Page 57 of You Spin Me

Her eyes narrow further.

Before I can say anything else, I hear him. Cal’s voice cuts through the murmur of volunteers on the phones and goes right to my heart.

That voice may still be coming through wires, but, discounting our collision earlier today, the man is closer than he’s ever been. As I listen, every single reservation about whatever it is between Cal and me fades away. “Please,” I whisper. “I need to talk to him. Face to face.”

Slowly, her gaze tracks from me to the speaker on the wall and back again. “Yup. I think you do.” Talia tips her head at the door to our left. “This way.”

Big Bob steps in our way. “Talia, Cal said no visitors.”

Talia’s no shorty, but even she has to crane her neck when she turns to face him. “Big Bob, when does Cal smile?”

“Uh, never?”

“No. There’s one occasion when Cal always smiles.”

A volunteer hangs up a phone and pops a pink bubble. “When Jessica calls, duh. You can hear it in his voice.”

Big Bob looks at me, then at the door. “I don’t know…”

Talia puts a hand in the middle of Big Bob’s wide chest and pats it twice. “Someday you’ll get it, sweetheart.” Before he can say anything else, she adds, “If this goes south, it’s on me.”

He shakes his big head slowly. “All right. But I don’t want anything to do with it.” Both hands up in surrender, he turns and walks away.

Talia puts an arm around me. “You’re a heck of lot prettier than I thought you’d be. Maybe that’s part of the problem. But don’t give up. We’re all rootin’ for ya.” She opens the first of two doors that lead into the recording studio. When I hesitate, she gives me a little shove as she whispers, “In you go.”

Taking a big breath, I make what feels like the most important entrance of my life. Problem is, the first door only takes me to a small buffer chamber between the lounge and the actual studio. The bravado that got me to this point falls away, and I can’t quite get myself to open the second door. All I can seem to do is wait at the window and hope that he invites me in.

Chapter15

What’s happening out there this fine winter evening, Boston? Tell me what you’re up to. All I know is it’s exactly thirty-two degrees and not a cloud in the sky to blot out that full moon. Be safe out there and watch out for werewolves.

CAL

There’s a shadow on the other side of the window in the studio door. If it were Talia, she’d already be inside. Even though it’s possible for Jess to have finished her show and made the drive back here, I can’t believe it’d be her. If it is, she’s probably just here to try to apologize for how she reacted when she saw my scars—or worse, try to convince me that she doesn’t care about them while she secretly pities me.

I know what I saw in her eyes, so I stifle any surviving shreds of hope for a real relationship with her and solder my focus to the tasks at hand. After all, it’s time to check the rack and make engineering notations. Then I really should line up carts for the next round of commercials.

But I can only hold off for so long. Now that I’ve encountered the woman behind the voice, all I want is to inhale the scent that I didn’t get anywhere near enough of and touch the soft skin that I barely brushed, even as I’m taunted by the fact that her beauty puts her so far out of my league even the idea of romance between us is a cruel joke.

Despite all the reasons why I shouldn’t, I turn my head. The person on the other side of the glass is a tiny thing. Not Talia, that’s for sure. I’d trust her next to me in a pub brawl. This creature, this delicate vision with a halo of curls, needs protecting.

The drive to open the door and pull her into my arms is doing its best to drown out protests from my frontal lobe when a red blinking light from the telephone reminds me that I do have a job to do here. Rolling my chair over, I tuck the phone receiver between shoulder and ear and punch the button, even as I keep one eye on the window. “This is Cal, what can I play for you?”

“This is Talia. You need to invite that girl in and talk to her, or I will stop screening calls for you and you’ll have to talk to anyone and everyone, including the idiots requesting country music.”

“You know I don’t allow visitors in here,” is my last attempt at self-preservation. Letting this woman rock my world feels more dangerous than going back under the knife.

“What I know is that you’re acting like an idiot,” Talia says in her mom voice. “Get over yourself.”

It takes me a moment to clock the dial tone blaring in my ear. Setting the receiver back in the cradle, my heart plays a heavy baseline in my chest as I take my time putting away albums I played earlier, slipping them into the far end of the box before pulling one from the Heavy Rotation section. Spinning the cover, I try to skim Jones’s notes about the preferred track, but I just keep reading the same words over and over. Giving up on that part of my job, I slide the record from the sleeve. For the first time ever, my hand shakes as I place the needle, and I almost scratch the fucking record.

This is why I can’t have visitors.

“Hold My Life” by the Replacements is winding down—something I need help with, it seems. Sliding my headphones back on, my hands go through the familiar motions to slip-cue from one track to another: set the needle, check the volume, fade out on one and in on the other as I release the record so it can join the spin of the turntable. The sequence complete, I look over my shoulder.

She’s still there.

For five songs, three calls and two commercials, it takes every one of my brain cells to get my job done.

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