Page 34

UNCLE RICK’S MARGE bobbed along the surf beside the pier, blasting the Drifters’ “I’ve Got Sand in My Shoes” as it crested each wave.

The moment Sasha saw it, a jolt of joy ricocheted from his head to mine.

It wasn’t even a thought. It was just sudden, pure, dizzying joy.

He gave a laugh, already sliding out of his shoes as he headed toward the water.

I told him that if we signaled to Uncle Rick, he could come to the shore and pick us up, but Sasha didn’t even bother.

“I won’t melt,” he teased, grabbing my hand excitedly as he pulled me into the waves.

The Marge had a few other patrons when we swam out to it, so Uncle Rick didn’t notice me until Sasha asked what the specialty margarita was today, and if he could get it nonalcoholic. Then Uncle Rick turned to him accusingly and went, “You want to Shirley Temple my margs?”

Sasha put a heavy hand on his heart. “It’s a sin and I admit it.”

Uncle Rick narrowed his eyes. Then gave a single nod. “I respect the hell outta that. Nini, this the new friend you were telling me about?”

I laughed, flustered. “Um—actually, yeah. This is Sasha.”

He nodded, giving Sasha one more look down—

I froze.

When had I started referring to him as Sasha again? I couldn’t really remember, though if he’d already noticed, he hadn’t said anything.

He slid a sly look to me. “So you’ve been talking about me?”

I stared up at the margarita menu, trying to summon nonchalance. A little.

His mouth curled into a smirk.

“Special today is the lemana marg,” Uncle Rick informed him.

I wrinkled my nose at the idea of lemons and bananas, but Sasha perked. “Oh, heck yeah. Gimme that .”

“And what’ll you have?” Uncle Rick asked me, quirking an eyebrow. “The usual?” Which was ice water with slices of lemons and oranges. If it wasn’t broke, why fix it? Then again, I did wonder what the lemana marg tasted like …

“You know, I’ll have what he’s having,” I said, nodding toward Sasha, not really caring if I’d regret it.

I didn’t regret it right now, and that was all that mattered.

Uncle Rick made margaritas, and Sasha watched with giddy attention as Rick cranked up the blender and thrust his fists into the air like a frat boy at a homecoming football game.

“Did you see that?” Sasha asked. “Did you see? That’s amazing.”

With all his world tours and reality television shows, this was what he got excited about?

A blender attached to a lawn mower engine on a boat that probably didn’t meet regulations for seaworthiness?

My heart squeezed—but it felt different from the dread that normally coiled there. It felt tender, this tightness. Raw.

We sat against the side of the boat, close enough that our knees knocked together, at least until the boat crested over a large wave, and I almost lost my balance, grabbing the railing for leverage.

After that, Sasha pulled my legs over his lap to keep me stationary, his free hand resting against my outer thigh.

It was impossible to ignore his touch—too close, perhaps, because I wasn’t sure if the flush across my skin was from the heat of the sun or his hand on my upper thigh.

Just a little slip and his fingers would inch under my shorts, and I wondered what his calloused fingers would feel like stroking me there—

He cleared his throat. Cut his gaze to me. The blue of his eyes was dark, like the ocean. “It’s not polite to tease, bird.”

His heated gaze held mine. I wasn’t sure if it was a tease.

In my head he was off-limits because that kiss at the pier allowed me to see and feel inside his head, too close, too personal, too intimate for a stranger—

But he wasn’t a stranger anymore.

I knew this was a bad idea. This was what I didn’t want, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

If we kissed, what would happen next? After we chased the impulse, after an evening of sex?

We went through life differently, loved differently—being with someone like Sasha didn’t make sense.

He was a celebrity, famous, and that was the sort of life that I didn’t want.

Did I just want to hide in a bad idea so I didn’t have to think about the storm brewing right ahead of me, made of my grief over Mom and losing the Revelry and my own lack of inspiration? Or did I actually have feelings for this man in my head?

