Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 112892 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112892 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
“Thanks. See you, Raymond.”
27
CODY
It took me quite a while to hear the pounding on my door. After telling Mia that I liked Beethoven, I’d put his seventh symphony, movement two, on repeat in my headphones. I liked how it kept building on itself, eventually becoming relentless, but beautiful.
Then the knocking.
As I pulled off my headphones, I half hoped it was Mia, but I couldn’t imagine her climbing an extra set of stairs for me in her current condition.
It was Aaron. “Hey,” he said.
“Hi.” I blinked at him, a little surprised. We were friends, but we usually met up in the common rooms of the house, not here. “What’s up?”
He stepped inside, scanning my room. It wasn’t a mess, exactly, just full. There was a keyboard on the bed. A guitar on the only spare chair. And sheet music on every flat surface.
I moved the guitar, and he sat. I returned to my desk which held another keyboard, two monitors, and a sound board and audio mixer. Then I waited.
“It’s about Mia,” he said at last.
“She okay?” I’d stopped by a few hours ago, and she’d seemed fine then.
“Yes.”
That was it, that was all he said. And I was supposed to be the silent one. “And?” I finally prodded.
“And, I saw the flowers you got her. I should’ve thought of that.”
It took me a moment to digest this. “So why didn’t you?”
“I don’t know.” He stared off into the corner of my room where there was nothing but an old metal music stand. “I… I’d hoped that after she went with me to my grandparent’s party, that things might…” He looked frustrated, with either the words not coming or at himself. Both were sentiments I could identify with. Finally, he looked at me. “I’d like to ask her out on a date, but when I saw those flowers… I thought maybe you and I might have a problem.”
He said it so dramatically that I had to bite back a grin. “Should we fight for her?”
“No,” he sounded shocked, and then seemed to realize that I was kidding. I gave him credit for that—most people had no fucking clue. “I just wondered what we should do about it. If you like her too.”
“We don’t do anything,” I said, side-stepping that last part. “It’s completely up to Mia.”
“I know that, but like… I figured we should talk.”
“And it’s going great so far.”
He shot me an annoyed look. “Could you not?”
I held up my hands in an apology. “Okay, but I still don’t know what you think we’re supposed to do about it. We each get a certain number of days to talk to her? We can take turns asking her out until she says yes to one of us?”
The glare looked out of place on Aaron’s usually serene face. “We all live together. This could become a problem.”
“Not for me.”
“Because you don’t like her or you just don’t give a shit?”
All right, he was clearly getting heated. And while I didn’t share his concerns, I didn’t want to antagonize him further. I didn’t have enough friends to be piss one off, though I seemed to do that frequently, anyway. “I hear you, but I don’t see how there’s anything for us to do. If you want to ask her out, go for it. If she wants to go out with you, she’ll say yes. Problem solved.”
“Don’t you want to ask her out, though? It shouldn’t be a matter of who asks first.”
“It’s not. She’s a big girl. She can make up her own mind.”
“Not if she doesn’t know there’s a choice.”
“Look, probably she thinks of us both as just friends. Hell, maybe she’s got a crush on Raymond. Talking about it doesn’t change anything.”
Aaron nodded, but he didn’t look happy about it. But he stood, clearly seeing that he wasn’t going to get what he needed from me. Most people came to that conclusion fairly quickly.
“I’ll let you get back to your music.” He vaguely gestured around my room which looked a bit like a used instrument store. “I’m going to talk to Diego about it. See you.”
“See you,” I echoed. I was absently staring at a spot on my carpet when he left, but then my brain kicked into gear. He was going to talk to Diego about this? Why the fuck would he do that? The dude wasn’t our dad or our brother. And I liked the guy overall, but he was smart in some ways and clueless in others.
I had a sinking feeling that this was going to fall into the latter category.
“There she is,” Diego said as Mia limped her way across the backyard, Aaron holding onto her arm like she was going to collapse at any minute. “How are you feeling?”
“Better,” she said, blinking in the sunlight. We all had jackets on, but otherwise, it was pleasant out here. She seemed to think so, too. “It’s nice to get some fresh air.”