Necessary Restorations (The Walsh Series) (A) (6 page)

These weren’t spring break souvenirs or douchey faux-tribal bands. These were artful, significant designs that begged to be touched.

Explained.

I blinked away when he caught me staring.

“I’m never listening to you again,” he said. “You’re the one who dragged me into that damn elevator in the first place. If I’d taken the stairs, I would’ve had a decent gin and tonic, a respectable blowjob, and woken up in a bed like a civilized human being.”

I felt his gaze land on my chest, a warm lick of attention, and I looked up to find him smiling at me. I didn’t know what it was about this boy, but every time he smiled at me like that, all I could think was,
Oh shit.

This wasn’t dimple game. This was dimple war strategy.

I stared at him for a long moment, not sure whether I wanted to laugh or beat him with a broom. “Admit that dancing in your underwear is more fun.”

“I will do nothing of the sort . . . but you . . . um,” he stammered, angling his chin toward my chest. “You look good in that.”

And yeah, like all the best hungover train wrecks in town, I was wearing nothing more than his tank and a pair of ratty blue panties. I smelled like stale wine, my morning breath could murder woodland creatures, and my thighs, in all their plump, unshaved glory, had been inches from Sam’s face. He wouldn’t be agreeing to much more alley kissing and friendly snuggle parties after this.

“Yeah, I really do need that cappuccino. I’m not fit for human interaction,” I mumbled. I untangled myself from Sam’s grip, slipped into the bathroom to put myself back in order, and prayed for the day when thinking about coffee would make it magically appear at my apartment.

After showering and changing into clean clothes, I felt a bit less like roadkill.

Just enough to know I practically threw myself at Sam last night, and then ordered him to strip down to skivvies and dance in my living room.

Classic post-traumatic response, right?

When I emerged, my apartment was back in order and Sam was programming his device. With his shirt hanging open, the ports on either side of his belly button were exposed. He didn’t notice me watching him.

His black eye was matched only by a long, mottled bruise running down his side. I stepped forward, reaching out to feather my fingers over the contusion, but he closed his hand around my wrist and yanked me away.

“Don’t,” he warned.

“Sam, that bruise is putrid,” I said, gesturing toward him while he pulled his shirt closed and buttoned quickly. He avoided my eyes. “Are you sure you don’t have a broken rib or internal bleeding, or something? Is your infusion set okay?”

“Please, don’t,” he said, his voice strained and impatient. “I should go.”

“No, no, no,” I said. It was so much easier to talk while wearing fresh undies. “I made you sleep on the floor. The least I can do is get you some coffee and breakfast. I’m sure you need breakfast.”

Sam looked around the apartment, as if he was trying to determine where he was. He eyed the ink sketch of a nude woman hanging above the fireplace, then looked back and forth between the two bedrooms on either side of the living room.

“Yeah, I should—”

“Stay. You should stay. I’ll go grab coffee and bagels around the corner at Sweet Spoon. Today we can be the people who avoid all awkwardness after getting drunk and sleeping together but not
sleeping together.
” I ran a hand through my damp hair and rolled my eyes. “Okay, wow. That sounded desperate. I’m not desperate. I just don’t want to be awkward. Wow, yeah, I just
can’t
stop talking, and I’ve made it
so
awkward.” I took a deep breath and let my hands fall at my sides. “How do you take your coffee?”

Sam smiled—why did I have to feel that smile everywhere? Hot and tingly and wonderful—and he laughed. “I could just go with you.”

“Yeah, that is a much simpler solution,” I said.

We walked through my neighborhood in silence and waited in line with the early afternoon crowd while a remixed cover of No Doubt’s “New” played around us.

There were no casual touches, no secretive glances, no easy cuddles, and I found myself edging closer to him to force an accidental embrace. I missed the affectionate freedom of intoxication.

It was ridiculous but I missed our stalled elevator, too.

“Are your rude comments reserved for boobs alone, or do you ever branch out?” I asked. “What about inappropriate ass grabbing? Lewd gestures? Catcalling?”

Sam turned his attention away from the chalk-scrawled menu board, his eyes narrowed. He stared at me for a long moment, then a smirk pulled at his lips. He inclined his head toward the counter, urging me to step up without offering a response.

