by L. J. Evans
The crowd whistled as a tall, muscled guy with shaggy blonde hair came onstage. He didn’t have anything but his guitar and his attitude with him. He smiled his dark eyes into the audience, and we could feel the collective sigh that went through it.
I chuckled because Mac Truck weren’t going to get anywhere with this crowd either. They were all about the sexy wannabes singing.
“What’s so funny?” Truck grumbled.
“Just the fact that you’ve struck out again. Your uniforms aren’t helping you at all. You would have been better off in torn jeans and a band T-shirt,” I said.
“If we aren’t getting laid, then we are certainly going to join you in your drunk,” Mac said and flagged down the waitress again for more drinks when we hadn’t finished the round in front of us.
The singer had the whole crowd on their feet, except a handful of tables like ours. They were singing along with him, a song about longing and wanting more. It sounded familiar to me. It tickled at the back of my brain and raised the hair on my arms in a way nothing had since Ava had been in my presence.
“Is this a cover?” I asked, slurring the words slightly. Shit, I really was drunk.
“Not for any song I know,” Truck said, looking at Mac who had always been our music expert.
“Don’t think so.” Mac shrugged.
The guy finished the first song and headed into a second that tugged as hard at my memories as the first had. Then he stopped, talking into the mic. “You all know that I love my songwriter more than I love just about any person on this earth. Well, after months of begging,” —some woman in the back yelled that she wouldn’t make him beg, and he winked before continuing— “I’ve finally talked her into singing this next one with me, so give her some encouragement to make sure she stays.”
The crowd hooped and hollered. I turned away from the stage to say something to Truck, but the stunned expression on his face and the wave of energy I felt coming from the front of the room drew my eyes back.
There she was. Ava. Weeks of seeing and thinking about her, and she’d finally appeared, apparating into the room like Harry and his friends that she’d mentioned so often. The room burst into color around me. Colors that I hadn’t realized were missing from my life. Color everywhere, filling my vision and my heart and my soul with an ache that had me standing.
When I really focused my vision around the colors to look at her, I saw that she was both leaner and rounder at the same time. Stunning. Gorgeous. But without the hyper energy that had exuded from her in Rockport. This Ava was quieter, moving with a purpose that was still sexy as hell, but somehow subdued.
She took the extra mic from the Brady guy and smiled out into the audience. My breath completely stopped at that smile. The corner indenting slightly more than the other on her muddy green-eyed side and causing more flashes of sunlight to hit me.
“Goddamn,” Truck whispered harshly.
Mac was as speechless as I was.
“This one you all know; it’s called ‘Scrabble Tiles,’” Brady announced, and the crowd erupted again in cheers of joy.
Brady started singing, more to Ava than the crowd. The way he moved around her and to her and with her spoke volumes about their relationship. About the intimacy that he was accustomed to with her, and I found my entire body going into defensive mode. Like when I boarded a ship that we knew held a drug haul. Adrenalin pumping, heart beating so that everything sounded as if it was underwater, dimmed and yet heightened.
The song was about how life can be shifted around like the words on a Scrabble board. Letters that should go together having to be broken apart in order to make the most of them. How the easy words weren’t always the path to winning; that those are often the ones that hurt you the most. It was about walking away, dumping the tiles, and starting over so that you can accomplish things you never thought possible.
It was about her. Leaving me.
It was about the game we’d played atop a kitchen table in a beach house.
When she took over for him in the duet, when she started singing, all the wounds that I thought had been covered and healed broke open and bled.
And she didn’t even know I was there, bleeding out on the floor of a bar that she was singing at. Singing with that husky voice that haunted me in my dreams, but somehow was so much older. Less childish enthusiasm and more old soul wisdom.
Brady wrapped her in his arms, and they cooed together, staring into each other’s eyes. She accepted it. Accepted the arm and the stares, and even returned them, but I swore there was something missing in that look that she gave him. She didn’t love him.
She wasn’t looking at him as she’d once looked at me right before she kissed me in the ocean, and I’d kissed her back. Before I’d let her walk away. Fucking idiot.
Maybe that’s what I wanted to see: her not loving him. Maybe it wasn’t the truth, but I had to tell myself that in order to prevent myself from storming the stage in my drunken stupor, ripping his arms from around her so that I could bury her in mine instead.
I could feel Mac Truck’s eyes on me, but just like once upon a time in a bar called the Salty Dog, there was nothing that could rip my stare from her. I wanted to walk up to the stage, hold out a hand, and demand that she jump into my arms like she had then. I wanted her to announce to the world that Mr. Grumpy was there to take her away.
When the song ended, the crowd went wild like it had a lifetime ago. Our table in the corner was silent, Truck’s anger radiating from him while Mac was all nonchalance. And me? What emotion was wafting off of me? Longing. For something I couldn’t have.
Brady didn’t let her go. He kissed the top of her head, and she beamed at the crowd, because the stage was where Ava had always loved to be. Yet, she wasn’t jumping from the stage to the bar top—and not only because the bar was on the other side of the room. There was something tamer about her now. I both hated it and loved it. I hated whatever had caused her to lose that sense of unrestricted exuberance. But I also loved that there was a new energy flowing from her that I hadn’t yet named. Hadn’t yet discovered. There were new layers to pull away, explore.
