Play Me (10 page)

“You’re out
of your mind,” my father hollered back. “If anything, the
trumpet is aggressively taking over the piece. A jazz group is about
balance and this player is all about their instrument, their solo,
their sound! It’s selfish playing and you can hear it in the
music.”

“I don’t
even know what you are listening to.” I saw Nina throw up her
hands in exasperation. “Clearly I got my musical ear from my
MO-THER!”

“Don’t you
dare speak about your mother like that,” my dad shot back. I
could hear the smile in his words.

Somehow I managed to
sneak past the den where they were arguing, going straight to the
kitchen where my mother—decked out in her favorite crystals—was
unpacking Chinese take-out. If you couldn’t heat it up in the
microwave, we didn’t even bother. I had no doubt that Jake
would be horrified with the eating habits I had grown up with.

Surprisingly, I was
starving. I was never hungry, but my mouth watered at the smell of
orange chicken and beef and broccoli. Usually I just ate sautéed
vegetables and some rice—as Mark’s dietary plan
dictated—and had never craved anything else, but tonight, I was
ravenous for more.

“Hi, Mom.”
I came around the counter to give her a kiss on the cheek.

“Ella!” She
put down the food and gave me a tight hug. “Nina! Frank!”
she called out for my dad and sister. “We’ve missed you
so much.” My mom hugged me again.

“I’ve only
been gone a few days,” I reminded her.

“It feels like
ages.” She put a hand on my cheek. “How are you doing?
How’s the apartment?”

“It’s
good,” I told her, as my sister and dad came into the kitchen
finishing up another conversation.

“They would
absolutely die over the gramophone at Burning Man,” Nina was
saying. “I could put it on top of one of the sculptures and it
would be a huge hit.”

“No,” my
mom interjected. “Absolutely not.”

Nina pouted.

“Ella!” My
dad came around the counter and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “You
look good.”

“Thanks.” I
smoothed back my hair, even though I had made sure to redo it after
Jake had done considerable damage during our energetic make-out
session. Just the memory of his mouth against mine, his lips kissing
my wrist, my neck was enough to make me blush.

“Yeah.”
Nina was leaning against the counter, a toothpick hanging out of her
mouth. “You’ve got a real glow to you, sis.”

I shot her a look. Nina
could sniff out a secret faster than anyone I knew, and this was
something I wanted to keep to myself. At least until I figured out
exactly what kind of game I thought I was playing. I wasn’t the
kind of girl that did what I was planning on doing. That I was
fantasizing about doing. If anything, that was the kind of thing that
Nina did. Easygoing, free-spirited Nina. Who never got hung up on
what she should or shouldn’t do. She just did it.

I looked at her, so
casual and comfortable in her vibrant clothing—this time a
bright blue kimono over a tight green body suit. I had no doubt that
something like that would look ridiculous on me, but, glancing down
at my own black dress, I was starting to think that I was overdue for
some changes in my life. Getting my own apartment had been a big one.
A great one. So why stop there? I could go on dates with men whose
clothes I wanted to rip off. I could wear colors that weren’t
black. I could eat Chinese food. Why not?

I helped my mom carry
the food to the table and we all took a seat, passing the take out
cartons around. No one said anything when I put a heaping spoonful of
Kung Pao chicken on my plate, or when I followed it with the beef and
broccoli, but when the orange chicken hit the porcelain, my dad
cleared his throat.

“I didn’t
think you were eating that kind of food right now,” he said,
clearly trying to be casual about it.

“Yeah,”
Nina said, chomping on a sautéed string bean, which was all I
usually craved. “I thought The Maestro had you on a strict
diet.”

Maestro is what Nina
called Mark, who she did not like. In fact, no one in my family liked
him. Sure, they would grudgingly admit he was a good teacher, but my
dad was pretty sure he had a “major stick up his ass” as
he had told me many times.

“He did,” I
admitted, “but I decided to make some changes.”

“Oh, honey.”
My mom reached a hand across the table, her eyes sympathetic. “Did
you not qualify for the next round of the competition?”

Suddenly the suspicious
looks on my dad’s and sister’s faces mirrored my
mother’s.