Once my iced cappuccino and bagel order was placed and the barista eyed Sam, he shuffled forward, his hands firmly stowed in his pockets. This was not the road to ass grabbing.

“Almond milk latte, iced, extra dry, no sweeteners.”

“Seriously? You have a bad-ass cross tattooed on your back and you order an almond milk latte
extra dry?
Did you hear yourself?”

Sam handed his credit card to the barista and laughed. “I don’t eat dairy. Or wheat. Or artificial sweeteners.”

“What’s left?”

He placed his hand on my back—finally—and steered me toward a dim, quiet corner of the café. “Plenty,” he murmured before retreating to collect our drinks.

He made quite the picture: wrinkled khakis and shirt, hopelessly messy hair, heavy stubble, black eye. Somehow that didn’t deter several customers from eying him up and down, and sending longing gazes in his direction as he returned to me.

I know how you feel.

Once the caffeine and carbs hit my veins, I was a happier woman, and again capable of speaking in complete, logical sentences.

“Feeling better?” Sam asked. Too hungry to stop eating and respond properly, I nodded. “Yeah. I can tell. So . . . random question. Can I ask you about your apartment?”

Mouth still full of bagel, I nodded again.

“Do you have a roommate?” He stirred his coffee, his brow wrinkled. “Also—what’s the story with the art?”

“Mmhmm, yeah. About the art,” I said. The drawings were in every room, and though I was told it was odd to have so much nakedness in one small apartment, I did not care. “My great-grandmother, and she was a painter. She mostly painted ordinary things, like fruit, landscapes, children, but when she died, my father discovered this whole crate full of, well, you know . . . erotic art. And now I haul them around with me, wherever the wind takes me.”

“Is that a way of saying you move frequently?”

I shook my head. “No. Not really. I go where I go. After I finished college, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I knew I wanted a new city, so I moved here. I bounced around for a while, playing with a few different theatre companies, some bands, living in different parts of town, trying out the private music lesson thing, starting a grad program at Berklee.” I finished that chunk of bagel and thought for a moment. “Eventually, the wind will take me somewhere else.”

“And the roommate?”

“Oh, yeah,” I laughed. “Miss Ellie Tsai. We met in college, in the strings program. She was T-si and I was D-si. Obvious love connection. She’s on tour with a folksy pop band right now. She’s the lead fiddle. Very important role.”

“I can imagine,” Sam said. “So you’re a professor at Berklee?”

“Adjunct,” I clarified, my mouth full. “
Adjunct
professor.”

“What’s the difference?” Sam asked.

“I teach more classes for a fraction of what tenured profs are paid. I’m obligated to assist the department chair and do all his grading. Plus research. Tons of research. Never-ending research. But that’s the deal until I finish my doctorate.” I redistributed the cream cheese to an even layer and took another bite. This wasn’t the time to tell all of higher ed’s dirty secrets. “I’m not convinced academia is for me. Like, forever. I don’t like making forever plans. I’d rather see where life goes.”

“I guess that’s fair,” Sam said. “What do you teach?”

We talked about my introductory music therapy courses, and the path I took into the discipline, which came after spending two years with a family who hired me to give their autistic daughter piano lessons. Lillian didn’t speak much, and she struggled to interact with her family, but she loved music. We didn’t have to talk to understand each other; the music spoke for us.

I didn’t do anything miraculous or special with Lillian. I just taught her to control the notes, and she was the one who turned it into complex compositions. Her mother referred me to another family whose child experienced similar challenges, and soon I had more than my share of unique, incredible children who possessed my passion for music.

“So . . . After finishing work on a graduate degree in strings performance, I wanted to learn why music spoke to these children when nothing else could,” I said.

“My sister’s like that,” he said. “She just kept finding new reasons to stay in grad school.”

I stared at the table, debating whether I wanted another coffee or another bagel.

Most likely both.

“So you teach them violin? The kids, I mean. In your private lessons?”

Shrugging, I swirled my straw around the empty glass. “Sometimes. Sometimes piano. I’m working with a percussionist now, and there’s one who wants to learn guitar.”

“You can teach them all that?”

