Crazy About Love: An All About Love Novel (4 page)

18 MONTHS, 23 DAYS AGO: 10:11
A.M.

“Do you need accompaniment?” the director asks from the center of the small playhouse auditorium. My heart starts beating in my ears, and I glance at the empty seat behind the piano.

She said she’d be here, but that was before our conversation last night. That was before I made a fool of myself.

I could play, but I’ve always had difficulty playing and singing at the same time. I need more practice, and promised myself that I would master the craft, but whenever Theresa is around, I’d much rather hear her tickle the keys, or tickle them with her.

“Mr. Tucker?”

I shake my attention away from the piano and back onto the director. “Excuse me,” I apologize. My heart throbs in my ears and I can hardly hear myself. A sheen of sweat forms along my hairline, and all I can do is count the thumps, try to calm them, but the more I try the louder and faster they get.

“I—I have…I mean, I
had
”—
thumpthumpthumpthump
—“accompaniment.”

The director doesn’t look fazed by my nervous habits. Or perhaps he sees them all too often. I’ve always needed a character to slip into in order to relax onstage. The singing portion of the auditions is always when I crumble.

“Would you like us to provide it for you?” the director asks. “Or would you rather sing a capella?”

My eyes move slowly to the girl in the front row with a stack of music resting on her lap. She smiles encouragingly at me, as if pitying my lack of preparedness.

A capella, I decide. Nothing wrong with a capella. I’m better a capella, I’ve been told. So maybe this is fate’s way of helping me out.

I give the empty piano seat one more glance.

Thumpthumpthumpthump
.

“A ca—”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” Theresa calls out, bursting through the side door adjacent to the stage. Her hair, wet from her morning shower, bounces around her face and drips onto her chest while she digs through her large purse for the sheet music. My nerves move from my stomach up into my throat, and I start wondering if I’ll be able to sing at all.

The director waves Theresa over to the piano, impatiently tapping his foot on the seat in front of him. Theresa catches my eye before she settles onto the piano bench, her mouth pulled to the side slightly. Though I’m okay singing a capella, I’m grateful she’s here.

I hear her nail tap the first key before the notes are played, and I push my nerves back into my stomach. My eyelids drift shut, and I take a deep breath, blow it out, run over the first line in my head, the first note, and try to forget about the girl behind the piano…the girl who plays flawlessly, like it’s in her blood. The notes are tattooed into her skin, right down to the bone. I’m so enraptured by the way she’s playing that I miss my cue. I miss it and don’t realize until she’s halfway through the first verse.

I cut a side glance at her, smirking a little about having screwed up before even opening my mouth. Her shoulders shake with suppressed laughter, and she brings the notes back into the intro seamlessly.

“Love Changes Everything.” That’s the song I’m singing.

Lizzie picked it—she always requests the love songs. I rip my eyes from the gorgeous woman behind the piano and look at the director with the artsy goatee. I sing to him the words that tasted weird on my tongue when I rehearsed but suddenly taste honest. I feel them rock me where I stand—an earthquake localized right under my feet, and I’m the only one who feels its destructive force.

I know I said it wouldn’t, but it has. I feel it when I let the last note out and my eyes connect with Theresa’s again.

Love changes everything.

P
RESENT DAY

“Better?” Rian asks, stepping back from her graffiti art. I push away from my lookout spot against the wall. The only sketchy person I saw was a woman across the street in a bright pink winter coat, her face hidden by the hood. For a long minute I thought she was staring straight at me, and I squinted through the night to see if I recognized her, but couldn’t get any facial features. Then more people started walking down the street and she became distracted, and so did I.

I step up next to Rian and tilt my head to the side. It does look better.

“It’s fantastic,” I say, amping up to flatter her. “You’re really talented.” I say that because it’s the truth.

“All right,” she says, plopping the empty spray can into the trash. “You hungry?”

“Lead the way.”

She gives me a cute little wink, lifting her shoulder enough to touch her chin. Then she tucks her arm in mine and leads us out of the alley and into the street. As we walk she occasionally asks me a question or two. I try to fill the silence with drawn-out answers to make myself seem more interesting. My attempts to create chemistry with a girl I’ve just met are coming out a bit rusty. I don’t want her four grand to be a bust, but I also have my own agenda here. So during the sporadic silences, I try to brainstorm ways to build sexual tension. Though the constant buzzing of my phone isn’t helping anything. Whoever’s calling is going to have to wait a bit.

“This good?” she asks, stopping in front of a place. I can see through the window that it’s jam-packed inside, with people waiting, so we’d have to eat on the outside patio. I’m not a fan of eating outdoors, especially since the wind is currently blowing so hard it whips her short hair into a tall bouffant. I know this February has been exceptionally warm for New York, but by no means is it comfortable. I’d have to leave my jacket on, and I don’t like eating in anything long-sleeved, let alone the $500 jacket Jace lent me.

