Three
THREE
ALL TREE CLIMBING IS PROHIBITED
I head over to the outdoor kitchen hoping no one else thought to raid Jackson’s personal stash. When I open the fridge, it’s empty except for a lone bottle of ketchup and what appears to be a pitcher of sweet tea. I decide cold and wet will do until I can get something stronger.
On the counter are stacks of white solo cups with JL’s Pool printed in gold on the side. I pull one from the top and push it against the ice maker in the door of the fridge. Instead of cubed ice, a huge clump of crushed ice dumps into my cup. I sigh and toss the ice into the sink. I jam my thumb against the cubed ice button and try again. More crushed ice falls into my cup.
I growl in frustration and toss the offensive ice and the cup into the sink.
“Ice crisis?” A voice next to me, deep and flirty.
He sounds exactly like the kind of guy I could get into trouble with, which is exactly the kind of guy I’m not supposed to be getting into trouble with. I’m here for free food and drinks, nothing more. I’m turning over a new leaf. I’m a serious artist as of today. I’m focusing on me, on my music. I officially cannot be swayed by a deep voice and what is likely, based on nothing but a feeling, an incredible jawline .
I hold my hand up without looking at him. “No thanks.”
He chuckles. “No thanks?”
I should have stayed home with my hydraulic press videos.
“Look, man,” I glance over, and then up, and my breath catches in my throat. He’s so much worse than my five-second judgment predicted. Tall and angular, sharp nose and chin that catch the light perfectly, shaggy brown hair that’s wavy and disheveled in an intentional way. Full, pink lips. Bright, curious eyes. A day’s worth of stubble.
He’s not attractive he’s…irresponsibly gorgeous.
“I’m not doing that,” I say, more to myself than to him.
He smiles and leans against the fridge, his broad shoulders pulling in as he crosses his arms. “I feel like we’re starting in the middle. Catch me up?”
I shake my head. “I realize this is a party and going up to a girl and striking up a conversation is the natural ebb and flow of things but, and there’s no way you could have known this, I have removed myself from both the ebb and the flow. I’m choosing to focus on more important things at the moment.”
He cocks an eyebrow like, go on .
“I’ve decided to live a life free of,” I motion between us, “this.”
He looks down at himself. “Wasn’t aware I had put anything out there.”
I roll my eyes because there’s no way he doesn’t know how his whole thing comes across. With that face? That body? He’s probably never been turned down once in his life.
“I’m afraid I’m not in the zone, so to speak.”
He runs a hand across his mouth, pushing down another smile. “So you think I came over here to, what, seduce you and carry you away into the night?”
“Well, no, because that would make you a vampire. Are you a vampire?”
He smiles, showing all his teeth. “Would that help my case? ”
I’ve unintentionally made this into a game he’s too happy to play.
“It’d be better than if you were a musician. Vampires I can resist. Musicians? Not so much.”
“So me being a musician would be a bad thing.”
I push myself up to sit on the counter and put some much-needed space between us. “It’s a long story.”
He reaches across me, his hard chest brushing against my elbow, and grabs a cup. He presses it against the ice lever in the door of the refrigerator and fills it with crushed ice all the way to the top. He scrapes a bite into his mouth with his teeth and says, “I’ve got time.”
I can’t stop looking at him. He’s wearing fitted black pants and a nearly translucent white v-neck. I scroll through every memory I have to see if I’ve ever met anyone this attractive. I can’t think of anything to say that isn’t let’s get naked and do it on this counter .
“Do you actually like crushed ice?”
He peers down into his cup like he’s surprised to find ice there. “You don’t?”
“No one does. When your drink gets too low it falls in jagged clumps and lands on your face and goes up your nose.”
He peers up at me through a tangle of eyelashes so thick they weigh down his eyelids in that sexy/sleepy kind of way, so thick he blinks in slow-mo. A ceiling fan is whirring over our heads and his eyelashes flutter in the breeze, that’s how long they are.
“You know, I only came over here to get a cup of ice because the line to the bar is so long, but now I’m invested. Tell me about these musicians of yours.”
“I’d rather keep talking about ice. Safer topic. I prefer Sonic ice, by the way.”
He nods. “Nugget cubes. Very manageable.”
I instantly regret the giggle that bubbles up my throat .
“Is that why you’ve sworn off musicians?” he says. “Not enough ice in it for you?”
“Maybe too much,” I say.
“Eliminating musicians from your dating pool must really narrow down the options. This is Music City after all.”
He’s cocky, but in that ultra-sexy-flirty way, like you want to slap him and kiss him in equal measure.
“I don’t have anything against musicians. I am a musician. I just can’t date them anymore.”
He takes another bite of his ice and watches me with an amused look in his eyes.
“Top five worst dates with a musician.”
“It’s cute you think the horrors can be contained in a tidy top five. And they haven’t all been bad experiences. Some of them have been so, so great. Well,” I double check myself, “maybe not so, so great. Some have been a medium amount of great.”
“But not great enough,” he says knowingly.
