Page 47 of Spiced!

Me: You know the worm is a dance move, right? We’re still not talking about your anaconda.

Adrian: You might not be, but I’m a mystery. Guess you’ll find out.

I stood in my kitchen staring at my phone and felt another something move through my chest that I didn’t try to name because it didn’t need a name. It just needed to be there. Then I put my phone in my armband, made sure both earbuds were well and truly shoved into my ears, and went outside.

My playlist kicked in, and I made it four blocks before I started singing along.

This wasn’t the internal version where I moved my mouth and no sound came out. This was the stage version, at full voice, with the specific lack of self-consciousness that happened when I was running and my brain was doing something else entirely and the music was too good and it was Sunday morning and someone had just agreed to let me grill for him while he showed me his worm.

A car slowed beside me.

I didn’t notice until the driver, a woman in a silver sedan, rolled down her window and laughed. She gave me a thumbs-up and shouted something about “loving Journey, too” before accelerating away.

I kept running.

And damn it all, I kept singing.

Chapter 12

Adrian

My abuela taught me to always be honest and open with myself. So, I freely admitted, I was honestly, genuinely nervous, and I wasn’t afraid to admit it.

I had danced in front of rooms full of strangers, auditioned for Broadway productions, then performed in said productions. I’d even auditioned in front of Finn and Benji with three minutes of music and zero preparation and had not been nervous in the slightest. Hell, I had dirty-danced with a bride named Madison while her bridesmaids livestreamed it to the world and had not been nervous (or turned on, but please don’t tell Madison. She was sweet.).

And yet, there I sat in my car outside a modest condo building in South Tampa, holding a box of pastries, terrified at stepping away from the safety of my vehicle.

Mofongo squirmed in his carrier on the back seat and sneezed.

“I know,” I said.

He sneezed again.

“I’m aware of the irony. Thank you.”

After a couple of deep, calming breaths, I got out of the car.

Brendan’s building was exactly as I’d seen it from the street the one time I’d driven past for entirely legitimate Mofongo-related reasons. It was two floors of cream stucco with a row of mailboxes by the entrance. Dr. B. Davis DVM was printed on the second one from the left, exactly where I’d seen it before, in the neat script of a man who did things correctly.

I pressed the buzzer.

“It’s open,” came through the crackly speaker, and the door clicked.

I climbed to the second floor, found the right door, and knocked. It opened almost immediately, which meant he’d been close to it, which meant something I chose not to examine too carefully because I was already nervous and didn’t need additional information.

Brendan wore a gray, loose-fitting T-shirt and shorts. His hair was doing its opinion-having thing, and he had the look of someone who had recently showered after a run and was as put-together as he intended to be, which was just the right amount.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” I replied.

We stood there for a second, a pair of unmoving idiots.

Then his eyes drifted straight past me to the carrier.

“There he is,” he said, crouching to Mofongo’s level. “Hey, little buddy.”

“He couldn’t stay home alone. He gets lonely and gets into things.” I held up the pastry box with my free hand. “I also brought pan dulce. My abuela would consider it a moral failing if I showed up empty-handed.”