I didn’t know, but maybe I had been wrong this whole time. Maybe this was what I really wanted.

Maybe—

I opened my mouth to say as much, but Uncle Rick plopped down two yellow monstrosities in front of us, and I came back to my senses. Sasha’s hand quickly slipped away from the frayed hem of my shorts.

And the moment passed.

We spent the rest of the afternoon floating on the Marge.

The lemana marg was awful (apparently some flavor profiles really should never mix), but the beach music and the conversations were good.

Sasha talked about bars he’d snuck into when he was underage, chasing down no-name bands he loved, even when he had the world in his hands on Renegade’s world tour.

I learned that he hated flying, but he hated tour buses more.

He never tipped less than 50 percent of the bill, and he hadn’t had a drink since the night he crashed his Corvette, and his best friend was one of the other singers in Renegade who Gigi (and, let’s face it, about a million fans) thought he was having a secret relationship with.

I knew we needed to finish this song, but the more of the day I spent with him, the less I wanted it to end. The melody in our heads got progressively louder throughout the day, and we were getting louder in each other’s heads, too.

With it came a strange sort of connection.

Or maybe we were just getting more comfortable being loud and emotional to each other.

I found that he’d simply get me a bottle of water when I felt my throat was scratchy, or I’d scoot over into the shade of the barge a little more to give him room because his shoulders felt like they were burning.

He’d absently tuck a lock of hair behind my ear that kept falling into my face, and I’d call him Bernard or Lloyd or Stuart every time someone came up to the barge and looked at him a little too long as if they recognized him.

It was unspoken things. Small, unassuming.

Things we didn’t even have to ask the other person to do. Learning each other, bit by bit.

And, when Uncle Rick finally kicked us off his boat, I learned that Sasha didn’t like going home.

Well, back to his Airbnb, anyway.

I still had to go to the Rev; my parents probably needed help tonight at the box office or the bar, and I wanted Mom to have more good days so I could spend time with her, and I wanted Gigi to talk to me about the things she was hiding, and—

He caught my hand as we started to leave the beach and said, “Let’s stay here. Your head is so loud right now.”

I gave him a strange look.

“Your head is always quietest when you’re staring at the ocean.” He nudged his chin toward a dune. “Just for a little while?”

I really didn’t have the willpower to say no.

So we sat on the beach in the dusk, watching the cotton-candy clouds roll across the horizon.

The wind was cool, and the smell of ocean brine was strong.

Sometimes, I wondered why I ever left this place.

Sasha was right—the waves calmed my worry.

The way they flooded in and ebbed out again.

There was just something soothing in how reliable they were.

“I go sit in that private box at the Fonda when I need to clear my head,” he said.

“Is that why you were at Willa’s concert?”

“No, I was there because Willa asked.” Sasha tilted his head a little, leaning back on his hands.

A seagull circled over a fry in the parking lot, and he watched it thoughtfully for a long moment.

“But most of the time, I just go to sit and listen,” he finally added.

“I know the manager, so she lets me in whenever I want. Which is often.”

I whistled. “A premium box at a music hall? You’re probably very popular with your friends.”

He barked a laugh. “You know me well enough by now,” he said, sounding a little depreciative. “I don’t have a lot of friends, and I hate the idea of paying for company, so I don’t have an assistant, either. That just seems too sad.”

“And too much like my dad,” he added in my head.

The seagull finally took his chance and swooped down to the fry, but as soon as he nabbed it, another seagull chased after him, and they squawked away in a fight.

“So you just go to concerts and sit up in that private balcony and watch shows?”

He sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Sounds a bit spoiled, doesn’t it?”

“Sounds lucky. Is that why you were so snarky with me when we first met, because you weren’t expecting anyone?”

He nodded, a little embarrassed. “At first, I actually thought you were someone the manager of the venue wanted to set me up with. Her name’s Tania,” he added as an aside.

“She’s very nice. She sort of bullied me into teaching an after-school music program twice a week at her kid’s school.

