Gavin's Song (Road to Salvation A Last Rider's Trilogy 1)

“Do you have to?”

“I could watch Murder, She Wrote if you’d rather?”

“I’ll pick the show. Do you have to watch morbid ones?” Turning the television on, Gianna started flipping through movies to watch.

Tapping her toenails, Ginny made sure they were dry before she reached for the pillow behind her back to make herself more comfortable. “Murder, She Wrote isn’t morbid.”

“Is there a dead body in every episode?”

She had her there. “Yes.”

Gianna pressed Play and the screen went dark. Their casual conversation ceased as a montage of a young couple growing old had Ginny’s legs going to the floor.

“I think I’ll go lie on my bed and read for a while.”

“Hey.” Gianna grabbed her arm, stopping her. “If you don’t want to watch Up, I’ll pick something else.”

“I don’t like movies like this. They bother me.”

“How do they bother you?”

“They make me sad.”

Gianna gave her the remote back. “I was just joking around to show you that some marriages are very successful.”

“Gianna, I don’t have anything against getting married. I didn’t mean to give you that impression. I know that there are happy marriages. I’ve seen them firsthand.”

Ginny saw her give her the side eye. “Go ahead, ask.” Why did people always assume she was sexually confused because of her lack of desire to engage in meaningless relationships?

“Is it men?”

“I like men,” Ginny assured her. She found some men attractive; she just didn’t want to touch them.

“Do you like women?”

“I like women, just not sexually.”

“Do you like men sexually?”

“Gianna …” Ginny started to warn her nicely that she was becoming too personal, but then she couldn’t bring herself to hurt the woman’s feeling. “When you look at a dark sky and see the stars, they’re all beautiful. There’s over one billion-trillion stars in the universe and there over seven billion people on earth—not everyone gets to find the star that makes them whole.”

Gianna regarded her somberly, as if she was trying to decide whether to agree or disagree with her. “Stars are too far away; how were they supposed to meet anyway?”

“They fall to Earth every day; you just can’t see them or they don’t land near you.”

“So, your star could be among people you have been near and didn’t recognize, or they’ve never been where you can meet?”

“Yes.” Ginny knew her way of thinking was her way of explaining to herself the forlorn hopelessness that she felt each day she awoke and every night she went to sleep that the one meant for her was out of her reach.

“Which one do you believe?”

“The third option.”

“The third option?”

“That my star came to Earth, and I didn’t find him in time.”

“Girl, that’s some deep shit. Too deep for me without a glass of wine.” Gianna tossed the magazine aside. “You want a glass?”

“I can get it. I don’t want you to ruin your nails.” Ginny went to the fridge to take out the bottle of wine that they had been working on. Pouring out two glasses, she carried them into the living room to give Gianna hers.

“Can I ask you another question?”

Curling back up on the couch, Ginny took a sip of her wine. “Since you introduced me to this wine, go ahead. But the next bottle is on me.”

“Don’t worry about it. I keep several bottles on standby for when I have a bad day at work, or when I want to strangle Penni. The wine mellows me out and keeps my ass out of jail.”

Ginny could relate. When Penni focused on something, nothing stood in her way. Sometimes it worked out great, like when she had offered her the job with Mouth2Mouth and hooking up with Gianna as a roommate. Then there were the instances when she wanted something and would harp on you until hell froze over.

Penni had offered to help her move into Gianna’s apartment, but Ginny didn’t have much, just a few boxes of small trinkets that she had collected when she’d traveled with the band and a few of her personal belonging. She had rented a small storage unit to keep her things, and Penni had helped her empty the unit out.

Ginny had carried one box out as Penni was lifting two of the smaller ones. When she had come back, one box had spilled its contents on the ground, and Penni was reading one of the pages that was loose.

Bending over, Ginny had grabbed the sheet of paper from her, shoving it back inside the notebook.

“I’m sorry the box was heavier than I thought,” Penni apologized.

“Dropping the box may have been an accident, but reading my private papers wasn’t,” Ginny snapped. Gathering the rest of the papers, she put the notebook back inside the box, then closed the flaps.

“No, it wasn’t,” she admitted apologetically. “I was putting it back inside when I realized it was a song. You’re very gifted. I could ask Kaden—”