.

Some days it feels like Scott can read my mind, and some days he thinks I can read his. He jokes about it all the time, but he's actually almost convinced of it. I check every once in a while to see if he's sure yet. I don't think I'll tell him until he's already certain. I'm not going to rush it.

I walk in with four bags of groceries hung on one arm. He looks up and thinks I'm gorgeous, the same as he thinks every time I walk into a room. It's nice that there's someone who loves my appearance so much, I guess. What I really love, though, is watching his thoughts when I sing. I try to make him forget his words just so I can watch him be transported to his own personal paradise. His euphoria in those moments is a magnificent work of art. It's beautiful, and I crave it. Knowing that he feels that just from hearing me sing, and that maybe others feel a piece of it too, makes it impossible to stop. I keep practicing and pushing my voice because I don't ever want him to get used to it.

There are moments I hate too. There are times when he can't stand my outfit or he just doesn't care about what I'm talking about, when he just wants me to hurry up and get to the point, yet he keeps smiling and nodding like he's interested. It's nice of him to pretend, at least, and he's allowed to think what he wants. Thoughts matter, but actions matter more. Still, it hurts sometimes. Sometimes he hates a song I wrote. Sometimes he thinks I'm selfish. Sometimes he lies to me. I purse my lips and pretend that I trust him, and sometimes I really do, even when I know he's being dishonest.

Sometimes I have to look away. He keeps it in check most of the time, and he doesn't dwell on it, but he gets drunk sometimes, and I can see exactly what he thinks when he looks at me.

It wasn't until we were seventeen that I first saw his thoughts. You can look at someone's face and know if they're happy or sad, and I could look at Scott's face and know he wanted to go to the gas station to buy cinnamon PopTarts. At first I didn't even realize there was anything different. "Why get them at the gas station, of all places?"

He was shocked, but not half as shocked as I was when I saw his face and realized what I had just done. I had thought that it would only ever work on my parents, whose thoughts I could see for as long as I could remember. As much as I've always considered Scott family, he still isn't a blood relative. I never thought I'd be able to read him, not when I couldn't read my own sister. I looked at him again and saw amazement not just in his face, but in his mind as well. "Get what at the gas station?" he gasped.

"Uh, shoelaces," I stammered out. "They sell them there. Kinda weird." Scott and I had spent all summer together touring with the choir, and then we had three classes together, and we visited each other's houses after school most days. We were closer that fall than we ever had been before, and I decided that must be what made it work, so I clung to him all year. And then he left.

When we met again for the Sing-Off, it was gone. I couldn't read anything. I felt blind, and I tried to get close enough to him again, but we were together 24/7 and I still couldn't see anything. I thought maybe he was holding something back, and it was keeping me from knowing him. At the same time, I could feel the connection with my parents weakening as we lost daily contact, and it saddened me. It's gone now. I cried when I told them, and they cried too, but they told me they were proud of me, that I was growing up.

It took a few months to get back the connection with Scott. I was lonely then in a way I never had been before. It's hard to go back from that kind of intimacy. It started working again, though, and I never let it lapse again. I don't think I've gone even a week without Scott in the past four years.