Page 63 of Dying to Meet You
“That sounds like fun,” I stammered.
By which I meantthat sounds terrifying. I didn’t know how to be with this man I’d been crushing on for weeks. Harrison asking me out on a dinner date felt about as likely as Mick Jagger rolling up to play a gig in our bar.
That’s how we got started. Because of a damn song, and my inability to stop undressing him with my eyes.
The song in question gets louder as I reach the front of the restaurant, and louder still when the door opens to belch out three drunk party boys with backward baseball caps.
I hear the song’s chorus. The vocalist sounds different, of course, but he’s getting the job done. Every other detail is shockingly the same. The steady beat of the drum and the low thump of the bass vibrating inside my chest. The scent of fried fish and lemon.
The baseball-hat guys are moving slowly and the sidewalk is narrow, so I have to stop and wait for them to gather up their smack talk and their laughter and cross the street. I’m stuck here just long enough to notice the pinned-up flyer for tonight’s band. They’re called Enough Already. Another terrible name, and it makes me smile.
My expression freezes as I study the black-and-white photo of the band. Three guys standing shoulder to shoulder, two of them smiling. They look like brothers. But the third guy...
He’s aged, of course, but not as much as I have, damn it. Harrison stares coolly out from that photo, a bass clutched in his hand.
I can’t believe it. And I mean that literally. This feels like a bad dream, one that I’d better figure out how to wake up from. Grabbing the old bronze door handle is a reflex, and within seconds I’m walking Lickie into the dimly lit space. All the action is in back, where there’s a stage and patio seating. Up front is the hostess stand and a bar area that’s only popular during cold weather.
A bored college girl looks up and greets me. “Table for one? With the dog, it has to be outside.”
“No, I-I won’t be staying,” I stammer, neatly circling her and heading toward the back. The song grows louder, and the scent of fried clams and bad decisions is cloying.
It’s only a few more paces until I can see the stage. The bassist is in profile, but it doesn’t matter. I’d know him anywhere. He strums with a frown that’s both serious and cool at the same time. Long hair in motion, body swaying in time to the music, his skin tinted by the red-orange stage lighting.
I’m caught in a time loop. I’m nineteen and I’ve forgotten tartar sauce for table twenty-two, because Harrison is up there playing “Beast ofBurden,” and after my shift he’s going to kiss me so thoroughly in my car that my panties will be damp before the engine warms up.
Then he looks up—like he can feel time warping, too. He lifts his chin and finds me on the first try.
For some awful reason I expect him to smile, just like the old times. Instead, the spell breaks as his gaze shifts to a table in the middle of the restaurant. Table sixteen.
When I see who’s sitting there, my heart stops.
23
Natalie
With her back to the door, and the thrum of the bassline thumping in her chest like a second heartbeat, Natalie watches her father play the hell out of an old song. He makes it look effortless. As if his hands just know what to do.
Live music on a weeknight and the breeze off the water. For once, she’s living herreallife and not just prepping for it, the way high school always feels.
Tessa sits opposite her, finishing off the last of their French fries, humming along with the band and slurping on a Coke that the waitress keeps refilling.
Until her friend’s eyes suddenly widen. “Omigod, don’t panic,” Tessa says. “But you are in so much trouble right now.”
Oh shit.
Natalie swivels in her chair, but it really isn’t necessary. There’s only one person in the world who’d give a damn that Natalie’s sitting in a perfectly respectable tourist trap splitting fries and Cokes with a friend.
Her mother stands at the edge of the seating area. She’s in running gear, her hand clenched around the dog’s leash, her eyes full of rage.
Natalie’s heart collapses inside her chest.
With Lickie in tow, her mother threads between the tables like an angry hornet on a mission. Natalie is already pushing back her chair. Maybe it’s not too late to avoid a scene.
But her mom is already at the table, leaning over and hissing into Natalie’s ear. “You’re out of here. I’m paying your tab at the bar. Then you’re going home, young lady.”
Young lady. Ugh.
Natalie drops her gaze. But she can feel Tessa’s worry. And people arestaring. Shame heats her face as she weaves between the tables, her chin practically tucked against her chest.
