by Katie Dowe
It had come straight from her soul, and she was laying it bare for them.
It looked like they appreciated it.
She damn well hoped they did. She had poured everything out, put everything on the line for that.
And it was too much. She was too spent that day. She should’ve waited till she had more to give to try and pull that much out of her.
Heidi didn’t know how she managed to finish the song.
It wasn’t all because of the song. It was also because she couldn’t take her eyes away from Christian. She saw him get the drink, and read the surprise in his body language.
She saw him settle back down, and had to force herself to focus on the rest of the room.
She closed her eyes to finish the last verse, and finally opened them again to look at him. She could feel the searing blue of his eyes burning into her.
Everything seemed too hot.
Ironic, thought Heidi.
When the last note died down, there was silence. She saw him raise his glass to her in a toast in that precious moment and she released that breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
And then the applause started.
It was far more than the usual polite acknowledgment, with a smattering of enthusiastic encouragement, that she usually got. She did have a few fans who were regulars.
This was different.
This time, she felt like a musician – a real one.
She felt like an artist, and she felt appreciated.
By the time she got off the stage and sat on a bar stool for that glass of wine, she was beyond exhausted.
But she didn’t have to look around to know that Christian Sanders was no longer there. She’d felt the very air change when he left.
*****
The next morning, Heidi got up early, as usual, and did her dog rounds.
She swallowed her guilt when she got Apple from Zoe. Apparently, Zoe was using the time to practice her meditation techniques.
Heidi figured that it was as good a way as any of dealing with such adversity.
But she got Apple and left quickly, without staying to chat, despite the fact that Zoe obviously was full of what had happened.
From everything, it sounded very much like Christian had kept his word.
She had had a few uneasy moments that morning, wondering if he would. She was so screwed if he didn’t.
To keep herself occupied, she taught Apple a new trick – balancing a biscuit on her nose.
The dog sure was smarter than her person.
By the time she got the rest of her canine cohort, she was feeling much better.
She hadn’t gotten any calls that indicated that she might be arrested or slapped with a very hefty fine. There had been nothing alarming.
Heidi was even relaxed enough to hum by the time she got back home, and pondered what to bake.
Something extravagant to celebrate not being in trouble and not having set anything on fire, decided Heidi, and settled on red velvet cupcakes.
She had cream cheese, red food coloring, cocoa powder, the fine cake flour that worked best with the recipe, vinegar, buttermilk – everything she needed.
She was soon whipping her butter and sugar, getting her eggs, and enjoying the slight fatigue that came with turning her nose up at an electric mixer.
You appreciated it more when you took the trouble to do it by hand, believed Heidi. Besides, it toned her arms quite well.
By the time she had her batter in the cake tins and in the oven, and the icing ready to go, she was definitely calm.
Until she thought about Christian again.
He had come to see her sing, to listen to her. What had he thought of her?
Would he come again?
She was surprised by the strength of her desire to have him there again, to listen to her again.
Why hadn’t he stayed to talk to her? She wished he had.
Maybe he had come to keep an eye on her and make sure that she didn’t set anything else on fire.
That was as likely as anything else.
But he had told her that he’d heard of her. He’d heard her before.
It was a relief when the oven timer went off and she could get the cake layers out.
They looked perfect. Belatedly, she remembered that she had meant to bake cupcakes, so that they wouldn’t stuff themselves with butter and sugar.
Well, maybe she was still a little rattled.
Heidi tried to distract herself by updating all her social media accounts while the layers cooled enough for icing. She checked comments on YouTube – they didn’t make her want to scream or cry, which was excellent for comments on YouTube. She went on Tumblr and made an update. Replying to messages and emails distracted her enough.
She was getting a few more invitations to sing, round and about. That was good, wasn’t it? She was getting noticed.
That was the point of it all.
Wincing, she even ventured onto Reddit and saw that nobody had been particularly nasty.
For Reddit, that was excellent, too.
Heidi was feeling buoyed enough to even consider an AMA. She wasn’t well-known enough for it to be feasible, though.
If only she could get a break, thought Heidi, frustrated.
She worked so hard. She worked her ass off.
And she knew that she would get that break. She would. She believed it.
But she really wanted it to be sooner rather than later.
Barney’s was always open to her, and there were a few more watering holes that counted on her for open mic nights, but she needed more than that.
Just a chance.
Sighing, she got up and got to work icing the cake.
Maybe she got a bit carried away. When she was worried, she tended to get a bit more intricate that usual.
By the time she went over to Mrs. Spinelli’s, she had managed to paste her smile back on.
“Heidi, I made gnocchi. For you.”
Heidi had to fight back tears. Gnocchi was her favorite thing ever. She knew that it was a fiddly thing to make, and it was a lot of trouble.
