51. Indy #2
“You’re a musician?” I say.
“Trying my best, at least.”
We smile at each other.
“A cellist. I’ve never met a cellist before.”
“Well, you know what they say about cellists.” He leans closer.
I shake my head. “No. What do they say about cellists?”
His skin is so fair that I can see the blush move higher over his cheeks in real time.
“Shit,” he says. “I actually don’t have a follow-up for that.
I was… I was trying to flirt? Oh, crap. I’m not supposed to say that, am I?
It’s meant to be obvious. I… I was going to say something about knowing how to handle an instrument, but then I chickened out, and that’s not me anyway.
I wouldn’t know what to do with an instrument. Apart from a cello.”
I start to laugh. He’s cute. He’s really fucking cute. Stupidly cute.
He drops his head back and groans.
“Sorry. I’m gonna go be somewhere else.”
I stop him with a hand on his arm. “We’ve all made an ass out of ourselves at some point while trying to hit on somebody, I promise.”
“I was kind of hoping I was the exception.”
“Look at it this way—you’ve made an ass out of yourself once. Next time will be easier.”
“Yeah. Let’s pretend I’ve only done it once. Sure.”
I grin at the bashful look on his face. He really is cute, and I couldn’t care less. Instead, I find my eyes wandering the room, my heart beating louder and louder while I search, and by the time my gaze finally lands on him my heart is in my throat, hammering in a decidedly not-just-friendly way.
“Indy?”
I jerk and look back at Julian.
I blink and try to figure out if I have any memory of what he just said. There’s nothing.
“Sorry.” I shake my head. “I spaced out on you for a second.”
He glances at where Nick is standing and sends me a knowing look.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks. “I’ve been told I’m a decent enough listener.”
“I wouldn’t even know where to start.” I look down and try to find the right words to explain without saying anything too revealing.
“We have a lot of history. Some of it is the best thing that ever happened to me. A lot of it is the worst.” I blow out a breath.
“It’s complicated, and it doesn’t matter anyway.
Whatever we had, he’s done with it. Has been for a long time. ”
Julian quirks his brow at me. “You sure? Because that dude looks like he’s contemplating murder every time he looks my way.”
My head whips around.
“Subtle,” Julian says dryly.
“He’s not even looking at you,” I say. Nick is standing across the room, talking to some of Callum’s teammates, his attention firmly on them.
Julian gives me a sidelong glance. “Is that disappointment?”
“You’re kind of evil.”
He looks genuinely proud of himself.
“He was looking at you,” he says after a bit. “Kind of like he wanted to eat you. After throttling me first, obviously. I assume at least some murder was on the agenda.” He squints thoughtfully at the other end of the room. “He’s kind of intense, isn’t he?”
I let out a snort of laughter. “You could say that, yeah.”
“Which begs the questions: Why are you wasting your time here with me, pretending to listen to me ramble about the cello when you could go and have all that intensity directed at you from a much closer distance?”
I fidget with the sleeve of my tux and avoid looking at him.
“We’re friends,” I mutter.
“Mm-hmm. Sure,” he gives me a look that clearly calls me on my bullshit. “I have to get ready to go on stage.”
I nod absently. “Break a leg.”
I try to take a subtle look at Nick, but by the time I’ve finally turned my head just so, he’s not there anymore. I refuse to think about how that makes me feel and why it’s disappointing. Instead, I throw myself into work again.
For the next few hours, I run around making sure everything happens smoothly. I deal with entitled guests demanding special treatment and solve one ridiculous problem after another.
It’s almost midnight when I run into Callum. The party has gone from a somewhat classy charity event to a frat party. I saw the half-melted ice sculpture floating in the koi pond earlier.
“Indy!” Callum shouts in a booming voice that echoes off every wall. He snatches my phone out of my hand.
“Hey!” I say.
“Relax.” He grabs my shoulders and shakes me. I think he figures it’s gently, but he’s a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound NFL player and most of his weight is muscle.
“I can’t relax.” I try to take my phone back.
“You will. I’m keeping this for the rest of the night.
” He slides the phone into his pocket. “You’ve done enough.
There are people here who can take care of stuff.
In fact, listen up, motherfuckers!” he shouts in his next breath.
“You need something taken care of? Come to me. Indy is off limits for all questions and requests. Got it?”
A murmur of voices mixed with loud whoops and hollers from Callum’s teammates follows, even though I’m pretty sure they’re all too drunk by now to really understand why they’re cheering.
I sigh. “Your parents just didn’t bother teaching you any manners, did they?”
