“You sound better than them,” I told Sam.
“We sound better,” he corrected me. “And you sound better than everybody. The tips prove it.”
“You told me this was your first gig in the District,” I reminded him. “You don’t know what the tips would have been like without me.”
He lowered his dark brows at me. “It’s a compliment, Bailey. Take it.”
“No,” I joked. But I really did wish he wouldn’t say things like that. So far I’d done a fairly good job of enjoying the night without thinking about the consequences or the future.
His brow wrinkled with confusion, just for a moment, before clearing to its usual pleasant default setting. As we crossed Broadway, I watched the road ahead of us, knowing he was looking up the hill at the promised land.
Safe on the opposite sidewalk, I commented, “Ace and Charlotte are really good.”
“I know,” he said appreciatively. “I can’t tell you how many bands I’ve tried to put together over the years. This is the first one that’s stuck. Ace and Charlotte have been in bands before. They just needed a new place to call home, you know? Ace was playing R & B until now. You can really hear it in his bass line.”
“Yes!” I said, realizing only after I’d exclaimed that I’d sounded way more enthusiastic than I’d intended. Sam smiled at me like I’d just given away a secret. The truth was, I used to have nerdy conversations about music with Julie. It had been too long.
I cleared my throat and said more calmly, “I noticed Ace was adding a seventh sometimes that wasn’t in the original.”
“So cool, right?” Sam asked. “It makes the whole game more interesting to watch, like throwing an elbow. And I rescued Charlotte from our high school jazz band. She has a lot of experience playing for the local middle schools and old folks’ homes.”
“This is a good thing?” I asked.
“Yes, because she’s hungry. She lives in an apartment. She can’t practice at home because the neighbors complain. It’s not even her drum set—it’s her set from the high school band, and she’s just neglected to give it back yet. That driving beat she gives us comes from a lot of years in the marching band. But you can also hear how much she appreciates having a place to play and people to play with, and how bad she wants to keep doing it.”
I felt guilty about every uncharitable thought I’d had about Charlotte that night. But as I worked through it, I felt a little less guilty because Sam was trying to make me feel guilty.
Or was he? I’d suspected over and over that he was manipulating me, yet his delivery was so honest and guileless that I was never quite sure.
However, I was sure after what he said next. “And then there’s you, miss ‘I don’t want to be in a band right now,’ miss ‘I don’t want to major in music when I go to Vanderbilt.’ ”
“Oh, boy.” Why couldn’t he let me live another hour in my fantasy world, starring him, where I didn’t need to answer questions?
“If you’re not majoring in music at Vanderbilt,” he pressed me, “what’s your major?”
We were passing the strip club again. I pretended I was holding my breath to avoid breathing great lungfuls of smoke and air freshener, but really I was hoping a piano would fall out of the second story of one of the bars, changing the subject. Sam wasn’t going to like my answer.
After several moments, when the piano crash was not forthcoming and Sam continued to watch me with an “I told you so” expression, I conceded, “Biomedical engineering.”
He gave me a sideways look like I’d said I was majoring in the literature of Antarctica. “Biomedical engineering. Like, inventing new cancer drugs?”
“More like working on one tiny part of one chemical that might someday be a component of a cancer drug.”
“Mm-hmm,” he said in a tone that sounded like I’d proven him right. “So you’d work in a lab.”
“Or a cubicle, at a computer.”
“That sounds like fun.” I heard no sarcasm in his voice, but I knew it was there. “Did you pick the major that was as far away from music as you could get?”
“No, the guidance counselors at our school gave us a personality test and matched us with professions we’d be good at.”
He nodded. “Your personality is analytical.”
Intellectual, unemotional, cold. “Yes.”
He held open the door to the parking deck for me. After it squeaked shut behind us, he said, “You’re so analytical that you would turn your back on a profession you love just because a standardized personality test told you what career you should have.” His voice echoed around the stairwell.
“You’re doing it again,” I said quietly.
“Right,” he said, opening the door at the top of the stairs and watching me as I passed under his arm. We wound through a couple of rows of parked cars to his truck, then deposited our instrument cases and his hat behind the seat and got in. All this time he didn’t say a word—which is what I’d wanted, for him to leave me alone. But now that I had my wish, I missed his nagging. His brows were knitted and his lips were pursed as he stared out the windshield of the truck with his keys in his hand, slack on the seat. Thinking hard didn’t suit him.
His eyes shifted to me. I never forgot how handsome he was, but when he looked straight at me, his brown eyes fringed with long, dark lashes gave me a shock. A guy should not be this handsome when a girl wanted desperately to keep her boots on the ground.
“Do you want me to take you home now?” he asked in his husky voice, barely above a whisper.
I licked my lips. “What are my other choices?”
His intense gaze never left me as he asked, “Do you want me to kiss you?” His normally expressive mouth quirked into the smallest smile. He’d worn the same look that afternoon when he held open the door of Borders for me. I had something he wanted. He was going to convince me to give it to him for free.
I didn’t want him to feel like he’d gotten the better of me. There was something about his question that put the responsibility for kissing on me, not him. But even with that smug look on his face, he was so handsome with the dim glow of the parking deck lights shining in his dark waves and glinting in his friendly eyes. The responsibility was only a little one, negligible, casual, like picking up a lipstick at the drugstore.