The last bell blasted through the room, yanking me from my thoughts. The students bolted for the door as if it was the only path to freedom. Not that I could blame them.
Mari had agreed to meet me when she was done doing something for the band. She hadn’t told me what exactly she was doing, just that she had about a two-hour drive before she got back. We agreed she’d text me on the way home. I hope she liked what I’d planned.
There was an open mic night every Thursday at one of my favorite coffee shops. I had no idea if she’d want to sing, but I figured she’d enjoy the music anyway. Plus, it would be a great buffer if we ran out of things to talk about. Not that I thought that might happen. The conversations between us had run smoothly over text, but I knew that didn’t necessarily translate into anything. I’d had more than my fair share of dates where things had gone great over text beforehand only to fall flat on their face when we met.
When I’d arrived, there were still a few booths open along the wall. Wanting to keep the door in my sights so I could see when she got here, I took the seat with my back to the main stage, tucking the guitar in next to me. If she decided to sing, at least she’d have an instrument to play.
Less than fifteen minutes later, I saw her walking along the sidewalk outside the window. My eyes darted to the door, waiting for that first glance of her—the moment she’d step into the room and be too busy looking for me to remember to keep up her walls. The moment where I’d see her how everyone else did.
The door opened and I practically swallowed my tongue.
Mari was sexy as fuck.
Her hair was in messy curls that framed her face, which only accentuated her blue eyes. The way she held her shoulders straight allowed a few of the bird tattoos to peek out from the neckline of her shirt, her confident stance belied by the way she bit the side of her bottom lip. Every part of her called to me. My dick perked up.
Down boy. She’s not interested in me like that.
Karma was an absolute bitch. Of course I had to want the one person who I’d pretty much guaranteed wouldn’t want a goddamn thing to do with me. High school me had fucked everything up. I’d been too stupid to realize how many mistakes I’d been making, but I was sure paying for them now.
Her eyes connected with mine and her step faltered when she realized that I’d been watching her. Eventually she caught herself, taking a step forward and walking to the table with all the grace of a ballerina.
“Hi.” She dropped into the seat across from me, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
“You look absolutely gorgeous.”
A light pink tinted her cheeks. “Thanks.”
Silence descended over the table. For the first time in my life, I was out with a woman and I had absolutely no idea what to say to her. My hands began to tremble, so I dropped them into my lap because, no matter what happened, I didn’t want her to see that she made me nervous.
The corners of her lips turned up in a shy smile and she glanced around the room, her eyes sweeping over everything as her smile grew in size. “I’ve never been here before.”
I gestured toward the stage. “It’s open mic night. I thought you’d enjoy the music.”
Her entire face lit up. “I love live music.” Almost immediately she looked away, the blush on her cheeks returning with renewed force.
“I figured you would.” I did nothing to hide the smile in my voice. “Do you know what you want? I wasn’t sure what you drank so I waited for you to order.”
“I’ll have a caramel mocha.”
“You got it. Give me a minute and I’ll be right back.” I stood from the table, careful not to knock the guitar, and made my way to the counter where I could order our drinks.
“What can I get you?” the barista asked, not looking up from her computer.
“I’ll have a caramel mocha and a coffee, black.” Call it intuition, but I had a feeling Mari hadn’t eaten much all day.
The barista glanced up, her eyes widening. She blinked rapidly, her hand coming up to tuck her hair behind her ear as she said, “Umm . . . hi.”
I handed her the cash, noticing her fingers caressing mine as she took the money from my hand. I sensed eyes on me from behind and glanced over my shoulder.
Mari was watching the barista intently, a frown making her eyes narrow and cute wrinkles had appeared between her brows. When she noticed me looking, Mari quickly glanced away, pulling out her phone. For some reason, it gave me a bit of pleasure to know that Mari seemed to be a bit jealous of the woman behind the counter talking to me.
I watched her until our drink order was called, her eyes never leaving the phone. Whether there was something very interesting on the screen in front of her or she was just avoiding catching my eye again. I wasn’t sure, but the fact that I might just have witnessed jealousy, even in the most fleeting of moments, was a boost to my floundering ego.
When I heard my name called, I turned away from her and took the cups from the outstretched hands of the barista.
“Too bad you’re taken.” She nodded her head toward Mari. “I’d have loved to get a drink with you.”
Taken.
It had a nice ring to it, even if it was a pipe dream.
I smiled to let the girl know I’d caught her meaning, but turned away before she read too much into it. The only woman I was interested in was physically on the same page as me. Her body definitely enjoyed being touched by mine but emotionally she was way out of reach.
I set the cups on the table and took my seat. Mari’s eyes were still on her phone, the frown lines on her forehead deeper set now than they had been minutes earlier.
“Everything okay?”
Her eyes snapped up from her phone. “Yeah, just Sawyer.” She sighed.
I took a sip of my too hot coffee and burned my tongue, simply to avoid saying something that might piss her off.