But she’s in charge, so I go with it.

We get seated by a railing and a bunch of hedges. We’re close to the sidewalk but the shrubbery makes it easy to have a private conversation. Not that we’re talking anyway.

The waiter brings us our menus and glasses of water, takes our drink orders (we order the same brand of beer, so maybe this’ll turn out better than it started), then leaves us alone. I pick up the menu and glance over the choices.

“Wait,” Rian says, putting her hand over my menu. “You up for a game?”

Finally, an opening. I breathe out a sigh of relief. Here’s my chance to be witty, charismatic, maybe romantic, and get something happening between us.

I set the menu down. “I believe you’re calling the shots tonight.”

“How about I order you my favorite dish, and you order me yours?” Her eyes smile. “You allergic to anything?”

“Tomatoes,” I lie. But there’s no way I’m eating anything made with them or on them or around them or touching them.

“That’s total bullshit,” she says with an accusatory point of her finger. “That is a bullshit face.” She smiles down at her menu. “But I’ll avoid tomatoes if you want. Is tomato
sauce
okay?”

“Does your favorite dish have tomato sauce in it?”

Her eyes flick up to the night sky, and she plays with her bottom lip thoughtfully. “No…”

“Then it doesn’t matter, huh?” I laugh. “What about you?” I ask, looking back at the menu. “Allergic to anything?”

“Nope. And I like to try everything at least once.”

“Everything?”

She pauses while I glance over the entrées. I sense her leaning in closer.

“
Any
thing,” she says.

The sexy twist her tone gives the word causes my gaze to lift from my menu to make sure I wasn’t imagining it. Her hooded, mischievous eyes tell me I’m definitely not in the realm of my imagination.

The reality that I’m about to embark on an evening with a woman who may spark the first step of moving on hits me hard in the guilt-ridden gut. She’s taken us from the friendly pleasantries into the flirty agendas with one word, and it’s been so long since I’ve played that role I find my mind reverting back to the tactics I used when I was a novice to the dating scene.

“You like games?” I ask, and she raises an eyebrow. “ ’Cause I have one for us.”

“You have my attention.”

“I want to know your bullshit face.” I grin playfully. “You said I have one.”

“You do.”

“I want to see yours.”

She tilts her head, an amused look in her eyes. “You want me to lie to you?”

“I’ll ask a question, you tell me the answer, and I’ll guess if it’s a lie or if it’s the truth.”

“Hmm,” she mutters thoughtfully, closing the menu with careful hands. “And this will work in reverse as well?”

“Sure.”

“Truth,” she says, the corner of her lip tilting upward. “So, Alex with a
c
, were you in a church group growing up?”

I attempt to keep my face as passive as possible. “No.”

“Bullshit.” She laughs, and I find myself automatically laughing with her. It’s a natural reaction I haven’t experienced during an evening like this, and it jolts the heart in my chest, if only for a moment.

“How’d you know?”

She lifts a shoulder again, grazing her chin with the bulk of her jacket. “This game feels very community-group-esque.”

“Were you in a church group?”

“Yes,” she answers. I study her face for a moment, but I can’t tell if she’s for real or not.

“Truth?”

“Truth. Catholic school girl. I still have the uniform.”

I eye her teasing grin. “Bullshit.”

“Truth…I’ll even prove it, if you so desire.” She pauses for a second. “But let’s get something straight—I’m not exactly a practicing Catholic anymore.”

She taps her fingers against the cloth-covered table and grins, presumably at the thought running through her head. I grin at the action, then take a drink. Girl’s got a hell of a poker face.

The waiter comes and takes our orders. I get her the steak and she whispers her order to him.

“Should I be worried?” I ask when he leaves. Her shoulders lift the tiniest bit, flirting, teasing, and I feel as if I should be flattered and eating it up, but I still haven’t fully gotten there yet.

“No,” she answers.

“Bullshit.”

“Well, maybe a little worried.” She pinches her fingers together, then reaches for her beer. “Is steak really your favorite or were you just trying to see if I eat meat?”

“Steak is the best-tasting thing at this place.”

She eyes me up and down, then tilts her head with a smile. “Truth.”

I nod, confirming her guess. “You’re good at this,” I tell her. “What’s your secret?”

“I’ve been told I’m good at reading people.”

“Bullshit.”

“Hey, you got one right.” She smiles, and I’m not surprised I guessed correctly. That answer comes standard with that question, but it’s rarely the truth. “Truth is, you’re extremely transparent, Alex with a
c
.”

“Really?”

She nods, but doesn’t say anything more. I go to scratch the back of my neck but quickly stop my hand in case that’s some sort of tell. If I’m so transparent, does she know what I’m doing here, that I’m trying to move on from another woman? Can she see the unexplained guilt still lodged in my gut? Can she tell that my heart isn’t ready to be opened? If she can see all of that, she’s hiding it well. I might be transparent, but she’s a stone wall. Reading her is like trying to understand why the hell there are letters in math.

