We walk into the youth center and there’s a group of teenagers shooting hoops on the half court. One of them, a Latino boy who’s probably around fifteen, looks up and whistles through his teeth.
“Padre! That’s a mighty prime piece on your arm,” he says, making an obscene gesture near his crotch with his hand.
“Watch yourself, Christian,” Alessandro warns, placing his hand on my back and guiding me past.
“I’m watching something else right now,” he says with a shit-eating grin, his eyes glued to my ass as we walk by.
The girl next to Christian steals the ball from his hands, shooting it at the hoop and catching nothing but net. She shoves him and says something in Spanish that sounds an awful lot like trash talk.
I like her.
“Why did he call you Padre?” I ask once we’re past them.
“It’s just a nickname I picked up.” He waves a hand at the group of boys at the free weights that we’re approaching. “Alex thought my accent sounded Spanish and started calling me that, and it stuck.”
“But you’re not a priest.”
“I work for the Church.” He shrugs. “To them it’s all the same.”
As we pass, one of the boys on the free weights, a buff black kid with ink up his right arm that I recognize as the kid Alessandro was boxing with last time I was here, knuckle bumps Alessandro and grins.
“Alex,” Alessandro says.
“Looking good, Padre,” he tells Alessandro, but his eyes are on me. Or more accurately, my chest.
“I’ll see you in the ring once I get Ms. McIntyre situated.”
“I’ll situate her,” Alex mutters with a grin.
Alessandro gives him the eye and ushers me past.
“I’m taking you down today, Padre!” he calls to Alessandro’s back.
“Not if you don’t keep your feet moving,” Alessandro jabs without turning around.
“Horny, aren’t they?” I mutter, turning back to see him following me with his eyes.
“Grown men lose their capacity for rational thought around you, Hilary,” he says low in my ear, gliding a finger down the inside of my upper arm and sending goose bumps skittering over my skin. “What else would you expect from hormone-driven teens?”
He guides me past the small boxing ring, with punching bags hanging from stands behind it, to a glass door in a wall of windows in the back of the gym. He pushes it open and we step through into a small room with a round table and several chairs. On the table is a karaoke machine.
“The rental place guaranteed me it’s loaded with a variety of music,” he tells me. “Everything from Rolling Stones to Beyonce to Broadway.” His eyes spark as he says Beyonce’s name. I wasn’t sure if he remembered, but it’s clear from that look that he does.
“I told you,” I say, looking around the empty room. “No one’s going to want to do this.”
He leans close and I think he’s going to kiss me, but instead he says, “There are still a few minutes, Hilary. I guarantee you there will be interest.”
A little part of me hopes he’s wrong. But a little part of me also hopes he’s right. I don’t really have anything to teach them, but if there are kids who want to sing, I think that would be totally cool.
He moves to the table. “I’m honestly not sure how this thing works,” he says, looking over the karaoke machine, “but one of the kids will be able to help you with it, I’m sure.”
I push the power button and the display screen lights up. “I’ve got it.”
He nods and just looks at me for a second before hiking his duffel higher on his shoulder and backing toward the door. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”
He turns and I watch him through the glass wall as he disappears into the boys’ locker room.
A wiry Latino boy comes in the side door of the gym with his head down and his hands dug deep in his pockets. He slouches toward me and I brace myself for the hormone fest, but he looks up a little shyly at me as approaches my glass room. Christian catcalls him from the half court and he hesitates at the door, looking like he’s thinking of turning back, but then he steps through. “Is this for the singing?” he asks without looking at me.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m Hilary. What’s your name?”
“Tony.” He glances up from under long dark lashes, then his eyes flick to the machine. “What you got on that thing?”
I shrug. “Go check it out.”
He saunters past me and pulls up the menu on the machine as three younger girls make their way across the gym. “I remember you from American Idol,” the short, blond one tells me with wide, amazed eyes as they step into the room. A round, dark-haired girl next to her nods.
The taller Latina girl looks me over skeptically. “Padre says you’re in a Broadway show.”
“Off-Broadway,” I clarify.
“Which one?” she asks.
“It’s called Don’t Look Back and it opens in a few weeks.”
“What’s it about?”
It’s about two sisters who go through a bunch of sh—” Damn, I have to be careful. “ . . . who go through a really hard time with some things that happen to them.”
Her gaze grows more skeptical. “Are you one of the sisters?”
“I am,” I say as a shivery rush courses through me. I still have to pinch myself sometimes.
Working in the theater is different than I thought it would be—which really means it’s no different at all. It wasn’t some big transformation, like the caterpillar turning into the butterfly or anything. I guess when it happened to Brett, I was just so in awe that it looked that way to me. But I’m no different. I’m just me . . . except maybe stronger.
The girls file into the room and head for the karaoke machine as another boy and girl arrive. They join the others at the machine and, as I move to the door to close it so no one will feel embarrassed, I look out into the gym and see Alessandro just emerging from the locker room in a snug gray T-shirt and black athletic shorts, with a towel slung over his shoulder. He loops the towel over the ropes of the boxing ring and takes a jogging lap around the gym before stopping at the ring again and stretching.
“Are we gonna use the mic?” the blond girl asks from behind me, shaking me out of my I-can’t-believe-that-gorgeous-hunk-of-man-flesh-is-mine daze.
I suck the drool off my bottom lip and close the door, then turn back to find the group staring at me. “This is a small room, so you can use it if you want, but I don’t think we need it.”
The kids start choosing their songs and the three girls who came together decide to sing a Taylor Swift song I recognize but don’t really know. One of them, the Latina girl, has potential. The others are just sort of screeching.
Through the window beyond them, Alessandro has boxing gloves on and he’s working a punching bag. He’s pulled off his shirt, and the sight of his rippling muscles sends the muscles in my groin rippling. I force my eyes back to the girls as they finish and work really hard not to stare out the window as Alessandro climbs into the ring with Alex.
The girls each do something solo, then the other girl, who showed up with the boy who it turns out is her brother, takes her turn. They all pick the more current hop-hop stuff that’s on the machine. Her brother comes up next and raps something I’ve never heard before. Then Tony gets his turn. When the music he chose starts and the first piano chords of “Suddenly” from the Les Misérables movie flow from the karaoke machine, I’m sure he must have pushed the wrong button. But then he begins singing . . . and my jaw hits the table. His voice is rich and pure and nothing like I would have expected from a wiry, shy sixteen-year-old kid. Just listening to him sends goose bumps rippling over my skin.