Page 22 of Sing For Me

“They don’t have anywhere to go that’s as cheap as the rent I’m asking for.”

“Eli always did have a bleeding heart,” Kelly says. “Cassandra says you’re even coaching kids at basketball.”

“Baseball,” I grit out. She’d rubbed an old wound between us, and she knows it. She used to hate how much I cared about baseball, when frankly it wasn’t even as much as I could have. It wasn’t like I watched every game and had pennants on my wall. Not since I was a kid, anyway.

She also hated how much I wanted kids. She’d always clam up when I tried to broach the subject. It feels kind of pathetic that teaching other kids how to play baseball is the closest I got.

I take a swig of wine—too much to be considered a sip—and glance at Reese, needing the anchor of her.

Reese is looking at me with her brows furrowed—not in concern, but like she’s surprised, though I can’t tell what about and I can’t exactly ask her when she’s supposed to know all about it.

“Well, I think it’s admirable,” Neil says, lacing his hands on his belly. “The artist thing I mean. The baseball too. Well done, Eli.”

He doesn’t mean to sound condescending, I know, but it still has that effect. Like the kids and artists are urchins or something and I’m granting them porridge. I want another sip of wine, badly, but I also want a clear head. And I need to drive us home.

“I don’t know about admirable,” I say. “I just don’t have any need to put them out just so I can make a couple extra bucks.”

“What about making the whole thing artist studios?” Reese asks before sticking a bite of the chocolate mousse cake we’re sharing in her mouth. “The ground floor could be a gallery.” For a moment I’m distracted by the way her tongue flicks out to lick the bit of chocolate stuck on her lip, making my flame of irritation turn to something else. I turn away, forcing myself to look back at the others.

“It barely breaks even as it is,” I say, even though I kind of love the idea. But I’d still need to fill it. Plus, I never set out to be a landlord. Buy, fix, sell. That was all. “I don’t know that there are enough artists in Quince Valley to fill up six giant floors of office space,” I say.

Reese looks away and I feel like an ass for torpedoing her idea.

“Too bad it’s not New York,” Neil says. “People’d pay a mint for TV productions space. Hell, I would.”

“Do you have a background in art as well as restaurant work, Reese?” Kelly asks her.

For a moment, the table is silent, looking at Reese, who’s just stuffed a bite of mousse cake into her mouth.

Kelly laughs, and this irritates me enough that I blurt out, “Reese is a singer.”

Reese’s eyes shoot toward mine.

I never was very good at shutting up.

“No, I’m not,” she says. Then she seems to remember she needs to not appear to hate me and softens slightly. “I…I used to sing. But not anymore.”

“Oh why’s that?” Neil asks, oblivious.

I hate the way she seems to shrink at that. How she worries her hands together, rubbing her wrists the way she does when she’s upset.

“It was a long time ago. Just for fun.” Reese takes a sip of her wine, clearly uncomfortable.

But I clench my jaw. That’s bullshit.Just for fun.

The first time I heard Reese sing, she’d been in the shower at my place. I was still in bed, already panicking that in just a few days, I’d thought the girl I was distracting myself with had turned out to be so much more than I’d expected. Funny. Smart. Self-deprecating. Instead of wallowing over my ex, I realized my thoughts had turned to Reese. I wanted to know everything about her. To meet her family and see awkward pictures of her as a little kid. To eat her Mom’s lasagna. It scared the shit out of me. It was a rebound. That’s all. I’d sat up and started pulling on my clothes, fully intending to leave her a note and disappearing like the chickenshit I was.

Then she’d started singing.

It was Adele’s “Someone Like You.” Even through the door and the shower, her voice was clear and strong. But that wasn’t even descriptive enough. The song starts slow and builds, but even from the beginning, each note struck something deep inside my chest. Like, I couldfeelit. I got up and stood close to the door. By the time she hit the crescendo, I watched as gooseflesh popped up on my arm.

It was the same song, I realized now, that I heard her sing on stage at the Rolling Hills after we’d already broken up, the only time I ever heard her sing for an audience. I don’t remember how her sister convinced her to get up on stage, but she did. That song took serious range. She was glorious. Even the memory of the way her face looked up there, how her voice sounded as it shot across the room makes something dance prickly down the back of my neck now. Nothing about her voice saidhobbyist.

“What about you Neil, do you sing?” Reese asks. “Kelly?”

“Oh I can’t sing worth a damn,” Neil says. “But Kelly’s not bad, are you Kel-Kel?” He reaches an arm over the back of their chair and Kelly smiles demurely.

They’re both oblivious. “Reese has a beautiful voice,” I say, a bit too loud.

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