“I’m only in town for a week and a half, then back on tour for a couple more months. I want us to hang out as much as possible. Plus, it’s Sunday. What else do you have to do?”

After Cal left, I drank some coffee and played guitar for a couple hours. It felt good to make sounds that communicated all the feelings I had inside me, feelings I didn’t know how to express any other way. That was the reason I’d picked up the guitar in the first place. Because there were chords and notes that, when I played them, made me feel as though I was expressing emotions for which I had no other language.

When my fingers got too tired to keep moving, I walked into town to get my truck. I stopped at Equator for more coffee, sat and read a while, and then went into a clothing store down the street and bought a new shirt to wear to dinner. It was black with thin white stripes, and I thought it would make me feel better around Cal and his friends. Cal’s clothes were a lot nicer than they used to be. He still wore jeans and T-shirts, but they were the expensive kind now.

Before I headed home, I ducked into Mill Valley Market and picked up a bottle of tequila that I spent way too much on, but I didn’t think it was right to show up to a dinner party empty-handed and figured I was going to need it to get through the night.

By the time I got back to the house, a long dining table had been set up in the yard. I was sure October had been the one to decorate it, because it looked like the dinner table of a gypsy princess. Gardenias floated in long rectangular boxes all the way down the middle of the table, and the scent they gave off mingled with the scent of redwood, eucalyptus, and jasmine so that the air smelled like some sort of sexy heaven. Candles and leaves and more flowers were strewn around colorful, mismatched plates and glasses, and strands of lights illuminated the trees. The yard could have doubled as the set of a hip A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

More candles lined the path to the front door, and I worried about Diego knocking them over and catching the place on fire, but I looked closer and saw they were the same candles the brewpub had on the table the night before. Of course, battery-powered candles made perfect sense in the middle of a forest, but they made my heart clench up like a fist. I felt as if they somehow represented me. The safe kind of fire. Or, rather, no real fire at all. October was all sparkles and warmth. Cal was combustion. I was that fake flame. And trust me when I say it hurts to be a spirit inside a body that yearns to burn far hotter and brighter than it actually does.