Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
NORA
We’re all in Tea of Fortune. It’s a party, kind of.
Ann is here, of course, and Dottie, Sophie, Hannah, Briar, Liam, and me.
Bear even ducked in from the bakery, having passed his duties along to one of his shift managers.
We’re all gathered in the back, eating pastries and drinking tea at a couple of tables we pushed together.
The band’s performance starts in forty-five minutes.
I won’t be the only one going, though. We all are.
Bear claimed his hearing’s shot anyway—might as well damage it some more—Ann said she’d turn off her hearing aid and it would be a nice blur of sound, and Dottie announced that every other point was moot because she had a stock of earplugs in the back for everyone to use.
Funnily enough, my mother and Cormac’s father are babysitting Travis’s son. According to Hannah, he prefers Dottie, since there are lots of rules when he stays with my mom and Eugene, but desperate times and all that.
“Travis actually knows that actor guy,” Hannah says, her eyes dancing. “Their dads were in some shitty movie together.” She snaps her fingers. “Soviet Summer. That’s the one.”
Travis’s father, who passed away several years ago, had starred in an incredibly popular and universally panned series of movies about a maritime lawyer.
“Were they enemies in the movie?” I ask, vaguely interested.
Hannah shrugs. “Honestly, I can’t remember anything about the movie other than that Travis’s dad brained someone with a frying pan.”
“Sounds fun,” Liam says.
Briar scrunches her nose.
“What kind of a man are you looking for, Ann?” Hannah asks. “Do you want, like, a less chatty silver fox?”
Ann heaves the sigh of someone who just went on a date with an aging narcissist. “I might be all the way done with men after this. I thought for sure George was the one. That man talked a good game.”
“You shouldn’t give up,” Briar says earnestly. “Not if you want to meet someone. I mean, look at Bear and Dottie. Dottie says they met after she’d decided she was done with dating.”
“We certainly did.” Dottie smiles at the handsome older man beside her, on the shorter side and well-built, with thick silver hair. “This man is the only person who could have convinced me otherwise, although I made him work for it.”
“I wanted to work for it,” Bear insists.
They are disgustingly cute. Not as over-the-top affectionate as my mom and Cormac’s dad, but they have this warm connection that sort of radiates outward. A serene contentment that I’ve never felt with a romantic partner before.
The voice in my head, which should really mind its own business, objects.
You feel that way with him. That’s why you brought him up to Gallagher Park the other week. That’s why you felt so awful after you walked away from him afterward.
“Yeah,” Sophie says. “We’ve all dated awful men.”
“In some cases the same awful man,” I add.
She smiles and continues, undaunted. “But you have to keep trying. I never would have ended up with Rob if I’d given up. When you find the right person, it makes all the struggle worthwhile.”
I feel a twist of something in my chest—discomfort or possible indigestion, who’s to say. But I hoist up my teacup. “We need to let Ann decide. If she doesn’t want us all up in her business, pushing her toward this man or that, that’s for her to say.”
Best to draw that line now.
“But what about you and your sweet man?” Ann asks. “Aren’t Dottie and I allowed to help you along?”
I cast a dark look at her. “Come on, Ann, I thought we were friends.”
“Oh, I’ll keep your secrets. Of course I will.” She swats the air, completely ignoring the fact that she has not, in fact, kept my secrets.
God, I’m an idiot.
I should really have thought of this a while ago, but the more people who know about a situation, the more likely it is that the truth will come out.
Sooner or later, my mom is going to find out about—
I don’t even know what to call my situation with Cormac, other than a situationship.
It used to be both secret and fake; now it is neither of those things fully. The only thing I can say for sure about it is that it’s complicated.
“Anyhow,” Ann continues, “I don’t mind telling you children what I like. I like a man with a fine beard. A fine, thick beard.”
Hannah waggles her brows. “Like Santa Claus?”
“Like a real damn man,” Ann says emphatically, rapping the table once.
Bear, who is clean-shaven, rubs his jaw while Dottie pats his hand supportively.
“And I don’t want to be with a man who only talks about himself,” Ann continues. “On and on about all the great things he’s done and people who’ve patted him on the back. You want to talk? Fine. You talk yourself blue, honey, but have something interesting to say one time out of ten.”
An idea sparks at the back of my mind, and I squirm in my seat, wanting suddenly, desperately, to share it with Cormac.
I want him to be here.
It feels wrong that he isn’t, although I like the thought of him pulling out his guitar. Tuning it.