A low hum vibrates through my body, like this guy has x-ray vision and is peering into my soul. Something in his eyes, the way his body moves as he’s talking, is setting off alarm bells in my brain. Trouble is, I can’t tell if the alarms are signaling something good or something bad. Maybe that’s been my problem the entire time I’ve been in Nashville. I think run-for-your-life sounds like jump-right-in.
“Okay. If you think you can handle it. First was the guitar player who, after meeting for drinks, took me out to his truck to show me his gun collection. There was the bass player who made fun of my car when I picked him up. I should add, he asked me to pick him up because he didn’t have a car and also asked me to give his mother a ride to Bingo with Jesus at the Methodist church. Then there was the drummer who could only meet me within a two-block radius from his apartment because that’s as far as his ankle monitor would let him go. Another guitar player took me to one of those axe throwing bars and when I came back from the bathroom, asked if I’d gone number one or number two.”
“No,” he says, smiling behind his cup.
“Then there was the lead singer who, on our first date, kept one earbud in during dinner because he ‘needed to catch up on his podcasts.’”
That one gets me a big laugh. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am one hundred percent serious.”
“You said first date for podcast guy. Does that mean you went on a second date?”
I cover my face in shame. “Possibly.”
“No wonder you’ve banned musicians.”
“What about you?” I ask. “I imagine you’ve had better luck in the Nashville dating scene.”
“I’ve never been on a date with someone who listened to podcasts the whole time, no.”
“Too bad. That story kills when I meet people at parties.”
He chuckles again, charmed.
Behind us, a too-loud LOVEJOY song cranks up and people tipsy enough to be uninhibited start dancing on either side of the pool. I sigh so loud he hears it over the music.
“Am I boring you?”
“It’s this song.”
He listens for a beat. “Not a fan of LOVEJOY?’
“You have no idea.”
We watch the crowd, watch each other, long enough for the playlist to move on to a Sparrow song. Arguably more palatable but just as upsetting. Sparrow and LOVEJOY are the two artists I never want to hear and yet, everywhere I go, Sparrow and LOVEJOY follow me like bad debt.
I don’t even know why I hate Sparrow, it’s just always been the way. My mother hates them and has commanded I hate them as well. Something to do with my father, who was an original member of the band. Whatever went down between him and the Sparrow brothers, my mother refuses to talk about it .
“Dance with me,” he says.
He doesn’t ask, just says it, like us dancing together is a foregone conclusion.
“Why?”
“Because I wanna dance with you. And I think you might wanna dance with me.”
I dramatically sigh and throw my head back. “I’m going to level with you.”
“A good start.”
“There’s nothing I’d like more than to climb you like a tree at this very moment. But I promised myself I wouldn’t do that anymore. I’m going to get serious about my art, my songs, work on making things happen for me. I’m focusing on myself, not hot guys who eat crushed ice. Lucky for you,” I hook my thumb over my shoulder and point to the crowd, “there are about fifty girls in tight little party dresses over there who would absolutely love to dance with you.”
He cranes his neck to look behind me at the crowd. “Do you think any of them would climb me like a tree?”
“Oh, for sure. Probably multiple at the same time.”
“But not you.”
He’s subtly inched his way closer as we’ve been talking and now his hip is lightly touching my knee.
“I told you,” I say, my resolve weakening with every swish of his eyelashes. “I’ve given up musicians. Forever.”
“I never said I was a musician.”
I give him an obvious once-over, letting myself linger on all the good parts. There are so many good parts. “I can smell it on you. You have lead singer ego.”
He clutches his chest. “You wound me.”
“It’s not a bad thing. All the great lead singers have huge egos. It’s how they get the crowd to fall in love with them every night. But then they think everyone off stage should fall in love with them too.”
He sets his cup down and faces me, his hands on the counter on either side of my thighs. His eyes are light hazel with flecks of gold and green. “I asked you to dance with me, not fall in love with me.”
I lean toward him the tiniest bit. “The love part is implied.”
He leans toward me the tiniest bit. “You’ve got me all figured out then.”
“Like I said, I’ve dated a lot of musicians.”
He grins like we’ve just invented our first inside joke. “I never said I was a musician.”
We stay like that, our faces close, our eyes locked. Maybe I could do it, dance with him and that be it. Maybe I could touch his arms, fit my chin in the crook of his neck, let him squeeze my waist, and that be it. Maybe I could have this and nothing more.
“One dance,” he presses. “After that, you can go back to your, what did you call it? Removing yourself from the ebb and flow?”
Trouble is, I can see how the whole thing will play out. We’ll dance and then we’ll kiss and then we’ll find a quiet corner and then I’ll give him my number and then he’ll text and then we’ll meet for coffee and somehow I’ll end up at his place on his couch, in his bed, and then a month later I’ll be moving back into Cass and Granny G’s because things didn’t work out. Again.
Or it could just be a dance.
I push on his shoulders so he’ll back up. When I hop off the counter, we’re standing so close I have to turn my face up to meet his. “One dance. That’s all you get.”