“Back off, Meadow.” That’s one good thing about being a beast. I know how to defend my territory—call it animal instinct.
She was on the sofa in the tiny lobby of our hotel watching for me. She’s on her feet and in my face before the door swings shut behind me. Too bad there’s not a window out to the street. She could have seen Derek kissing me good-bye.
“What happened to you. Your face is a mess.”
“I got some bad news.”
“And you had to drag Derek off because . . . ?”
“He noticed and came looking for me to see if I was all right.”
“You are so naive. You should have heard what Blake said about him after you both ended up missing.”
“Blake’s a jerk. Why would I care what he says?”
“Derek plays this game everywhere they go. Picks out a girl beforehand, overwhelms her, gets what he wants, and then the festival is over, and he vanishes on a jet plane.”
“Sounds like somebody else I know.”
“You mean me? Hardly. Ann Arbor isn’t that far from London. I’m after more than this week.”
“Until I got in your way.”
“Exactly. You need to step aside and leave this to a pro. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
Hurt? She has no idea what it means to be hurt. “Too late. He kissed me.” We made out until he had to go to practice, and if this week is all there is, I’ll do it again every chance I get. Go home to your boyfriend, Meadow.
“I made you, Beth. Remember that.” Whoa. Now Meadow looks like a protective beast. She holds the dirty look long enough to make me blink.
I really want to pull this fake hair off my head, scrape the makeup off my face, and strip off every Meadow tainted thing I’m wearing. I hate that she’s right. Derek may love my voice, but it was the fake me he was making out with.
Meadow crosses her arms. “So—what’s this awful news?”
I’m a mutant beast and will produce deformed offspring. No way I’m telling Meadow that. “It’s personal.” I push by her, take the stairs up.
“Three more days,” she calls after me, “and then kiss him good-bye.”
The whole choir goes to the concert that night. We’re in the balcony. Derek’s choir has seats on the floor.
“There he is.” Sarah points him out to me. Derek is standing up searching the hall. “Where’s Blake?”
Leah spies him, too. “Stand up, Beth, and wave at him.”
I feel so stupid. “He’ll never see me up here.”
Leah prods my ribs. “Stand up.”
I get on my feet to shut her up, watch him searching the auditorium, section by section. Then he’s waving, smiling, pointing at the exit.
“Go,” Sarah whispers. “I’ll distract Meadow. Find out where Blake is.”
The orchestra is warming up. It would be so cool to perform with a full orchestra to back us. I tell Terri I’m going to the girls’ room and slip out without Meadow tripping me.
I hurry through the exit, and he’s there—pulls me behind a pillar and kisses me. It works standing up. I wasn’t sure. I just have to stoop a little.
I run my hands down his arms, exploring the muscles. “Hey.”
He takes my hands. “Hey.”
That’s all we manage. We get lost in lips, miss the opening two numbers.
“You all right?”
I bite my lip and nod. “I better go back, though, before Terri sends Meadow for me.”
He grins. “Anything but that. She scares the hell out of me.” The
oo
in his
out
is so delicious.
“You’re not into high-maintenance hotness?”
He laughs. “Come here—one more time.”
We miss the third number, too.
“I gotta go.”
“Meet me tonight. I’ll hang outside your hotel until you can get out. We can go back to our bench by the lake.”
Is Meadow right? Does he expect that already? “I don’t know if—”
“This isn’t about sex, Beth. I wouldn’t disrespect you like that.”
I’m flaming red. “Am I that easy to read?”
“Trust me. I just want more time with you. We can walk and talk. Sarah told Blake you write, too.”
I’m going to kill her. “I scribble lyrics. Bad ones. Nothing like what you do.”
“I want to hear them.”
“No way.”
“Please.” He kisses me.
“No.”
He kisses me again—lingering and utterly persuasive.
“I’ll go out with you, but no lyrics.” I’d die if he ever heard that thing I made up last night. And no one will ever hear what I composed sitting on that bench this afternoon. But that was before. Before Derek found me and kissed me and changed me.
Derek smiles, gets ready to kiss me again. “Bet I can get you to sing them for me.”
“You’re welcome to try.” I close my eyes, ready to get lost in him one more precious time.
“I’ll bring my best tune.”
“Are your lips tired yet?” he whispers into my ear.
I’m in Derek’s arms, draped across his lap, knees bent, feet up on our bench. There’s a fresh breeze blowing so it’s cool. I snuggle into his warm hockey jersey-clothed arms, glad that he wore it. “I could kiss you all night.”
He props me upright and stands up. “Let’s take a walk.”
I don’t want to stop making out. “No.” I grab his hand and tug.
He pulls me to my feet and kisses me one more time. “I need a break—or it
will
be about sex.”
Why doesn’t that scare me? Crap. I have a massive urge to shove him back down on the bench and see what happens. The Beast wants loose. Who knew I could be this skanky? Maybe those dumb doctors do have something to worry about.
Derek takes my hand, and we walk along the paved pathway that skirts the lake. He points across it. “Those lights are France. Evian, where the water comes from.”
“How do you know?”
“I looked it up to impress you. The lake is a thousand feet deep.”
I stop walking. “I don’t want a tour right now.” I try hard to sound sexy. Me. Sexy.
He turns and points to three large tufts of feathers, bluish white in the moonlight. “Those are swans—should I wake them up?”
I shake my head and let him tug me forward. “Why are little boys like that?”
“I’m a little boy?” He glances sideways at me and frowns.
