Page 9 of Naz & Roz

Did she want him to?

More than he could possibly know.

“How’s the piano thing going?” he asked.

Roz couldn’t help but laugh at that question. As random as it was, it was more the way he asked it than anything. “The piano thing?”

Naz shrugged one shoulder, and glanced away. “You got quiet; I got nervous. I blurted out the first thing to come to my mind.”

Seems she had done it again.

Made him … speechless.

“A mind like yours,” she said softly, “and you don’t know what to say?”

Naz cleared his throat, and chuckled. “Hey, this is new for me, too.”

“I bet. The piano thing is pretty good, by the way.”

“I hear you’re fucking amazing, actually.”

Her fingers twitched to reach out and touch those lips of his that seemed perpetually smirking or grinning in some way. Especially with the way he was looking at her right then. He called her amazing, and she wanted him to say it again.

“Funny,” she said, “I hear the same thing about you.”

Naz glanced upward. “Yeah, but I was just blessed with this genius thing. You … you learned your craft.”

She bet he had to learn a lot of things, too.

“Maybe I’ll play for you sometime,” Roz said.

“I would love that.” Naz tipped his head to the side a bit, saying, “We were going to have a dance, yeah? You still up for that, or …?”

“Can you dance, or did you just say yes—”

“Don’t be cute. I can dance.”

This time, it was Roz’s turn to grin. “Prove it, boy genius.”

Naz smiled wickedly, and inched closer to Roz in the hallway. It wasn’t like there was a whole lot of space between them now, anyway. She couldn’t remember the last time she was this close to a guy, and felt this way about it. Like his cologne was soaking into her lungs, and her heart was about to pound right out of her chest.

It was wonderful.

“Boy genius,” Naz murmured, nearly eye-level with her. She was a tall girl—it made things awkward sometimes. But with him, he had a couple of inches on her, and she liked that. Loved that she had to look up at him. “Let me know when you see a boy, Roz. Because I’m pretty sure this man is far from just a boy.”

She swallowed hard.

He wasn’t wrong.

“And if you want, I can even show you sometime,” he added quieter.

God.

He was something else.

“A dance, then?” Naz asked.

He changed direction altogether but left her feeling oh, so crazy at the same time. He probably knew it, too.