by Staci Hart
I laughed, ignoring the zing of awareness at his hands on the tops of my arms or his face so near. “I dunno, Sam. He’s pretty…well, pretty.”
He turned me around again. “So are you. Look, he’s coming to the bar. Now’s your chance. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to pick up Newsboy and convince him to buy you a drink.”
I nodded, pumping myself up. “Okay. Easy. Eye contact. Smiles. Bite my lip. Laugh. Compliment him. I can do this.”
He held my shoulders like the coach from Rocky. “You can definitely do this.”
“I can do this!” I said again, slamming the end of my drink and straightening my spine. The whiskey and Coke slid down my esophagus, filling my belly full of warm anticipation.
“Go get ’em, tiger,” he said with a smirk.
And I turned to meet my fate.
Smile. Make eye contact. Don’t be weird.
I sidled up next to Newsboy at the bar and shifted to face him. He was handsome, strong nose and jaw, his forehead dotted with sweat from dancing. When he noticed me looking, he met my eyes—his were the most brilliant shade of blue and green.
“On a scale from one to America, how free are you tonight?” I asked.
A laugh burst out of him, and it was such a nice sound, I found myself smiling.
Good. Check that off. Eye contact, too. The weird part you just can’t help.
“What are you drinkin’, sweet cheeks?”
I wondered whether he was talking about the cheeks on my face or my ass and tried not to flinch. Instead, I kept that smile in place. “Maker’s and Coke.”
He leaned over the bar and whistled. “Two Maker’s and Coke, would ya?”
The bartender jerked his chin in acknowledgment.
He turned to face me, his smile affectatious. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Val,” I said, sticking out my hand.
Newsboy laughed and took it. “Ricky. I’ve never seen you here before.” He looked down at our hands as I pumped them. “Quite the grip you’ve got there.”
“Thanks!” I said proudly. “It’s my first time here.”
“Ah, poppin’ your cherry? Tell me you dance so I can die and go to heaven.”
My smile split wider, not because I actually liked him—he seemed like kind of a creep—but because it was working. “Oh, I love to dance. I’m just learning. I’m nowhere near as good as you are. I saw you out there…you were really something.” I touched his forearm that rested on the bar.
His hand slipped around my waist. “Boy, would I love to teach you a thing or two.”
Our drinks appeared on the bar in front of us, and I was thankful for something to do with my hands. More grateful he had something to do with his other than put them on me.
I shook off the feeling—like I’d turned a corner into a dark alley, alone—and was grateful Sam was watching.
“Cheers,” I said, holding up my drink, and he clinked his to mine.
“To cherries poppin’ and solid handshakes.”
The whiskey went down easier this time. Drink number three agreed with me. “So tell me, Ricky, what do you do for a living?”
“I’m a logistics consultant.”
I blinked. “Oh. Like, something with numbers?”
He chuckled. “I help improve customer service operations and develop cost-effective solutions for things like supply and distribution issues.”
I swear, I was looking at his mouth and listening with my entire brain and both ears, but I didn’t understand a word he’d said. “That sounds riveting.”
“It’s a veritable adrenaline mine, logistics consulting,” he joked. “So, who’s your friend giving me the hairy eyeball?”
He nodded over my shoulder, and when I looked behind me, Sam wore an unreadable expression.
“Oh, just a buddy of mine. Don’t worry—he’s totally gay.”
A short, loud laugh of surprise left him. “He doesn’t look too keen on you being over here with me.”
“Psh, please. It was his idea.”
That seemed to surprise him, but he didn’t comment. “So, how about you? What do you do?”
“I’m in a pit orchestra on Broadw—”
“Ricky Santolini, you useless son of a bitch!”
Her voice came from behind me, shrill and high, cutting through the music and murmur of the crowd like a siren. His eyes darted behind me and shot open like he’d been zapped with electricity.
“Oh, shit. Jeanette, baby, what are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here? What the fuck are you doing here?” Her blonde hair was in a mostly ruined ponytail, and mascara pooled under her eyes, running in long streams down to her chin. “You told me you had to work late, but I knew you were a liar, you fucking lying liar!” She pushed his shoulder. “Stupid, stupid liar. Well, I’m not as stupid as you.” With every stupid, she pushed him again. “If you wanted to dump me, you should have just said so. Stupid! You stupid, stupid, stupid, cheating liar!”
Once I picked my jaw up off the ground, I tried to slither out of there unnoticed. But the second I moved, Jeanette turned her bloodshot eyes on me. I froze dead to the spot.
“I…I’m sorry. I was just lea—”
She launched herself into me, throwing her arms around my neck. “Don’t be sorry. Just run away from this piece of shit as fast as your legs will take you, okay?” She leaned back, her face bright with concern as she waited for me to respond.
“Ah…um…okay. Thanks, Jeanette.”
She hugged me one more time and let me go, and I slunk away and back to Sam’s side as Jeanette and Ricky’s argument escalated to nuclear proportions.
I plopped into the seat next to Sam, still blinking. A sip of my drink helped me collect myself. Sam’s face was enigmatically closed.