Wait…do people tune bass guitars?
Surely they do.
Briar, who’s opposite me, says my name, and I snap my attention to her. “Nora, what are you thinking about?”
I shouldn’t tell her, but the words trip out of me anyway. “Whether bass guitars need to be tuned.”
“Yes,” Liam says. “You ready to go watch the magic happen?”
He says it a little suggestively, and I notice Briar nudging him with her shoulder—her super tactful way of telling him to shut the fuck up.
The thought makes me smile, and I decide, again, that I might as well be honest.
“Yes, actually. Should we go?”
“Not until you all let me look at your tea leaves,” Dottie says.
A collective groan issues from the group, but you know what?
We let her.
This time she doesn’t see a snake in my cup.
This time she just smiles softly to herself and refuses to say anything definitive, looking so smug it would be infuriating if she were anyone else.
“All is as it should be.”
Hannah checks her phone and says, “And we’re officially running late.”
Text conversation with José
Seriously, you’re ditching me?
Yes, alas. You’re on dick duty all by yourself.
Garbage Fire is already playing when we arrive, and the music washes over us, the thrum of Cormac’s bass vibrating through the large, open space. It’s a big venue, with a bar at the back, equipped with a few tall round tables and chairs, and a sizable stage up front, flocked by people.
We help source seats for the older folks, by which I mean Hannah and I basically bully a bunch of twentysomethings into moving, and then we push our way toward the stage. Hannah says she always likes to be on the front lines so she can tackle anyone who has eyes on our guys.
Our guys, as if Cormac is mine the way Travis is hers and Rob is Sophie’s.
I open my mouth to correct her, but then I close it again without saying anything. I just follow her through the crowd, shamelessly stepping in front of people because I need to see him.
And I need him to see me.
I’ve wanted to come see him play before, since this thing between us began, but I didn’t want to give him ideas. I didn’t want to give myself ideas. I wasn’t sure what I could offer him, or if I could offer anything at all.
But now…
I’m still not sure, but I’m here because I want to be. I want to watch him in his element—one of his elements, that is. Cormac has so many skills.
He’s not tucked between the other guys quite as much as he was at the wedding, so I have a better view of him.
He’s so compelling to watch as he plays, his body channeling the music as he creates it.
A live wire. An outlet. His hair is mussed, and he’s wearing those sexy glasses, his eyes nearly closed behind them as he plays a bass riff.
“Who’s the new bassist?” I hear a woman shouting behind me over the loud music. She’s a tall, pretty blonde, I see, pointing out Cormac to the brunette friend standing beside her.
“He’s mine,” I say to her.
Hannah, having overheard the exchange, smiles at me approvingly. Then, for good measure, she shouts, “They’re all super taken. Like, way off-limits. Except for the rhythm guitarist. That guy’s single. And a boxer! You should totally go for him.”
The blonde woman shoots her a hostile look, and she and her friend blend into the crowd.
Hannah shrugs. “Mick can never say I didn’t try.”
Smiling, I turn back toward the stage, and this time Cormac’s eyes land on me. It’s as if someone flicked a light on inside of him. He practically glows with happiness.
For a moment, I can only watch him in wonder. I did that. Somehow I made him feel that way.
A voice inside me is screaming. Telling me I’m not so tough after all. I’m going to fall in love with him—maybe it’s already happening—and it’ll ruin one of us.
But the warning voice in my head isn’t as loud as the music he’s playing—the song that thrums through me and makes me want to believe that being happy and in love is possible for me. That maybe it isn’t just a phenomenon reserved for better people.
When they finish their inevitable encore, the guys start packing up their instruments. Briar and Liam are nowhere to be seen, so either they left to attend to a brewery emergency or they found a darkened corner where they could make out. Knowing them, either possibility is equally likely.
“After-party?” Hannah asks, turning to Sophie and me, her face bright with excitement.
Leave it to Hannah to take this same buzzing positivity into everything—if I’m a fuck the glass person, she’s firmly a glass is half full person.
I’ve told her as much before, and she said it was “the fate of a redhead.”
“No,” I say, “I’ve got other plans.”
“Look at you, you woman of mystery.” Hannah hip-checks me. “And will you share those plans with your best friends, by any chance?”
Sophie smiles softly at us. “Leave her alone, you big bully. You know exactly what her plans are. She wants to be with Cormac.”
Well…she’s not wrong. I do have plans for him.