I keep looking as Kat pulls away from his lips, and her gaze meets mine through the mirror. She pushes at Duke’s shoulders, separating their chests from each other.
“Lia! Wait!” She runs toward me, and it’s the signal I need to jolt me out of my trance and push into action. My foot slams onto the accelerator, and the car jerks back. I change gears just as Kat reaches my window, and she pounds on the glass with her fist, her mouth moving but her words not reaching me over the loud thrumming of my own heart.
I hit the accelerator and the car’s wheels spin, then gain traction and propel the vehicle toward the lot exit. Sand clouds the air behind me, but not so much that I don’t see Duke wrap his arms around Kat’s waist.
Not so much that I don’t see her eyes still fixed on the car, her mouth moving to say those two words.
I’m sorry.
***
I idle the car in the lot outside the hall. Ten other cars are parked there, and I know from seeing the calendar so many times that dance practise is in full swing. Thuds come from the hall, and I'm reminded of the age group. There are no P-platers in this lot. It's full-grown adults, all taking a—in some cases, heavy-footed—leap into ballet. Fabulous.
I bite my lip and look over at the bar. A new sign has been put up, and it sits above the door, naming the bar Class. The lights aren't on, but then again, it's not even five, and the sun is screaming its harsh afternoon glow off the clouds above us.
No cars are in the bar’s lot, and I rack my brain to think whether there have been cars there before, but I draw a blank.
After a few seconds of silence, punctuated only by the heavy thuds of less-than-graceful pliés, I decide to get out, investigate.
When I cross over the chain-link fence that separates the bar's lot from ours, guilt slams into me. I'm here to return something I think my mother may have stolen. How the hell do you explain that?
A glance to the left, to the right, and nothing. No movement, no sounds that aren't awkward-dancer related—nothing.
I'm steps away from the door when I think to look through the window.
Darkness greets me, a stage of shadow with minimal light spotlighting the lead characters—the bottles of booze against the wall, the empty stools tucked neatly underneath the redwood bar-top.
But that's not what grabs my attention.
The feature of the band setup is tucked neatly in the corner, a grand old dame of the music scene. She's probably not as old as her sister in the scout hall, and if she is, she's been better kept, hasn't been raped by the students of yesteryear. Her dark wood gleams on the top, the curves too smooth, too perfect to be just a new piano in a new bar. It's everything I've ever dreamed of playing, and my mouth salivates, my fingers itching out imaginary transitions onto the wood of the door in front of me. It’s a Steinway & Sons, one of the top-of-the-line brands, worth at least $20,000. I've never had the opportunity to touch something as perfect as this. Not since everything changed.
I push against the door, and for some reason, because of everything, or perhaps despite it, I'm surprised that the barrier doesn't loosen under my touch, that it doesn't give way. Because I feel so much like I belong behind this wall that it may as well not exist.
My phone vibrates in my pocket, and it's all it takes to bring me out of this moment.
Where are you?
It's hard not to shove the piece of metal back in my jean pocket, and even harder not to just throw it at the window of the place she's already vandalised. Because really? Really, now she wants to act like a mum, not when I was heartbroken on the weekend? Not when I cried, worried about my future? Not when Dad ... when Dad ...
I swallow the stupid damn sob that threatens to breach my throat, and puff up my chest. Screw him, and screw those stupid thoughts. I don't have time for them anymore.
What I sadly do need to find time for is to smuggle the remaining four boxes of twelve bottles of red wine my mother has stolen into the bar.
It did occur to me to leave them, absolutely. But knowing that at any moment Mum could be pinned for a crime, sent away to jail, makes me want to protect her. She'll never turn her life around if she's serving time. And I need her to turn her life around.
I walk around the building, admiring all the entrances and exits, until I finally come across a delivery room, or what I presume is one. Plastic strips line the doorway, and inside is a small cool area, a garage-sized door in front.
