Ginger looks around. “Where’s your secret agent man?”
“Um . . . I’m on my own. They let me go.”
She grabs my hand, dragging me out of the booth and back through the writhing bodies to the front of the stage just as Jonathan is swinging his mic by the cord to the last pounding beats of the pizza song.
When he looks down from the stage and sees me, his eyes widen and my heart stops. It feels like the rest of my life later that a grin breaks over his face.
“We’re gonna take a short break,” he says into the mic, hopping off the stage and landing right in front of me. “Don’t go anywhere.”
He flicks the mic off and tosses it onto the stage, and then he just looks at me with those incredible eyes. “Long time no see.”
It’s only as the first tear leaks over my lashes that I realize I’m crying. “I’m so sorry, Jonathan.”
He tips his head at me with a question in his eyes. “For what?”
“I thought you—” The words choke off on a sob and I drop my face into my hands.
“C’mere,” he says, and I feel his strong arm wrap over my shoulders. He moves us through the jostling crowd as everybody tries to get their piece of him, tugging on his clothes or grabbing at his arms. He manages to break through and guide me up the stairs on the side of the stage. He leads me backstage and turns me to face him, a hand grasping each of my upper arms. “What’s up, Red? Why the tears?”
“Do you hate me?” I ask, my voice thick as I rub at my wet cheeks.
His face scrunches. “What?”
“I thought you . . . might have . . . with Ben . . .” I stammer, fully aware that I’m making no sense.
“Hey,” he says, giving me a little bit of a shake. “I was afraid you’d never forgive me for being so fucking stupid. You have every right to hate me.” He lets me go and hangs his head. “I got you shot at, for fuck’s sake. I’m never going to forgive myself.”
I wipe my eyes again, and as our surroundings come into focus, I realize the entire stage crew is staring at us. I haul a shuddering breath, trying to get my shit together. “I’m so sorry I doubted you.”
He looks up at me, then opens his arms. “I’m a moron. I deserve to be doubted.”
I step into his arms and they close around me.
“Jon,” someone says from behind me.
“Yeah, I’m coming,” he answers, but he doesn’t let me go. “So, Red. I gotta get back out there, but we need to talk, okay? After the gig, if you’re still around? Or tomorrow?”
I nod and pull back, stretching up on my tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “I love you.”
He gives me his signature crooked smile and cocks a pierced eyebrow as he backs toward the curtain. “I know.”
I stumble down the stairs and to the table where Izzy’s still holding down the fort.
“Everything good?” she asks when I slip into the seat across from her.
“I’m good,” I say, and it doesn’t feel like a lie.
I’ve talked to Mom. She wants me to come home. I think we understand each other a little better now. She gets that she needs to let me make my own mistakes, and I get that I need to try to make less of them. But the truth is, I really feel like it’s time to stop relying on everyone else and stand on my own two feet. I’ve been researching scholarships and grants, and I think I want to try the college thing again—on my own this time. San Jose State offers a victimology concentration in their criminology program, and I want to minor in women’s studies.
I’ve spent a lot of time at the shelter over the last week. Sabrina and I have talked and cried together. If all I can do for her now is to be her friend, I think that’s something, but I want to learn to help women like Sabrina for real. I want my life to mean something. Which means I need to get it straightened out, and the first thing that’s going to entail is getting a real job so I can keep living at Izzy’s and pay for school. The next thing is going to be figuring out how to shake the feeling like I left a huge piece of my heart up on that hill in Berkeley.
I’ve got to let Blake go, but I can’t deny the hole in my chest every time I remember the brush of his lips over mine; the feel of his hands, so gentle on my skin; the press of his body against mine as he loved me.
I miss him.
“Have you heard from him?” Izzy asks just over the music, reading my mind.
“No. Nothing.” I’ve resisted the urge to call him, and after what Cooper said, I’m glad. If he’s trying to get everything straightened out and keep his job, I’m only going to be a problem for him. I have to stop pining for him.
“He’ll call, Sam. When he can. I’m sure of it.”
I just nod, because if I try to say anything, I’m going to start crying again.
“Hey,” someone says from the end of our table.
I look up and see a dark Hispanic guy. He’s totally hot, and Izzy sits up a little straighter when she sees him. “You up for a dance?” he asks, grinning at her.
She looks in my direction with a hopeful expression.
I give her a nod. “Go.”
“I’ll be right back,” she says, giving me a quick hug before sliding out of the booth. I watch as he guides her to the dance floor.
Jonathan is screeching into the microphone as his guys back him up with a breakneck rhythm, and Izzy starts to move. She’s a great dancer, and her guy can’t take his eyes off her. Half a song later they’re pressed together, swaying half-time to the beat.
I slouch into the booth and tip my head into the back of it. I need to forget about Blake and move on. I listen to Jonathan sing and resolve right then that I’m going to dance with the next guy who asks me.
Jonathan and the band wind down their song, and there’s a pause in the music. It’s a few seconds later when he says into the mic, “This next one goes out to my best friend, Red. Things aren’t always going to suck. Starting now.”
I sit up and look toward the stage, where he’s grinning at me as he breaks into the Bruno Mars song that was playing the first time I met Blake. I’ve never heard him do this song before, but as he starts on the first verse, my heart contracts into a hard ball. He doesn’t know what this song means to me. I close my eyes and lower my head, determined not to cry, as the lyrics yank at the deepest part of my soul.
“Dance with me.”
At the slow warm-honey drawl, my breaking heart explodes. I lift my head, and my eyes find the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
BLAKE IS STANDING at the end of the table in the same pink button-down he was wearing the night we met, his hand out to me.
In a total daze, I take it and blink away tears as he guides me out of the booth and to the dance floor. His hands on my back are so gentle, but at the same time insistent, as he pulls me tight against him and begins to sway to the song. I don’t know how or why he’s here, but I’m not going to worry about it now.
My heart swells at the feel of his body pressed against mine, the heat of his breath in my hair. I press my face against his chest and hear the beat of his heart over the music. His hands smooth slowly over my back, one of them gliding up to the nape of my neck. He weaves his fingers into my hair as he nuzzles the crown of my head. I can’t stop the tear that escapes over my lashes when I feel him sigh.
People move all around us on the dance floor, but all I know is Blake, and Jonathan’s voice singing our song as we move together in our own universe. His lips brush my forehead and down my temple, and when he starts to sing the chorus in my ear, slow and sure, the floodgates open and I cry into his shoulder. He strokes my hair and pulls me closer, and we dance, blending together into one on the dance floor.