The piece, with its tenuous creeps, its plaintive, deathly romance, surrounded us; we were dizzy with it. Every now and then the bow would go all the way across the strings, from one end to another, and the full sound would be drawn out in a throaty scratch. Jes visibly strained to hold the notes. What had once been automatic, the result of hours of daily practice, was no longer. Yet there was a depth to the struggle that shaded her sound into a dreamy intensity, and I could not have imagined it any other way.

At the end, she let the bow fall to her side and her head drop.

I was the first to clap, overcompensating for the tension between us, and was soon drowned out by the others. After a moment she raised her head to reveal a face that was blood red and drenched in sweat. She looked to Tyler for approval. For the first time I saw Jes herself as vulnerable and fragile.

Superb, he mouthed to her across the crowd—and then he went to her and took her hand, helping her down from the stage. They walked together out into the night, her head upon his shoulder, his arm around her waist.

In Tyler’s studio, the last stop, everyone got rowdy and decided to light the forge. He was the center of attention, the orbit around which each conversation anchored itself. Jes hung at his elbow like a girlfriend, and everyone treated her that way. They were intimately connected to each other. As they leaned against the workbench where he and I had shared our first kiss, I had the awful realization that we would never share anything the way he shared Pine City, and all his memories of Carey, with Marlin, Jes, and Jack. Even if he did want to tell me, someday, it would never be the same as having lived it in the first place.

As I stood near the door, marinating in jealousy, Max gripped my wrist and pulled me, quickly, into the walk-in refrigerator. When the door slammed shut in the chilly darkness, I yelped. Max ignored me.

I waited for an annoyed Jack, Jes, Tyler, or Marlin to pull us out of there, but nothing happened. Concerned, as always, that I might alienate them, I reached for the handle, intending to leave, but Max swatted my hand away. I yelped again. She switched on her phone, waving it at the waxy red hands lining the top shelves.

“Look. The hands from my house.”

Her hair was flat, but her eyes were enormous. Max was drunk. Not the drunkest I’d ever seen her…but compounded with the fact that she was not currently the center of attention, I suspected I was in for one of Max’s patented baby tantrums.