Signals Crossed

24

Things did go back to normal.

Or at least they became good at pretending.

Mel abandoned the makeup experiments almost completely after that night at Yauch's house. Her hair went back into messy ponytails. Oversized jackets reappeared. Converse sneakers squeaked through school hallways again.

And somehow that hurt Adam Horovitz more than he expected.

Not because he wanted her dressed up.

But because part of him wondered if he had been the reason she stopped trying.

That thought stayed with him longer than he liked.

So he compensated the only way he knew how:

By acting exactly like himself.

Louder. Funnier. More flirtatious.

Girls hovered around him constantly now. At parties. After shows. In hallways.

And Ad leaned into it hard.

If people expected Ad-Rock the flirt, then fine. That was easier than whatever else was happening inside him.

Meanwhile, Adam Yauch quietly stepped back.

Not fully.

Never from Mel entirely.

But he stopped pushing for something more.

He knew timing mattered. And right now Mel's heart was still too tangled up in Ad for anything real to survive.

So he settled back into friendship, patient as ever.

Only Mike noticed how miserable that actually made him sometimes.

⸻

The only person who truly changed was Ad.

Or maybe it was more accurate to say—

he stopped being able to control where his mind went.

Mel crept into his thoughts constantly now.

At random moments.

Inconvenient moments.

A girl would be talking to him at a party and suddenly he'd remember the way Mel laughed with her whole body when something genuinely caught her off guard.

He'd hear a song and immediately think:
Mellie would love this.

He'd see oversized flannels hanging in a store window and think:
That color would look good on her.

It was exhausting.

And terrifying.

Because no matter how hard he tried to push things back to the way they'd been—

his feelings refused to cooperate.

⸻

Then came that day.

The anniversary.

The day the world had cracked open for Mel years ago.

Ad never forgot it.

Never would.

Every year since her mother died, they'd done the same thing.

Sleepover.

Wake before sunrise.

Bike to the cemetery with flowers balanced carefully in their baskets.

Then Ad would sit beside her mother's grave and perform a ridiculous little rap updating her on everything she'd "missed" that year.