Sweet Harmonies (25 page)

As she slowly drifted back down to earth, she
found herself wrapped in Ryan's arms, and she took a moment to
enjoy the delicious sensation of him stroking her hair and
murmuring sweet nothings into her ear.

She felt her eyelids getting heavier, along
with her limbs, and she began to drift away into peaceful slumber,
a small smile on her lips, secure in Ryan's embrace....until her
eyes flew open and cold panic flooded her muscles. NO! What was
wrong with her? She had come dangerously close to breaking her own
“no spending the night” rule.

Taking a deep breath and attempting to seem
casual, she stood up and stretched, pulling her panties and boxers
up in a single motion. She made a show of yawning.

“
Don't take it personally,” she smiled,
“That was far from boring. I just haven't slept. So if we're all
good here, I think I'm gonna head back to bed. You can let yourself
out, the door automatically locks after it closes.”

She turned and started towards the stairs,
clearly not inviting him to go along.

A little stunned, he said, “OK. Um…well,
alright. Sorry I woke you up. I'll call you later,” and started
towards the front door.

When he was halfway to the front door and she
was halfway up the stairs, it occurred to him that he'd never even
addressed what he had come over for in the first place.

“
Oh, wait, Karina,” he called up the
stairs.

She turned and looked at him expectantly.

Ryan pulled his phone out of the back pocket
of his jeans, pulled up the bookmarked page, and pressed play on
the video.

“
Have you seen this?” he asked,
amazed.

Karina glanced down at his phone to see the
video which had been the subject of so much discussion on this
endless night.

“
Yes, I've seen it,” she said in a
blasé tone, “And if you wouldn't mind, I would much rather discuss
it with you when I can actually string two consecutive cohesive
thoughts together. Good night, Ryan.”

With that, she continued up the stairs, and
Ryan heard her footsteps as they padded down the hall. He then
heard her bedroom door close behind her, definitively ending any
discussion on the matter.

“
Okay then,” Ryan mumbled to himself,
puzzled, “Guess I'll be going.”

Not sure what else to do, he turned and
walked out of Karina's house, checking to make sure that the door
had, indeed, locked behind him. He walked back to his truck and
climbed in, starting the motor, and pulling away.

He drove down the mountain as a brilliant
orange sunrise began to peak over the Sierra Nevadas, and Ryan
tried to figure out how in the name of God and all that is holy he
was EVER going to manage to take things slow with the extremely
sexy and enticing Miss Karina Blackstone.

Chapter 16

Ryan listened to the hustle and bustle of Sue
Ann's Cafe die down after the dinner rush. He felt like a coward
hiding out back here in the office, but he couldn't help it. It
seemed every single person in Hope Falls had some kind of opinion
about his new YouTube fame. Not only that, but it seemed like every
single person in Hope Falls felt the need to come by the Cafe and
share that opinion with him.

He had held out as long as he could, being
polite, smiling, treating each person as if he really and truly
cared what they thought about his relationship with Karina, his
musicianship, his voice, his lyrics, his stage presence....his
clothing, for Pete’s sake!

He had pastedon his fake smile through the
breakfast rush, he had pasted it on again for the lunch rush, but
God help him, by dinner, he had had enough. He told his Granny –
who incidentally could not be enjoying what he considered to be an
extremely embarrassing turn of events more! - that he needed to
catch up on inventory and payroll.

Since his arrival in Hope Falls, he had taken
over the bookkeeping duties at Sue Ann's Cafe. It was a pretty
monumental project. He had realized right away that, while Sue Ann
definitely had kept all of the pertinent information, she had also
eschewed any kind of filing system. Not only that, but she had
unsurprisingly neglected to bring her business into the
21
^st
century – hell, even the 20
^th
! - by
putting her financial records on computer. What receipts there were
sat stuffed into shoeboxes, and what records there were sat
handwritten in thick and dusty ledger books.

Justin had gotten them all pretty much
organized chronologically, and now was beginning the massive
undertaking of entering all of the Cafe's past records into
QuickBooks.

