Five
PHASE ONE, ACT TWO – THAT’S WHAT HEATH CALLS our next outing, a couple of days later.
The objective is the same as Phase One, Act One: be seen together. Get noticed. Ease the general populous of our little cove into the idea of a Belfort–Williams union before shoving it in their faces – it’s more believable that way, he claims. We’re laying the groundwork, he says.
I’m not entirely sure what our groundwork is doing in Salt & Sound Records, but I’ll bite.
I won’t complain either. I like this place.
It’s busy, but not in the people kind of way – more like physically, with every inch of the walls holding racks of old records and CDs, the tables cutting the store down the middle stacked with full crates.
It’s quiet, except for the low drone of Nevermind.
I’m humming along to ‘Come As You Are’ and sifting through a box of Fleetwood Mac records when warmth envelops me from behind. A chin drops to my shoulder. Breath sears my collarbone. Gone as quickly as it descended, like Heath just wanted to remind me he’s there, just wanted to get my attention.
And, oh, the fingers hooked through my belt loops, the knuckles grazing my bare waist, certainly do that. ‘Favorite song?’
‘Ever?’ I shift and his hand dutifully falls away. As does he, moving a safe distance away, hip propped against the table, arms crossed over his chest. ‘Or right now?’
‘Both. You’ve intrigued me.’
‘I can’t think of any.’
‘You can’t think of a single song?’
Lips pursed, I shoot him a dry look. Sliding further down the aisle, my fingers trail over vinyl after vinyl as I think – I freeze when I find one that’s almost painful to recognize.
I start to pick it up only to drop it a second later, before Heath can notice me looking at it and get curious.
I don’t want to talk about Natalia Lafourcade, my mother’s favorite artist – I don’t want to talk about my mother.
I want to leave her where she is, safely tucked away in a soft, neat corner of my mind, perfect and kind and teaching me to dance in the kitchen of our childhood home.
Instead, I keep looking. Like some stroke of fate, I find another I recognize. Snagging the Darkness record that was, at one point, the soundtrack to my childhood because a tape of it lived in my dad’s car, I flip it toward Heath.
He takes it with an approving hum. ‘Good choice.’
‘“I Believe In A Thing Called Love”’.
‘You do, do you?’
Cheeks heating, I hip-check him on my way back down the aisle. ‘My favorite song, dumbass. Always.’
He makes another soft noise as he puts the record back and searches for a different one. As he holds up a Jets album and he hums ‘Are You Gonna Be My Girl’ beneath his breath, I roll my eyes, and he makes another noise. A sweet, pleased sigh that makes my heart do something very odd in my chest.
He steps forward, damn near suffocating me as he leans around me to drop the record back in its box. ‘Gonna have to learn those.’
The edge of the table digs into the curve of my ass as I reel back, inching out of his orbit. ‘What?’
‘Your eye rolls. What they mean.’
‘They mean you’re annoying.’
‘Sometimes.’ He cocks his head, mouth quirking. ‘Sometimes not.’
My eyeballs do a quarter revolution before I catch them.
A puff of laughter warms my skin. A second later, before I even register him moving, Heath kisses me. Quick and chaste, gone without really being there at all, but still, I jerk away instinctively.
‘Shit.’ Heath retreats too, eyes wide, cheeks suddenly a rosy red. ‘Sorry. Too much?’
‘No. You just surprised me.’
This is what we’re supposed to be doing, right?
This is good. We need the practice. I need the practice, clearly.
And it’s perfect, practicing right here, right now, right this very second, actually – the bell above the entrance chimes, and the tinkling noise shepherds in a group of girls I’m sure must go to Cove College.
The drool gathering at the corners of their mouths and the knowing glances they shoot each other as their gazes rake up and down the length of Heath give them away.
Gripping the table’s edge, I straighten up. When he doesn’t move, I drop my head to one side inquisitively. ‘Go on. I’m ready now.’
With a quiet laugh, he slowly leans in again.
Barely an inch away from my mouth, he suddenly detours.
He kisses one cheek. Then the opposite. One corner of my mouth gets the same fleeting attention, and the other isn’t left neglected for too long.
His nose nudges mine, and my breath catches as his lips brush my Cupid’s bow before finally – God, did I really just say finally? – dipping lower. Really kissing me.
Still chaste. Not quick. Long enough that my heart starts to pound and my skin starts to crawl – no, not crawl. Heat. Tingle, fuck my life, and it’s that completely alien sensation that has me wrenching myself away.