I nodded. “Most people who go to music school can play a few things. Not unusual.”

Sam leaned back in his seat, crossed his legs, and folded his arms over his chest. The movements pulled his shirt open at the neck. He was slim yet strong—beautifully sculpted—and I wanted to taste the dips and curves of his shoulders.

“These kids, they’re prodigies or something?”

I wanted to drag my teeth over his skin. Bite, lick, savor.

“Tiel?”

My tongue swiped over my lips, and I inhaled deeply. “Hmm?”

“I asked you whether these kids are prodigies, and then you zoned out on me,” Sam said. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m great. I’m just . . .” I stared at my glass. “Nothing. I don’t like calling anyone a prodigy. Some people can just play.”

“And
you’re
not a prodigy? You can ‘just play’ all those instruments?” he asked.

It was funny how the rest of the world offered a certain degree of reverence for children with boundless musical talent, yet my family saw it as a nuisance.

My parents seized on an opportunity to channel my hyperactivity and teach me some focus when I was five, but I knew they deeply regretted putting me into the area’s early orchestra program. They never expected it would turn into an entity that defined my life.

Unless I was playing traditional Greek songs at the restaurant, I was an expensive, time-consuming annoyance, but not playing wasn’t an option for me. It was the movement my heart and soul required, and once it became clear they didn’t support that for me, I was willing to invent solutions to every obstacle.

My mother found my Rachmaninov and Prokofiev pieces “screechy.” I took to practicing in the garage when I was seven, and cut the fingers off my mittens when winter rolled around. When my lessons and practice time were squeezed out by Greek school and church activities, I secretly woke up before sunrise to play. When I grew out of my three-quarter violin and my parents couldn’t afford the full sized, I started babysitting to cover the expense. In high school, I saved my camp counseling salary for new bows, sheet music, and trips to see the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center.

I might have known—even when I was very young—that my violin was my ticket out. My talent and skill made me different, and it helped me leave.

“That term is kind of . . . hmm,” I started. “Everyone has gifts and talents. Music is mine.”

Sam opened his mouth to speak, but sneezed instead. Then he sneezed twice more. “Sorry,” he said. “There might have been a little dairy milk in there.” He pointed toward his half-empty latte and pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket.

“And that’s why you’re sneezing?”

He nodded. “I’m allergic to dairy. It’ll pass in a minute.”

“Wow,” I said as he sneezed again. “That is unfortunate.”

When the sneezing subsided, Sam pointed toward my empty cappuccino. “Would another one of those make you happy?”

“Very,” I said, smiling when his hand brushed over my shoulder to grab my cup.

There was a gentleman hiding underneath that obnoxious player and he was too adorable for me. Just too freaking adorable. He could spend three months in the wilderness, come back looking like a mountain man, and I’d still want to nibble every inch of him.

“How much longer do you have in grad school?” he asked, placing a fresh cappuccino in front of me.

“Until I finish my dissertation, which is a small eternity. Still figuring those pieces out. I haven’t exactly committed to a topic yet.” I gestured to Sam, and his cup of tea. “You said you’re an architect, right?”

“Right,” he said. He produced a small bottle of hand sanitizer from his pocket and worked the liquid into his skin. It was methodical, and more than a little mesmerizing. “We specialize in sustainable preservation, which is basically the idea that the most ecologically sound option in building is to restore and improve existing buildings.”

“That’s cool,” I said. “And you work with your brother?”

Sam laughed and scratched his chin for a moment. “I work with two older brothers, one older sister, and one younger brother. Third generation family firm, actually.”

Multiple generations, three brothers, and a sister felt all too familiar.

I grew up stacking dishes and filling baskets of pita bread at my family’s restaurant. It had been in business for over forty years, and all of my mother’s brothers and sisters worked there, too.

Cooking, prepping, waiting tables, washing dishes, carrying deliveries—whatever it was, we did it. Me, my sister, and all nineteen of my cousins.

But I never belonged there.

It worked out well for Agapi. Manning the hostess station five nights a week was her dream job, and she met her husband on an emergency trip to the meat market when the restaurant was running low on provisions. It was amazing we hadn’t added a butcher to the family until then.