Normally, he relished the task. He liked for
things to be organized, and he got satisfaction from taking chaos
and fitting it into neat and understandable entries in a
database.

Today, however? He was suffering from two
problems, and they both involved Karina. The first was simple – he
could barely keep his eyes open. After his sleeplessness the night
before, he was having a tough time keeping himself from nodding
off. He had made numerous trips back to the kitchen for fresh
coffee, but the strong brew did not seem to be doing too much to
keep his eyelids any more open than half-mast.

The second was more complicated. Try as he
might, he could not help getting flashes of their searingly hot
encounter every time he looked...well, pretty much anywhere in the
room. Every time he looked toward the door, he saw her standing in
her bra and panties, blocking his exit from it. Every time he
glanced down at the desktop, he saw himself setting her perfectly
shaped naked backside down on it, immediately before plunging
himself into her.

Yes, if one of the goals of solitude –
besides freeing himself from the tide of public opinion – was to
get his mind off Karina and onto his work, maybe he shouldn't have
retreated to the very same small room where they had first made
love. Yes, he sarcastically told himself, this may have been a
mistake.

He let his head fall down, his forehead
hitting the edge of the desk with a sharp 'thunk' sound. I deserve
it, he told himself miserably.

“
Ouch,” he heard a voice say from the
doorway, “I know YouTube stardom can come with pressure, but don't
give yourself a concussion over it.”

He looked up to see Justin standing in the
doorway, a lopsided grin on his face, dressed in athletic gear and
holding a basketball.

“
Hey, man,” Ryan said, perking up,
“How's it going?”

“
Good, good,” Justin assured him, “I'm
meeting Eric and Jake at the Rec center for a pickup game, you
in?”

“
Hell, yes!” Ryan replied, up and out
of his chair before Justin had even finished speaking, “Lemme just
go throw on some shorts, and I'll meet you out front in
two.”

This was exactly what Ryan needed to clear
his head of thoughts of Karina, a little physical exertion. Since
he was doing everything in his power not to get physical with
Karina (with limited success, but nevertheless) blowing off some
steam by playing a little b-ball was exactly what the doctor
ordered.

Ryan threw on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt,
and quickly laced up his sneakers. As he bounded down the stairs
and onto the sidewalk, he saw Justin standing there waiting, with
none other than Kyle Austen Reed.

Great – this guy, he sneered derisively to
himself, just what I need.

“
Hey,” he greeted the two guys, “I'm
ready.”

They turned to face him.

“
Ryan Jackson Perkins!” said Kyle
gregariously, his face lighting up.

“
Kyle Austen Reed,” Ryan returned the
greeting cordially. He wasn't exactly thrilled to see Kyle, sure –
but that didn't mean he was going to be rude. I mean, hey...it's
not as if Kyle Austen Reed was a bad guy. He was clueless when it
came to Karina, but he wasn't a bad guy. He shook his head
slightly, smiling to himself. One things for sure, he mused, I can
definitely say that I've never met anyone before who was anything
like Kyle Austen Reed, and I probably never will again.

“
So, yeah!” Justin said, maybe a shade
too brightly, “I ran into Kyle here, he was out for a jog. So he's
gonna join us!”

Kyle smiled brightly, “I'm a big fan of the
game of basketball. I played a point guard in All Net, and have had
a true love and respect for the game since then.”

Justin, stepping back so that he was out of
Kyle's field of vision, mouthed to Ryan, “Sorry!”

“
Yeah, great, let's go,” Ryan said,
doing his absolute best not to let his irritation with the
situation show through. After all, it wasn't Justin's fault. It
wasn't even Kyle Austen Reed's. It was just shitty
timing.

As they entered the basketball court at the
Rec Center, Ryan saw Jake and Eric sitting on the bottom row of
bleachers. Jake was putting something back in his bag and Eric was
tying his sneaker. There were also a few other guys that Ryan
hadn't met yet, and he nodded at them as Justin introduced each
one.

