More Than Words: Kissed By A Muse #3

by S. K Munt

  ‘I’d love that.’ Bruce was smiling broadly. ‘That was exactly what I wanted too. I think the whole dating concept is a big call for me right now; I feel like I’m over Paisley, but I’m clearly not over the being in a relationship part, and I have a lot of re-tuning to do before I can…’ he blew out a puff of air and looked bashful. ‘There I go again, blah, blah, blah… I’m a musician, but not a rock star!’ he tossed his phone in his hand and caught it again, grinning. ‘I’ll pick you up from Weaver’s at six?’

  ‘Make it seven,’ Leigh said, thinking quickly. ‘We’ve got a long drive and everything today…’

  ‘Cool.’ He paused. ‘Don’t freak out or anything but it has to be said- if staying at Ryan’s place or his company in general gets too intense, please know that a change in company, or a fresh hotel room- is just a phone-call away, okay?’

  Leigh smiled at him. ‘Thanks for the offer but really, I’m fine.’

  ‘Just putting it out there.’ He stuffed his phone into his pocket. ‘So, it’s a non-date for tonight though?’

  ‘For sure.’ Leigh rose with Bruce and hugged him quickly, impressed by how he’d recovered his composure. She was eager to spend time with the laid-back part of his nature, for it would help combat how tense she always felt in Ryan’s company. ‘Thank you, for not holding a grudge or anything.’

  ‘And thank you for not bolting when you saw me coming.’ Bruce kissed her hand in a gentlemanly fashion. ‘We’ll have a ball tonight okay? That’s an order- I’m determined to squash the other first impressions I made on you so when you remember Niagara, you smile instead of dead-bolting your door.’

  Leigh laughed. ‘We don’t really have dead-bolts in Australia.’

  ‘Then how you’re still a virgin is beyond me.’ Bruce winked at her cheekily and then he was gone, leaving Leigh grinning.

  He was definitely a little more rock star than he thought, even if he wasn’t front man material yet.

  Three

  People swamped Ryan after he rounded off his set, and though all he wanted to do was march over to Leigh and demand to know what had gone down between her and Bruce. But he didn’t want to look as desperate as he was feeling, so he let his new fans form a small circle around him and tried to answer their questions and acknowledge their compliments while packing his equipment away.

  He wanted to kiss her though, and he was pretty sure that not being able to kiss her when he’d woken up that morning, or re-affirm their bond in any physical way, was what had him feeling so uncertain. When she’d shown up, she’d certainly looked every bit as enraptured with him as she had the night before when she’d been coming against his lips, but then Bruce had shown up and hadn’t left without getting a hug in first and Ryan’s mood had flat-lined again.

  Ryan had been obsessing about her all morning; as he’d dressed and eaten his breakfast, as he’d tidied up the house and ducked into her bedroom to smell her pillows, as he’d driven into town and as he’d spent an hour sitting in a café, sipping on a coffee and staring at Kathryn Praser’s bio, and though he was all sorts of muddled up, he’d come to one realization; He needed to know where he stood with Leigh, and he needed to know without having to spell out where she stood with him. He knew that was unfair and unbalanced, but it was what it was. He couldn’t make any sort of commitment to her until he had his memories back, and he might not even want her once he had the blanks of his past filled in… but he could no longer deny the fact that she was plan B- a plan B he wanted more than his plan A. So if she wasn’t interested in him at all in the forever sort of sense, he needed to know before he scrapped plan A altogether and ended up even more lost than he already was.

  But finding out how she felt was going to come down to either asking point blank, or continuing to read her body language, which wasn’t getting him far. It was hardly the time to have a serious conversation, but he’d more or less decided to ask her later that night, after they’d seen Kathryn and cleared that part of the air (if that was still possible after). He’d take her to his gig, get her panties all wet with his best numbers, then take her for another long drive to somewhere romantic and moonlit and just say: ‘Leigh… do you like me, or like like me?’ It was a scary plan, but a solid one. He just hoped that Kathryn Praser didn’t have the ability to mind fuck him any more than he already had been before then.