“Oh, no.”
Nina pushed the Kung Pao chicken towards me. “It’s okay,
El, you’ll do better next time. You just need to figure out how
to get over your nervousness.”

“Those judges are
too strict anyway,” my dad said. “They’ve got no
sense of the heart behind the music. They’re too stiff, all of
them.”

That was something I
had heard all my life. No one in my family seemed to understand why I
loved classical music so much. To them, it was restrictive and
suffocating—being forced to follow music so closely without
improvising. I had stopped trying to make them understand that I
loved knowing that I was playing exactly what pianists had been
playing since the piece was first created.

“I haven’t
heard yet about the next round of the competition,” I told
them, annoyed that they had immediately jumped to the conclusion that
I had been eliminated. I knew that they wanted me to succeed, but
sometimes I didn’t get the sense that they believed I could.
Even though I had been entertaining the same thoughts, lately, I was
irritated that my own family didn’t have faith in me.

“Well, you should
take some crystals with you anyway,” my mom told me, patting my
hand. “You can wear one around your neck during your
rehearsals. Really harness your inner spirit.”

“Okay, Mom,”
I told her, knowing that trying to refuse crystals from her was a
fool’s errand. My drawers were stuffed with them, though I
thought about hanging them near my windows at my new place to catch
the light in the morning. They didn’t do exactly what my mom
said they would do—harness my inner spirit—but they
certainly looked pretty.

“They’re a
waste of money,” was what Mark had told her when she offered
them during his first and only visit. I had tried to explain that he
was just a bit abrupt in his manner, but my father was quick to
define it as rude. More and more I was starting to see his point.

“How many more
rounds until the end?” Nina asked.

“Two,” I
told her and finally took a bite of my food. Oh my god, I thought as
flavors exploded in my mouth. This was so freaking good! If Jake
could recreate this—oh my god! I had always found ways to avoid
the main dishes, even before Mark had instituted his
competition-schedule diet. I guess I must have tried it at some point
and found it weird back then, but oh man, I was really enjoying it
now. I took forkful after forkful of chicken and beef and broccoli
and rice and string beans and loved every second of it. When I
finally looked up from my practically licked clean plate, I found my
entire family staring at me.

“I was hungry,”
I said, as if it wasn’t completely unusual behavior.

“I can see that,”
my dad said.

“Can I take your
plate?” Nina asked, clearing the table. “Or do you think
you’ll eat that too?”

Jake

I slid the perfectly
seared scallops onto a plate, and without skipping a beat, reached
over to the sauce simmering on the stove and drizzled the exact right
amount over the seafood, decorating the meal in a simple yet
eye-catching spiral. Returning the spoon to the saucepan, I gathered
a pinch of herbs and sprinkled it around the edge of the plate before
scooping a neat, heavenly smelling cup of mashed potatoes next to the
main course. I pushed it into the waiting hands of our waiter and
grabbed the order instructions for table four.

It had been a long time
since I had had a night this good—in the kitchen, at least. On
average, most of my nights were decent. There were always a few
grumpy customers, a problem dish or two, and that was to be expected.
But on a good night? Oh man, a good night was when every spatula or
spoon or whisk or pan became an extension of myself. When everything
seemed to be moving at the perfect speed—the food was ready
exactly when it was supposed to be, and all the orders seemed to come
in with just enough time between them that the kitchen staff could
focus on the food at hand, instead of trying to get half the
restaurant’s orders out at the same time. Nothing was burning,
nothing was undercooked or overcooked, and so far tonight, nothing
had been sent back.

It was an amazing
feeling. Nearly as amazing as Ella had felt that afternoon, her soft
mouth eager and passionate, her lean body pressing against mine, the
smooth slide of her skin beneath my hand. Fuck. I shifted behind my
station, my pants growing tight, as seemed to be the reaction any
time I even thought of Ella. And now that I knew what she tasted
like, how she moaned against my mouth, how she drew my tongue into
her mouth to tangle with her own, well, there was very little chance
I was going to think of anything else until our date on Monday. Which
was entirely too far away.

