Chapter 18: Not a Single Note

Micah walked me down four flights of stairs without letting go of my hand.

He didn't ask what he had overheard, and I didn't ask how much.

At the bottom he held the door with his shoulder.

"Come on," he said. "I have a key to somewhere that has a lamp."

The writing center was dark and smelled like paper and old coffee.

He turned on the lamp by the sagging couch, and the long narrow room went gold at one end.

"Sit," he said. "Not on the couch. The couch is a trap."

I sat in the wooden chair, and he stood in front of me, rubbing the back of his neck.

"I owe you a line," he said.

"You do."

"I wrote some. Nine drafts." He took a folded paper out of his flannel pocket. "Two of them were poems. Please forget the poems."

"Read me one."

"Not the poems."

"Read me the best one."

He unfolded the paper and looked at it for a long time.

Then he put it down on the table without reading it.

"Marlo Armitage," he said. "I would like to kiss you, and I have not got a single note."

I laughed so hard that my glasses slid down my nose.

He caught them before they fell, and he was still smiling when he set them on the table.

The smile went away slowly.

"That's the line?" I asked.

"That's the line."

"It's not a good line."

"No," he said. "It's just true."

I stood up.

I was close enough to see the small freckle under his left eye.

"You can kiss me," I said. "And you don't need a note."

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