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“I don’t mind waiting,” I replied.
Hell, I’d been waiting this long. What was a little longer?
“Or you could just come inside,” she offered, opening the door to let the smell of pasta and meatballs drift out to the porch.
Lifting the corner of my mouth in a half-smile, I took the door and let her in first as I said, “Even better,” while hoping her father wouldn’t stab me with his fork.
***
She only took off the glasses when we were inside the house, sitting beneath the wagon-wheel chandelier over the dining room table. Her parents eyed me with apprehension, avoidance, and the slightest hint of concealed recognition, and I wondered if they knew who I was and why I was there. But none of them said a damn thing other than the most mundane small talk—how long would it be raining, how did the pasta sauce taste, what was the name of the movie they had watched two weeks ago—all while exchanging looks and stealing dubious glances at the stranger across the table.
“So, do you not tell your family about your one-night stands, or am I special?” I asked once we left the house to walk across the street to my car.
Lennon snorted. “Considering you’re my only one, I’d say you’re pretty special.”
“Ah,” I replied, pressing the unlock button on the key fob. “So, wait. You’ve never hit-and-run before?”
She glanced at me over the car roof, dark sunglasses once again in place, and shook her head. “Just you,” she admitted, offering a shy smile that teetered at the edge of embarrassment.
“Really?”
“Really,” she said as we both got in.
“Damn,” I muttered, closing the door behind me. “You had me fooled. You were like … a little assassin. Quick and deadly.”
She snickered, turning her head to look out the window. “An assassin doesn’t leave a freakin’ letter.”
“Ah, but maybe that’ll be your trademark,” I suggested, slipping the key into the ignition.
“Oh, no,” she replied, shaking her head. “You were a one-off.”
Snow Patrol’s “Just Say Yes” came through the speakers as the engine began to rumble. Lennon sat quietly, tapping her fingers innocently to the beat, as if what she had said wasn’t a sliver of a deeper truth.
Who is she?
She glanced in my direction, her eyes barely visible through the dark, red-tinted glasses. “What?” she asked, realizing I was staring.
“Nothin’,” I replied, shaking my head.
But it wasn’t nothing, was it? Not to me anyway, and from the coy little way she bit her lip, I suspected that feeling was pretty fucking mutual.
***
She wanted to go to a bookstore, a little hole-in-the-wall place I’d passed a thousand times throughout my life but never gone into. I hadn’t been a reader as a kid and had zero desire to become one as an adult. My passion had been strictly geared toward music. Playing the guitar, writing lyrics, singing, listening to the greats and not so greats …
As far as I was concerned, there wasn’t time for books as long as music was around.
But if Lennon wanted to go to a bookstore, then I was going with her. If for no other reason than to learn something about her. Something to fuel my inspiration through another song or twenty.
After parking, we left the car, and I expected Lennon to lead the way inside, but she didn’t. She hesitated, keeping her hand on the BMW like she wasn’t sure if she should get back in or not. I watched her, wishing she’d give me a clue, and then I remembered what she had done for me back in the hotel room.
She’d turned around and granted me privacy, knowing what I needed without asking. And while I didn’t know what exactly the problem was, I could make an educated guess.
So, I rounded the car and offered her my arm, like a true gentleman, and with a grateful, hesitant smile, she accepted.
“You know, I had no idea this was even a bookstore,” I confessed as I led the way through the parking lot.
“What did you think it was?”