The silence stretches between us, and she leans back and gazes at the open night sky. Her finger pushes the straw in her water glass around and around, up and down, and I wonder if she’s truly comfortable with the lack of conversation or if she’s in deep thought and speaking would only ruin the moment.

Then, I swear to God, the bush behind her coughs.

“You hear that?” I ask. She doesn’t drop her gaze from the sky.

“Hmm?”

“I think that bush just coughed.”

She lets out a small laugh. “That’d be quite the party trick.”

Her shoulders lift and fall in a contented sigh, and she closes her eyes as the frosty wind rushes over our table. I grab at everything to keep it from blowing over. I really hate eating outside.

Rian doesn’t seem cold or uncomfortable. She could be
bored
. I thought we were killing it for a minute there. I mean, I wasn’t feeling fireworks exactly, but at least there were smiles, a back-and-forth,
conversation
.

This is what I like about Theresa. Because when there isn’t conversation, she’d still be talking, even if it was to herself. I don’t like silence. And this silence is going to murder me slowly, painfully, leaving me dead with an awkward look on my face.

“Why’d you bid on me?” I blurt out, punctuating the aching silence. Her eyes blink down to mine and she stops playing with her straw.

“You’re cute.”

“Lie,” I say with a small laugh, running a thumb over the label on my beer bottle. I may be cute—unfortunately I’ve been told “cute” over “sexy” more times than not—but no one would spend four grand on cute.

“Truth.” She pauses, but at least keeps her eyes on me. “But maybe not the
entire
truth.”

“What’s the entire truth?”

“Have you ever stripped before?” she asks.

I chuckle. “Aren’t you supposed to answer my question first?”

“Because I could tell that you deal with stage fright.”

My eyebrows rise. “Is it that obvious?”

She shakes her head. “Only to people paying attention. You were all over the place, which was great, but once the bid got really high, you focused on one woman.” She looks down at the table. “A woman, I might add, who wasn’t putting a single dime on you.”

Theresa’s wide eyes, obvious flush, and amused shock flash through my mind. The enraptured look she gave me would’ve snagged the attention of any bachelor up there.

“Could you blame me?” I tell Rian honestly, shaking my head at the table.

“Not at all.” The corner of her mouth tilts upward. “Of course you danced for her. You
enjoyed
the attention.”

“And that’s an attractive quality?”

“Yes,” she says without missing a beat. “I think you enjoyed the attention so much because you don’t get a lot of it. And that’s a damn shame.”

I actually look down at my body to see if I am literally transparent—if I have all my issues laid out for everyone to see.

“You are one hell of a good guesser.”

She grins as the waiter plops our food in front of us. She’s ordered a gooey-looking something for me to try. When the waiter leaves we swap plates, even though my mouth’s watering just from the smell of the steak.

“What is this?” I ask, poking at it with my fork.

“Seafood risotto.” She looks at it longingly. “I get at least one bite.”

“If you reciprocate.” I push my fork at her steak, and her arm hits mine as she reaches for the gooey rice. We each take our one bite, and I let the meat sit in my mouth for a bit, hoping I can make
every
bite of my food taste like this one.

“Okay, it’s not bad,” she says after her first taste of the steak.

“Bullshit,” I say. “It’s the best thing at this place.”

She rolls her eyes but takes another bite. Something that feels a lot like victory bubbles up in my chest.

But the risotto isn’t that bad either.

We eat for a few seconds—or minutes; who the hell knows—in silence. The coughing bush behind her rustles. A clink of her fork sends my eyes up to meet hers, and I realize she is staring right at me. Maybe through me.

“Why are you a bachelor?” she asks.

“Huh?”

“You’re in your late twenties, right? No serious girlfriend or prospects?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Truth.” She sets her fork down and locks her fingers under her chin. “So…why not?”

“Haven’t met the right girl, I guess.”

“Bullshit.” She shakes her head. “Really, you should stop with the lies, because you’re no good at them.”

I didn’t even know I was lying. But I am. It’s not that I haven’t met the right girl; it’s because I’m still hung up on one.

“You sure you want the truth?” I ask. “Might ruin this.”

“I think I already know the truth. I just want you to say it.”

“Why?”

“Because it might help. First step on the road to recovery: admit there is a problem.” Her hands drop to her lap. “So, Alex with a
c
, what’s the problem?”

I take another bite just to avoid saying it. It will ruin this night, won’t it? Or will it help? Rian looks at me expectantly, and I can see that this girl could really know me
and
want me. That’s enough, right? That’s what I’m missing right now.

So I swallow. Then gulp again to make sure my voice doesn’t sound like there’s a frog in my throat.

“I’m in love.”