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She made a noise that was something between a squeak and a squeal and hurried into his room. And froze.
He closed the door behind them and came around to her side.
The box of notebooks that he’d shown her on moving day sat on his bed with various pages opened and scattered on the comforter.
This wasn’t just a casual invitation to mess with music together. This was so much bigger. He was inviting herin.
That little hiccup her heart did sometimes turned into a staccato rhythm. Her throat tightened as she tried to swallow down the huge lump of emotion suddenly clogging it. She turned toward him and tried to keep her voice as even as possible. “Are you sure about this?”
His lids dropped slowly over his dark eyes as his gaze went from each of her eyes to her mouth and back again. No hint of hesitation or anxiety. His hands hung loose at his sides and his mouth tugged up on the corners. “Yeah.”
It was a word. Just one. But coming from Asa—a man who thought things through, considered multiple viewpoints and endings—it was all she needed.
CHAPTER TWENTY
INDIA INK
ASA
Nikki had been his best friend since he could cogitate. It was hard to remember when they had become friends because in his mind she was always there. He didn’t remember a time without Nikki. Even his oldest memories that didn’t include her, his mind put her somewhere in the background. He had more memories with her than his own family.
Or maybe Nikki was his family and always had been. They often joked about how they’d gotten separated at birth by some horrible accident and good thing they’d found their way back to one another.
Nikki had this amazing way of encouraging people to be themselves. She didn’t judge and she didn’t shame. She reveled in people’s uniqueness. The weirder the better. She was the only person he’d ever felt comfortable being himself around.
Until now.
He lay on his back on his bedroom floor staring up at the ceiling, his ankles crossed, his hands folded behind his head, listening to Zara hum and strum and scribble on the bed beside him.
“My goodness,” Zara murmured. “Your mind… You didn’t even use your best stuff for Winking Pete.”
“I wanted to save some of it back. Just in case.”
She peeked over the edge of the bed. “In case of what?”
“I don’t know,” he replied honestly then chuckled. “Something.”
She narrowed her eyes at him and then went back to whatever she had been working on.
For several hours every night for the past three nights, they’d been in his room going through his shit.
And he wasn’t freaking out about it.
If anything, he was completely at peace.
“Okay, what if this actually goes with this…” She wasn’t really talking to him. Mostly she was just thinking out loud while he enjoyed it.
She began to play the old acoustic and he closed his eyes. It was the song he’d been working on every night, the one she’d been listening to through the door. But she had a lighter touch than he did and it changed the sound of those steel strings.
He did an ab curl and sat up. Her eyes flicked to him but she didn’t stop playing. He grabbed the paper in front of her and scanned the words until he found what he was looking for.
Zara grinned. “And then you can shift it here.” Her fingers moved expertly over the frets, changing the key.
She hummed where words would be and he grabbed the pencil off the bed and started scribbling.
“Play that part again,” he said. She did and the words kept coming. He stopped writing and she went back to playing the original part of the melody.
“Please tell me you have that memorized,” he said, sitting back on his heels.