“Well, mission accomplished. Newsboy’s name is Ricky, as the entire bar heard. He’s a logistics consultant, which is something so boring it didn’t even sound like English when he explained it, and I got a drink.” I held it up in display. “Victory tastes…unexpected.”
Sam chuckled and shook his head. “Teachable moment. Eighty-five percent of all guys you meet will be duds. But you’ll learn to spot the good ones on sight. Sorry I picked a loser. I’m much better at picking out women, if it makes you feel any better.”
I giggled. Then I put my drink down because if I was giggling, I should probably quit drinking. “Why are you apologizing? I just won! I checked all the boxes—I smiled, complimented him, got a drink, and I even got to use one of my pick-up lines.” I beamed like a spotlight.
Sam shook his head again, but he was laughing.
“I know I wasn’t supposed to, but you told me to be myself. And myself loves cheesy pick-up lines.”
“Well, cheers to that, Val.” He raised his drink and brought it to mine. “Now, finish that drink. I promised you a dance, and I intend to make good on it at least four or five times tonight.”
I took a gulp, then another, and paid for my enthusiasm with a deep cough against the whiskey.
“Question,” he said while he waited.
“Answer,” I responded automatically.
He smirked, amused. “What’d he say when you looked back at me?”
“Oh! He asked who you were and I told him not to worry because you were gay.” I laughed a little too loud at myself.
Something in his face changed, darkened, even though he was smiling. His eyes were molten gold.
“I could show you how not-gay I am, but I feel like that would be against the spirit of our lessons.” He was leaning toward me, and I found that I wasn’t breathing, my unblinking eyes on his lips. “So not-gay,” he whispered, his lips close enough to feel the words against my mouth and smell the sweet whiskey riding his breath.
And in a snap that left me reeling, he was a foot away, knocking back his drink and sliding off his stool.
“Finish that drink, Valentina, so I can take you on a turn around the dance floor.”
He held out his hand, and the second my fingers were in his palm, he towed me out to the dance floor. There was nothing in the world so freeing as being twirled around by Sam like I was weightless.
The night flew by, time speeding up and sliding past with nothing to mark the hours but his laughter and my smiles and our bodies bouncing around the parquet like we had nothing in the world to do but dance. I had no idea how late it was until “New York, New York” came on with the house lights.
Sam hooked me under his arm and guided me out into the chilly fall evening. Like an idiot, I’d come without a jacket, and I tried to play it off like I wasn’t cold. A shiver wracked down my spine, betraying me.
He shrugged off his leather jacket. “Here, wear this.”
“B-but then y-you’ll be cold,” I said, shifting away from him in an effort to stop him. “Look, it’s n-not even cold. It’s f-fake cold. It’s only what—like, sixty out? M-my body is j-just being drunk and d-dumb.”
“Val.” The word was a gentle warning. He held out his jacket like a matador. “Put it on.”
“N-no,” I said with a laugh.
He shook it once like he was taunting me. “Toro.”
I giggled, stumbling a little as I brought my hands to the top of my head, pointer fingers to the stars. “Olé!” I cheered as I charged. But instead of running through his jacket, I found myself in his arms.
I didn’t know how it happened. The jacket was there, and then it was gone. But instead of being laid out on the sidewalk like I should have been, Sam’s arms were hooked around my waist, our bodies winding together and twisting from the force of his catch. And then I looked up, and time stretched out in a long, still moment. His eyes on my mouth. Mine on his. His nose millimeters from mine and his mouth so close, if I turned my head just right, our lips would brush. The warmth of him was everywhere.
I wasn’t cold anymore. I was on fire.
So I said the first thing that entered my empty mind.
“Are you going to kiss me, or am I gonna have to lie to my diary?”
The moment broke with our laughter, filled the air around us, stopped my chugging heart. He pressed his lips to my forehead.
I sighed. “I guess that’ll do.”
He hooked his jacket over my shoulders, taking a moment to look over my face, watching his fingers as he tucked a loose curl behind my ear. “Come on. Let’s get you home. You did good tonight, Val.”
“Thanks to your expert advice.”
But he smiled. “Pretty soon, you’ll figure out you didn’t need me at all.”
And I smiled back and pretended like it was possible that statement held an iota of truth.
11
Practical Application
Sam
The melody sang in the air around me, the same melody that had been following me around for days. My eyes were closed, my fingers moving on their own across the ivory keys. Each time I started the phrase over again, I would find another layer of depth, another expression of the music in my mind. It was the truth, uncovered like bone rising from sand.
I paused, snagging my pencil from behind my ear to jot down a few more notes. In my mind, it wasn’t a piano, but a full orchestra, the rise and fall of the music filled to the edges with a host of sound and harmony.
In my heart, it was my dream.
In my life, it was my secret.
It had started in college, an errant thought that had led to my favorite pastime. That pastime had turned into an obsession, hijacking my brain, thieving my spare time. Some people knew I made music—I always had my music notebook on me, and I’d written plenty for the band—but no one knew I was working on symphonies or scoring nonexistent screenplays of novels I’d read.