I’ll take the bottles here. It's going to be obvious some bottles are missing, but I don't know that I have another choice. I could ignore it all, but then I'd just be providing Mum with more alcohol, and I don't know that I can do that. I could take the boot full of wine in my car and throw it at the waves, get rid of the evidence and attain the therapeutic high of something so fragile smashing against pure nature, but I don't know that I can do that, either.
And I hate why I can't.
It's because I know the guy who owns this.
And he may not be my friend, may not be someone I'd count as a confidante, but he's someone who once understood me. Even if it was only with a few notes on a throwaway piece of paper.
I pop the boot, then walk to the back of the vehicle and shuffle my hands under a box of wine. It creaks under my grasp as I lift it, twelve bottles in one loose cardboard casing. With a glance to the left and one to the right, I stumble up the causeway and through those flappy plastic strips. Sure enough, a wooden pallet sits in the middle of the room, eight boxes of wine identical to the ones I found at home placed haphazardly on top of it. I shut my eyes for one moment, and wonder what if.
What if I've got this all wrong, and they bought it?
I know we don't have the money, but it's possible Smith does. Maybe I should give my own mother the benefit of the doubt here and cut her some slack. Then I see the marker on the corner of one of the boxes. 1 of 12.
I look at my box. Yep. 7 of 12.
Guess that answers that then.
I place the box down in front of the door. It's one box, twelve bottles of the original goods, but it's a start, and a start I plan on continuing. On finishing.
Well, minus the minimum six empty bottles I found in my house this morning.
I skip back down the ramp to my car and grab box number two. In this one the bottles are loose—must be the one Mum took her six bottles from—and the glass clings and clangs against itself, a merry symphony that plays in direct contrast to my furtive desires. Once again, I push through the flaps and place it down on the ground, next to box one.
Back at my car again, I lift up the third box, and—
"Lia! So good to see you."
Clunk
The box drops like a deadweight back to the floor of my car and I slam the boot shut before spinning on my heel and pasting what I hope is an angelic smile on my face as I greet the scout hall proprietor, June Longworthy.
"Hi ... Mrs Longworthy."
"It's so nice to see you here. You haven't scheduled in a booking I've forgotten, have you?" She walks over to the car and furrows her brow, her sweet brown eyes mirroring the concern her body language holds.
"No, no." I shake my head. "I just ..." Have about three seconds to think of a good excuse. "Sometimes, I like to take a walk by the lake ... and this is an easy place to park."
"It is beautiful at this time of year, isn't it?" Her eyes sparkle, and as the golden beams of light glint off the lake's surface as they shine through the trees, I can't help but agree.
But the thing is, deep down, I know. I know that under that beautiful shiny exterior, the depths of the lake hold secrets. The serene surface belies the sludge on the bottom, and the creatures that lurk in the lake's belly. The sea snakes and the crabs—the sharp edges of oyster shells, whose inhabitants have long since left.
There's death under the lake. A little boy, when I was just a kid. He swung from a rope off the jump tree and hit the bottom with too much force, paralysing him from the waist down and effectively drowning him.
There's my past.
"Lia?"
I blink, and snap my attention back to Mrs Longworthy.
"Sorry, yes. It's really pretty."
"Well, I'll let you go for that walk. Do be careful—some of those rocks are a little slippery near the shore." She squeezes my shoulder fondly and toddles off to her shiny new car, then pulls out of the lot as I meander toward the lake, trying to make my deception real.
A quick glance at my watch, and I see it's near half past five, and that soon the dance class will be over. Probably for the best I wait here for a bit.
I park myself on a rock—a non-slippery one, thanks Mrs Longworthy—and wonder how on earth I'm going to get through this. Wonder if I should have just reported my mother for theft.
Wishing there was an easy answer.
As soon as the last car is out of the lot and darkness has cast its shadows long across the lake, I jog over to my car to resume my mission. It's only three days out from the bar's grand opening—the odds of that bar owner being here tonight aren't low, and I need to move quickly if I'm going to get these last two boxes in undetected.
