Page 101 of Shy Girls Can't Date Rockstars
I nod toward the stovetop. “We burn it.”
He stares at me. “Over the gas burner?”
“Over the gas burner.”
“Alice.”
“I know how it sounds.”
“It sounds insane.”
“My friend Jill and I used to do things like this. Like, if we were super nervous before entering an art show. She’d bring a candle, and we’d sit on her bedroom floor and write down everything that terrified us about putting our work out there.” I look at the notepad and tap the counter space beside it. “Then we’d burn the paper and watch it go. And somehow, after that, walking into the show felt easier.”
Ryder’s expression softens slightly. “Jill sounds like a character.”
“She was full of ideas like that.” I smile, but it’s the kind that aches a little around the edges. “Crystal healing, moon rituals, and writing letters to the universe.”
“Is she still doing all that with you now?”
The smile fades before I can catch it.
“Jill can’t handle death.” I say it quietly, looking down at the notepad. “She pulled away from me after my parents...” I don’t finish the sentence. “She just couldn’t help me anymore.”
Ryder’s jaw tightens. “I’m sorry about that.”
I nod, swallowing the tightness in my throat. Then I nudge the notepad toward him.
“But this might help.”
He looks at it for a long moment. Then, slowly, he uncrosses his arms and takes the pen from my hand. He stares at the blank page for a moment and then starts to write. Short, sharp strokes at first, like he’s just getting words down before he can talk himself out of it.
Then he stops, lowering the pen. “This is stupid.”
“Keep going.” I reach over and nudge the pen back toward his hand.
My fingers brush the back of his hand, and I feel a spark.
Neither of us moves.
But the air in the kitchen shifts, and when I look up, he’s already looking at me. It was barely anything. The lightest contact. But Ryder’s shoulders drop, and his tension quietly gives way.
He looks back down at the notepad and keeps writing.
I watch him without meaning to. The way his brow furrows slightly as the words come. The way his grip on the pen loosens the further down the page he gets. When he finally sets the pen down, he tears the sheet free and folds it once.
He holds it up. “Do you want to see it?”
I shake my head and move toward the stove. I turn one of the burners to low, and the blue flame catches with a soft click.
“It’s not for me,” I tell him. “It’s for you to release.”
He comes to stand beside me, folding the paper again and again, and pressing it into a small, tight square.
For a moment he just looks at the paper in his hand, and then he holds it over the flame.
The corner catches first. A small orange glow that creeps inward, curling the edges black. We watch it travel across the page, consuming his handwriting word by word until there’s nothing left to read. He loosens his fingers as the last of it goes, letting the final scrap of ash drift down toward the grate, and then he turns the burner off.
The smoke thins and disappears.