Not very far, though. For some reason, I can’t separate us more than an inch. We’re almost at eye-level. I’m on my tiptoes, though I don’t remember rising.
Slowly, I lower myself back down to solid ground. ‘What’s yours?’
Eyelids drooping heavily, Heath practically slurs, ‘What?’
‘Your favorite song.’
A flurry of blinks, and then he clears his throat.
With practiced nonchalance, he walks away, rattling off an answer followed by another question, and I answer that, and offer a question too, and we go on like that for a while.
We leave the record store and linger in the flower shop across the street.
We’re in the bookstore when he asks, ‘Why anthropology?’
Flipping through a weathered bodice ripper, I answer easily.
‘My favorite character in my favorite TV show was a forensic anthropologist. Thought it sounded cool when I was younger—’ I don’t specify that it was her I was really fixated on for a long while.
‘—and then when I got old enough to actually understand everything, the interest kinda just . . . stuck.’
Heath hums, intrigued, another question loudly brewing, but I beat him to it.
‘Why history?’ I ask, frowning a beat later and adding, ‘Wait, what’s your major?’
‘Business. I want to open a surf shop, but I always liked history, so . . .’
‘You don’t wanna swim professionally?’
He shrugs. ‘Not really.’
My frown must worsen because he laughs, flicking my crumpled forehead affectionately. ‘I take it you do wanna swim professionally?’
‘Why else would I be doing it?’
‘That is a very sad question, Daniela,’ he says quietly, moving on too quickly for the statement to really hit home, for it to hurt. ‘Then why go to college at all? Why not just go straight into it?’
‘My mom wanted me to go.’ I couldn’t have been older than seven, but I so vividly remember her waxing poetic about the wonders of higher education, the privilege of it all, how the single year she attended was one of the best years of her life.
‘Felt kind of disrespectful to ignore a dead woman’s wishes. ’
I swear to God, I hear Heath’s heart fucking drop. ‘Your mom died?’
An echo of my ex-boyfriend’s voice rings in my ear, snidely wondering aloud if it would kill me to be a little more sensitive. ‘Sorry. Too blunt.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know that.’
‘It was a long time ago,’ I offer, an attempt to alleviate the pity flooding his features.
I don’t need it, I don’t want it. The concept of grief is kind of a gray, fuzzy area for me, and I don’t need the punch of guilt I always get when someone else feels it more potently on my behalf than I do myself.
‘If it makes you feel any better, my dad died a lot more recently.’
‘Why would that make me feel better?’
My mouth opens only to promptly shut. My frown reigns supreme once more.
I have no idea. I don’t know why I even said that.
If anything, Dad’s death was worse – I was older.
I remember it more. I was there. Watched him from the deep end of the pool in our apartment complex as he clutched his chest and just . . . dropped.
The longer my silence persists, the softer Heath’s expression gets. ‘So it’s just you and your brother?’
‘And our stepmom.’ Who I really would rather not discuss right now, so I slide the forgotten book back onto its shelf and start toward the exit. ‘Can we be done with twenty questions?’
He’s got more than twenty now, I can tell. I can hear at least a hundred rattling around in his brain, and I don’t know where the fuck he finds the control to keep them all in.
Long legs overtaking me, he beats me to the double doors and pushes them open, ushering me outside with a dramatic gesture, and, God, do I always roll my fucking eyes this often or does he just bring it out in me?
Am I really so clueless as to how the hell to act around him that a single snarky gesture is pretty much all I can manage?
Shaking that thought right out of my head before it takes root and festers, I start down the sidewalk in the vague direction of my apartment. I only make it a few steps before his hand catches mine and starts to drag me the other away. ‘What are you doing?’
Half a stride ahead of me, Heath tosses a smile over his shoulder – briefly, I wonder if he really does that so often or if I bring it out in him, before dismissing the idea as idiotic.
‘Didn’t I tell you?’ he muses, oh-so-innocently, and oh-so-dreadful is how I suddenly feel. ‘We have dinner plans.’
‘I don’t think this is a good idea.’
Plastic bags full of takeout hanging from his crooked fingertips, Heath tosses me a grin over his shoulder. ‘It’ll be fine.’
Fine. I snicker. How Not to Inspire Confidence 101.
‘Maybe this escaped your notice,’ I snark, as we amble toward a front door I don’t recognize, ‘but I’m not exactly a people person.’
‘What?’ Looking back at me with wide eyes, Heath tries and fails to fight the amused twitch of his mouth. ‘I had no idea.’
My expression remains unimpressed. ‘Heath, this is a bad idea.’