Chapter 7
Seven
“Jazz doesn’t follow rules.”
The concert had spilled over the Parliament Lawn like honey, golden and slow, as the evening dropped its weight across Victoria. The harbour beyond shimmered in the last light, seaplanes gliding low over the water like ghosts.
I saw him right away.
Paul stood near the edge of the low stone wall that bordered the lawn, hands tucked loosely into his pockets, head tilted as he listened.
His body moved with the music in tiny, unconscious ways: a tap of the thumb against his thigh, a shifting of weight from one foot to the other. Not dancing. Just… attuned.
The way he wore the evening: a black T-shirt, casual chinos, battered leather jacket thrown over his shoulder.
It should have looked careless, but, instead, it looked deliberate, almost a maddeningly effortless style.
It was that James-Dean-ish, I woke up like this kind of look.
Like he belonged here, woven into the melody, part of the city’s pulse.
It was palpable. I could see it, feel it, in the way his expression shifted, the way his blue eyes darkened whenever something struck him deeply.
Watching him in that moment, so immersed, completely unguarded, felt like witnessing something private, something beautiful.
It probably took seconds, but in my head, I stood there for ages, caught in the subtle shift of his face, the faint curve of his lips as the music pulled him somewhere I couldn’t follow.
I hesitated a few feet away, nerves prickling under my skin.
Part of me wanted to turn around; there was still time to pretend I was just another anonymous tourist. On a side note, I wished I’d made more effort with my clothes.
It wasn’t like he was dressed for a formal date, for lack of a better word.
I wasn’t sure what it was, exactly. And just when I started full-on spiraling, my phone buzzed with a short text:
Where are you, girl? Jazz is waiting for you.
I almost laughed. A breathless, disbelieving sound. I had to shake off my self-induced coma, squeezed my phone, and walked up to him.
“Hey, girl,” he said when I finally closed the distance between us.
His voice was easy, familiar, like we were picking up a conversation we hadn’t finished yet.
That gaze, the same one I’d caught before at the office, swept over me.
I had no idea if he sensed how flustered I felt, if he noticed the heat in my cheeks, the chaotic swirl of self-consciousness beneath my oh so fragile calm. I almost felt as brave as… then.
“Hey, boy,” I replied lamely. Nowhere to run.
He smiled: not a broad grin, not the kind you flash for show. It was like he knew exactly how precarious this moment was, and didn’t want to spook it. Hey, boy. Somehow it didn’t feel so ridiculous.
His hand hovered briefly—uncertain?—and the next thing I knew, he was leaning in, brushing a slow, deliberate kiss against my cheek, just a few millimeters away from my lips.
His breath, warm and minty, lingered for a moment too long on my skin, sending a shiver curling down my spine.
The warmth of it stayed behind, soaking into my skin.
And somehow, in that small gesture, he loosened the knot of tension inside me.
Well… almost. I remembered, then, why I’d been so curious about him.
Why I wanted to see him outside the careful structure of office corridors and coffee breaks.
“You made it,” he said.
“You didn’t think I would?”
He shrugged, amused. “As far as I remember, you already took braver dares than showing up to a free jazz concert.”
He wasn’t wrong. Still, my hands found the hem of my shirt and twisted it nervously. He didn’t comment. Just let the silence sit there, unthreatening, until the music swelled between us again.
“This is Greg Osby,” he said, nodding toward the stage. “Saxophone god. Used to play with Art Blakey. Now he’s doing all these mad experimental things. See that woman on the piano? That’s Renee Rosnes. Canadian genius. She can make a Steinway cry without touching a key too hard.”
I blinked at him. “You really know your stuff.”
Paul shrugged, almost embarrassed. “It’s my one pretentious skill, and you have been warned.”
I already knew this side of him from our many email exchanges, but still, he surprised me with his easy passion and the way he talked about music like it was his oxygen.
We drifted closer to the music, and for a while, it didn’t matter that I didn’t understand half of what he said.
I liked watching him explain it. His hands moved when words failed.
His eyes—that stormy blue—lit up in ways I hadn’t seen before.
At one point, when the saxophone broke into a raw, heartbreaking solo, Paul leaned down and said, almost to himself:
“I’m gonna torture my kids with jazz one day.”