“He’s worried about me.”
That caught me off guard. I set my cup on the table and in a move that I wasn’t entirely sure wouldn’t earn me a slap to the face, I put my hand over hers. She looked down at our connected hands, but said nothing.
Score one for Cole.
“I promise I won’t do anything to hurt you.”
“I’m trying to believe you.” With her free hand, she gripped the pendant around her neck.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you nervous.”
“I’m not nervous.”
I looked down at her neck, then back to her eyes. “You’re playing with your pendant again."
She pulled her hand out from under mine and dropped the necklace, like it burned her. “How would you know that?”
Hopefully she didn’t find my answer to be as stalkerish as it sounded in my head. When the hell had I become a creeper? “Remember I was watching you. Every time you’d look at me across the bar, you’d reach up and your fingers would rub over the metal.”
She glanced down at the table. “Oh.”
“Like I said, I don’t want you to be nervous around me.”
Mari wrapped both hands around her cup, her fingers tapping idly against the top. Her eyes moved up to meet mine. “You don’t . . .”
I cocked a brow, waiting for her to say I didn’t make her nervous. It was written in every fidget, every movement, even in her eyes.
“It’s not you as a person that makes me nervous,” she explained. “It’s more about this.” She pointed back and forth between the two of us.
My heart thundered in my chest. “What this?” I made the same movement with my finger as she had.
“What this is supposed to be.”
Her words were exciting. I wanted Mari, but she couldn’t really mean us together. As a couple.
At this point, I was happier leaving things undefined. I didn’t want to force anything on her, and that included a friendship, if she didn’t want it. It would suck if she couldn’t handle at least being friends, but I understood that whatever relation
ship she chose to have with me was exactly that—her choice. And however that choice made me feel, I had to be okay with that. At least, on the outside.
It might have been a reckless and crazy notion, but I hoped for much more. She was like a magnet; an unseen force, connecting two people. There was no one I’d rather be connected with.
“So we just go from being enemies to friends?”
Friends.
It was better than nothing, but the whole idea of her thinking of us as enemies? It bothered me. “I’ve never thought of you as the enemy.”
She hesitated a moment. “Trust me when I tell you, I’ve thought of you as the enemy plenty of times. I don’t know why I figured you’d think the same. Honestly, you probably never thought of me at all.”
I was at war with my own mind. If I lied to her, she’d walk away without another glance. But thinking about telling her the truth made my stomach roll. I sucked in a breath and weighed up my options. Some things were more important than others.
“I promised earlier that I wouldn’t hurt you, and now I’m caught between that and lying to you.”
She pinned me with a glare. “Lying is definitely worse.”
I sighed. “The truth is that, until a few years ago, I never consciously thought about you. I went day to day not worrying about anything but what was in front of me.” I rubbed the back of my neck, trying to release the tension the conversation was bringing. “I made a lot of mistakes. Later things changed.”
When I glanced up at Mari again, her eyes had welled up. My gut clenched. The last thing I wanted to do was make her cry.
“How?” Her gaze never faltered.
“When I changed schools, and had to reevaluate the plans I’d had for my life.”
I leaned forward and brushed the lone tear from her cheek. The gesture was simple, but it helped me avoid a topic that made my head pound and my chest tighten.
“Why would you switch schools?”
I shifted around in my seat, unsure if I wanted to go there now, if ever. “That story is a little longer and definitely not a high point in my life.”
My gaze focused on the cup in my hand when a soft caress made me look up to see Mari’s hand on my arm. It was the first time since the night she’d come home with me that she had consciously touched me.
“Tell me,” she whispered.
The light blue of her irises held understanding; sincerity. She truly wanted to hear the story. Maybe it was to gloat. I wouldn’t blame her, but I didn’t know if I could hear that from her lips. I’d lost everything after I’d cost her enough.
“It was a game in the middle of junior year of college. Different NFL teams had contacted me, wanting to know if I planned to skip senior year to enter the draft. Honestly, I hadn’t decided. My dad thought that was my best choice. I’d go first round. Which team would take me was the question.
“Mom wanted me to finish my degree first. She wanted me to have something to fall back on when football was over. I just never thought it would be over so soon.” A lump formed in my throat, and I had to force the rest of my words over it. “That game, I leaped for a catch I knew I shouldn’t have. Something about the way it was coming down seemed off, plus, the defense from the opposing team was barreling down on me. We were three points down at the end of the fourth quarter. A good catch would give us the first down and put us in position to make a field goal, tying the game. I came down with the ball in my hands but at an awkward angle, which under normal circumstances wouldn’t be a big deal.”
When I paused for a breath, she nodded for me to continue. “Two of the defenders hit me before I had a chance to move my leg. My knee went into the ground first. Their weight plus mine left me with a broken tibia, right behind my knee cap.”
Shame washed over me like it did every time I thought about that night. Deep down, I knew it had been a freak accident, but the what ifs always screwed with my head for days.
