“I’m going to play for a very little bit,” he muttered. Sofia grinned.
When he pulled the pick from the neck of his guitar and started to strum, John stepped over the log to sit next to him, set the video camera on a tripod in the dirt and pressed record. The other workers moved closer.
Aish settled into a melody and John tapped out a rhythm against his thighs. Aish started to sing. The song was an easy and bright one Sofia hadn’t heard before. She watched John as he joined in with Aish for a nice harmony at the chorus, his eyes closed, their voices blending smoothly because of the similarity of their registers.
The other girls thought John was hot. Sofia imagined he was, in a blond and square-jawed kind of way. But next to Aish, with Aish’s one-of-a-kind beauty—black hair and lightning-struck eyes, long nose and a dimple—it was like comparing American vanilla cake to her village’s torrijas, bread soaked in milk or sweet red wine, fried and then covered in honey.
John’s voice compared the same way. Talking, he sounded a lot like Aish, a symptom of growing up in each other’s pockets. Sometimes when she heard them out of her sight, she didn’t know whose low voice was whose. But when they were singing, she could differentiate them in a second. While John had a perfectly fine singing voice, he didn’t have Aish’s range or depth. Or emotion, if Sofia was going to be bluntly honest.
Whatever drove John weren’t the same things driving Aish.
When the song ended, one of the multiyear workers called out for a song that Sofia hadn’t heard before.
“How about this one instead?” Aish said and began strumming.
But John smirked and said, “We don’t play that one anymore.”
“Why?” the woman asked.
John looked straight at Sofia. “’Cause.”
His message was clear. It had been a song about another girl.
Sofia pulled her long braid over her shoulder, aware of everyone looking at her, and smiled. “I don’t care.”
“See, I told you she wouldn’t care,” John said, motioning at her. “We can’t get rid of half our playlist every time you get a new girl.”
Aish had called her his muse. His North Star. Of course he’d written songs about other women. And when this summer was over, he would shelve her songs for new ones.
Sofia believed that for about three seconds before Aish thumped the side of his guitar and turned to glare at John. “Fuck, man. I told you. The fact that I’m in love with Sofia has nothing to do with dropping that song. It’s just a shitty song.” He glanced at the person who’d requested it. “No offense, Lan.”
Lan shrugged, enjoying the drama with the rest of the group. “I’m good.”
Sofia could feel her heart expanding in her chest. It was going to burst if she didn’t...touch him, talk to him. Kiss the shape of those words on his lips. After a lifetime of having her private pain displayed for the world, she refused to share this happiest moment with anyone else.
She stood up and caught Aish’s attention when she took the pick from him, slid it in her pocket, then wrapped her hand around the neck of his guitar. She handed it to John without looking away from Aish’s firelit eyes. She tugged him to his feet and pulled him away.
Aish walked docilely behind her through the moonlit grass as they headed toward the bunkhouse. “Sofia?” he said.
“Not yet.”
Once they’d turned the corner, once they were out of sight of the goggling workers, she shoved him against the side of the barn.
“Otra vez, señor,” she said, holding him against the wood by his shoulders.
His warm hands slid down her forearms, over her tattoo, making goose bumps break out in the warm night. “Sofia, what is it?”
“Say it again,” she demanded.
“Yeah, I’m sorry about John. I know I said he wouldn’t pull this shit again. I don’t know what’s gotten into...”
“No, not about him.” He was driving her crazy; she wanted to tear open his shirt and listen to his heart pound out the words. “I don’t care about that. Say what you said.”
“What?”
The crinkle of his black eyebrows, the confusion on his gorgeous face, would have been adorable if Sofia wasn’t suddenly horrified. What if she’d heard wrong? What if she’d had a ministroke? What if—Dios mio—what if she wanted him to say it so bad that she’d hallucinated it? What if...
Stop.
She might be young. She might be inexperienced in matters of the heart. But she’d been lied to her entire life, so in this—sensing what was real and what was pretend—she was a divining rod. Aish loved her and needed her and she could point the way for him.
She stared up at him and dug her fingers into his shoulders. “I love you, Aish. Te amo.”
Those shoulders slumped. “Shit,” he said, and he looked so disappointed. “I know you do, baby. I love you too.”
Sofia blinked. Breathed. And relaxed her grip on his shoulders. She straightened and dropped her hands to her sides.
“Sofia?”
She leaned back on one heel. “You love me?”
“Yeah. I do,” he said with a sad half smile and a shrug.
She took a step back away from him. “Is this an illness you catch with every girl you’re with?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head and reaching for her as she took another step back. “No, I just—”
Sofia gave a resigned laugh. “Or the illness every girl catches when she’s with you?” She was such an idiot. “They touch you and then they give you some cute nickname and then they fall in love with you...” She thought that she was special. “And then they become too needy because—”
“No, Sofia, that’s not—”
“I mean, who wouldn’t need all that, look at you, and then you have to break up with them because—”
Her back was against the wood so quickly that her head spun.
“No,” Aish said, fierce above her, dark hair framing his eyes. “Don’t do that. I’ve never
