Chapter Twenty-Four
Twenty-Four
“Are we being robbed?”
Indy’s voice is still sleep-coated as I blink twice, adjusting to the blackness. “I don’t think burglars knock.”
With the next strong rap on the hotel room door I fold myself out of bed and click on the reading light, purging a muffled groan of indignance from Indy. She shoves her face into the pillow as I throw my Happy Tortilla sweatshirt over my head and pad over to the entry.
If I wasn’t exhausted from the most exhilarating performance of my life followed by the most toe-curling, knee-shaking non-sex sex of my life, then the two-hour midnight gab session with Indy when we arrived in New York certainly did me in.
We’d gotten up to our room, Molly had ditched her bags to find Pete’s floor, and I was just about wound down enough to sleep when Indy claimed Molly’s bed and demanded every sordid detail.
It’s not like I could course correct now—she’d covered for me before I’d even told her anything. So I’d walked her through Halloran’s and my friendship and first kiss and told her things were blossoming from there. “Are you into him?” she’d asked.
“ We’re just having fun,” felt like an easier response than saying nothing that feels like this—whatever it is—can last. Even if I wanted more than this fun with Tom, even if I told him as much, what future could we possibly have?
I’ve never seen anyone walk away from a relationship with more than a crumpled-up heart and enough baggage to ensure the next one’s worse.
Not my mom when she was a teen. Not my mom as an adult.
Mike’s mom, Everly. Tom himself. In fact, I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen one healthy long-term relationship stick the landing, unless it was on a stage with a finale number.
I’m not dumb enough to strap on my rose-colored glasses and go bounding after the same fate. Not a chance.
Indy had conked out soon after, satiated by a mug of juicy gossip like a kid with warm milk, and I’d stared at the pitch-black ceiling for another hour wondering why I felt like I’d just lied to the principal.
I’m probably functioning off three hours of sleep. Not ideal before a frightfully long weekend: Tom has three shows in the city—Dreamland music festival in Central Park today, tomorrow night’s concert at Madison Square Garden, and Sunday’s at Radio City Music Hall.
When I wrench the door open, it’s Tom who peers down at me. Freshly showered and dressed in my favorite of his Dead Poets Society clothes: khaki slacks, high-tops, nineties jean jacket, and a white button-down. Backlit by the buzzing hotel lights, he looks like a redwood-tall indie-rock messiah.
I curse myself for applying so much spot treatment before bed. “What are you doing here?”
“Mornin’ to ya,” he says quietly. “How’d you sleep?”
“Who is it?” Indy sounds like she almost passed out again only to remember we were at risk of being burgled and rallied for moral support.
“Uhh.” I falter. I decide I never want to lie to Tom, so I mouth, She knows .
“Hey, Indy,” Tom calls out, unfazed. His deep voice scatters goose bumps over my bare thighs.
Indy groans something like Oh, brother into her mattress and I fight a grin.
“A bit of a last-minute thing, I know,” he says. “But I was hopin’ I could take you on that date.”
“At”—I look at my phone—“five thirty a.m.?”
Tom offers a sheepish half grin that might as well turn my knees liquid.
“Give me two minutes to get ready?”
“Sure, but”—his eyes lick up my legs from ankle to over-exposed thigh—“I quite like the current state of you.”
Two minutes is evidently ambitious, but six minutes later I’ve thrown on a pair of blue jeans and an eyelet lace blouse with my old reliable cowboy boots.
In the hotel elevator Tom says, “So you told Indy.” It’s not a question, but he doesn’t sound angry. In fact, he sounds kind of…proud?
“She figured it out herself,” I admit, “and promised not to tell a soul.”
“Makes sense. She’s the one who’d have to battle that particular beast.”
He’s right. As the head of his socials, I can’t imagine that would be a picnic for her. The day famously private Tom Halloran is caught hooking up with a random blond backup singer is surely the day the internet implodes.
Tom has a bright yellow taxi waiting for us downstairs and I can just make out the sun cresting over the rising skyline, casting all the brick and glass and scaffolding in a honey-peach hue.
“Where are we going that we had to leave at sunrise?”
Tom takes my palm in his and squeezes, warm and tender. “It’s a surprise.”
The drive is short, and I spend the entire ride wishing I’d sat in the middle seat and there wasn’t a foot of space between the two of us. Honestly, I wish I’d sat right on top of him and memorized every angle of his heartbreaking face, inch by inch.
At one red light, Tom absently runs his thumb over the back of my hand in its entirety.