I didn’t know what struck me more: the ease with which he mentioned future kids to someone he’d only known for what, a couple of weeks, or the pure, unfiltered passion threading through his voice.
As if the idea of passing on something he loved so fiercely wasn’t just a casual joke, but a promise to a future he already saw.
I turned my head sharply, but he was already watching the stage again, a soft, private smile on his mouth.
“You see,” he continued his thought, “jazz doesn’t follow rules. It just finds the places where you are softest and hits there. Over and over again. Do you feel that?”
I didn’t answer. I felt the echoing bass in my veins, in every fiber, reminding me what I had lost, in every tremble of my hand. But also how much it took to crawl back, day by day. Paul looked at me, no words, as if he knew.
Later, we found a quieter patch of lawn near the back, slightly raised above the crowd. Paul sat down, his long legs stretched out lazily in front of him, one arm braced behind him.
I hesitated, awkward and clumsy.
“Join me,” he said, amused. “I won’t bite.”
I dropped down cross-legged, trying not to look as graceless as I felt.
From here, the harbour was a dark mirror under the city lights, stretching to our side.
Planes taxied across the water like mechanical birds.
The music softened into the background hum of conversations, footsteps, and clinking glasses.
I glanced at him. He was close enough that I could see the stubble along his jaw, the curve of his mouth when he wasn’t smiling.
The silence between us stretched, a live wire.
I tugged at a loose thread on my sleeve to calm my nerves.
He noticed—because of course he did—and reached out, just to flick the thread lightly with his fingertip, a barely-there brush that made my stomach flip.
“You always fidget when you’re nervous?” he asked, voice low.
“I’m not nervous,” I said too fast.
He didn’t argue. Just smiled that quiet, knowing smile and leaned back again.
We let the night fold itself around us. The musicians started a slow, smoky blues number, all low brass and velvet bass lines.
A few couples began to sway along the edges of the lawn.
Paul didn’t move. Neither did I. After a while, I pulled my knees to my chest and rested my chin on them.
My heart was still hammering from nothing—from everything.
I should say something and ask why he looked at me the way he did.
I should ask why I was here. Instead, I found myself asking, “Did you ever want to play?”
He turned his head toward me, thoughtful.
“Nah,” he said. “Listening’s better. You get to feel it without the pressure to perform, you get to let it wreck you a little. And nobody expects you to make sense of it afterward.”
His words floated between us, heavy as smoke.
Wreck you a little: I wasn’t a big fan of the word “wreck” lately, but when he said it, it seemed to have a whole different depth.
I looked down at my hands, embarrassed by how much I wanted to touch him, just his wrist, perhaps: just to feel something real and solid under my fingertips.
I didn’t. Instead, I sat there in my cheap jeans and borrowed bravery, and let the moment unfold itself, somewhat naturally.
The last note from the brass instrument hung in the air like a silver thread, suspended longer than it had any right to.
The crowd erupted into cheers. I clapped too, but mechanically, with my body still vibrating with everything that had almost happened when he looked at me that way.
Paul tilted his head, that lazy smile curving one side of his mouth.
His hands slid casually into the pockets of his chinos, as if the past hour or so hadn’t shifted the axis of my universe.
He leaned a little closer, and for the first time all night, I relaxed. Whatever it was, it felt safe.
Then, cutting through the moment like a razor, a woman appeared next to us.
“Ella!” Paul’s voice lifted an octave higher than usual, surprise spiking through it.
The brunette from work: gorgeous, poised, and wearing a black leather jacket uncannily similar to his. She approached like a slow burn, heels clicking lightly against the plaza, a coy smile on her lips.
“American boy,” she said, the words drizzling honey and vinegar all at once. “I thought I’d bump into you here.”
For a split second, something flickered across Paul’s face. Annoyance? Discomfort? It was gone too fast to tell. He straightened, brushing a hand through his hair like he needed something to do with his body.
“Yeah. Small island, huh?” he said, easy on the surface but brittle underneath.
“I see jazz and blues, and some other things, still help you?” He didn’t answer.
Other things? Help? With what?
