Somewhere in the Middle

Her Meaning

Jamie didn't want to stare at her, but he couldn't help it. He had the perfect vantage point from stage, and with no one to fill up the vast amount of floor before it, all he could see was her.

The way she curled her hair behind her ear as she crouched down to open a box. The way that hair sprung forward again when she stood, and she barely seemed to notice. The way she looked from behind while she was pinning t-shirts to the cork board—her back rippling beneath her thin shirt, the lines of her legs strengthening to support her as she leaned this way and that, her perfectly round...

"J," a voice called, "where are you, man?"

Greg. Jamie turned around, embarrassed to think that he had been caught, hopeful that he hadn't been. He met Greg's eye from where he sat behind his drum kit.

"Are you listening?" Greg asked, and Jamie felt the burn of embarrassment blaze brighter because he felt Travis and Luke's confused gaze on him as well. Travis was one thing, but Luke...

"Sorry, zoned out for a sec," Jamie said, which he hoped would be believable considering just how exhausted they all were. "What'd you say?"

Greg rolled his eyes a little, but explained, "We're gonna start with From Before, so you're gonna need your acoustic."

Jamie had forgotten he was holding his electric.

"Oh," Jamie said, sweat prickling at his brow as he lifted his guitar up and over his head. "Yeah. Right. Okay."

He didn't mean to, but he caught Luke's eye on the way to his guitar stands, and looked away almost immediately. Still, it was long enough—and there was no question there was confusion as well as what could've been suspicion in Luke's eyes. Or maybe Jamie was just being paranoid.

He still couldn't believe he'd told her—that he'd even said the words aloud. He'd known for a while that he was in love, but he'd never admitted it, even to himself. And then she was standing there, looking angry and hurt by the sight of him with another woman—a woman who hadn't mattered in the slightest—and he'd said it. He'd said it because he was excited, but also angry and hurt and wanted her to know that what she was feeling in that moment was what he felt all the time. Every single moment of every single day.

I'm in love with you, he'd said. And she had looked so stricken, Jamie couldn't tell whether she was happy, sad, surprised or a confused combination of any or all three.

But he'd said it. He'd said it and he had no intentions of taking it back, no matter what happened now.

Jamie stepped up to his microphone as Luke plucked out a few notes on the bass, as Greg pounded out a few beats on the kick drum.

"Check one, two, check," Jamie said, trying to keep his eyes on Nate at the sound booth as Nate fiddled around at the board, adjusting knobs here and there to ensure that what they were all hearing in their in-ears would work. Jamie strummed his guitar once, and the sound filled his ears, along with Luke's bass line.

He tried his best to keep his gaze on Nate, so that they could signal each other when something needed adjustment, but his eyes inevitably drifted over to Evie as the sounds of the other instruments filled his ears.

And she was looking back at him.

Jamie's heart pounded, and his breath caught in his throat. Time seemed to freeze, the world had stopped spinning, and it was just the two of them—he and Evie—and the words that he'd spoken earlier that morning. The feelings he'd revealed when he'd said those words, and the questions that had formed between them once those words were out in the open. He knew what his questions were, but he didn't know hers. And before he could try to pick them out from her gaze, she looked back down at the table in front of her.