Box three is placed with the other two, no worries, and I do one more furtive check of the dark street before spiriting box four up the ramp and placing it right on top of the pile I've created. I stretch up to straighten it, making sure it's sitting flush and—
"A little more to the right and it'll be even."
I scream and stumble, my body catapulting backward in the dark. My heart leaps to my throat and I flail my arms wildly to try to regain balance, before I'm caught by two strong hands that steady me while I find my feet.
Two very strong hands.
I spin around, and even in the near-dark I can see enough to know it's him. The man from the bar. His hair is scruffed, windswept, as if he's been out all day. His eyes seem to glint gold, even in the low light, and the stubble lining his jaw is the five-thirty shadow male models would dream of.
He's close to me, so close that I can feel the heat of his body, smell the sweetness on his breath. It’s rich and heady, and makes me think of—
"Have you ... have you been eating chocolate?" I ask.
And then I die.
Because, seriously?
"God, I'm so sorry." I push against his chest—his very firm, very nice feeling chest—and take two steps back, wiping my hands against my jeans as if touching him has burned me.
"About the theft or the chocolate question?" He folds his arms across his chest, and I can't quite read his expression. His lips are in a hard line, and those brows of his are drawn.
"I didn't steal anything!" I protest, rushing forward. A copper taste floods my mouth as I bite my lip, and I can't, I can not be arrested. I'm no expert, but I'm fairly sure the words 'thief' and 'juvenile detention' don't go down too well on scholarship applications.
For some reason, even though I'd spent all afternoon worried about Mum getting caught for stealing, I hadn't stopped to think that maybe this could come back on me. And now I feel like an idiot for not realising that in the first place.
I stare into the man's eyes, and try my best again. "I am sorry."
"So you stole my wine and are returning ..." He pauses, and turns to face the boxes. He takes two steps forward, noticing the open one to the left of the stack. "All but six bottles."
"I didn't drink them. Or steal them. I promise." I shake my head, but even as I do, I feel like an idiot. "You have to believe me. I'll do anything. I'll ..." My eyes rapid-fire around the room, flicking over bottles, boxes, brooms, crates—brooms. "I'll clean. I'll clean the whole bar. Multiple times. And pay you back for what you lost."
"Even though you didn't steal it—"
"I'll even wash the windows. Surely you want nice clean windows for your opening night, right?"
"You want to work off the debt of the alcohol you're returning."
"Please?"
He sighs, and the blank exterior that had been painted on his face washes away. He turns to the door at the far end of the room, the one that I presume leads to inside the bar, and takes a key from a set in his pocket and turns it in the lock. The metal clanks against each other as he jiggles it back and forth, then finally, with the encouragement in the form of his heel to the bottom of the door, it swings open and he holds it wide, gesturing for me to walk through.
My gaze firmly on the ground, I shuffle past him into the darkness ahead, blinking when the flights flicker on and illuminate the room in a soft golden glow.
It's everything I saw from looking through the window and more. The bar is not only a beautiful cherry colour, but stocked with gorgeous old-style glassware lit up from behind so the different angles and planes seem to sparkle in the light. Low wooden coffee tables with vintage velvet-lined chairs are scattered throughout the room, contrasted by high tables with stools. In the corner, the beautiful piano stands, and now that I'm inside, up close, in the same room as it, I have to get nearer.
I open the lid and run my fingers over the smooth, worn keys. This piano has a story to tell. One I can feel in its ivory bones.
"It's beautiful," I breathe.
"It was my mother's."
I jump. He's right behind me.
And I'm here to sort out the whole theft thing. Not to fall in love with this piano.
Right.
"How can I make it up to you?" I turn, and he's right there, and wow, up close he's way more ... way more man than I'd realised before. He'd only be a few years older than me at most, but his shoulders are broad, lined, and there's something about his eyes that screams of depth, of times past, and of pain.
