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After a minute, he asks, “So what happens if the tour thing becomes real?”

I look at him. “How do you know about that?”

“Lachlin.”

“Of course.”

“He said nothing’s official.”

“It isn’t.” I take a drink and turn the bottle slowly between my hands. “But if it happens, I want it.”

Conlin nods. He knows that without me saying it.

“I just didn’t expect there to be someone here I’d hate being away from for months.”

He doesn’t give me advice or tell me what that means. He only says, “That’s new for you.”

“Yeah.”

Touring has always been simple in one important way. I wanted to go, so I went. Home was family, friends, the town I grew up in. I missed people, but I knew they would all be here when I got back. I never had anyone waiting in a way that changed how I thought about leaving.

Ruby changes that. Not enough to make me want the tour less, but enough that the idea of being gone for months doesn't feel as uncomplicated as it used to.

By the end of the week, Ruby has slept at my place three nights, and I’ve spent two at hers. We never discuss the pattern. Sometimes one of us knocks on the other’s door after dinner, and sometimes she comes over with her sketchbook and ends up staying. If she has an early appointment, I’m more likely to go to her place so she can stay in her own bed and get whatever extra sleep she can.

Somewhere in there, I learn her schedule without trying.

Tuesday and Thursday are usually her earliest starts. Saturdays can run long if Black Fern is booked. Monday mornings she usually takes off, unless somebody specifically requests her.

On the nights we don’t end up in the same house, the wall still gives us its own routine.

A few days later, I get home before she does and spend an hour working on a new progression. When I hear her door close next door, I switch to something I know she likes and turn the volume down enough that it won’t rattle the wall.

A minute later, one knock comes through, and I smile as I keep playing.

If she’s working late, I don’t crank the amp when she gets home. If I know she has an early morning, I keep things quiet. On nights when she’s home drawing, I’ll play Fleetwood Mac, the Black Keys, Tom Petty, or something else she’s asked for before. Sometimes she knocks once to let me know she likes what I picked. Other times she sends a request through the wall.

One night my phone lights up with a text from her.

Play that one again.

So, I do, and it strikes me how quickly all of this has started to feel normal.

Late one night, I’m sitting on my couch with my guitar across my lap when I hear movement next door. Ruby’s been home for maybe twenty minutes. I know because I heard her come in, heard the cabinet in her kitchen close, then the faint sound of her shower running through the pipes.

A few months ago, I would’ve thought of the wall between our houses as an inconvenience.

Too thin. Too easy to hear each other. The whole reason we started fighting in the first place.

Now I know when she’s home because of it. I know when she’s drawing because the room on the other side goes quiet except for the occasional scrape of a chair. I know when she’s had a long day because she doesn’t knock until later. I know which songs bring her closer to the wall, and which ones make her send me a message asking what I’m working on.

I rest my fingers on the strings and play the opening of one she likes.

At some point, the wall stopped feeling like the thing separating us.

Now it feels like the thing that connects us.

Chapter nineteen