Page 41 of Saving Mr. Bell

I turned the sausages over before lifting my gaze to Arlo’s. “You’re expecting a traumatic story. Something somebody said, maybe. You’re going to be disappointed because I don’t have one for you.”

“So what happened?”

I set to work on buttering the bread while contemplating the question. “I used to love playing. Like really love it.”

“I know you did. I remember. While we were making the documentary, you lived and breathed music. Sometimes we’d be talking, and you’d get this look on your face, and I’d know you weren’t listening to a word I was saying, that you’d gotten an idea for a musical composition in your head and you were desperate to try it out. Your enthusiasm was…”

“Sad?” I suggested.

“Inspiring. I wondered if…”

The reluctance to end his thought had me searching Arlo’s face for clues about what he’d been going to say. “You wondered what?”

“I wondered if you’d ever look at a person the way you looked at a piano.”

There was a lot of information to take from what he’d said. I settled on humor first. “I can promise you I’ve never had sex with any of my pianos. No matter how much money anyone has offered me to film it.”

Arlo’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s a joke, right?”

“Well… no one’s actually offered me money to have sex with a piano. Yet. But people have offered me ridiculous sums to pose naked on top of one. So the good news is that even if I never play again, I have ways of earning an income. For a few years, anyway. I just have to get my cock out for the paying public.”

“I’m sure any photos would be more tasteful than that.”

“Probably.” I replayed Arlo’s comment about the way I looked at a piano and went down a different avenue. “Did you like me back then?”

“What?”

I could tell from his expression he knew exactly what I was referring to, but was buying himself some time. “Six years ago.”

“Of course I liked you.”

“Yeah, but did youlikeme?”

“You were seventeen.”

“I was a month away from being eighteen.”

Arlo rolled his eyes. “And that makes all the difference.”

I fixed him with a stare. “You’re avoiding the question.”

“Says the person who still hasn’t told me what happened in Germany that night.”

I pulled a face. “Fine. Answer the question and I’ll tell you as best I can.”

“Promise?”

I let out a weary sigh as I took the cooked sausages off the stove. “I promise.”

“If I say yes, I’ll sound like a pervert.” Twin flags of color had appeared on Arlo’s cheeks. They made him look so adorable that it was all I could do not to reach across and pinch his cheek like he was a kid and I was his auntie.

“Still not an answer.”

“Yes.”

It was so grudging that I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. “Pervert!”

“You’re not funny.”

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