  When Ryan’s equipment was slung on his shoulders and he’d shaken the last hand and handed out the last flyer, he’d tried to look for Leigh without looking like he was looking, and had endure a mild heart episode when at first, it appeared as though she’d left. But then he spotted her near a hot dog wagon, and his soul had lifted. He’d made his way to her just in time for her to accept a plate of gooey poutine from the female vendor- the vendor who batted her eyelashes at Ryan as he approached so rapidly that he worried that Leigh’s cheesy fries would be air-blown cold by the time she got them.

  ‘You get nutritional demerits for those,’ Ryan said by way of greeting as he bent down to pick up Leigh’s shopping bags.

  ‘Hey…’ the vendor said with a broad smile, and he nodded politely, his eyes locked on Leigh’s as she looked up.

  ‘Gee, and here I was hoping that they were organic…’ Leigh smiled at him and stepped out from under the shadow of the cart’s little roof. ‘Oh well! I had a lot of maple syrup for breakfast this morning and that comes from a tree so that’s organic, right?’

  Ryan chuckled and nodded toward his car. ‘That and we have a ten meter walk to get to my car, so that counts as exercise.’

  ‘Totally.’ Leigh had her shoulder bag slung over the crook of her elbow and was tilting her face to the bottom of her food container in order to catch a drip of gravy with her tongue. She looked awkward and adorable, and Ryan couldn’t believe that he’d intended to play it cool with her. She glanced over her shoulder, then back to the road ahead of them with a smirk. ‘Don’t look, but I think that hot dog chick is contemplating doing something really gross with a frank and pretending that it’s you.’

  Ryan chuckled but made a point to not look back. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. She wouldn’t shut up about how hot that singer guy was the entire time she was serving me.’

  Ryan grinned down at Leigh; glad he’d worn the blue shirt. ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘I said you were okay…’

  Ryan bumped her with his guitar case. ‘Just okay, hmm? You didn’t threaten to beat her up for eyeing off your rent-a-date?’

  ‘Is that what this is?’ Leigh asked, not missing a beat as she stepped aside to let him open her door with his key.

  ‘I don’t know…’ Ryan hedged, a little surprised at how quickly he’d managed to work his agenda into the conversation but thrilled to be flirting again. ‘What do you think this is?’

  ‘Well…’ Leigh popped another fry into her mouth and helped open her door with her knee when he stepped back. ‘If it’s a rental situation, you’re gonna have to accept a stuffed squirrel as a bond, because I just blew most of my cash on Cliffton Hill.’

  ‘So I see.’ Ryan laughed and walked around to the trunk, popping it and stashing her numerous bags in with his stuff and finding that it only just fit. He closed it and jogged around to his side. ‘And what if the squirrel doesn’t cut it?’ He slid onto the driver’s seat and smiled at her as he shut the door behind him. ‘How am I going to collect for kissing services rendered?’

  Leigh’s lips twisted in a self-conscious smile. ‘Depends on how high I run my tab before I leave.’ She placed her fries on her lap and unbuckled the seatbelt. ‘Good thing I just made plans with Bruce for tonight, hmm? Because you look positively expensive in blue.’

  Ryan’s stomach acid bubbled. ‘You what?’

  ‘I told you about the deal I made with him, didn’t I?’ Leigh didn’t seem to notice his crushing devastation as he started the ignition and turned on the radio with numb fingers. ‘If he got the address, I’d take him out on a second date.’

  The
blood whooshed behind Ryan’s ears again so loudly that he could barely hear the car chug to a cold, groggy start. ‘That’s why he came to see you?’ he demanded sharply. ‘To collect?’

  ‘No. He came to apologize, and I accepted it- and then I asked him out. On the condition that it was a friends-only deal.’ She glanced at him, frowning. ‘Don’t look so worried, Ry! He knows now that he’s not ready to date and just wants to make up for ruining parts of my holiday for me, okay? And I feel bad for him- he really went out on a limb for me and I just jumped to the next tree.’

  Ryan could not believe his ears, and Roy Orbison seemed just as winded by the news because he was crooning ‘Only The Lonely’ in his most soulfully broken tone.

