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And I do not know what to do with all this special attention that the songwriter gives me. So far, my only response has been to brush my hair more often.
Maybe I should be scared. Should report him to someone. But he’s never approached me, has never made me feel threatened or unsafe, so what would I even say? Hello, police, this man keeps giving me tingly feelings? Hardly.
Besides, I don’t want to report him. I like feeling his eyes on me.
Sure wish he’d talk to me, though.
Because whenever I catch glimpses of him, he’s always across a crowded room or three flights of stairs above me in a venue. In a shadowy bar on a work night out, or ducking out of a coffee shop. Always in the distance, blending into a crush of people, and I know from these stolen glimpses that he’s panty-melting-gorgeous, but I want details. I want to know the exact color of those eyes.
“Cool venue.” One of the sound crew stops beside my merch booth in the lobby where I’m stashing boxes of band t-shirts under tables. I raise my head and smile quickly at him, then get back to setting up. “The stage is old as shit but the speaker system’s brand new. You need any help setting up out here, Carmen?”
“No, thanks.” My voice is muffled beneath the table, and I keep rummaging, elbow deep in Run Along Ruby shirts. “I’m pretty much done.”
The noise boys are useless at setting up pretty displays, anyway.
Knuckles rap against the table near my head, and then footsteps trail away across the quiet lobby.
I’m used to working alone. You only need one person to sell merch, after all, and soon the only sound out here is the rustle of cardboard boxes against the tiles, and the rasp of my breaths as I rummage in the darkness.
It’s hot behind the table cloth. Stale and dusty.
I know we have more medium shirts. I know we do. I ordered another two hundred last week.
A door creaks open across the lobby, breaking the silence. Footsteps stroll across the tiles, casual and unhurried, but I can’t see anything through the thick table cloth. I frown and keep searching, muttering under my breath.
If that new box of mediums has been thrown in some random corner backstage, I swear to god—
“Do you always wave at strange men in the flies?”
I freeze, my heart leaping into my throat. My palms go damp where they’re buried in cotton, and my muscles tense on my bones.
He spoke softly, his deep voice husky in the quiet, but there’s no one else it could be. No one else who saw my weird little wave earlier.
It’s him. My songwriter.
A thousand scenarios run through my head; a thousand reasons I should call for help, or scramble back and put distance between us, but some bone-deep instinct inside me dismisses them one by one. I’m not scared that he’s here. I’m thrilled.
Because he’s finally talking to me! Hallelujah. A big, goofy grin spreads over my face and I move without thinking, smacking my head on the underside of the table.
“Ow! Motherfucker.”
I rub the top of my head as the tablecloth flips up, the dim light from the lobby washing over my tangle of shirts. There’s a pair of long legs in dark pants, toned muscles pushing at the fabric—then he kneels down, and smoky gray eyes peer beneath the table.
Oh.
Oh, god.
The songwriter is very pretty. He’s got that masculine beauty thing down. With those dark, wild curls and the dimple in his chin, he looks like the model in a renaissance painting. Like he should be playing a pan flute and cavorting in a forest glade with a bunch of nymphs.
That velvet voice comes again. “Are you alright?”
Am I alright? I’m meeting my stalker up close for the first time, there’s a lump the size of a small egg on my head, and I smell like sweaty laundry and cheap body spray after hours and hours on the crew bus. Am I alright?
Slowly, ever so slowly, I close my mouth and nod.
The man tilts his head, his eyes roaming across my features then down my throat. It’s exactly the same head tilt as the shadowed figure in the flies, and that reminds me of his question.
“No.”