I’m reminded for the hundredth time just how much man he is—how much large, lean muscle and lanky bone is in that towering frame—and how gently he wields himself with me.
My whole palm fits into his like a nesting doll.
He strokes the skin between my fingers and I forget to breathe.
I roll my window down to get some much-needed air, and stare out at the honking, hustling city.
It’s light enough now that I can soak it all in: more cars than I’ve ever seen, a more significant amount of trash than Rent led me to believe, and buildings so tall I can’t see around a single corner.
The air is ripe with exhaust and roasted peanuts.
“Disappointed?” he asks.
I don’t want to appear ungrateful or uncultured. “It’s awesome.”
Tom suppresses a laugh. “Took me ages to fall in love with Manhattan. It’s got a wretched frenetic feel to it that kind of rattles the mind. But there’s too much of a heartbeat—too much history here—to write it all off due to brick and asphalt.”
“There’s very little green,” I admit. Cherry Grove is nothing to write home about, surely, but it does come alive in the spring.
The lawns and hiking trails are lush and overgrown with wildflowers.
Bluebonnets and dainty evening primrose.
The swimming holes are shaded beneath full oaks and you’re never too far from a handful of ripe blackberries.
“We’re here,” he says, and after he pays for the taxi, we shuffle out onto the street.
Here turns out to be a walled-off park across from the noisy street I realize is Fifth Avenue. Central Park—I should have known.
Tom buys us two coffees from a street vendor—a purchase he refuses to let me even split—and we stroll toward the shady enclosure.
There’s so much greenery obscuring the grounds that I don’t even register the scope of it until we’re inside.
My hand once again enveloped in his, we lope through a verdant kaleidoscope of pines and leaves and branches on a winding pathway.
Cedar trees lean into old, ivy-covered stone.
Unruly bushes grow far past their enclosure, too eager to crawl into the generous sunshine reigning overhead.
The coffee is rich and creamy, its cardboard sleeve warm against my palm.
“Still not green enough for you?”
My eyes eat up every slab of rock and twist of vine. “It’s like home,” I say. “You can’t even hear the honking.”
Each bend we round I expect to see sweaty summer crowds, but the park is too spread out. And it’s early on a weekday morning. It’s like we have the place to ourselves. I glance down at his fingers, so comfortably threaded through mine. “Paparazzi don’t wake up this early?”
His expression screws into concern—perhaps that I’m hurt that our first date has to be in the witching hours when we won’t be seen. My lips twitch and all the muscles in his face relax.
“Surely they’re after bigger fish. I’m more concerned about running into people who know my music. But it’s an American thing, I think. I don’t avoid the public eye as much back home in Ireland. “
I love the way he says much and but like they rhyme with soot and Ireland like Uheyereland. I love the way he always says people who know my music or listeners and never fans. I love his near-delusional level of humbleness.
“You think a fan will snap some pic of us and it’ll end up on TMZ.”
“They’re very dedicated.” His eyes find his shoes. “Very interested in knowin’ me.”
We stroll past a row of wooden benches baking under the morning sun even as the iron streetlamps have yet to turn off for the day. A focused jogger zooms by to my side.
“Does that bother you?”
“It doesn’t. I’m honored by their enthusiasm,” he admits, guiding me into an empty meadow. “But I think they’d be disheartened to learn I’m a person just as they are.”
I rack my brain—comb through twenty-four years of summertime memories—and can’t come up with a single scene as stunning as this one.
The field is a sprawl of green unhampered by shade or tourists or patches of dirt.
It’s got to be ten acres. Tom sits down in the grass, pulling me onto his lap and sparing my jeans a splatter of morning dew.
His chest is sturdy and warm beneath my back.
I lean into him with a sigh and toe my boots off.
“This is like a screen saver.” My fingers find a tiny dandelion beside his splayed palm in the grass. I pluck it, spinning the itty-bitty stem between my thumb and forefinger as the seeds drift off. “How is it so empty?”
“Sheep Meadow doesn’t open until eleven.”
“But it’s not even seven.”
“Dreamland is over at SummerStage, just down that way.” He dips his head behind me. “I asked a favor of our security team.”
I twist and find our faces closer than expected. My chest flushes with the memory of last night. How his fingers felt against the slick of my skin. How he groaned my name. His eyes heat on mine, liquefying me.
“This is our first date.” I’m amazed when my voice isn’t just the sound of steam out of a kettle.
“It is.” His gaze settles on my lips. “That all right?”