Page 10 of One More Time
‘What?’
‘This playlist called Furniture. The Smithereens?’
‘What’s wrong with The Smithereens?’
‘The best thing about The Smithereens is their name.’
Nicky’s mouth dropped open. ‘“Blood and Roses”? “A Girl Like You”?’
Lucy shook her head.Nope. Not going to convince me.
‘Okay, no Smithereens. Interesting.’ He looked backdown at her playlists and said, ‘What made you want to go into teaching?’
Good question. One she’d asked herself plenty.
She tried, ‘It wasn’t teaching so much; it was academia in general, I guess. I got to college and it felt like, I don’t know, a warm hug.’ It sounded dumb, but Lucy remembered the feeling of peace and stability that had enveloped her at college. At eighteen, it had felt like the best kind of drug. She continued, ‘It was comfortable. Nice. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of backstabbing and underhanded garbage like in every workplace, but it’s just so …cozy. I don’t know how else to put it. The campus and the old buildings and the library. The students who mostly don’t want to drink themselves to early cirrhosis. The dedication to thinking. Valuing thought and experimentation and ideas. It appeals to me in a way few other things do.’
Nicky hummed his understanding, but also stared at her lips and clutched her phone like he was trying to Hulk-smash it with his grip.
‘Did you ever go?’ Lucy asked. ‘To college?’
‘Nope,’ he replied.
‘Well, it’s where I’m the happiest, I guess,’ Lucy finished. Maybe that was still true. Probably. She looked down at Nicky’s phone again, flipped to a different playlist. ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait just one minute. There is an awful lot of David Lee Roth in here and almost no Sammy Hagar. Are you—’ She feigned a look of shock and horror. ‘Are you Team David?’
‘Oh, shit,’ he played right along. ‘You’re a Sammy lover?’
‘Of course!’ she replied. ‘As though David Lee Roth could compete. Ha! Impossible.’
‘Ouch,’ he said pressing a hand over his chest dramatically. ‘It hurts.’
She laughed at the histrionics, and Nicky winked at her.
Lucy felt that wink in her panties, and got the distinct impression that yeah, she was probably on a fucking date. And it was also very likely that she was in deep, deep trouble.
CHAPTER FIVE
NICKY
Drinks turned into dinner. A leisurely thing involving a bottle of wine and steaks for savoring slowly. One tiny, minute-dragging nibble at a time.
Nicky had watched transfixed through the first course as the wine had warmed Lucy’s skin and exaggerated her expressions. Not that she was sloppy, justmore. A concentrated, lit-up Lucy.
She wore a silk tank top something-or-other that looked like it would slide down her arms and spill to the floor with a mere flick of his wrist. She kept tucking her hair behind her ear and running her tongue across her bottom lip. He tried to memorize it, so he could play it back later, over and over again.
‘So, Las Vegas,’ she said, cutting her steak. ‘Are you here for business or pleasure?’
Both, now. He hoped.
She added hastily, ‘Or, wait … do you live here?’
‘In the hotel?’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Rock stars can be eccentric and peculiar.’
He hated how she kept calling him a rock star. The way she said it hit him like an insult. She made it sound like he was from another planet or something.
‘I’m here for business.’