They quickly divided up into teams, and Ryan
was somewhat disappointed that he ended up on the same team as Kyle
Austen Reed. He was really in the mood to get out some aggression
on the guy – in socially acceptable ways, of course, he reminded
himself with a smirk – and it would have felt very satisfying to
run up and down the court, with the sounds of sneakers pounding,
the basketball hitting the wood, and bystanders cheering all
echoing in his ears as he pounded Kyle Austen Reed into the ground.
Metaphorically speaking.

As they began to play, however, it became
evident to Ryan very quickly that this scenario would never have
taken place, and he ended up being very glad that he and Kyle
Austen Reed were on the same team.

Kyle danced around them as if they weren't
even there, faking one direction and then the other, snatching the
ball from their grasps effortlessly, darting past them, outrunning
them, and all the while putting in fancy moves like bouncing the
ball from hand to hand as he spun in a 360 degree circle, topping
that off with an immediate jump shot.

He dunked, he made three point shots – some
of them from nearly the other side of the court – and still managed
to wave to and show off for the steadily growing crowd of onlookers
who had stopped to marvel at his prowess.

Soon, all pretext of a real game, wherein
there would be a competitive element and a score would be kept, was
dropped. The other guys were basically just providing the stage
from which Kyle Austen Reed could perform.

The oddest thing was, though, that each of
them surprised themselves by not minding very much. It was such a
bizarre experience to be a part of that they all just felt sort of
surreal about the whole thing, and it was really too weird and
amazing to be upset about.

Finally, after the exhibition of sorts had
gone on so long that the youth athletic team needed to take over
the court for their regularly scheduled practice, the guys brought
it to a halt.

The crowd erupted in cheers, and Kyle Austen
Reed held up the basketball victoriously. He pulled a Sharpie pen
from his back waistband and signed the ball, throwing it into the
delighted crowd, and then jogged over to them triumphantly, signing
autographs and posing for photos.

The rest of the guys migrated over to the
bleachers, chuckling to themselves and patting each other on the
back.

Eric, who had been on the opposite team,
said, “I guess I should kind of feel like I just lost? But I sort
of feel like we all won, in a way.”

Justin shook his head, “Hell, he just gave
away my basketball and I still feel like I came out ahead. What is
it about that guy?”

Ryan sat down on the bleachers, not sure what
he felt about the whole afternoon. Having Karina's ex there playing
certainly didn't help get his mind off of her. Hell, maybe that was
just a losing proposition all the way around. God knows nothing he
had tried so far had come even close to working.

The guys started packing up and getting
involved in their own conversations, and Justin sat down next to
Ryan. He leaned in so that the conversation was just between the
two of them.

“
So, how are things going with Karina?”
he asked.

Ryan barked out a laugh, “You could say there
have been a couple of setbacks.”

“
Really, what’s up?”

“
Well, this YouTube phenomenon, for one
thing. Talk about putting the pressure on. I haven't even had a
chance to talk to her about it yet. I went over to her place the
other night to talk about it, but...”

“
What?”

“
Well, let's just say that the Take It
Slow plan hit a speed bump.”

Justin laughed loudly.

“
Dude, seriously, you might wanna
abandon that plan.”

Ryan shook his head, frustrated, “I don't
want to, though. It makes me feel like shit, I hate that I'm too
weak to live up to my own ideals. But, dammit, every time I see
her...”

Justin nodded, “Say no more. Hell, I'm newly
engaged. I get it!”

Ryan nodded, “Yeah, so you understand the
pull. I mean, the truth is, I'm young, I’m a guy. And then I'm
alone with this amazing, sexy woman...”

Justin nodded again, “The spirit is willing,
but the flesh is weak, as they say.”

Ryan pointed at him, “Exactly!”

Justin said, “So how about not being alone
with her?”

Ryan cocked his head slightly, “I'm
listening. What do you have in mind?”

“
Well, how about a group date? Amanda
and her friends used to love playing mini-golf at Putt N Stuff. I
could text Amanda to get the girls together, we can see who out of
this motley crew wants to hit the mini-links...it will be
fun.”