He claps me on the back and grins. “Go get a drink. Dance. Make an offer on a vacation to the Bahamas at the auction. It’s on me. Have fun.”
With those words, he pushes me toward the dance floor. I linger at the edge, trying to find any enthusiasm for getting out there, but I’m suddenly so stupidly tired that pushing myself into the middle of too many sweaty bodies sounds like the least appealing prospect of all the prospects.
I wander the house and the surrounding lawn for a bit before I make my way back inside, eventually finding my way upstairs, where I go from room to room, trying to find one no one is having sex in. There are a lot of fucking footballers. Literally.
Finding all the rooms occupied, I trudge back downstairs, and at the foot of the staircase, I run into Nick. I haven’t seen him the whole evening, so I honestly figured he’d taken off a long time ago.
“Hi.” I blink at him.
My heart jumps at the sight of him, and it’s bad. It’s so, so bad. Friends, I remind myself. We’re friends.
But that feels so inadequate. So pathetically far from what I’ve always wanted.
I’m too tired to hide from myself, so all these thoughts just freely fly around in my head.
He raises his brows. “You look all partied out.”
I chuckle and rub a hand over my face. “Is that another way to say I look like shit?”
He shakes his head. “Just tired. I don’t think you know how to look like shit.”
I stare. Is that a thing we say now? Is this what friends do?
Instead of asking, I look around. The party doesn’t exactly seem like it’s winding down. Honestly, from what I can see, it’s just getting wilder.
“You want a ride?” Nick asks.
I throw him a surprised glance. “From you?”
He looks around pointedly before aiming his gaze at me again. “Yes?”
I have a few fleeting thoughts about my job and having to stay here and make sure everything goes well.
And then I look at him, and I think, fuck my job. Fuck this thing. Fuck everything else.
He stares at me, and he has bad decisions written all over him, and I don’t care.
“Yeah.” I nod. “Yeah, I really do want a ride.”
I grab my stuff and we head outside. I pause when I see his car.
“What happened to the Toyota?” I ask. He’d been driving that thing forever. It was his mom’s car.
He waits until we’re both in the car, then he pulls out of the parking lot before he answers.
“Died on me on a cross-country road trip a few years ago,” he says. “And repairing it was going to cost about three times as much as the car itself was worth.”
“I’m sorry,” I say softly. “I know how much that car meant to you.”
He shrugs. “It wasn’t actually as difficult to let it go as I figured it’d be. I guess I built it up in my head as a way bigger thing than it actually was. Turns out I don’t need the car to keep the memory of Mom alive.”
I stop breathing altogether. This is dangerous territory. Painful territory. Neither of us has mentioned our families. I wouldn’t know what to say. I still don’t know what to feel most days.
I’ve just stuffed our whole history into a box and tucked that box far, far away in my mind and ignored it’s there for the past six years.
Well, now it’s suddenly pushed into the middle of my living room, and maybe the lid is still shut. But the box is there. In full view. And I know what’s inside it.
“How are your parents?” he asks.
I guess we’re prying that sucker open right here and now.
Nick’s voice is extremely measured, and he doesn’t look at me, but his knuckles whiten on the steering wheel. I stuff my hands under my thighs and look out the window into the darkness.
“Dad’s still painting. He sometimes visits when he’s on the West Coast. Not too often, but…
” My voice dies off. Silence descends. I clear my throat.
“He’s gotten really into traveling. And finding himself or something.
He’s supposed to go on a wilderness expedition in Alaska this fall to become one with nature. ”
“August never gave me the impression of somebody who’s excessively into nature,” Nick says in that same measured voice.
“Yeah, no. Those aren’t exactly real ‘everything you need in one huge backpack, make your own fire, poop into a hole in the woods’ types of things. It’s more like pretending you’re in the wilderness for a few hours before taking the ATV back to the hotel.”
“Okay, that I can picture,” Nick says, and we both laugh.
Well. We’ve revisited the past. Time to close the box and push it far out of sight and—
“What about Liz?”
I press my lips together so I won’t sigh out loud. I stare out the window so hard I start imagining shapes in the darkness.
And then I’ve suddenly been quiet for a really long time, so it feels like I should say something, and has enough time passed to change the topic?
“Do you think it will start to get warmer now?” I wince as soon as the words leave my lips. This is more than pathetic.
Nick doesn’t say anything.
“It’s high time, honestly,” I continue. “I didn’t remember it was so cold here.”
“What are you doing, Blue?” Nick asks.