The Only Song (Only You)

38. Sadie

Chapter 38

Sadie

“ I can’t believe you dragged me here!” I shout over the loud club music. Except we’re not at a club. We’re at a house party. A certain fraternity’s house party that has my heart beating double the time of whatever EDM song plays through their speakers.

My fingers subconsciously tug at the edges of the same black dress Sloane insisted I wear. I think she thinks it’s good luck ever since I told her how Jaxon had slipped it off me that one night. But that night is one of many I tucked away in a vault, then threw away the key.

“It’s gonna be fun!” Sloane yells and even with my pained heart, my mood lightens a little. The Troubadour Orchestra has since ended its tour and the past two months have been the closest I’ve ever run away from all sense and responsibility. Even after my stellar solo performance in New York City, my parents still found a way to bring down my success enough that I bought a one-way ticket to LA instead of San Francisco and have been slumming it with Sloane ever since.

I step back to let a trio of girls slide past when my nostrils are hit with strong, raspberry perfume.

“I found the drinks!” Sloane shouts, immediately grasping my elbow like a mom making sure they don’t lose their child in Disneyland. She hauls me to a table stacked with red solo cups and about five rich-colored alcohol pitchers with edible glitter. It looks like a potions class meets a disco.

“No, no, no.” I try to pry myself from her grip, stepping away from the poison potion jars.

“Sadie! We are having fun tonight. I’m not putting up with your break-up PJs any longer. You’ve done your hair. Your make-up is fab. We’re here to have a good time. Want to try one of these unicorn glitter bombs?”

“Yeah, seriously, what are those?” I scrunch my nose. They smell good. The type of good where you don’t taste the alcohol, but you know you’ll be put out the next morning.

“I have no idea but please, can we have fun tonight?” She sticks out her bottom lip and I roll my eyes, ignoring her attempt at a puppy dog expression. Her cat eyeliner is giving the opposite effect with how sharp she drew it.

“Sloane,” I whine. “We’re, like, thirty. We don’t party like we did a decade ago.”

“Fine. More of this Barbie drink for me. But we agree, yes? Tonight will be fun?” she implores, eyes softening, and this time I know I owe it to her. She didn’t have to nurse my broken heart that I shattered myself the moment I stepped out from Jaxon’s rich New York City townhome. She didn’t have to fly to New York and stay that whole concert weekend where I performed a solo I thought I wanted, only to find the act so lonely. Because it wasn’t that I wanted a crowd to hear me, it’s because I wanted him . And he wasn’t there. Sloane didn’t have to make burnt pancakes every morning that we’d slather maple syrup over whilst a nineties sitcom played in the background. She didn’t have to coax me out from her spare room where I avoided my parents, avoided text messages and phone calls, avoided life and its responsibilities outside of the music teacher gig I found in a nearby school.

I reverted completely back to my old life and it could’ve been worse, if not for her. She kept me afloat, even when I felt like drowning.

“One.” I level her with a stare, but it softens into a smile at her glee. I turn and face the drinks table. “But I get to pick which glitter we shit.”

Sloane barks a laugh, then loops her arm in mine. “God, I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve been here the whole time. ”

“No. You’ve been sad Sadie. I miss this one, the fearless one.”

Without mercy for my aching heart, Jaxon’s words slip from its vault and into the forefront of my mind.

I admired you. I wanted to be like you. Fearless. Confident. Pain-free.

With a newfound vigor to lock the memory back up in its vault, I point to the magenta purple pitcher with swirling silver glitter. “What flavor do you think that one is?”

Sloane doesn’t answer.

When I turn to face her, her mouth is ajar, and she looks like she’s seen a ghost.

“What. What is it?” I ask, wondering now if the drinks really are a poisonous mistake.

“That can’t be right,” Sloane says. Her eyes, I realize, are on something behind me and I know now, it’s not a question of what, it’s who.

I track her gaze as three tall Omega Chi fraternity brothers march through the door.

My eyes snag only on one. The one with jet black hair, tan skin, and dark chocolate eyes.

Suddenly, I’m back in New York, wrapped in the smell of cedar wood and leather, sunlight warming my skin through the bay window as we tangle on his couch. I’m in LA, the moonlight filtering through my hair that curtains our faces, foreheads pressed together, smiling and laughing over the giddy feeling of not being able to keep our hands off each other. I’m in Chicago, twirling over an empty stage, electricity bouncing off our skin as we press closer and closer until our lips finally brush.

My breath leaves my lungs as heat unfurls at my core, up my chest, to my face. Everything in me feels as if it’s boiling and fizzing, like a shaken soda bottle as Jaxon’s eyes lock with mine.

“Sadie? Are you okay?” Sloane asks from beside me, but I hardly hear her over the pounding of my heart beating loudly in my eardrums.

Jaxon’s here.

Jaxon. Is. Here.

And for the first time in two months, I don’t feel empty.

For the first time in two months, I feel alive.