I felt my feet moving before I’d actually thought about doing it, my body going to her before my brain cells could catch up. I heard Truck’s whispered, “Fucking hell!” and I heard Mac’s, “Eli!” warning, but it didn’t stop my body.
Ava and the blonde were leaving the stage. They were at the curtain that separated backstage from the rest of the bar.
Maybe my movement caught her attention. Maybe the wave of particles that had hit me when she’d come onstage hit her as well, because, for whatever reason, she stopped at the curtain. It caused Brady to take a stutter step as she released his hand and turned to me.
I increased my pace to step closer to her before she could disappear, and our eyes caught across the space that was left between us. I was still moving; she was turned to stone.
When I got to the edge of the stage, a bouncer stopped me.
“Where you going, buddy?” His gruff voice barely registered to me.
I didn’t have to answer because Ava had already joined me. The stage wasn’t very tall, maybe twelve inches, but it was enough that she was looking down at me just as she had whenever she had stood atop a couch, a stage, a rail, or a rock.
Her smile had faded from her face and had been replaced with a stunned look that echoed the feeling that I had swimming through me.
“You’re here,” she breathed out, the raspy tone washing over me like a drug.
I nodded. I couldn’t find my voice. This made her lips quirk.
“Still silent and broody, Mr. Grumpy?”
God. That tone. The tease. That look. She was wearing skinny jeans, ripped at the knees, showing her skin that was no longer tan from sunshine, and a sheer top with some tank underneath it that accentuated her curves. The top was the color of Caribbean seas and brought out the hints of blue and green in her multi-co
lored eyes. Her hair was cut, sharp angles that landed about her chin, swinging around like the curtain behind her.
All I could think was how badly I ached to touch her. To run my hands under the shirt. To feel her skin with my rough hands. To pull those straightened angles of hair into my fists so that I could force her head up to allow me better access to her lips.
I was insane. Drunk on way more than the alcohol that I’d let fill me.
“I’ve come to collect what you owe me.” I finally found my voice and was surprised it wasn’t shaking. That it wasn’t full of doubt and longing. That it sounded just as calm as it did when I ordered the ensigns about deck.
Her eyes widened, her smile deepened, and she laughed. And I was lost all over again.
Chapter Twelve
Ava
GET TO YOU
“Somebody had to hurt you bad
For you to give up like that
Somebody had to break your heart in two
But that ain't me and you
So, tell me why, tell me why, tell me why
You can't look me in the eye.”
—Performed by Michael Ray
—Written by Stoklasa / Dovgalyuk
My heart thudded so loud that I could barely hear the crowd or Chance announcing the next act as his way of prodding us from the stage. Once I’d reached him, there wasn’t really a way for me to move. Eli had always had that effect on me, commandeering my body into doing things.
He looked the same in that he was all military muscles, self-control, and intense eyes. But he also looked older, having aged in that way that men seemed to do as they moved through their twenties. Little left of the college boy I’d met on the beach. He hadn’t had much boy in him even then, and now it was non-existent.
He was all man.
Muscled. Gorgeous. With a dark-haired evening shadow on his face. His whiskey-colored eyes, that I still saw vividly in my dreams, were calling to me just as they once had.
The pull on my bones and my skin and my heart was the same as well. I’d doubted those feelings so many times since then, thinking that there was no way my body had truly reacted to his the way I remembered. I had told myself that I had just been a stupid teenaged girl full of thoughts of freedom and escape and hormones. I told myself that his effect on me had been situational. Momentary. Fleeting.
But it wasn’t. I was feeling all of those things all over again., my body aching to leap into his arms just as it had from the bar of the Salty Dog.
He was there to collect on a promise I’d made him so long ago that I was surprised he’d remembered it. I couldn’t help but laugh at that. It was just like Eli… to have a demand be the first thing from his lips.
I felt Brady’s arms wrap around my waist. My body screamed at me to push him away, but I didn’t. Mostly because I was still stunned by Eli’s appearance in a New York City bar.
“Babe?” Brady grunted.
I didn’t take it personally, but I could see that Eli did—the arms wrapped around my waist and the affectionate babe. I wanted to laugh again, because Brady called every female in his acquaintance babe. Even some of the guys. It was his way of saying Hi or What’s up? or Come on. It was his favorite word. It also allowed him to not have to remember names, especially the female names, from his long list of conquests.
Eli’s eyes squinted so hard that I thought his forehead might explode. I didn’t know how to react to that—his apparent jealousy at Brady’s hands on me—when there’d been nothing between Eli and me but years of silence.
Irritation flashed through me, at him having gone all this time without contacting me and then still acting like he could demand anything of me. That irritation made me do the thing I never did. It made me ease back into Brady’s chest even as I was smiling down at Eli.
“Brady, I’d like you to meet Mr. Grumpy.”
“Seriously?” Brady reached out one of the hands that had been around my waist toward Eli. “Nice to meet you.”
