Page 39 of If Not for My Baby
“I appreciate you saying that. Sometimes it can feel shameful almost, to have reached this level…or to revel in it. I try to keep the success separate from myself, but then it can be hard to reconcile what I’m even doin’ here.”
“But you’re bringing people so much joy.” I don’t know why I want so strongly to convince him of this. Maybe because he can and I can’t. “The thing you were born to do happens to also change the lives of others. That exchange—that…phenomenon that occurs—when you share yourself with every single one of those people in the crowd…it’s rare and fleeting and so, so precious.”
The look on Halloran’s face is somewhere between stunned and touched. “You don’t speak like that about love, but you do about music?”
I swallow around an awkward lump in my throat. “Certain music. Yeah.”
Halloran nods to himself, allowing his eyes to roam across the lounge. They sweep over the hallway of bunks and land on the closed door to his suite. I feel a sudden pang of abject horror.
I lower my voice. “Is she sleeping in there?”
I have never seen anyone look more bewildered than Halloran does right now. “Iswhosleeping in there?”
Don’t make me say it.I steel myself. “The blonde,” I answerhim as if I’m very, very chill. A wingwoman. A guy’s girl. “From the greenroom.”
“I cannot even picture whoever it is you’re referencin’.”
The sheer relief that is felt in every corner of my body should be worrisome. I’m suddenly made of helium—I could float into the night skies on this sensation alone.
All I say is “Never mind.”
But Halloran shakes his head as if somehow I should have known better.
“What?” I press. “You don’t date?”
I wish I hadn’t asked. I feel like Joe Jennings.
But he doesn’t seem bothered now that the question is coming from me. “I don’tnotdate. I don’t sleep with the women who come to my shows, if that’s what you mean.”
“I see.” But curiosity’s got me by the throat. “So what does ‘dating’ Tom Halloran look like, then?”
He smirks down at his hands, wrapped softly around the epic poem. It’s like it was shrunk in the wash, so dwarfed by his grasp. “I could show you.”
My mind stalls. Scatters and reconfigures. Sharper and blurrier all at once. Before I can say anything he laughs lightly and stands from the lounge seat, tossing the book behind him. “Nothing too exciting.”
He is so goddamn tall his head nearly scrapes the top of the bus. Cloaked in violet shadow he strolls toward me like some kind of mythical folk-rock Jesus. Suddenly, I’m all too aware of my dumb denim miniskirt and bare thighs. I feel like a Bratz doll.
“A pint,” he continues, pressing one hand into the other. “A burger, too, if it’s going well.”
“Shared fries?” I ask. My voice squeaks out like a cartoon mouse.
“Yeah,” he murmurs. “Of course. Shared fries.”
I take a step closer. Bold. I am being way too bold. But his absinthe eyes are glowing in the soft light, and I’m drawn to them like a drunk. “Then what?”
Halloran raises one thick brow at me. Both suggestive and a little guarded. But then he cuts his eyes down in thought and answers more sincerely than I expect. “A walk along the sea. A chaste kiss while the waves crash. A text once you’re home.”
You’re.My heart speeds.
“What happens after that?”
I am hanging on every word—this is downright embarrassing. I blink a couple of times to try to clear the fog of tension that’s billowing between us.
“What always happens. Life gets in the way. I have a plane to catch, or a studio session to make. I get back to town months later and find the girl’s married.”
“You don’t seem too beat-up about it.”
“It’s never been the right girl.” He’s pretty close now. I can smell his heavenly skin. The entire lounge rises in temperature.