Ella’s eyes flicked to me then, sizing me up in a single, clinical sweep. A curve of her lips, not quite a smile.
“Hey, you work with us too, right?” she said, like she was doing me the favor of remembering. Her hand brushed Paul’s arm, a casual, too-familiar gesture. Something cold and tight pulled in my gut. I smiled stiffly. “Yeah. Tom’s assistant.”
Ella let out a small smile, tipping her head back theatrically. “That’s right. Cute.”
Before I could decide whether to say something that would get me fired on Monday, Paul cleared his throat.
“You were heading to the bus station, Alicia? Right?” he said quickly, throwing me—and himself—a rope I didn’t realize I needed. “Me too.”
I blinked. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, I am.”
“Great,” he said, already shifting his body subtly toward me, away from Ella. “We’ll walk together.”
Ella’s face flickered, just a flash, but I caught it. Irritation. She covered it quickly, air-kissing the air near Paul’s cheek.
“See you Monday, American boy,” she purred.
“Yeah. See you.”
And then we were walking, fast enough to make it obvious we were escaping.
We made it two blocks before either of us spoke.
“What was that?” I asked finally, trying to keep my voice neutral.
He exhaled through his nose, running a hand through his hair again. “Ella. She… likes drama. Honestly, we had a good time a while back, short, superficial, nothing more. I had no idea she was going to show up here tonight. I swear.”
His voice was low, edged with frustration, not at me, I realized, but at the whole situation.
I believed him. Mostly. But a tiny part of me folded the information up like a sharp little piece of paper and tucked it away.
He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his jacket, holding it up like a question.
And I swear, for a second, I found myself in a clip from Rebel without a cause.
The way his fingers curled around the pack, the easy slouch of his body in that black T-shirt and leather jacket, the messy hair, and the dangerous glint in his eyes: it wasn’t fair.
He looked like he had walked straight out of an old movie, the kind that made teenage girls in the ‘70s swoon and mothers warn their daughters about.
My stomach fluttered, and I felt heat prickling under my skin.
He looked good. Then he flicked the lighter open with a soft, metallic snap.
“Mind?” he asked casually, but there was a flicker of something in his eyes, like he already knew the answer.
The image: the cool, careless lean of him, the cigarette dangling from his mouth, snapped against the memories in my head. The fire and the smoke. I blinked hard.
“Actually, yeah,” I said, voice steadier than I felt. “I do.”
He froze mid-motion, the lighter half-flipped in his hand. Looked at me, and tucked both the lighter and the cigarettes away without another word.
“Sorry,” he said, quiet and more serious than ever.
“You didn’t know,” I said, tugging the sleeves of my top lower over my hands. “It’s just… after the crash, smoke freaks me out.”
He turned his full body toward me now, not just his head. His expression was unreadable except for the slight, almost imperceptible tightening of his jaw.
“Got it,” he said. “No cigarettes around you. Ever.”
And somehow, despite everything, the bad-boy image he accidentally conjured in my mind didn’t fade, and this became something far more dangerous than attraction: trust. Trust that there will be no jokes and no teasing, only a quiet, fierce promise dropped into the space between us.
We kept walking, the harbour unfolding before us, glittering with lights, tourists drifting like loose leaves, and the smell of salty air thickening in the night.
By the time we reached the food trucks lined up near the ferry docks, my stomach growled so loudly it was embarrassing. Paul laughed, a real one this time, the kind of sound you didn’t hear often enough.
“You need to eat before you start biting people,” he said, bumping my arm lightly with his.
“I make no promises,” I deadpanned, already eyeing a taco truck that smelled like heaven. He grinned at me, hands shoved deep into his jacket pockets, body relaxed now in a way it hadn’t been around Ella.
“Go pick something. I’m paying.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Alicia,” he said, tilting his head at me, that half-smile dangerous. “Let me do this one thing right.”
As I ordered, I felt his gaze on me, steady and unblinking.
Like he was memorizing the exact shade of my hair under the streetlights, the way my mouth quirked when I tried not to smile.
He wasn’t making me nervous anymore; he was making me bold.
Bold enough to eat my tacos by his side, salsa verde dripping down my chin.