  She’s not coming to my gig! She says she likes me! She says she’s smart! But smart chicks that are into musicians are supposed to know that they’re wanted at the gigs- in the front row! But she’s going out with him instead? ANOTHER musician?

  ‘And you trust him?’ Ryan asked shortly as he pulled off the curb and into a break in traffic. ‘That’s so adorable.’

  Leigh smacked his arm playfully. ‘I can handle him, even if he’s lying. And this way, you don’t have to worry about baby-sitting me all night. I mean, there’s a good chance that you’re going to have a lot to process after today so…’

  Ryan was glad that he was wearing glasses because he knew the look in his eyes could have snap frozen the falls. ‘Yeah,’ he said softly, turning up Roy Orbison louder to kill the conversation before he could say something that would leave no doubt in her mind as to how pissed off and jealous he was. He wanted to baby-sit her! He wanted her every second of every minute, and the idea of her giving Bruce so much of what precious time Ryan had left with her, made him want to hurl.

  But the fact that she was so willing to leave his side for the night was what cut him the deepest, especially after she’d already spent the whole morning without him. Ryan was aching to hold her hand and kiss her and just inhale her… but knowing that she was no longer as fixated with him was sobering. Had she only ever wanted him because he looked so much like the guy from her favorite book? Would she have been as drawn to him if he’d looked like Justin? Or had he just satisfied what few virginal urges she had and now, she was good to move on to the next adventure while he licked his wounds and nursed his blue balls?

  Or was it the other guy? Ryan turned down the radio dial again and glanced at her as she happily swallowed down another chip. ‘Can I ask you something?’

  ‘I think we’ve made it plain that you can.’

  Ryan tried to smile, but could not. ‘How do you know that your feelings for this other guy are worthy of so much of your heart?’

  Leigh paused, then swallowed and shrugged. ‘Because he’s always there at the back of my mind or the front of it, you know? Sort of like how you feel about your dream girl.’

  ‘Always?’ Ryan echoed, thinking of the night before and how he’d barely given his dream girl a thought while he’d been entangled in Leigh’s golden limbs.

  ‘Always,’ she said softly, and Ryan’s heart broke.

  ‘Fair enough.’ Ryan turned up the radio and leaned away from her, cupping his cheek in his right palm on the window and thinking that he had a long, lonely road ahead of him, and that the sanest thing he could do, was stop trying to convince himself that she was going to keep him company for longer than a few miles of it.

  *

  Leigh could tell that she’d said something wrong, because Ryan went from cool, to warm, to frigid in the space of a five-minute conversation, but she didn’t know how to fix it. And then he stopped talking to her completely and started singing along with the radio, and Leigh couldn’t force herself to pester him with questions and ruin her private concert.

  His voice really was incredible. The sound was deep and rich but flowed without allowing the husky edges to catch and break it, and he had this effortless way of putting vocal runs on the plainest notes and a few times, Leigh was tempted to actually switch the radio off so there would be no background noise to mute the sound of perfection.

  Leigh wanted to tell him how good he was, but once again, that would mean breaking the spell with her own shaky voice and she couldn’t bear that so she put her cheese fries down at her feet and leaned back against her window, just staring at his profile and absorbing his melodies as the towns bordering Lake Ontario whipped by on the highway beside him on the way to Toronto.

  He’s good enough to have a label, a contract, a music video… the works. Oh my god… what if he ends up famous, and I’ll be able to say that I knew him? Will he remember me after? Or am I just as thickheaded as every other groupie in the world to hope to be a VIP in a sea of discarded one-night stands?

  Leigh frowned as she thought that over, not liking the idea of becoming not just a notch on Ryan’s headboard, but half a notch. She liked things the way they were now, and the realization that she’d be leaving him soon and he’d be bringing other women back to his house to sit in front of his fire and ‘Ooh’ over his Christmas tree and mock her dying fir made her heartsick. She’d spent the morning away from him so she wouldn’t overdose on his charms by lunch, but she’d only been in the car for him for twenty minutes, and she was as boneless and wistful in his company as she had been when he’d cuddled up next to her the night before.

