Page 61 of Bribed by the Billionaire Bad Boy

Her hands drop. “That’s it?” she asks, searching my eyes for lies. “Why was that so hard to tell me? You made muffins with a classmate. You may actually have a friend. I don’t understand.” Something flashes in her gaze, something that looks like her coming to her own conclusion. “Caly, don’t tell me you are overworking yourself. Is that why you didn’t want to say anything? You’re stressed?”

“I…” I’m not exactlynotstressed, but my stress has nothing to do with work. I’m fine and ahead in my classes, per usual, and since I’m not even really working anymore, I have more free time than ever.

“Do you need to quit your job?” she asks.

“What?”

Folding her arms, she goes off on a tangent. “I can take care of the house, you know. I was a single mother raising you for twelve years after all.”

Twelve. Because my parents separated when I was six. I honestly don’t even remember them being together. All I remember is the fact my daddy lived elsewhere and sometimes visited me on the weekends while the other kids’ fathers seemed to live with them.

The spring I turned eighteen was the same spring I graduated. The same spring Mom sat me down and told me that child support had ended. The summer after I graduated, I was working full-time across three jobs in an effort to both help supplement the child support we no longer received and save for college.

Stress is normal for me. I’d probably start acting strange if Iweren’tstressed.

I swallow a hard lump, unsure exactly where it came from. “No, Mom. It’s all fine.”

“Then what’swrong?”

“I don’t know!” I blurt, biting my tongue. Squeezing my eyes shut, I motion at the two little rows of muffins. “Just look at the muffins. I made your favorites. And I’m tired. So I just…I just want to go to bed.”

Is that too much to ask? Can’t I be unremarkable and average, with nothing wrong and nothing to prove and nothing to do?

“Okay…” Mom hesitates, but she’s nodding when I open myeyes. “If you say so.”

The venom in that statement isn’t lost on me, but I take the brief moment as my opportunity to escape, so I do.

I do, and I try to remember the feeling of cool keys against my fingers while two voices meld like one.

Lex

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Something’s wrong. I’ve thought so for a couple weeks now, but I didn’t know if it was my business to ask.

Fourteen.

Fourteen weeks, and the feeling that hit me when I was beside Calypso at my piano hasn’t dulled in the slightest. I’m still hopelessly addicted to how she moves. Nothing about her has ceased to pull me in.

No one else seems to notice anything amiss, and that almost makes it feel like I’m delusional, but no one else sees her in the mornings at the piano in the theater classroom, when her spirit is softer and her fingers are slow.

No one else sees her in the moments like now.

Sitting on Mr. D’plume’s desk, I watch Calypso’s back while she rocks in front of the keys, taking part in her own private promenade. The song isn’t one I’ve heard anywhere else, but she started playing it sometime late last week. It was short then. Now it’s almost full, complete, but with the way she pauses every now and again, it’s clear she doesn’t think so.

“Can I ask you a question?” I ask.

She doesn’t stop giving life to the gentle tones. “You just did.”

“Can I ask you three questions, then?”

She casts the flurry of a smile over her shoulder. “I suppose.”

“When are you going to tell me you write music and stop trying to keep it hidden by rewriting the piece you’re working on in your head right now instead of on a piece of paper like a sane person?” I lean forward, resting my elbow on my knee and my chin in my palm. “It must be giving you such a headache to not record the changes you’re making right when you decide them.”

In the silence her fingers leave when she looks at me, I canalmost hear her swallow. “Rewriting? How do you know I’m not just having trouble remembering how the song goes?”

Well, that’s obvious. “Because you’re you.”