Sunkissed by Kasie West (popular e readers .txt) 📕

Lauren asked. “Why do you have that goofy smile on your face?”

“Do I?” I let it drop off. Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough.

As we made our way back toward the cabin, I looked over at Lauren. “Hey, you and Kai—”

“Gah. Avery, seriously, you’re going to go on about this again?”

“No, I’m not.” Because I’d just promised Maricela I wouldn’t tell anyone. “I just worry about you.”

“Well, stop. It’s annoying.”

I wished it were that easy.

“Nobody is in there,” D said the next night as I walked toward the theater a little after nine. The day had dragged on, but it had been just as easy as I’d hoped to leave the cabin—my parents had been in their room, and Lauren had crashed after a day in the sun.

I could’ve sworn D’s shift ended at nine. I thought that was half the reason for the time Brooks had chosen.

I turned. “Oh. I know. I think I left something in there the other night.”

“What?”

“I think I left something,” I repeated.

“No, I mean, what did you leave?”

I was a crappy liar. “My hair clip.”

She lowered her eyebrows.

“It’s my favorite.”

“Okay, good luck.”

“Thanks.” I opened the door to the theater and the room was dark. No stage lights, like there usually were. I held the door open with my foot and turned on my phone flashlight. Behind me, D stacked a few piles of papers together and said a few words to the night-shift person. As she rounded the desk for the exit, she caught my eye. I moved my foot, letting the door close between us.

“Hello?” I whispered, shining my light ahead. It only lit a ten-foot area around me. “Brooks?” Where was he?

With my hands stretched in front of me, I made it to the edge of the stage and felt my way along it to the stairs. Off to the side, I saw a tiny sliver of light from a small gap between two curtains.

Once backstage, the light led me to a room down a short hall. The door was cracked open and I poked my head around it to see Brooks sitting on an old couch, his guitar in his lap. I let out a sigh of relief.

He looked up with the noise.

“Was this my first test?” I asked.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to hide. I just saw D hadn’t left, so I made sure she saw me walk out the front. Then I came in through the back.”

I stepped all the way inside and pulled the door shut behind me.

“Is your sister coming? I wasn’t sure.”

I cringed. “I didn’t tell her yet. I don’t need my failures posted online.”

He flashed me a smile. “Such positive thinking.”

I walked the perimeter of the room, letting my hand run over the stacks of boxes that lined the walls. One of the boxes was open, revealing piles of colorful T-shirts.

I wanted to think positive, to know that I could do this, but I was struggling. “Where do you find your confidence?”

He held up his hand and circled it over his chest. “Somewhere under all this BS.”

I let my eyes travel the length of him. “That’s a lot to wade through.”

He gave a single laugh. “It really is.”

“So, seriously? You’re not going to tell me your ways?”

He tilted his head. “You just have to stop caring.”

“About what?”

“About what anyone thinks about your performance.”

I finished my lap around the room, then lowered myself next to him on the couch. It was threadbare and smelled of dust. “So you don’t care what anyone thinks about your music?”

“No.”

“What about your mom? Do you care what she thinks?”

“She doesn’t really listen to my music, so no.”

“Your brother?”

“No.”

“Your teachers? Or the girl you like, what about her?”

“What about her?” he asked.

I looked down, then back at him. “You don’t care what she thinks?”

He gave me a slow smile. “If she likes me back, she probably doesn’t do a lot of thinking.”

“It really is a miracle you can get through all that BS,” I said, circling my hand close to his chest like he’d done earlier.

He grabbed hold of my wrist and directed my hand back to me until it covered my heart. “Try this. Repeat after me.” He raised his eyebrows and I nodded. “You’re fun, brave, and hot.”

“You’re fun, brave, and hot.”

He dropped my wrist and rolled his head. “No, you were supposed to say I.”

“You said repeat after you.”

“You’re right, I did. Well, in that case, thank you.”

I whacked his arm. “You’re such a punk.”

He picked up his guitar again. “Now that we don’t have a full band, I’m going to play acoustic instead of electric.”

“Okay,” I said.

He strummed a chord. “You ready to try?”

I smiled. “No.”

“But you’re going to do it anyway?”

“Yes,” I said. “Because you’re fun, brave, and hot.”

He barked out a laugh. “And don’t forget it.”

“You have the lyrics? I want to make sure I remember them right.”

He reached over and pulled the loose pages out of his guitar case and handed them to me.

“Okay, count me in because I don’t know my cue yet.”

He strummed several chords, then said, “One, two, go.”

I opened my mouth and then shut it. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. Again.”

I grabbed hold of the edge of the cushion on either side of my legs with both hands. And when he counted me in this time, I sang. I sang while staring hard at the lyrics, so hard that my eyes started to water. But I was doing it and it didn’t feel foreign at all. It felt like something I did. Because my sister was right. I sang in the shower and with my AirPods in and while I did homework. It wasn’t perfect—I stuttered and went off-key a couple times—but I made it through the whole song. I didn’t look up from the pages of lyrics for three long beats, and finally, I raised my eyes to his.

He was staring at me, his unreadable expression back. “You can sing,” he said with a