Page 26 of Love You Like That (Excess All Areas 4)

Zoe ran her fingers over the marimba, soothing it. “All better now,” she said softly, earning another glare from Rich as he stormed away but she didn’t care. “What? Equipment carries stress. Treat it like a queen and it will sound like one. Treat it badly, and it will sound like it’s in pain.”

Rich didn’t turn to face her, but she said it so loud, he couldn’t have missed it.

She placed her fingers back on the wooden tone plates and felt her heart skip a beat. The groups of two and three accidentals overlapping the equispaced normals. The smooth surface, cool beneath her fingers. “I bet you have a lovely timbre.”

Alex picked up the mallets. “She does.”

Her fingers itched to take them from him. Because she had a secret. One even Cerys didn’t know. She still played…of a fashion. A marimba practise pad she kept under her bed. Kept up the drills. Only material she already knew. Songs she could play by heart.

But she’d not hit a real key in forever.

The plastic pad gave her nothing in the way of feedback. No vibration. No sound.

“I don’t think Rich is happy with me.”

He looked in the direction Rich had disappeared before looking back at her. “Well, I’m not too happy with him.”

“He was talking about me, right?”

“Why don’t we go get an early dinner somewhere?”

Zoe folded her arms and looked up at him. “Don’t lie. Don’t redirect. And don’t try to protect me. I’ve already got to deal with Cerys’s protective bubble. Don’t you start too.”

“He called you a groupie and bitched about how fucking a rock star didn’t give you the right to interfere with stage set-up.”

“Asshole,” she muttered. “He thinks you and I are…intimate?”

Alex shrugged. “Yeah. But he shouldn’t talk about you like that.”

“Great. Did you set him straight that I’m not here to sleep with you?”

A wrinkle furrowed Alex’s brow. “I set him straight. Come on. Let’s go eat.”

“In the green room?”

“Nah. We asked them to just deliver to the bus.”

Chaya was waiting for them when they got there having travelled by train with Iz, just for the concert. “Hello, Zoe,” she signed, spelling out the letters of her name diligently. “Y-o-u l-o-o-k g-r-e-a-t.”

It warmed her insides to see Chaya sign. Like Alex, Chaya had never asked her how to sign or for help to learn, and she appreciated not having to do the labour. So many people treated her like a party trick. They’d ask her to teach them something. Usually something crude. An expletive. Like, “teach me how to sign motherfucker or bollocks.” Never anything to help them interact with a deaf person.

Zoe waved hello and spelled out Chaya’s name.

“Ha, that’s my name,” Chaya said with a grin. “I recognised it.”

Ben sat at the table, tucking into some of the food that had been brought to them. “Take a seat.”

They grabbed some of the food and joined Chaya and Ben at the table. For a fleeting moment, it felt too…familiar. Comfortable. Almost date like. Except neither couple was a couple. She took a mouthful of the tangy sweet and sour chicken, which was melt-in-the-mouth good.

“W-i-n-e Z-o-e?” Chaya spelled out, offering her a mug and a bottle of Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc.

Ben laughed. “It’s going to be a long dinner if you spell out every word.”

Zoe huffed. “It’s an even longer dinner if you never understand a single word. Thank you, Chaya. I appreciate it. The wine and the spelling.”

“Sorry,” Ben said. “Wasn’t thinking. That was a shitty thing to say, Zoe. I’m sorry.” He turned to face Chaya and said something she couldn’t see to lipread.

By the look on Chaya’s face, the words were sincere. “That’s okay,” she said.

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