My pencil scratched across the cream-colored paper of my notebook, words flowing from my mind through that sharpened piece of lead with an unsurprising ease. It was always like that when it came to her, when I let my mind retreat into the darkest corners of my memories where Dani lived. I rarely let myself do it, but I allowed myself that small reprieve when it felt like my head would burst with all the things I wouldn’t let myself say.

I did it with only two conditions. One: that it was always done in pencil. Something impermanent. A few angry strokes of the eraser and it would all be gone, banished in the way I could never get the ache in my heart to just disappear. And two: they would never, ever leave that paper. They’d never be recorded. They’d never be performed. It was my own personal catharsis that would never be shared.

I tugged a hand through my hair, the other still studiously copying down the lyrics to my most recent never-gonna-happen song. The Blackbird was a blur behind me, the rest of the customers at the bar and the bartender existing only in the periphery of my thoughts. It wasn’t until I’d written the last word that the world came back to me. Or maybe it was the opposite, that I came back to the world.

I blinked, looking around me, and started in surprise when I found Ben on the stool to my right, a small fizzy glass of something clear already sitting in front of him.

He blinked back at me. “Welcome back.”

I hastily shut my notebook, pressing a hand down on the worn black leather cover to keep it from curling back open. “Been here long?”

He shrugged. “Long enough.”

I ran my tongue over my lips, my mouth trying to work out what I wanted to say. Ben and I had been friends, bandmates for years, but we were sadly lacking one-on-one time. Normally my first call would have been to Felix, but times were a-changing. I knew that if I needed him he’d come at the drop of a hat, but there was something particularly grating about his sunny smile when I was wallowing in my own misery. Clearly if I needed to wallow—and I so, so did—then who better to wallow with than the man who walked around with his own personal rain cloud?

He picked his glass up and swirled it, the ice cubes clinking together in a delightfully musical way. “You wanna talk about it?” The corners of his eyes tightened, as did his mouth. I think the appropriate term for the expression was cringing, which coaxed a smile out of me. The last, and I do mean the last, thing Ben would ever want to do is talk about it. Especially when the possibility for reciprocation existed. Ben lived in ever-existing fear of someone making him do that exact thing—talking about it.

“I’ll make you a deal.” I leaned an elbow on the bar top, swinging my legs over to face him, my gaze coasting over the rest of the room. “I won’t talk about the thing I don’t want to talk about. You won’t talk about the same thing you never want to talk about yet are constantly thinking about. And we can each get blissfully lost in our drinks and talk about absolutely anything else.”

“You know there was an easier way to say that.” He scowled at me. “Just, ‘no.’”

I clapped my hand on his shoulder. “But, see, if we all talked like you, in as few words and syllables as possible, then we’d miss out on some really fantastic words. Like—” I gave my mind a quick search for some long ago stored SAT words, “—effervescent and verisimilitude and ignominy.” I held up a finger. “Plus, if I’d said ‘no’ then we’d just be sitting here. Staring sullenly at each other.”

He muttered something under his breath that involved a string of curses and the Lord’s name.

I spun around on my stool, my mood already lifting since I’d exorcised my mental demons and done a little bit of verbal sparring with Ben. “What’s with the service tonight?”

“New girl.” Another shrug. “Bonnie’s showing her the ropes.”

“New girl, huh?” I cocked an eyebrow, leaning forward to look down the length of the bar. Two figures stood shoulder-to-shoulder at the end, too far for me to pick out anything other than the fact that she was short and thin.

“Consider me amazed that you can still come here and not get drinks thrown in your face.” He rolled his eyes. “Or that you can get drinks that haven’t been tampered with.”

“C’mon, man. There’s never any ill will where I’m concerned because I’m honest. They all know that it’s a one night thing and they shouldn’t expect any more. Sometimes there are some repeat customers, but even then they know what the expectations are—sex, mind-blowing orgasms, the fun stuff.” My ass hit the stool and I sighed as my stomach growled. “Honestly, you should take a page out of my book. And no, I’m not just talking about the no-strings sex, though you could certainly use some of that.” I winked at him. “But I think you’d manage to dispel some of this whole doom and gloom attitude if you just laid it all out on the table with Rachel.”

He glowered—yes, fucking glowered—at me. “I thought we weren’t talking about it.”

The thing about Ben was that he was tragically hung up on our long-time friend, his brother’s best friend, Rachel. At least we thought that was the case. When it came to Rachel, Ben was even less talkative, which was to say that he didn’t talk about her at all.

I held up a finger. “Technically, I said you wouldn’t have to talk about what you didn’t want to talk about, not that I couldn’t talk about it to you.”

“You’re a little shit, you know that?”

My laugh was cut off by the long overdue appearance of Bonnie and her supposed trainee. “Sorry, Gav. What can we get for you tonight?”

And then for the second time in three weeks, it happened. Time stretched, my heart fell out of my chest and splatted onto the floor, and I forgot how to speak. Because Bonnie’s new sidekick just happened to be the thing I didn’t want to talk about.

Dani’s chin lifted, her shoulders inching almost imperceptibly higher. This time around I was able to take in a few more details—the thin silver ring that pierced her nose, the dark sweep of eyeliner that lined the top and bottom of her eyes, the sharp edges of her collarbone peeking out from underneath her black T-shirt.

I tried to force myself to breathe, to relax, to chill the hell out.

What actually happened was that I sucked in a breath, nearly choked on it, and managed to spit out, “Four Roses, neat.” I shook my head, instantly remembering that the shock of Dani mixed with a bender wasn’t the best combination. Been there, done that. “No, water.”

Bonnie stared at me like I was in the process of growing a third eye in the middle of my forehead. “I think you can handle this one, Dani. I’m gonna . . .” She hooked her thumb over her shoulder.

Dani’s tongue darted out, taking a sweep of her lower lip. And I could not have hated myself more for the way my gaze tracked it from left to right.

“Bottled or tap?”

“What?” The words made absolutely no sense to me. That after all this time that’s the first thing she’d say to me.

One eyebrow lifted. “I said, ‘bottled or tap?’”

My fingers tightened around the edge of the bar. “Bottled.”

“Hold on a second,” Ben chimed in, narrowing his eyes at us. His finger wagged back and forth while one of his rare smiles teased at his mouth. “Do you two know each other?”

Dani seemed to pause, like she was waiting for me to deny it, but in the end neither of us answered him.

As if to counteract my death grip on the bar, she drummed hers casually against it. “Sparkling or flat?”

“Flat.”

“You do, don’t you?” Ben’s chest shook with silent laughter. “I’d like to remind you that technically, technically, I’m not breaking the rules—”

“We don’t,” I said, my voice flat. “She’s no one.”

Dani turned around, water bottle in hand and set it in front of me. Her crystal clear blue eyes met mine and without an ounce of emotion she said, “That’ll be six dollars.”