“There isn’t anything they can do? I haven’t noticed you limping.”
“No.” I shook my head sadly. “Even with physical therapy my knee is only about ninety-seven percent. No team will risk millions of dollars on a wide receiver with a risk of reinjury. The plate they put over the break can only hold so much, but my knee is weakened. Any hard hit to the ground could leave me in the same boat.”
I looked up into her eyes and saw it. The pity. Pity for me, the one person in the world who didn’t deserve it.
“I’m so sorry.” She leaned toward me, her tone sweet and gentle. “I hate that they wouldn’t take a risk on you.”
Silence descended over the table as I attempted to digest her words. Her defense of me against the big, bad NFL teams. Not that I could blame them for their decision. I still could have put myself in for the draft, but then I’d have to hope a team would grab me and play me, and not simply leave me sitting on the bench.
“Okay, so you moved schools. Why choose to be a teacher?”
I shrugged. “It was the only thing that felt right at the time. My head was a mess when I showed up here. My roommate, Ryan, helped a lot. I was skipping classes, not eating. Forget the freshman fifteen—by the end of junior year, I’d lost fifteen and then some. Throughout my senior year, Ryan pushed even harder to get to know me. Eventually, I could see what good I could do.” I covered her hand, which still rested on my arm, with my own, rubbing light circles across the back of it.
“I realized that, as a teacher, I could protect any kid in your situation from assholes like I used to be. Plus, it gave me a chance to be a part of football. Until recently, I never imagined coaching anywhere but high school or youth league.”
Mari picked up her coffee, taking a sip. “What happened recently?”
“The head coach at my school pulled me aside to tell me about colleges who’d been looking at me for their offense coaching positions.”
Her brows shot up into her hairline. “Colleges? Really?”
The discomfort that had taken hold of me at the beginning of the conversation seemed to loosen and fall away the longer I talked to Mari. Besides a handful of people, I didn’t usually open up about what had happened. It was actually a relief to let Mari in. Not that anyone who wanted to know couldn’t find the answers on any sports website, but it was different telling someone than having them read a news story that you had no input into.
“I guess. None of them have ever contacted me.”
She tilted her head to the side. “Would you want to coach a college team?”
I shrugged. “Not sure. I only started really thinking about it when Coach mentioned it to me. But yeah, I think I would.”
“Sounds like it could be a good option for you.”
The concern she had for me was a bit overwhelming given our situation, but I hadn’t asked her here to talk about my sad past.
“Maybe. What about you? Do you work outside of singing for the band?”
There was a moment where she paused, staring at me, before she refocused. “Nothing besides the band. About a year ago we all left our jobs to focus on the music. Up until then, I did the whole random retailer thing because being a music major doesn’t always pay the bills, not unless you make it big or play as often as we did.”
I nodded. “I did notice that you guys played four nights a week pretty often.”
“It was the easiest way to only work on the music.”
“Good evening, everyone.”
I glanced up at the stage to see the manager standing at the mic. “Welcome to the weekly open mic night at Avenue A Cafe. Some of the slots are already filled, but we do still have a few open so if you’d like to participate, you can sign up at the table next to the counter.” He pointed along the wall. “Our first singer tonight is all ready to go. Please give a warm welcome to Dennis Weeks.”
Mari turned her shoulder to focus on the stage and we both applauded as a man took the stage, a guitar strap slung over his shoulder. The music filtered through the room for a decent cover of Bruno Mars.
“It makes sense, especially with the size of your crowds. Who wouldn’t want to book Jaded Ivory?”
The blush that I was starting to find endearing pinkened her cheeks once again. She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “Yeah. They’re pretty good.”
“So are you. You’re just as much a part of the band as the guys are.”
She nodded, but didn’t say anything else about it. We continued to talk about her college years and what it was like being a music major. It was interesting to hear. Being a physical education major was so far removed from what she’d done.
Every once in a while, I’d catch Mari glance longingly at the stage, her fingers tapping out a beat on the coffee cup. I had a feeling she wanted to sing but something was stopping her.
“Do you want to sing?”
She looked quickly at the stage and back at me. “I wouldn’t know what to sing. Besides, I don’t have any music with me.”
I reached behind me and pulled out the guitar, placing it gently on the table.
“How about you make your own?”
CHAPTER 16
Mari
The guitar.
I’d been so pissed when I found out Heath and Jackson had helped Cole, I never bothered to really look at it. With shaking fingers I reached for the zipper, slowly pulling it around to open the case. Inside happened to be one of the most beautiful guitars ever made, the finish still as shiny as I remembered.
A Fender acoustic.
The Fender I’d lost to the bullshit in high school was nowhere near the level of the guitar that sat in front of me. As I stared my eyes began to water, but I was afraid that if I blinked it would disappear.
Rock Me (Jaded Ivory Book 1) Page 14