“You are too good to me. But I made us a red velvet cake.”
“Oh, that looks magnificent! Why, you have outdone yourself! Heidi, my dear, if you get tired of singing, you could open a patisserie and make a fortune. Or at least an excellent living. But we will need to go for an extra yoga class to pay for this. I think you have a client who could help, yes?”
Heidi shook her head wryly.
“I think we’ll go to somebody who knows what they’re doing. Mrs. Spinelli, I’m so sorry I was short with you last night.”
The older woman waved away Heidi’s apologies.
“Never you mind. It’s no matter. You were tired, and upset, and refused to take a break. You look better today. Today, we will sing together and we will forget about yesterday.”
Heidi smiled.
“Forgetting about yesterday sounds like a wonderful idea.”
But Mrs. Spinelli was sharp.
“You don’t mean that, not completely. What else happened yesterday?”
Heidi tried, very hard, to look as if she didn’t know what Mrs. Spinelli was talking about, and failed.
“Come on, Heidi. Have this nice bread I baked, and tell me.”
Heidi shook her head.
“You didn’t bake it.”
Mrs. Spinelli laughed, loud and booming.
“I didn’t, but it’s good, nonetheless. Now tell me. It’s a man, isn’t it?”
Heidi gave up. She would have to tell all, of course.
“Yes. The one who put out the fire. His name is Christian. Mrs. Spinelli, he came to Barney’s last night. He came to hear me sing.”
The older woman smiled and sighed.
“Ah, young love.”
Heidi shook her head vehemently.
“Young, yes. Love, no. Don’t you start picking out china patterns for me yet, Mrs. Spinelli. Come on, let’s have lunch.”<
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But if Heidi thought that that might be the end of it, she was wrong.
Mrs. Spinelli grilled her until she could probably have drawn a picture of Christian, and a very accurate one, from Heidi’s description of him.
Heidi was, for once, extremely glad when the singing part of the program began. At least she couldn’t be grilled then!
By the end of it, Heidi was exhausted. She had pushed herself harder than usual because she hadn’t wanted Mrs. Spinelli to start asking questions again.
She went back across the hall to her home, appreciating how nothing was on fire, and got ready to go out again for her afternoon dog rounds.
Things were looking up, thought Heidi. At the end of the day, she wasn’t in trouble, she had a few gigs, and she had an open mic event that had actual prize money that evening.
She’d never actually won any of those. It had been close, very often, but she’d never won.
But she would. Of course she would.
Strangely enough, when it was something without prize money, she almost always won.
If that wasn’t a wonderful description of how her life seemed to be, thought Heidi, a bit ruefully.
All evening, she busied herself with recording another original for YouTube. It would need more editing before she could upload it, of course, but it was a good start.
It was also a good way to keep herself from obsessing over Christian.
A fireman, of all things, thought Heidi. What a cliché of a woman she was turning out to be! She’d never been attracted to men in any position of authority. Heidi disliked authority with a vehemence she usually reserved for chamomile tea.
She really hated chamomile tea.
But he was sticking his neck out for her.
And he had come to hear her sing.
He had left before talking to her, though.
What did all of that mean? She had sent him a drink, he had raised a toast, and then he had just vanished.
Disgusted with herself and her budding obsession, she threw herself into her music, and soon enough, that was all that mattered.
Heidi lost herself in her words and her tunes, and nothing else could break through when she did that.
*****
“Chris! Man, you’ve been all over the place.”
Christian came back to himself with a jolt and glanced over at Rick.
“What? No I’m not. I did the drill perfectly well.”
Rick rolled his eyes.
“Yes, but your thoughts are all over the place. You can do drills like that. You know you can’t do the real thing like that.”
Christian shrugged.
“We’re not doing the real thing now, so that’s pretty much irrelevant, isn’t it? What’s the big deal?”
Rick shook his head.
“What the hell has gotten into you? Where did you disappear to last night, anyway? You left me there to deal with Aunt Susie all on my own, man! That is so not cool!”
Christian grinned.
“I’m sure you managed admirably. I had somewhere to be. Had to do something. Check something out.”
Rick shook his head.
“What the hell is going on with you?”
Christian shrugged.
He wasn’t sure he could answer that honestly. What the hell was going on with him?
Why had he gone to listen to Heidi sing?
Because she was very good. He could justify that to himself.
Almost.
But he had gone, and he had felt a need to see her. That need had been so strong that he’d left as soon as he could.
But she had seen him, even if he had sat in a place designed not to let him be seen, and she had sent him a drink.
She had known to send him a Scotch, too. Was that instinct?
Heidi hadn’t just been good. After the day she’d had, he wouldn’t have blamed her if she had been a bit off.
