Love Notes Page 22

  So yesterday at the track he’d held out the white flag of surrender. Or as close to it as he was going to get at the track.

  TJ pushed the leg weights, enjoying that he was moving mass in the hundreds of pounds now. It helped to get some of this off his mind.

  Or not, as his brain instantly reverted back to Norah mode.

  He’d walked beside her when they had finished their run, and asked before he’d lost his nerve. “So there’s this woman I met, that I’m in love with.”

  Her head snapped his way at that, and she’d met his eyes for just a moment before looking away.

  He’d prodded, “How do I tell her?”

  Norah was so startled by the whole thing, it made him wonder if he hadn’t made as much headway as he’d thought. He figured she had to know it was her, but her suggestion was simply some flowers and the words.

  He’d almost groaned and fallen to the track in agony. She’d given him nothing he could use. In typical Norah fashion, as she had from day one, she was making him do for himself.

  TJ wiped his face, then literally threw in the towel for the day. With no real effort on his part, he walked the motions of showering and dressing and then he hit his studio room. He’d been here every day, belting out his frustrations with Norah and his desire to be on track again.

  They had a show tonight, and there would be no bar stool sitting off to the side. The Troubadour had welcomed them back with open arms. TJ was looking forward to being on stage again. He had to find out if he’d reclaimed any of ‘it’.

  He cued up backup music of Wilder’s songs and started changing them up. He altered his volume; he played with starts and stops; he changed his timbre. He’d never really paid attention to it before.

  For a brief moment TJ stopped and wondered why anyone had ever let him on a stage, or signed the group, when he had been doing such a poor job. There was a wealth of basic material here that he’d never really considered.

  He tried This Ordinary Man while at the piano and found that he couldn’t do it justice with his lungs hindered from his seated position. He tried again a capella and liked the way it rang. It was hours later before he looked at his watch.

  Shit!

  TJ forced himself to stop. He couldn’t wear out his voice right before a big show. And if he screwed up tonight, too, someone was going to put it in a review.

  Thinking that a nap was a good idea, but knowing that he wouldn’t sleep, TJ popped himself into the shower again. No sooner was he wet than he realized what he needed to do with his time.

  He scrubbed faster than humanly possible and dressed with little care for a man going on stage. Behind the wheel in under five minutes, TJ waited with utter impatience for the long driveway gate to roll slowly back. He peeled out onto the deserted street, and got to the dance studio without much concern about how he’d gotten there. For a moment after he pulled into the lot he stayed still, thinking to himself that he’d better be more careful, Norah would kill him if he hurt himself. Sitting in the silent car alone it made him smile.

  What didn’t make him smile was the fact that all the lights were off inside her studio, and the parking lot was empty. Then he realized it was Friday. Classes ran Monday through Thursday.

  His shoulders sagged, and with a snort of disgust he turned around to pull out, only then did he spot Norah’s car tucked against the hedges. With a grin he felt, he popped open the car door and bolted up the steps.

  The door didn’t give.

  Knocking and peering inside, he finally caught a faint light shining through the small cut out window in the far studio. TJ pounded on the door again, knowing she was inside and probably couldn’t hear him. He let out a sigh, and stepped back to look for emergency exits, other windows. As he turned, the door clicked open behind him and Norah’s voice came to him, “Hold your little horseys.”

  She was standing in the doorway, four steps above him, and he figured there was something figurative there as well as the literal. She was in those stupid men’s boxer briefs and a sport bra, and nothing else.

  Her lips quirked into a little smile. He wanted, right then, to tell her he loved her, because he did and he wanted her to know it.

  Her voice found him again, “Well, come on in.” Norah turned, still holding the door for him, and he realized that he couldn’t tell her now. He had a show to do, and if she threw herself at him, he wouldn’t be paying attention on stage and it would be even worse than last time.

  TJ let a soft chuckle out under his breath. If she threw herself at him, he wouldn’t even make it to the show.

  And if, God forbid, she said ‘no’ . . . Well, he wouldn’t contemplate that.

  “Can you come out tonight?” It fell out of his mouth breathlessly, with no forewarning.

  She ducked into the room and must have hit something, because the music stopped just a beat before she emerged again. Her mouth curled and she shook her head ‘no’.

  “Please.” She had to come. The longer he stood here the more he realized that he needed her to be there, out in the audience.

  “I’m having dinner with my Dad.”

  He bit back the words, You owe me something of your father’s, he got something of mine. Instead he tried again, “Please.” Before she could protest, he cut her off. “I need you.”

  Her chagrin turned immediately to concern. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, but I have a show tonight and I need you there.” That just hadn’t sounded right.

  “I know, but you don’t need me, there will be plenty of people.”

  “I just,” He just what? He just needed Norah there, that was what. “I just have to try something new, and I wanted you to listen to it in the car on the way over and know that you were out there watching.”

  “I—”

  “Please.” He put weight behind the word. And waited. His heart was twisted in knots, just wanting to know if she would come tonight.

  “Maybe I can come after I meet my Dad.”

  “Now.” He had her hands tucked into his and her gaze caught with his own.