Eli looked down at Brady’s hand, but his hands didn’t budge from where they were shoved into his jeans, as if he was keeping them there on purpose. To prevent himself from doing something stupid. To not lose control.
What would Eli be like if he completely lost control? A memory of our heated kiss in the ocean filled me, my body responding as it leaned away from Brady and toward Eli without my consent. That night on the beach had been a start to his losing control. But it hadn’t been complete. He’d still pulled away and let me walk down the shore without him.
The next act came onstage, brushing into Brady, irritated at the fact that we hadn’t left. It was Brady that spoke, and not Eli or me.
“Hey, come on back, we have to get offstage,” Brady said as he pulled me toward the curtain.
The bouncer took a step away from where he’d been standing, breathing down Eli’s neck.
As I was being dragged through the flimsy material separating the back of the bar from the front, I saw Eli leap gracefully onto the stage and follow us. Without a word. His eyes never leaving my body. Glancing toward the hand that I had entangled with Brady’s and back to my face.
It was Brady who let go of my hand and not the other way around. It wasn’t because he was intimidated by Eli’s gaze. It was because he was reaching for the water bottles we’d left with our bags in the rack that the performers always used.
Brady took a long swig, offered me his bottle, and I shook my head. I had my own. I wasn’t sure why he offered me his. Scratch that. I did. It was like Brady was playing along with me now that I’d told him who Eli was. Because Brady knew I’d never be one of his girls. It was what had gotten us this far in our partnership. It was really part of the reason he and I had lasted this long. As friends. We both knew it.
“So, you’re Scrabble Guy, huh?” Brady asked, once again being the first to talk.
“Yes,” Eli said, his tone strong and sure even though he’d never heard the song until tonight. But if he’d listened to the words, there was no way it couldn’t have been about him.
There was a fuss onstage, and then the curtains parted to allow Mac through. I hadn’t seen Mac in as many years as Eli, and he had changed too. More man, less college clown. He wore a white Navy uniform that made me smile. Mac on the town. I wondered where his wingman was. I didn’t have to wonder long.
“Eli, Truck walked out. Called a Lyft. He’s pissed as hell that you’re back here with her,” Mac hissed.
That did stun me—that Truck would be pissed at anything. He had been the friendliest, most easygoing of the bunch back in Rockport. He’d been the one to accept me first. The one to treat me like a little sister. I frowned. Why would he be pissed that Eli was visiting with me? Why could Mac barely look at me?
“I’m coming.” Eli’s response was curt, but he hadn’t taken his eyes from me. To me, he said, “I’d like to meet. To talk.”
His eyes flicked to Brady for two whole seconds and then back to my face. I took in Mac’s coiled stance, still looking away from me, and the serious look that was always on Eli’s face and nodded.
“Sure. I’ll be at Café La Mode tomorrow around ten. Will that work for you?”
He nodded and turned toward Mac, who didn’t say hi or goodbye or anything. They both skimmed their way through the curtain, but Eli looked back one more time, eyes going to Brady lounging beside me and then to me, before he disappeared.
I let out a heavy breath.
“Well, that was certainly entertaining,” Brady chuckled, shoving his stuff into his bag.
I turned and gathered my belongings as well.
“What do you mean?”
“Alpha boy and his squad. What the hell did you do to them?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
“Nobody harbors that much animosity because of nothing,” Brady replied.
We headed out the back door and down the street, the cold air making me shiver in my scarf and fleece ja
cket. This was the only thing I really disliked about New York City. The cold. Not that it hadn’t gotten cold in Texas, but it had always felt different—less bitter, more temporary. I tucked my hands into the pockets of my jacket and picked up the pace to keep up with Brady’s long legs.
He never realized that he was leaving people in the dust. That was Brady for you. Self-involved. Self-focused. Not quite selfish, but close. He had his eye on the ball. The dream. And he wasn’t going to let anything or anyone get in his way. He wouldn’t quite step on people to get there, but he wasn’t going to move out of the way for them either. Full tilt toward the goal. I’d been that way once.
Not willing to give up anything for my dream.
Now, I easily acknowledged that he sang my songs better than I did. We were putting together an album as part of our jury examination for graduation with hopes of peddling it out to radio stations, YouTubers, and agents. If he got picked up, I’d get song credits. That was a bigger deal than me actually singing the songs these days.
“He was pretty sexy. I see why you’ve been harboring these unresolved feelings for him for years.”
“I haven’t.”
Brady shoved my shoulder with his.
“Babe, we’ve been friends since you showed up pissing all over Jaden’s Pitch Fest. I know you.”
He did. He knew me pretty well. He may be a self-focused sex addict, but he was my best friend at Juilliard. The only person in the whole world that knew me better was Jenna.
“I guess we all know now what you’ve been saving yourself for,” he continued to tease. “But can you please give it up to him so that you’ll lose your cranky attitude?”
“I’m not cranky,” I said.
“You didn’t use to be.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I gave him a side look. We were almost back to the dorms.
He shrugged. “When you first got here, you were all light and energy and words. And now…you’re still words, but your lightness is gone.”
“I’ve just had a lot going on. We’re graduating in a couple months, and we have jury exams coming up,” I told him.