But she had been thoroughly magnificent. She had blown it out of the water.
The audience had been eating out of her pretty, long-fingered hand.
He had forgotten that she sometimes played the guitar, too. When she did covers, she usually chose to just sing.
She was always full of surprises, too. He’d remembered that, when he saw her again on the stage, playing to the crowd and getting everybody cheering for her.
It wasn’t just her voice. Her presence was remarkable.
He was drawn to her, and he didn’t understand it.
Maybe he should stay away from her.
But he knew he wouldn’t. That evening, at nine, when he stepped out of his home, he told himself that he could be going anywhere.
He could call Rick and ask him to meet him somewhere. Maybe they could go and shoot some pool. They could do something else.
But his feet knew better. They took him to ‘Tunes’, where he knew there was an open mic night.
He knew, because he had looked it up.
And he knew that Heidi was billed to sing there.
He dithered outside, and told himself that he hadn’t come there just to hear Heidi sing. He came for open mic nights quite often. He liked music. But not Nickelback.
He’d even been told that he was quite passable on the drums, though it had never been more than a fun hobby to him.
He’d almost decided to walk away when he turned around and went inside. Walking straight to the bar, he slid onto an empty stool – one of very few left, which meant that he was right about open mic being a popular night at Tunes – and waited.
Ordering a beer, he nursed it, unwilling to let go of that part of his control. He seemed to have relinquished far too much of it already.
What was he doing?
He was about to get up and leave when she came on stage, and he felt as if he had relinquished control all over again.
He couldn’t leave. He knew he could.
Did she realize that he was there? Did she feel that same awareness that he did?
He sat back, and listened, as she gauged the crowd and played to them.
She was an entertainer and a performer, thought Christian, and an incredibly talented one.
And then their eyes met, and he stopped thinking, at all.
*****
It was him! He was there again.
Her fireman, as she had embarrassingly began to think of him, again.
Well, she had only one song this time, unlike at Barney’s, where she sang full sets for almost free. In the hope that it would lead to something, somehow.
And for the sheer joy of singing, seeing her music being enjoyed.
There was no original tonight. Tonight, she would sing Nina Simone, and boy, this one hit close to home.
She launched into Ain’t got no, I got life and she put everything into it.
She knew she did it well. She knew she channeled the great singer herself when she performed it.
Starting off low, and simple, she built it up, taking it higher and higher, bringing it back again, and by the time she launched into the long note, she knew she had it.
For once, she felt that complete certainty that it was her night.
This was hers.
She got this. Nobody could take this from her now.
She let her eyes meet his again, and the confidence poured out.
When she got up and walked, her hips rolled, her lips challenged, and her hands brought everything together.
She saw people clapping, getting to their feet, and knew that she had turned what could’ve been just another open mic night into something far more. She had turned it into an experience that they would remember.
She saw glasses left untouched until she reached the end, and drew that note out, impossibly long, taking it higher, from contralto to soprano, until she could’ve sworn she heard the wine glasses vibrating.
There was a moment of silence, so complete that it was more than just lack of sound.
Then she got something, for the first time in her life.
She
got an actual standing ovation.
Later, she might find it funny. Later, she might look back and think of how incongruous it was to get a standing ovation at a rather dingy pub, during an open mic night when anybody with ten bucks could step up and sing.
But that was the first night she felt like a star, and she needed that.
She hadn’t realized how low her soul had been until she heard it.
Riding that wave of confidence, she walked off the stage, walked up to the bar where Christian still sat, and slid onto the stool next to him.
Chapter 4
“Hello, Christian. Can I buy you a drink?”
Christian smiled, and Heidi found that she was riding a wave.
She had her balance, but there was this feeling that she might lose it at any moment that kept her sharp. It was exhilarating.
“I think it’s my turn.”
Heidi smiled, pleased.
“I’ll take a Scotch. Only if you have one, too.”
Christian had presence, she had to give him that, thought Heidi as the rather jaded bartender hopped to it. They had two glasses in front of them in no time.
She raised her glass.
“What shall we drink to?”
Christian smiled again, and Heidi felt like her heart had skipped a beat before speeding up.
The man looked potent. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had such a strong reaction to anybody.
Heidi usually kept all her emotions for her friends and her music.
That’s what mattered to her. That would never change.
Would it?
“To questionable decisions that turn out to be worth it.”
Well, that was pointed.
But the frank honestly was refreshing.
“As long as they’re worth it,” said Heidi, and clinked her glass to his.
Taking a sip, she put it aside.
She didn’t often drink hard spirits. She would take it slow.
The last thing she needed was another questionable decision.
“So, did you like the show?”
Christian grinned, and she nearly swooned.
His smile had packed a punch. But when he grinned, he had dimples.