“No. Most definitely not.” We come to a grayed statue and turn our backs to the lake to look at the frozen woman. “I’m trying to figure out what you are.”
“Dazzled.” He brings my hand up to his mouth and kisses it. I’m surprised the statue doesn’t melt. I am. So melted.
We stand like that, breathing each other in, eyes sinking, sharing the miracle of feeling like we do. I think he’s going to kiss me again, but he turns away, coughing, gets out a fresh packet of tissues.
I sigh. The evening is cool for summer, especially here by the lake. This air can’t be good for his voice. “I don’t like the sound of that. Are you getting a cold?”
He coughs again.
“You’re singing tomorrow. You should get back.”
“Don’t worry.” He tugs on my hand, and we wander toward our bench. “I’m allowed to sleep in.”
“Star treatment?”
“This from the diva.”
“I’m so not a diva.”
“I know.” He wraps his arm around my back without letting go of my hand—so my arm goes with it, and he can pull me in close. “I can tell from the way you sing.” He speaks quietly, his breath warm on my earlobe. “A diva couldn’t come up with the purity and emotion you get. You’re an artist.”
“Coming from you—that’s huge. Thank you.”
“Simple truth.”
“I like the way you see the world.”
“I’m seeing it differently today.”
“You make it sound like I’m the first girl you’ve said that to.”
He stops walking. “I’ve had a huge crush on you—” He bends his arm and holds me tight to his chest, buries his lips on my neck.
I stroke his soft, perfect hair and whisper, “With my voice. You don’t even know me.”
He raises his face, lets go of my hand, so he can cup my face between his palms. “I know your soul. It’s there in every note.” He brushes my lips with his. “You can’t fake that. You can’t hide it.” He holds my lips a long time. “I was dying to meet you.” He’s breathing faster.
It all gets too unreal. I pull away. “Sorry to disappoint.”
“Very funny. You know what the guys back in the choir call you?”
I can imagine.
“The goddess.”
His eyes are so full, so deep—I drop mine, stare at the chipped pink polish on my toenails. “I’ve been called a lot of things but never that.”
He puts his index finger under my chin and gently raises my eyes back to his. “Thanks for hanging out with a mere mortal.” He tucks a sticky hair-sprayed dyed-blonde lock behind my ear and moves in to kiss me again.
“You know how fake I am?” I turn my face away. “This hair. My face. If you saw me back home—”
“But we’re not back home. We’re here. We don’t have to be who we are back home.” There’s a fierceness in his voice that frightens me. Is he running from the realities of back home as much as I am? That is what I’m doing—with him, to him—substituting how I feel when he kisses me for the empty desolation that tries to creep back as soon as he stops. I cling to him. Need him. He grips me tight. Can he need me, too?
We stand there holding on, trying to stop time, compress it into this moment so we can drift on this feeling forever.
I raise my head off his shoulder. “What is it—for you—back home?”
“Let’s walk.”
I keep expecting him to start telling me, but he’s silent.
It gets uneasy—at least for me. I want to ask him about drugs—is that what he’s in therapy for? Or is it something else? Musicians aren’t particularly stable. Even perfect ones like him. Instead, I just say, “When did you start composing?”
He swings my hand then, ready to pretend with me. “I’ve been arranging for the choir a couple years. I play the piano—guitar, too. Of course, there’s the choir stuff, but I like Marley, and folk. Jazz it up sometimes. Not much pure pop or rock. But sometimes I can get down. Guess I’m a musical omnivore.”
I look out at the black lake and the lights winking on the other side. “Me, too. I’m no expert on Marley, but the folky stuff works for me. And then, I do listen to most of those divas.”
“Do you play?”
I shake my head. My dad played the guitar in his band, left an old acoustic behind. Mom still has it. Strange. I don’t know why she didn’t burn it.
We stop walking, stare out at the lake. A ferry goes by, all lit up with music playing. Derek squeezes my hand. “Let’s hop on one of those. Run away.”
I like that idea. “But it’s a lake.”
“A big lake.”
“We need to go back. You’ve got to go to bed.”
“Sing me something you wrote first. I need a lullaby.”
I shrug my shoulders. “You first.”
He puts his arm around me and starts to hum, breaks into
Ooohs
. This voice is rich with texture—not that pure choir voice he used at the concert. The melody is entrancing, winds into my heart, makes me want to smile and cry at the same time. It fades away. “That’s all I have.”
“I love it. What do you call it?”
“‘Beth’s Song.’”
chapter 13
ROCK STAR
Derek keeps his eyes on his conductor all through their competition performance until he starts his solo. His delicious chocolate eyes find me in the fifth row breathing in every note. Somehow he turns an “Ave Maria” into a love song. I’m lost in the power of it—overwhelmed by the intensity of the emotion that pours out of him. Tears form in the corner of my eyes. What is this? How can I feel like this?
I take everything back that I said about divas and love. If love is anything like the way I feel this moment, sign me up. Singing makes me happy, alive, but this is unbelievable.
His solo finishes, and the rest of the choir joins Derek. He focuses intently on the conductor again. We stand and applaud with everyone else when they’re done.
Leah frowns. “I think they beat us.”
Meadow stops clapping. “They’re kind of professional. It’s not really fair.”
I’d forgotten that we were competing with them. Gold medal. Right. Best youth choir in the world. I’m sure we’re looking at them.
Sarah watches Blake step down the risers. “Even with you, Beth, we’re not in their league. No one is.”