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“Yeah,” Asa agreed, rubbing the back of his neck.
“It’s a really good thing you hadn’t moved all your stuff downstairs,” she stated the obvious. “Or you’d have had more to deal with than powdered donuts.”
He shot her a look and she made a face. “Sorry. Too soon?”
He turned away, shaking his head. But not before she saw the lopsided smile.
She looked around the room again, trying to decide where she would be the most helpful. Outside of the guitars and amps, he didn’t have much. A couple milkcrates of vinyl, a tall dresser, two floor lamps, a couple framed posters, and a large stereo set up.
And whatever she couldn’t see in the closet.
“Is this it?” she asked.
“To get out of the house, yeah,” he said around a grunt as he took a box off the shelf in the closet. He set it down. “I have a couple boxes of stuff at my dad’s, but they can stay there.”
For some reason she’d expected way more. All of his stuff could fit into two trips in Cas’s SUV. Granted, he didn’t have a bed. But still.
“I live light,” Asa said by way of explanation. “When I was twelve, the basement flooded at my dad’s. I had just moved down there and had everything set up so cool.” He put his hands on his hips and smiled at the memory. “I had this enormous collection of Pokémon cards. I’d spent years building it and organizing it.” He took a breath and shook his head. “But then the water main broke. All ruined.”
Her heart pinched. The idea of Asa as a boy and losing something he cared about hit her in a place that felt familiar.
“That sucks,” she said, frowning hard to keep from having a different reaction.
He shrugged. “It’s just stuff.”
Well, sure. It was just stuff. But she remembered being that age, and sometimes your stuff felt like part of your identity.
“I still have more than I need.” He brought down another box and put it on top of the first. “Like, records. And guitars.” He chuckled to himself.
“You’ve always been a collector then, huh?” she asked, filling in a little more of what she knew about Asa.
“Yep.” He struggled to reach the last box on the top shelf. “I hold onto things others consider a waste of time.” He reached the box and pulled it down.
Something new washed over his face and she stepped closer.
He sighed and put the box on top of the others.
“What’s in that one?” she couldn’t help but ask.
His eyes flicked up to hers and back down.
For a minute, she thought he wasn’t going to tell her. But then he lifted the lid and she peered into the opening. It was packed full of notebooks and loose paper. All of it looked like it had been written in.
He put the lid back on. “Like I said, I hold onto things others consider a waste of time.”
“Are those…songs?” she asked, her eyes still on the closed lid.
He turned his back to her to reach inside the closet. His broad shoulders shrugged in answer to her question.
The box of notebooks was one of those banker boxes—white carboard with oval holes punched out for handles. But it was absolutely packed full.
Winking Pete had only released one album. An album she’d listened to so much in the past six months that she had it memorized. For some reason she’d thought there wasn’t more. The way he spoke about it in LA made it seem like there wasn’t anything else. Which was ridiculous. As a writer herself she knew there was always way more than what anyone else saw.
Her eyes darted between Asa’s still turned back and the box as she made an internal vow. She was going to get into that box eventually. Someday. She’d earn it. She’d convince him or bribe him or threaten him into letting her into that box of music.
“Can I start taking these out to the truck?” she asked, turning back to the guitars.
“Yeah,” he called over his shoulder.