  “I’ll see.” She shrugged and disappeared into the office, emerging with her phone to her ear. “Hi, Daddy. I got invited out tonight. . . . I know, he says it’s important though. . . . yes, it is. . .”

  TJ imagined that her father had just asked if it was ‘that Hewlitt boy,’ and he hadn’t felt so young in ages.

  Norah continued with no mind to him. “Okay, Daddy. I’ll be home a little later. We’ll do dinner tomorrow . . . Okay, Sunday then. . . . Monday?”

  Guilt settled around his heart. Dinner with her father clearly wasn’t an everyday occurrence, and he wanted to just tell her he’d find another way. But the thought of going out on stage and her not being there was petrifying, and he wasn’t sure why. He’d never been nervous about it before. There was always a first time, and this was clearly his.

  Norah hung up. “It’s okay, his girlfriend was going to come anyway it turns out.”

  “Thank you.” His chest unclenched and he smiled, wondering if she could read anything from the curvature of his mouth.

  She sighed. “Do I need to go get ready? When do we leave?”

  “About five minutes ago?” Damn, he was not making any of this easy.

  “All right,” She sighed and turned back toward the office. “I’ll do my best.”

  TJ puttered around the studio. He was getting to be a pro at showing up and whisking Norah away. And he was getting real familiar with these photos of her on the wall. A few were older, from Houston. One featured her in an overhead lift with some very buff guy; it looked like some kind of sun worship.

  He had it bad, and he knew it. The great masters’ artwork didn’t compare to photos of her in old holey dancewear doing exercises at the barre. He didn’t care if he was late for his show, so long as he had Norah in tow.

  And he was never late. Because there had never been anywhere else he’d rather be. Before now.

  She emerged with we
t hair pulled back. Her fitted jeans and a t-shirt left a little skin to show.

  He wanted to touch her. He wanted to tell her how great she looked. Instead he talked while he dragged her outside. “Good, let’s go. We’re at the Troubadour tonight. We start at seven.”

  “TJ!” Norah yelped and pointed at the dash clock as she slid into the passenger side of the Mercedes. “Are we going to have enough time?”

  “Just.” He threw the car in gear and peeled out of the parking lot.

  He played her various songs while he drove, directing her to change the pieces as he went. “Listen to that, see how the volume changes, it’s actually quite an art.”

  God, he sounded stupid. What had he been thinking?

  “You’re right. I never really thought of it before.” She tilted her head just a bit. “You don’t do that.”

  He’d been thinking just fine. This was Norah, and she understood. “But I need to. I’ve been trying it out. I just . . .”

  He didn’t know what to say. So he concentrated on pulling into the back lot at the Troubadour and parking beside Craig’s car.

  Her hand settled on his arm, stopping him from unbuckling. “You what?”

  “I just always performed for the audience. Now I’m discovering I really like singing. I want to be better at it. Does that sound right?”

  Her laughed sounded right. “I think we need to get out.” She pointed beyond the windshield, at JD and Craig waving him hurriedly in.

  Within minutes he was backstage with Norah shuffled off into the audience. By herself. God, he won the award for not thinking ahead today. He’d taken her from dinner with her Dad to come see him possibly screw up while she sat in the audience all alone.

  He vowed to make it up to her.

  Once on stage, he stood in the dark for a moment, just breathing before the lights came up. When they did, he started singing. Other groups did that, but it was unusual for Wilder.

  He sang just to be singing, and he added all the mood the song deserved. When he finished, he knew he had to speak. This part was never rehearsed, some sweet-talk bullshit always just fell out of TJ’s mouth. Instead, now he introduced the guys without the snarky comments he usually made.

  He saw the girls in the front, this time he saw that a lot of them were ignoring boyfriends. He latched on to that. “Ladies, I’m guessing if some guy brought you here tonight, then this one’s from him.”

  They started into I am, an old love song off their second album. For all it was the same as what he’d always done, it felt totally different.

  He couldn’t see Norah, but rested easier knowing that she was out there.

  TJ did what he’d practiced during the day, and faltered only when he picked up the guitar waiting for him at the side of the stage. JD was swapping out for his violin, and TJ and Craig both provided guitar lines.

  He made it through the song, wondering if anyone in the audience had noticed. He was supposed to be a pro. Six years they’d been at this, steadily getting bigger and better, and here he was just barely making the notes come out.

  After another brief interlude, where JD and Craig swapped out instruments again, he spoke to the audience. He even surprised himself by shading his eyes with one hand and peering out. There were people he’d never seen before. A group of older women sat on barstools across the back wall, they were chattering like the teenagers. A group of guys—actually several of them scattered around the floor.

  He knew males made up a good portion of Wilder’s demographic, but he’d never put it together before. These people were all fans, and they all deserved the show. Maybe he was stupid.

  TJ pointed to the guys off to the right hand side of the stage, they were the rowdiest of the groups, each with a beer in hand, and a few with two. “You guys want a song?”

  “Yeah!!!!” The response was almost deafening, and that just from them.

  He nodded. “All right, here you go.”

  Craig took it away with the opening to Sunday Afternoon. It was sweetly titled, but about a guy who murdered his girlfriend and buried her in the backyard because she interrupted his football game.

