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“What happened?”
“Nope.” She raised her hand, giving him a gestural stop sign, grateful for the rules of the game so she didn’t have to say out loud that Paul had decided being with her was more trouble than it was worth. “It’s my turn, Clarice.”
Sitting back, he stretched his arms out to rest on the back of the booth, the movement tugging his shirtsleeves even higher, exposing his forearms up to his elbows. “Do your worst.”
“How old are you?”
“Ouch,” he grunted. “Low blow.”
“You told me to do my worst.”
His lips quirked, and Mira blanked for a moment, losing her train of thought in that quirk. “I suppose I did,” he said. “But didn’t you find out how old I am in your googling?”
She probably had, but she couldn’t remember because that one video of him shirtless and drumming along to Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love” had been far more interesting. “I guess I’m not very good at googling.”
With a grim set of his jaw, he said, “Here’s the thing. Every time I answer this question, I feel like there’s so much more to the story. It’s like I’m a weatherman in Alaska reporting on the windchill.” He dropped his voice. “Cole Sanderson is only fifty-three, but today he’llfeelmore like sixty-seven.”
A laugh loud enough to turn heads burst out of her. “It’s so true.” She lowered her voice, trying to match his. “Mira Harlow recently turned fifty, but with this cold front coming through, grab your Tiger Balm and prepare for the joints of an eighty-year-old.”
“Tiger Balm.” He groaned, his head falling back. “I love that stuff.”
“Me too. Can’t sleep without it.”
When he leaned toward her again and asked, “Where do you rub it?” the bar went silent, the screeching kind of silence after someone jerked a needle off a record.
“Where…do I—”
“Rub it?” There was no doubt that he was staring at her throat now, even through the veil of his lashes. “The Tiger Balm?”
Her eyes burned, likely because she’d forgotten how to blink. “On my neck.” She trailed her fingers from just below her ear to the tip of her shoulder, and his eyes followed the path they made. “And…my low back.”
He hummed, and never had the application of a beloved topical counterirritant felt so pornographic, like they’d unlocked some secret level of old people foreplay.
“Where do you”—she could not believe she was about to ask Cole Sanderson—“rub it?”
His voice was quiet, a little gravelly, like he was already in bed. “My shoulders. Sometimes my wrists and fingers after drumming.” When he blinked, something dazed and heavy cleared from his eyes. “But you gotta be careful when you have that stuff on your hands.”
“Right,” she said in a rush. “It’s not a good idea to touch certain—”
“Body parts,” he finished for her.
Then they stared at each other, her heart pounding, her lips parting, time slowing. She’d nearly forgotten they were in public before the jukebox switched to the Cowboy Junkies’ version of “Sweet Jane,” and he asked, “When’s your birthday?”
Birthday? What’s a birthday?Working much harder than someone should ever have to work to remember their own birthday, she eventually said, “February seventeenth.”
“Aquarius.” A corner of his mouth tipped up. “That makes sense.”
“It does?”
“Sure. Aquarians are passionate, thoughtful, ambitious.” Just then, she noticed the tiniest freckle under his left eye. “And perfect matches for Geminis.”
“You’re a Gemini?”
Tapping the fingers of his right hand to the languid beat of the song, he said, “Tragically.”
The only specifics Mira knew about the zodiac signs were the ones she’d learned from watching YouTube videos with Ian when he was nine and in an astrology phase. If anyone had told her she’d someday use that information to flirt with a famous musician in a corner booth at Jimmy’s… “Then I guess that makes sense too.”
His fingers stilled. “Don’t tell me you’ve already figured out that I’m impulsive, can’t stop talking, and hate being bored. And here I was, at least trying to look cool.”