I set down my pencil and stretched, straightening my spine, arms overhead, glancing around the room. It existed only for music—my black baby grand in the center of the room, instruments dotting the space in front of the wall-to-wall bookshelves. Tall windows with wide molding cut the room in thirds with wedges of light stretched across Persian rugs that were stacked and layered on top of each other, extending to every corner. Mahogany and brass, wool and paper. The room was texture and sound.
I got up and walked over to my guitar, lifting it to my torso, thrumming a few chords as I made my way to the small, low-backed couch. The melody found its way to my fingers again, as if it wanted to be communicated in every instrument, in every way.
My ownership of the music was defensive and fierce. It was mine and mine alone, meant to be hidden, protected. Because no one would love it like I would. No one else could understand it the way I did.
I’d never even considered sharing it.
Sometimes, I wondered why I didn’t feel compelled to put myself out there. It wasn’t as if I didn’t have connections; between Juilliard and successfully working in pit orchestras for six years, I knew almost everyone. Our community wasn’t big, and we’d all worked together at some point or another. It wasn’t even that I was afraid of failure.
No, it was much more complicated than that.
I didn’t like to walk into something I wasn’t absolutely sure I would succeed at. What if I put my heart and soul behind something and couldn’t perform? If I put my hopes and dreams on the line and it fell apart? If I couldn’t meet the expectations? My responsibilities?
What was more terrifying than the failure itself was the damage that failure would do.
Expectations. I was familiar enough with them, duly doled out by my father on the regular. At least this way, I was failing him on my own terms than by my own shortcomings.
If I were being honest with myself, it was one of the reasons I didn’t get serious with anyone. I couldn’t be all things to a woman. I knew my capacity, and I gave what I could. Of course, I was rarely truly honest with myself, which suited me just fine.
Either way, I’d never found a woman who inspired that kind of devotion, and for that, I was thankful.
Things were easier this way. And my life was the life, a life full of art and money and women. My life was full of pleasure, and I couldn’t have wanted for anything more. I was happy and independent, untethered and unbound.
Val rose in my thoughts like a siren. Sweet Val with her doe eyes and bright smile. The realness of her struck a chord in my chest as honestly as my hands on the guitar.
I smiled to myself, thumbing the strings, feeling the vibration in the bones of my hands.
I’d expected Val to falter when it came to picking up a guy at Smalls, but the truth was, it’d been me who ended up agitated. Not only had the guy been a jerk, but the sight of his hand on her waist had had me imagining how many bones on his body I could break. His nose, easy. Jaw, probably. Cheekbone—with a solid head-butt, all things were possible. His hand had so many bones, I could rack up a pinball score with a well-placed boot, especially if he was still on the ground from the head-butt.
I’d also been irritated that she wouldn’t go for better-looking guys. She didn’t think she was desirable—it was clear in every little way—and the thought maddened me. Somebody had told her she wasn’t desirable. Someone had made her this way.
The thought made me want to find whatever man had told her such lies and rack up a bone count on him, too.
Fucking assholes.
My new mission in life was to convince Val of just how desirable she was. If the circumstances were different—if I didn’t like her so damn much, if I didn’t worry I’d inadvertently hurt her—I’d show her exactly how appealing I found her. But instead, I’d settle for teaching her confidence. She didn’t need lessons on dating because, just like with dancing, she was a natural.
Good guys finish last, and cheaters never win.
So who would get the girl?
I was beginning to hate Ian’s lurking. At work. At the club. In the back of my mind.
Ten years we’
d been friends, ever since he had been kicked out of another prep school and accepted to mine with the help of his musical talent and an obscene donation from his parents.
It was just about all they’ were good for.
Ian had been raised by nannies, a long, miserable string of them. He’d always been an unholy terror, but even then, it was easy to see what he really wanted—attention. But his parents ignored him, and so he continued to act out.
The prank he’d been kicked out of his first school for—writing a choice swear word in the rugby field with bleach—was both harmless and destructive enough to get him expelled.
But when he showed up, I think somehow I knew. I knew he needed a friend, knew he needed someone to have his back. And I figured maybe I could temper him a little in the process. For the most part, I had.
I wouldn’t go so far to say he hadn’t been a terrible influence on me, but the truth was, he was almost like a brother to me, or what I imagined one to be. Somebody to spend time with, someone you’d known forever and shared history with. Someone you accepted without condition, who would put up with your bullshit, no matter what.
Although I was beginning to wonder if the feeling was mutual.
He was antagonistic by nature, but lately, with Val, his bite had taken an unfamiliar edge. Maybe it was because he’d temporarily lost his wingman. Or maybe I was just hyperaware of Val.
Either way, I didn’t like it.
I brushed the thought away like a fly, checking my watch with a sigh before standing to hook my guitar back on its stand between a French horn and a mandolin. We were a few hours from showtime and then the club.
And after that? Well, after that, I had big plans. And I hoped Val had been studying.
Because it was time for a date.
Val
“A date?” I squeaked, clearing my throat.
Sam laughed, the sound so easy and kind and good that I didn’t feel embarrassed. “A date,” he said as we headed out of the pit. “Getting a guy to buy you a drink is one thing, but getting through a meal with him is a real testament of skill.”
I blinked and made myself smile against my fear. “Okay.”