  In TJ’s head it was clearly one of Craig’s pieces, but most of the fans never paid attention to the writer. In the end that was really the correct assessment. It was all just Wilder music.

  They closed out the set, then agreed to come back out for one last piece. Having given everything he had, TJ was grateful when his experiment was over.

  He was out the back before he knew it. Without being aware how it happened, he was getting kissed by some petite, big-breasted woman who had plastered herself to him. He almost laughed, but didn’t want to hurt the girl’s feelings. It wasn’t her fault she was just all wrong.

  TJ peeled her arms from around his neck, and physically set her away from him. She was overly made up and under-clothed. With a smile worthy of a cat with a canary, she leaned up and mentioned a few sexual favors she could do for him; she mentioned them with her tongue in his ear.

  Had he ever said ‘yes’ to this? Maybe the accident had knocked his brain around more than the doctors had thought.

  “Thank you, but no.” Again he lifted her away, and saw another girl leaning against the back of the building. She looked just as bottle-blonde and gym-body proud as the one he’d peeled away. She made big mushy brown eyes at Craig who offered only a flat grin. Maybe she didn’t know Craig was married? Maybe she didn’t care. When Craig looked away, she caught TJ’s eye and tipped her head in an invitation.

  Looking at the two, now three, girls out here, TJ thought the callousness with which these girls picked up men put even him to shame sometimes. He’d never been anything more than another notch on the bedpost.

  For the first time, he considered that he could relieve some of the sexual tension he’d built up. But these girls weren’t what he wanted.

  The guys were talking all around him, he’d done a better job. He knew it. But he still had a long way to go. He was going to work out the kinks, like practicing with the guitar in hand. That a been a stupid mistake. He’d be better the next time they were up.

  He talked to JD for a moment, his head popping up and spotting Norah at the back door.

  Craig leaned over. “Not about a girl, huh?”

  TJ was getting so tired of that. “It’s not. The girl is separate.”

  The girl was beside him then, and he told the guys goodnight, ignored the smile in his brother’s eyes, and walked away with Norah right beside him. He held the car door for her, and slipped into the driver’s seat. “So where do you want to go?”

  “To bed.”

  His breath caught.

  But she corrected quickly. “Home. To sleep.” She didn’t laugh or even blush at the words that had come out of her mouth.

  He might have turned to her and asked about it, but he wanted to get out of the parking lot first. When he turned onto the side street he put voice to his concerns, “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, I’m just tired.”

  “I’m sorry,” He scrambled. She wasn’t just tired. “I shouldn’t have left you out there by yourself. I wanted you to be here and tell me if I was on or not, critique me. Let me make it up to you.”

  “No. It was a good show. You didn’t falter or anything,”

  So she hadn’t caught that. In the future she would.

  Norah’s voice continued, flat as a pancake. “I think you did the things you intended, and it worked out well.”

  “Let me take you out.” He glanced to the side, where he could see she was a little cold in her t-shirt that didn’t quite come all the way down to her jeans. He caught glimpses of the lines defining her belly and hips.

  “No, I just want to go home.” Again she had no inflection, until she pointed over her shoulder. “The studio’s back that way.”

  “I’m taking you home.” He wanted to take her to his home, but that wasn’t going to happen. He knew better than to think he was going to get the whole Norah package w
hen he wasn’t even getting actual speech.

  “I need my car.”

  “I’ll get you in the morning.”

  “I need my car.” She couldn’t have cut him off more effectively if she’d bricked up the center of the car.

  “What did I do, Norah?”

  She gave a half-smile that was a smile only in the fact that her lips turned upward. “You didn’t do anything, I’m just tired.”

  He didn’t buy that for a hot second, and looked for some way to say that without looking like he was accusing her of lying. In the end she thanked him as she dragged herself from the car, and stepped up to her driver’s side door. She gave a small wave as she slid inside. In no time at all she’d turned the engine and disappeared.

  TJ sat there wondering what had just happened.

  Her eyes had been bright when he’d brought her out this evening. She’d looked amazing in that top and jeans, maybe like she’d been putting some thought into him when she chose it. But then she’d shut down.

  All too late, he wondered if she hadn’t lied at the end. If the problem was that he didn’t do anything. But what hadn’t he done?

  He considered following her home and having it out. Then thought tomorrow would work better. Maybe he could try those flowers and the words she had suggested.

  TJ ditched the idea as soon as it came up. It was as stupid as it sounded.

  Chapter 43

  Norah heard her own voice in her head. It’s not you. She answered it back as her feet hit the track. It’s me.

  The trite line made sense, although not in the usual way. I’m the one who thought I stood a chance. I’m the one who made all those looks and cheap smiles into something more.

  TJ had dragged her out, away from a reasonable dinner with her Dad, with his face all aglow. He’d wanted her there. She had to be there. And he’d been so hard to refuse.

  Even the rhythm her feet made sounded angry.

  After the show, she’d stepped out behind the stage, knowing her face told everything, and for once not caring. Everyone would know she’d gone over the edge for TJ Hewlitt. The only one who saw was the woman pressed against the wall wearing less than most people’s underwear.