  Leigh’s eyes dropped from his stunning profile to his hand on the gearstick, and then slid to the ring on his pinkie- which was the one piece of evidence to Imogen’s case that truly blew her mind. Without meaning to, she reached over and stroked it softly, and flinched when Ryan almost head-butted the roof of the car.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said quickly, retracting her hand. It amazed her that he would act so oddly in response to her touch, given how hands on they’d been the night before- but something was definitely off between them and his react only further affirmed that.

  ‘I thought you were asleep!’ Ryan rubbed his fingers through his hair and straightened, pausing at a traffic light. ‘I was just contemplating whether or not to wake you up when you…’ he shook himself. ‘Well... that got the heart going.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said again. ‘I was just thinking of how- no matter what Kathryn has to tell us today- the fact that your name is Ryan and you’re a musician and you look the way you do is a pretty amazing coincidence. I mean… you can’t really blame Imogen for giving you the surname Weaver, if that’s all that’s happened here. So I hope you don’t hold a grudge against her if that turns out to be the truth because, I think she really cared about you, Ry.’

  Ryan didn’t look at her. ‘And is that what you think has happened here?’ he asked quietly, and from his quiet tone of voice, Leigh could tell that he’d been deep in thought for some time over it all. ‘That Imogen just named me Weaver because she’d read the book and thought it fitting?’

  ‘Honestly? It’s the only explanation that makes sense, though it would be pretty cool if I’m wrong, and one of my other theories were accurate.’

  ‘You have other theories?’

  Leigh sat up, watching the buildings pass by on lakeshore boulevard and thinking of how much quieter that part of the region was compared to Toronto CBD, which she’d visited only days before. She smiled, wondering what Ryan would think if she revealed some of the inner workings of her warped mind.

  ‘I’d like to think that you’re for real, you know?’ She glanced at him, but his expression didn’t change. ‘That you’re THAT Ryan and Kathryn’s your aunt or something and they all think you died and I’m about to deliver you home.’

  Ryan snorted. ‘To an ex who who’s with someone else?’

  ‘An ugly one,’ Leigh admitted. ‘Then you’d fall madly in love with me and I’d get to keep you.’

  Ryan’s eyebrows shot up above his glasses. ‘Hang on now, what about the other guy?’

  It’s YOU, you dipshit! Ryan Weaver from the book IS the other guy! And you both have so much in common that I can’t make out the differences anymo
re! Where the story ends and you begin!

  ‘Look, the thing with the other guy is…’ Leigh felt her face heat up and suddenly, she wanted to be anywhere but there. Then she saw it- the sign high above the red brick building and she smacked Ryan’s shoulder and pointed. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? There was something about a bird in the name of the café?’

  Ryan’s head turned to look behind him and he cursed under his breath. ‘That was it!’ He flicked on his indicator and pulled the dodge into a small car park. ‘But back up a bit… I want to talk about what you just said before we go anywhere.’

  Leigh tittered nervously, checking to make sure that she had all of her things in her bag. ‘Now?’ She asked lightly. ‘Ryan my love life ought to be the least of your concerns at the moment.’

  Ryan yanked the keys out of the ignition and turned to face her. ‘If you’re thinking that your love life could be influenced by my availability, then I’m really fucking concerned.’ He took off his glasses and nailed her with an intense blue gaze. ‘Leigh…’ he rested his hand behind the head of her seat. ‘If you’re falling in love with me, I need to know, okay?’

  Leigh sucked in a breath, and it burned. Ryan looked pale, anxious and as he’d said- really fucking concerned. His expression contrasted so sharply against her flippant, affectionate words that it left no question as to the state of his feelings for her- if she told him that she was falling in love with him, and the only competition he had for her affections was his fictional namesake, he’d probably fake getting out of the car just so he could reverse over her and make it look like an accident before hightailing it back to Niagara. She lifted her hand to his face and stroked his brow gently, where the eyebrow ring ought to be, but wasn’t.

  Be. Cool.

  ‘I think you’re a fantastic kisser, great company and an amazing friend,’ Leigh said softly, smiling through the pain. ‘But I barely know you, and as romantic as I am, I’m too rational to convince myself that incredible chemistry equals true love, you know? And that’s what I’m holding out for.’