A Love Song for Dreamers - Piper Lawson Page 0,2

from where it sat. A thick white bandage covers from mid-forearm to his hand. His pale fingers stick out the end.

I lean over him. “Hey, handsome. How’re you feeling?”

His eyes open half an inch, and his mouth moves a moment before producing a raspy sound. “Good as I look.”

A breath whooshes out of me to hear him speak, as if I thought I might not again. “Beck and Elle and Rae are here. And Zeke. Do you need something else for the pain?”

Tyler shakes his head. “I can’t feel my hand. It won’t move. I can’t…” His eyes close.

My gaze drags to his hand again. There’s no hint of a rusty red stain through the white gauze, but my stomach turns anyway.

I can’t imagine what he’s going through. Not only physically, but the shock and hearing the doctor relay any part of what he told us.

The idea of him not being able to pick up his guitar tomorrow, to do what he’s always done, washes over me in a wave of grief.

I want to hug him, or kiss him, or even cry. Instead, I force myself to be strong for him. For us.

“I’m glad you’re okay. You’re going to be okay,” I amend. I start to reach for his good hand, then see a spot of blood I missed on my wrist and tug Rae’s sweater down to hide it.

“Am I?”

He says it so quietly I almost miss it.

2

When my eyes crack open, the world is black and empty.

Maybe I’m not awake after all. Maybe I’m dead.

But as I turn my head, something cool and soft glides across my cheek. Satiny sheets. They’re over me and under me, and my head is cushioned by a fat, fluffy pillow.

The green numbers on the digital clock next to my bed read 11:51.

I’ve woken up plenty and not known where I was, but as the hotel room comes back to me, I realize I’ve done it two mornings in a row. The blackness from the heavy curtains doesn’t help.

My arm is numb. It’s an improvement over the first time I woke up this morning, when it felt as if each muscle was being peeled from my fingers to my elbow.

Once when I was a kid, a brick from a construction site my friends and I were screwing around at fell on my hand from a stack a few feet high.

I couldn’t feel my fingers for a couple hours. It sucked.

I’d give anything for that feeling now. What I have instead alternates between pain and numbness. Hell’s see-saw.

I shift out of bed, the rest of my muscles aching. I can’t shower because of the bandages, but I drag my body to the en-suite bathroom to take a bath.

When the doctor told me what happened two nights ago, the mess of painkillers kept me in a dizzy state of denial.

Lacerations. Severed tendons. Long-term damage.

All of it means I can’t play guitar.

The emotions blur together like the sensations. There’s panic, clawing at my throat. Disbelief, hammering in my head. And underneath it all, a grief I can’t look at too closely yet because it means something I’m not ready to accept...

That no matter how long I sleep, in no world will I wake up and have everything be okay.

When I get out of the bath, I go to the drawer of clothes Beck brought over yesterday from our apartment. I grab boxer briefs and sweatpants and tug them on before heading out to the living room of the hotel suite. The smell of coffee is a small mercy, as is the shape of the girl in the kitchenette.

“You’re back,” I croak.

Annie turns and smiles, and the awful knot in my chest loosens a bit. “I went to class and picked up some supplies. Saw the nurse was here to change your bandage while I was gone.”

I glance toward the table where a note the nurse left says just that. Without asking, Zeke hired her to check on me once a day in the hotel room he insisted on paying for “as long as I need.”

The fact that he’s keeping such a close eye is unsettling, but calling Zeke to demand why he’s still treating me like an investment given how far my stock has plummeted in the last two days feels low on my priority list.

Annie looks at home in tight jeans and bare feet, a sweater zipped up over her tank top because I cranked the air conditioning. Her hair is twisted up in a