It took me a while to piece together why Miles would lie.

Last night, he needed me there as motivation. Then, he endured me rubbing his nose in my "win" until I left.

I revisited some of our conversations in my head for clues, but I came up with nothing significant. Maybe I would have read into the evading looks and the sheepish smiles from the past few days if I hadn't expected him to be an open book. From him, I just expected pages with just the right words to make my task of staying unbothered a joke.

So when I called him that night to grill him with questions and to invite him to the showcase if I deemed his answers were satisfying enough.

"Kelly?" Miles picked up on the first ring, and I assumed he hadn't checked the caller ID this time either.

That tiny unimportant detail and the sound of his voice still managed to make something in my stomach flutter. But that was irrelevant because that same warm voice had lied to me.

"You lied," was the only thing I said as I leaned back into the pillow against my headboard.

A gnawing need to know the truth was the only reason I could still keep my eyes open.

His silence came through as an admission of guilt to me.

"Why?"

"I wanted to tell you. But that also meant I would have no other reason to see you," Miles said as casually as he would have if he had been talking about the weather.

I must have been the only one who felt an elf skip and bounce on the valves of my heart like a trampoline.

"Oh." I was glad he couldn't see the blush that crept onto my face. "There's a showcase tomorrow at Duke. I'll be there," I said, hesitating as I struggled to find the right words to invite him to go with me. "If you happened to be there, I wouldn't be upset."

He laughed, and my head captured the sound for future use.

"I just want to lecture you all night on the unheard-of perks of telling the truth," I quickly explained and hoped that would discourage him from saying what I knew he would want to say next.

It didn't.

"It's a date." It sounded like a joke but, this time, I had no desire to argue.

➷➷➷

"It's physical therapy," Ace told me as soon as he saw Miles and I walk into the theater lobby.

He had to shout to be heard above the crowd. The Performance Arts building was more packed than it had been all semester. There was barely any room to move around without spilling someone's blood.

Even without context, I knew what Ace meant from the excitement that he didn't even try to hide from his face.

"Calling?" I asked him with a smile because I had lost count of how many of them I had heard just this year. "But wasn't that the first thing you tried after high school?"

I let go of Miles's hand I had unconsciously held in mine to guide him into the theater and around the clusters of people.

"Yeah, but I didn't have any reason last time except that it looked cool," he explained, impatient for me to get where he was going with this.

"And now?"

"I've been thinking about this a lot ever since I saw Emma fall that day. It would be pretty awesome to help someone bounce back and get a second chance at their dream."

By then, I should have been skeptical at every word he spoke, but his enthusiasm was too contagious not to reflect it back with a grin that mirrored his.

"Did you ever get to show Emma the piece that you've been working on with Sebastian?"

"We're still at that phase where she doesn't answer my calls," he said with a shrug. "I'll be patient, though. I know she was stressed about today."

I laughed as I tried to make a connection between Ace and patience. He was the manifestation of the opposite.

"Perk Number Eight," I whispered to Miles as we continued to wait for the doors to open. I had mentioned the first five in his car as he drove and the previous two as we walked across the parking lot. "The truth keeps you from having to win over someone you've let down." I pointed to Ace, and he scowled at me though he had no idea what I was saying.

Whispering had been the wrong move because, of course, he would respond in the same way. And his breath on my ear was the last thing that could help me hold on to what was left of my reasoning.

"Speaking from experience?"

Mr. Crawford's appearance kept me from having to answer that. A woman walked beside him with her arm hooked around his elbow as I stared in shock at the wedding ring I had never noticed on his finger.

Their laughter surprised me—I had always assumed his comments stemmed from lingering resentment. But he looked much different than he had the previous week when he got to give his last dosage of "encouragement" to follow us into our senior year.

"Kelly and company," he greeted us as he passed by our little corner of the lobby.

"Could I get a hint about the poetry collection results?" I asked with a sheepish grin on my face and hoped that the presence of his wife would soften him up.

He watched me for a few seconds before deciding to grace me with an answer I was not expecting. "Well, let's just say that I didn't want to gouge my eyes out while I read it."

As he walked away, a smile settled on my face.

"Nice going, Kelly. Very impressive."

I picked up on the playful tone that underlined Miles's words, but I chose to take the compliment, anyway.

"Perk Number Nine," I said, "it could make someone's day."

Ace pointed to a man who pushed what looked like a heavy rack of costumes through a door that led backstage.

His eyes gleamed with an idea. "Do you want to see Emma before the show?"

I assumed he was the one who couldn't wait to see her. I gave in, anyway, even though we were probably breaking one of the most important rules of proper theater etiquette.

"Save me a seat?" I told Miles, and he nodded as we sneaked into the hallway after the man.