I see myself in his gold-flecked eyes.
He clears his throat and glances away, then runs a hand through his hair, and I see his arms, arms that are scarred with tattoos and curved with his muscles. They’re dangerous arms. Capable of so much.
"How 'bout you tell me the truth?"
"I ..." I really want to. "I ... can't."
Silence swamps us, and a sigh escapes the man's mouth. "Look ... you told me once that you're not really a 'bar person'. Say I was to believe that. Say I was to think that perhaps this isn't something you've done, but something you're doing ... for someone else."
I bite my lip, nodding slowly.
"And say that if that were the case, do you think you could assure me that this wouldn't happen again?"
My nods speeds up.
"My name's Jase." He thrusts his hand out and I stare at it, that hand with callouses and grooves in front of my chest.
"Lia," I say softly as I let my hand fall into his firm grasp. He shakes, twice, and then there's this weird pause where both of us should be releasing hands, but neither of us is. Electricity flows between us.
Then it's over, and I shiver.
Duke was safe. Duke wasn't tingles.
I don't have room in my plan for tingles.
"So as you can see, your offer to clean, while generous, is unwarranted," he finishes with a smile, and I look up and meet his gaze, giving my best convincing nod. "What I do need is bar staff. And someone to man the piano once a week."
I purse my lips. If I tell him I'm not eighteen, is he going to report me after all? "Is there anything else I could do instead?" I screw up my nose, and he laughs.
"Look, I don't really need anything else," he says. "And besides, the girl I hear playing piano three times a week—"
He knows my schedule?
"—she plays notes so beautiful, it's like being transported to another world. I feel that—the emotions you portray using those keys, and it's the most amazing thing I've ever heard. That girl couldn't create that magic, orchestrate those notes if she didn't love it. If she didn't breathe it."
"I breathe it," I whisper, and I do. He understands me. And I don't know how.
"I want this to be a good thing for you. Once you've worked off those six bottles of wine—which will maybe take you one shift?—I'll pay you. We ca
n make this work." He smiles, and it's so easy that I smile along with him.
I do a mental tally in my head. It's only a few weeks till my birthday. Surely I could get away with working underage for that long.
"Of course, you'd need your RSA—or do you already have that?" he asks, then furrows his brow. "Wait, you are eighteen, aren't you?"
I swallow. Heat rushes through me and my mouth feels dry, as if someone has taken one of those sucky things you get at the dentist and zoomed up all my saliva. Responsible Service of Alcohol, the paperwork that enables you to serve alcohol to people in bars and clubs. To people over-eighteen. Because you are over-eighteen.
Gulp.
And yet all of a sudden, I want this. Not just to pay off my debt and avoid getting a criminal record, but also because this man standing before me understands what I do. He appreciates it. And what if I could play in front of others and have them reach the emotions I portray too?
"I don't have my RSA yet"—and hopefully that will buy me some time—"but I can get it."
"Great." He grins this time, and wow. Dimples. "You can apply online, so you can start this week. They give you a paper printout, then you just need to go to the post office and get your plastic card. You have a few weeks to do that."
I nod, my mind racing. How the hell will I do that?
Already, I’m forming a plan. I could fill in the online form and use Mum's name. Then I'll have the paperwork, and hopefully by the time that expires, I can apply for my RSA officially.
"So it's settled." He strolls behind the bar and pulls out a beer from the fridge behind it. "You'll start on Friday. We'll do a training session during the day before, but I wouldn't stress. It'll be a soft launch; I haven't done much in the way of promotion."
My mind races. Friday. I'll have to skip school. It's risky, but I'm sure all I'd need to do is catch Mum in one of her boozy states to sign me a sick note. I can't believe I'm doing this! It's so ... illegal.
It's so completely un-Lia Stanton.
And I can't decide if that's a good or a bad thing.
How To Save A Life (Emerald Cove #1) Page 10