Page 71 of Hidden with a Rockstar
Lena looks up.
She looks up and she sees me, and she smiles.
I reach her.
Her hands come up instinctively, a question written in her body. I reach for her face—palms on her jaw, thumbs along her cheekbones, the same touch from the first night on the couch. The same answer to the same question.
Then I kiss her.
In front of everyone. In front of Riley. In front of both bands. In front of a room full of people who have no idea what they're witnessing.
The kiss is unhurried and deliberate.Her mouth opens under mine. Her hands come up to my waist. For a moment, there's only the two of us and the fact of being known.
Then the room processes what just happened.
CHAPTER 19
THE KISS
Riley Puth is shorter than I imagined.
This is not the thought I expected to have at this party, but here I am, standing three feet from the woman I've dedicated two years of analytical devotion to, and she is 5'10" in her Converse and her backward cap and her warm brown eyes, and she is looking at me with the kind of open, genuine curiosity that makes my brain go offline.
"You're the RileyPuthDrumsticks account," she says, and her voice is exactly the voice from the Instagram lives—warm, unhurried, the voice of someone who takes her time with everything. "Your breakdowns are amazing."
"Thank you. I—thank you." I have lost the ability to form sentences. "I mean. Yes. Thank you for?—"
"I loved what you said about the cross-sticking analysis, I felt so validated." She leans against the counter, and she's completely at ease, like this is the most natural thing in the world. "I showed it to my drum teacher. She said you caught things she missed."
"Really?"
"Yeah. I still take lessons. Every Tuesday. Your post about my left-hand ghost notes changed how I think about my grip. I've been working on it ever since. The control changed. The finesse. Everything." She's looking at me like I'm a real person, not just a handle on the internet. "I wanted to thank you for that. I've been meaning to find you at a show or something and say thank you."
"I—" I have no words.
"You okay?" Riley asks, and there's real concern in her voice now.
"Yeah. I just—you're Riley. Riley Puth. And you knew my analysis. You actually read it."
"Of course I read it. Why wouldn't I? You were seeing things in my playing that I was trying to do. Thank you so much." She steps closer. "Come here," she says, and she opens her arms, and she hugs me.
Riley Puth is hugging me. I am screaming in my head.
The hug is genuine and warm and she smells like clean laundry and my brain short-circuits with the complete, helpless joy. I laugh into her shoulder. I can feel my eyes getting wet. I hold on. My arms wrap around her ribs, and I can feel the definition of her shoulders, the solid reality of a woman who plays drums for a living.
"Thank you," I say into the hug. "For everything you do. For the way you play."
"Thank you for watching," she says.
She squeezes me once more and lets go, and I'm standing in Sandy and Erica's kitchen with a wet face and a racing heart and Riley Puth's hand on my shoulder.
I hug her one more time. Because who knows when I’ll be able to hug Riley Puth ever again.
She releases me with a grin. "I hope you keep posting. You're making the world better."
I nod. I can't trust my voice.
Over Riley’s shoulder I catch Jani watching us, watching Riley. And when Riley glances up and finds my sister across the room, something passes between them. Riley’s smile falters half a degree. Jani lifts her chin. Neither of them says a word, and I file it away as a mystery for another day, because the room is already going quiet, and it has nothing to do with me and Riley at all.