I think she could tell I missed music, but I’m glad she did. She likes to meddle in that way.”

“So does Willa,” I added wryly, though I couldn’t get the image out of my head of Sebastian Fell sitting alone in that dark balcony, quietly watching shows while the world lived so brightly below him, singing along to their favorite bands.

It sounded … lonely .

“I’d rather be alone than surrounded by people who just want something from me.” He stared straight ahead at the crashing waves.

Are you scared that I do, too?

“Yes,” he admitted, still unable to look at me. “It scares me a lot, bird, because you know more about me than … anyone else. But what scares me the most is that I don’t know what you’d want.”

My heart squeezed tightly, because I couldn’t imagine how isolating that felt—to not have someone in your corner like Gigi or Mitch or my parents were in mine.

To not have a person to lean on, someone to tell secrets to, someone to eat ice cream with after a breakup and watch shitty movies with and share inside jokes with.

I said that, and I couldn’t even tell my best friend about my burnout, afraid of what she’d think.

We weren’t so dissimilar after all, Sasha and me.

I scooted up a little closer beside him, until our shoulders touched.

He gave me a curious look. “What’re you doing?”

In reply, I grabbed the side of his head and pulled it over onto my shoulder.

“What are you—”

“Shut up and just lean on me, okay? Because you can. I won’t betray your trust. I’m not that kind of person,” I told him. I promise.

He didn’t say he believed me. He didn’t say he didn’t , either. No, he simply rested his head against my shoulder, and the tenseness of his body unraveled as he leaned against me and closed his eyes. “She always smells so good.”

That pit in my stomach, where anxiety usually festered and twisted, burned with something different at his thoughts. I didn’t want him to think that any time spent with me—however small— was a nightmare. Or anything close. It certainly wasn’t a nightmare for me. Hadn’t been in a while.

And I didn’t want it to be for him, either.

“It’s just hard,” he said, hearing my thoughts. “It’s me, not you.”

But I was in his head, too, and I could hear the lie.

I said, looking out at the waves, “You can listen to my thoughts as I say this and you can tell that I mean it—I don’t want anything from you, Sasha.

This song, this experience—when it’s done, I trust that if it’s good, we’ll know what to do with it, and …

” I hesitated, thinking about the idea of a comeback.

He deserved one. “And if you want it, the song is yours.”

I knew what I was saying—what I was giving him.

The song might be no good at all, or it could catch the eye of a much bigger artist and make much better royalties, set me up for awards and recognition.

This was the business of music that I didn’t like.

The game of it. If I let him have the song, I gave all that up.

In surprise, he jerked his head off my shoulder. “No, bird, I can’t agree to that.”

“Well I’m not going to sing it,” I teased. “Besides, it might be terrible.”

“It won’t be.”

I studied his face, the determination in his bright blue eyes. There was something just so lovely about the confidence he had in me, and I knew without a doubt that whatever song I gave him, he knew how to sing it. He would be able to understand every lyric, every note, down to its core.

And I wanted to know why that was—

I wanted to know everything about him, really.

I wanted to know all the things even tabloids weren’t privy to—the things they ignored.

I wanted to know the mundane things, whether he liked top sheets and if he wore his socks inside out because the seam bothered him.

All the things that people took for granted.

It surprised me and terrified me.

“Who’s playing tonight at the Rev?” he asked.

I tried to recall who Dad said was playing tonight over coffee and crosswords this morning. “I think it’s a local Jimmy Buffett tribute band.”

He tilted his head. “I could go for a cheeseburger in paradise. You?”

This was a terrible idea. I should just tell him goodbye.

Walk home. Because if I brought him into the Rev, even though no one had come up to him today in his tourist getup, I was sure he’d attract another crowd like he had the first night, and I didn’t want to subject him to that if he wasn’t up for it.

There was no way I could take him in the front door.

But … no one said I had to use the front door. I did have the keys, after all.

And I really didn’t want today to end yet, either.