-It note, stained with flowerbed dirt and drips of melted ice cream. In cramped boy-handwriting and blue ink it says: Ice cream for your thoughts? There’s more where this came from if you’re willing to make the trade.

I stand there with the gnawed carton of ice cream, my slept-on hair standing up in at least three of the cardinal directions, and yesterday’s poorly-fitted shirt starting to slip sideways on my shoulder. And I have never felt more wanted in all my life.

He came to my concert. Not only that, he understood my music. My thumb traces his note, as if I can feel him through the lines of his handwriting. I lean against the doorframe and exhale.

God, what am I supposed to do? I’d be a thousand times safer with some tattooed bad boy than I am with a sweet, thoughtful guy like Jacob, because he makes me want to try again, and I don’t think I can survive any more failures when it comes to men. 

Swallowing against the lump in my throat, I take the garbage with me when I retreat inside. I need to take a shower and get to this record label meeting, because I think music might be the last safe thing left for me to care about.