We passed by the dressing rooms of the show choir, the drama club, and the orchestra before we finally found the "Dance" sign.

The other people in the room glared at the intrusion, but Emma grinned until she noticed Ace behind me.

She swiveled in her chair, and the thin material of her yellow chiffon dress followed the movement.

Her hair fell in loose messy strands over her face. "I swear it makes sense with the choreography," she explained with a chuckle as she glanced at the mirror to set the locks in their assigned place.

"You look amazing," I told her while Ace merely stared without saying a word. "How's your ankle?"

"I don't think it will be a problem," she said, staring down at the yellow ballet shoes that covered her feet. "I planned to do this barefooted, but my toes did not agree." She dismissed it with a shrug as she stood up with a wince I didn't miss.

Ace took his phone out of his back pocket, and hers rang. I glanced at him as I tried to make sense of his reasoning.

I didn't expect her to pick up, so when she pressed the speaker button and went on adjusting her dress, I was more surprised than he was.

"Hey." His voice sounded tentative, but it slowly grew in volume as he found his ground and made up his mind about what to say. "I think I've found my calling," he said, and I heard his voice tremble a little, "—making you happy."

She looked up when she registered the words. The straps of her dress she had been trying to fix slipped down her shoulder.

The radio in front of her beeped with a new notification, but her gaze refused to leave his.

"Except with this one," he continued, "I couldn't stop even if I wanted to. I know I couldn't stick to anything else. They were weak interests from passing curiosity. But, you, I want to know you better every day. I'm sorry I couldn't show you that."

A shaky breath seemed to finally release its violent hold on his chest when he hung up, and it gave me an idea for the next perk I would add to my list for Miles.

"Emma?" A woman's voice pierced through the radio, sharp and angry. "It will be you in forty-five seconds. You better be next to me when I turn around."

"I, um, I have to go," Emma said, though she made no move to go. "It's—it's my turn." Her gaze wandered to the door that would lead her to the closed curtains.

"You're going to knock them dead," Ace told her, and she gave us a nervous smile as she slipped out of the dressing room.

"Very smooth." I nudged Ace's shoulder as we left from the other exit back to the lobby. "You didn't even need my help."

"Could you tell that I was freaking out?"

We found Miles in a row towards the front of the room, where he entertained himself by going over the event program in his hand.

I fell into the folding seat next to him and wished the seats were more spaced out.

The music started before I could say anything, but for one minute, non-stop applause drowned it out. Sebastian looked as relaxed as he would if he had been sitting on his couch at home as his fingers ran over the keys on the shiny grand piano on stage.

Emma walked into the spotlight, her dress flowing with each of his notes as she stepped out on the stage—every step intentional, every glance calm and regulated. There was no hint on her face of the anxiety of these past few weeks or her nervousness from less than three minutes ago.

Even before she started moving, I was mesmerized. When she did, my eyes couldn't leave the stage if I tried.

Her dance moves were practically extensions of Sebastian's music, never missing the exact beat. They both worked to convey the same emotion—coming from a place where despair and hope could exist all at once, complementing the other without destroying each other.

A scene emerged out of her open arms and launched me back into a summer I had done my best to avoid revisiting.

All I saw for a few seconds was Grace's smile. Then the mist lifted from the rest of the image with each new spin and leap.

"Kells." Grace's small voice replaced Sebastian's music and woke me up. It resounded as loud and as it had that night.

If only I had heard much more than her words that night and read into her motivations.

I remembered pushing away my blanket as I looked up from the bottom bunk in frustration. "What is it, this time?"

"I can't find it," she whispered, and the sound of her voice echoed in the auditorium, accompanying Emma's steps. "I can't find the necklace you gave me."

"It's fine. We'll figure that out later."

I slapped my pillow on my face, but I could still hear her through it.

"No, I want it now." She used the whiny voice that had always worked on me. "I think it fell into the water when we were swimming earlier."

"We'll get it tomorrow."

The memory of Mom barging into my room that night was still vivid. She panicked over Grace's empty bed until I was awake enough to remember our conversation and rush to the lake.

The image of her lifeless face when Dad brought her out of the cold water was vague. What was etched in my mind was the look of shock on Mom's face when it dawned on her.

I felt Miles's hand rest on mine as though he had sensed my distress. He didn't ask or say anything. He continued to stare at the stage where Emma twirled her way around everyone's heart and pulled at strings and memories. Her every move seemed to reassure me that it hadn't been my fault.

Emma bowed when the music stopped, and applause followed as the curtains fell.

My hand found Miles's again and sought the same warmth the contact had filled me with when he did it.

"Perk Number Ten," I mumbled to myself though I knew he would hear every single breath from how close we were. "It takes the unnecessary weight off your shoulders."

Then I heard myself admit the truth to him and to myself, "I like you too, Miles."