Maybe I could just
check in on her when I got home tonight—knock on her door if
the lights were on . . . 

But then I thought of
Dakota’s advice. Let it breathe. That’s exactly what I
had done that afternoon. I hadn’t even made a move—that
had been all Ella. And I loved it. I fucking loved it. So I just had
to let her make the next move and the next one. I’d be happy to
do the asking, as long as she’d be willing to do the seducing.

Not that there wasn’t
some mutual seduction going on. Who knew that bad soup would have
yielded such good results. Not my usual way to get a girl to like me,
but hey, I would take what I could get. And it had caused me to do a
lot of thinking about that recipe and how far I had taken it from
what my mother had started with.

But man, if bad cooking
got Ella to kiss me, well, I was going to start burning some steaks
and undercooking some brownies. After tasting her, I had the feeling
I wasn’t going to be able to settle for anything else. And the
thought of tasting her other places, well, that was becoming a
central fantasy in my overactive imagination. Of laying her out on my
bed, her legs spread, her head back, hair fanning across the pillow
while her hand guided me to exactly where she wanted to be
tasted . . . 

“I’m
guessing by the big dumb smile on your face you made some progress
with your neighbor?” Dakota swung by, bringing me out of my sex
dream. I shook my head as if it was that easy to displace my
fantasies.

“Huh?” I
asked.

“Yep.”
Dakota gave me a poke in the side. “You’re a total goner.
I hope you took my advice, at least.”

I gave her a grin. “I
did and thank you.”

She let out a whoop. “I
knew it, I’m a genius!”

“Well, let’s
not go that far,” I teased. “You’re above average.”

“Whatever.”
She stuck her tongue out at me. “So what happened?”

I told her about the
soup catastrophe.

“So she didn’t
like your cooking, huh.” Dakota definitely seemed surprised.

“Yeah, but I
think she was right.”

“Whoa!” She
leaned back. “I’m sorry, did I just hear you say that
someone
else
was right about your cooking? That you were,
what’s the word I’m looking for, wr-wr-wrong?”

“Ha ha.”

“I am shocked.”
Dakota put a hand to her chest. “Shocked, I tell you.”

“You’re
annoying, that’s what you are.”

“I like her.”
Dakota looked entirely too pleased with the whole situation.

“I’m sure
you do.” I imagined the two of them meeting again, but not at
three in the morning—and I could definitely see them becoming
friends. It was weird. I had never really introduced Dakota to many
of the women I dated. For the most part, I got the sense that they
were jealous and didn’t believe me when I said that Dakota and
I were friends, nothing more. I didn’t get the sense that Ella
would be threatened. At least I hoped she wouldn’t.

“So you’re
not going to hide me away?” Dakota asked.

“Well, she has
already met you,” I reminded her. “And you behaved
yourself, so there’s hope for you yet.”

“
I
behaved
myself?” she scoffed. “Please, you were practically
falling into her. You were lucky I was there to keep you from looking
like a total creep.”

“Well, if you
hadn’t been so loud . . . ”

“She never would
have come up,” Dakota finished for me. “So really, you
owe me no matter which way you look at it.”

“Fine,” I
admitted begrudgingly. “What do you want? My gratitude?”

“Eh.” She
shrugged. “I already have that. How about you let me create a
new entrée one night? Also, you can name your firstborn after
me.”

“Okay, now you’re
getting ahead of yourself,” I warned her, even though the
thought of a kid all of sudden wasn’t giving me the hives it
usually did.

“Am I?”
Dakota gave me a knowing grin. Damn, I hated when she could read my
mind.

“Shut up,”
I told her.

“You adore me,”
she reminded me, and she was right. I was lucky to have a friend like
her.

“Hey.” I
glanced over at her as I began preparing the next order. She was
doing the same. “I never asked how your date went the other
night.”

“Good.” She
kept her head down, but I could see that she was smiling.

“Oh yeah?”
I gave her hip a bump. “Just good?”

“Okay.” She
rolled her eyes at me, still grinning. “It was great, okay?”

“Well.” I
began chopping onions for the pan I was heating on the stove. “I
can’t wait to meet him.”