“I really admire those guys,” Sam says, gesturing with his chin at the musicians.
“Because they’re good?” I must be the one who’s tone-deaf.
“No, not really. I wouldn’t say they’re outstanding based on what I’m listening to now, but I admire them being able to come out here and play for strangers . . . hoping to make a living at it but probably surviving on ramen.”
“Yeah, that takes a special set of ball . . . zzz . . .” I can’t believe I just said balls in front of a guy I’ve just met. I think I’m just a little too relaxed around him now.
“You said it.” He disregards my choice of words like it’s no big deal.
We stare at the guitarist for a little while longer before I build up the guts to speak again. “So, why don’t you do it? You’re a good musician. Maybe it would be more fun working out here than throwing things around in your bedroom.”
I can see the stress taking over his body as his shoulders stiffen. “Hell no. Why don’t you?” His voice has lost its earlier softness.
“Because I can’t play a musical instrument? Trust me . . . no one wants to hear me strumming a tune. They’d probably take up a collection to make me stop.” I smile at him, trying to take some of the pressure off.
“No, I’m serious.” He turns to face me, and I do the same automatically. It feels like warm air currents are traveling between us, flowing back and forth, heating up the space around us. I’m a few degrees warmer already. Damn.
“Really,” he says.
“What’re you talking about?” My heart starts beating fast again. I cannot keep it under control with him this close and staring at me so intently. I can’t even focus on what he’s saying. My head is full of air right now. Helium, maybe.
“Why don’t you come out here and draw something? It doesn’t have to be a person’s face. Why not draw that tree over there?” He points.
I look over my shoulder, following the direction of his finger. “It is a pretty tree, but no, thanks.”
“Why not? You afraid?”
There is that damn word again: afraid. It makes my blood boil. Now there’s a different kind of heat between us. A challenge is in the air. “No, I’m not afraid.”
His smile becomes decidedly evil. “Prove it.”
“You prove it.” Oy. Here I am with my seven-year-old retorts again.
“I can’t draw.” He laughs, scoffing at the very idea, as if that’s what I was talking about.
“No, not draw. Nice try. You know that’s not what I meant. Why don’t you come out here and play a song? Any song. You could play ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat.’”
He folds his arms around his top half like he’s trying to get warm all of a sudden as he looks to the side. “I would never play that in public.”
I try not to grin too hard. He looks like a little boy being stubborn. “Okay, so what would you play in public?”
He shrugs, looking around . . . anywhere but at me. “I don’t know. I don’t do that stuff.”
“Why? Are you afraid?”
He glares at me. “No, I’m not afraid. I just don’t do that shit.”
I shrug, trying to act all casual, when inside I’m throwing a party. I’m pushing buttons! Woo hoo! “Sure seems like you are.” I pause to look at the musicians. “Look at them . . . They’re even younger than you are, and they don’t seem to be very afraid.”
“No, they don’t. And neither does that guy drawing faces, and he’s not even any good at it. The last one he did looked like Scooby-Doo, but you don’t see him backing down.”
I laugh, realizing as he says this that the portrait did bear a striking resemblance to a certain cartoon character. “Scooby is the dog. You’re talking about Shaggy.”
“See? You saw it too.” He grins at me in triumph.
“Whatever.” I shake my head, trying to get rid of my smile. I know where this is headed, and I need to stop it in its tracks before it gets too far. “Are you hungry for dinner by any chance?”
“What would you say about making a friendly wager?” he asks, ignoring my dinner invitation.
I can feel my blood pressure rising. Uh-oh. “What are you talking about?”
He takes a step closer to me, closing the distance between us and ratcheting up the heat. “I’ll bet you a hundred bucks you won’t come out here and draw a picture of anything. Not anything. Not a face, not a tree, nothing. Because you’re too afraid.”
I imagine myself sitting in a folding chair like that guy over there and sketching just an outline of a tree, and fear strikes me like a bolt of lightning, right in the heart. Now who’s pushing buttons? “No thanks.” I look away, shrugging, trying to convince Sam that none of this is affecting me.
“Too scared, huh?” His voice is soft, but it’s no less sinister to my ears. He’s the devil on my shoulder, daring me to give myself a heart attack. The angel on my other shoulder is telling me to run all the way back to the apartment and lock myself in my room, that it’s okay to be afraid and to prefer my own company to that of strangers.
“I told you I’m not scared.” I grit my teeth to keep them from chattering. It’s suddenly very, very cold out here in Central Park.
“Then take the bet.”
I hate that he’s pushing me into a corner. We both know he’s as scared shitless as I am. Well, fine. If he wants to play that game, I can play too.
“I will if you will,” I say, staring him down.
Now he doesn’t look quite so excited, as he takes a step back. “What?”
“I’ll take the bet, but only if you take the bet too. We both go out. You play a song, I draw a picture.”
“Nah. That’s not the bet I said.”
“So? Can’t handle me upping the ante?”
“What do you know about antes?”
“I play poker at the farm.” The contribution of one of our guests—Victor Lunel—was to teach all of us how to gamble. I’m actually pretty good at it; Amber says my innocent look allows me to get away with way too much bluffing. “Don’t try to run and hide from me, Sam. Do we have a bet or not?” I think I know how the champion of the world poker tournament must feel when he takes the title. I totally called Sam’s bluff, and now he’s going to have to fold and beg for mercy.
“How do we know who’s winning and who’s losing?” he asks, caution flavoring his tone. I could be wrong, but it’s possible he’s considering taking me up on this ridiculous challenge. Oh, crud.
“Well, I guess if we both do it, we both win.”
“And if I play a song and you bawk, bawk like a chicken and run away without drawing anything?” he asks.
“It won’t happen, but in that case, I guess I’d have to give you two hundred bucks.” I pause and then continue on a happier note. “But if I go out there and draw a picture and you chicken out and don’t play a song, you pay me two hundred.”
“I can handle it.”
I hate how confident he sounds. I need to push him harder, make him back out before we’re both pushed to the limit and peeing our pants in public. “And . . .” I hold up a finger.
He grins. “And?”
“And . . . when I win and you lose, you have to wear a sign on your chest and your back that says, ‘I’m a lily-livered chicken’ for an entire twenty-four-hour period; and you can’t stay in the apartment all day either.” I don’t know who I am right now, but I like it! This new me isn’t afraid of anything, openly flirting with this gorgeous man in the dark in Central Park. I think some crazy New York magic has happened to me. Either that or I’ve caught a virus and I’m feverish. I resist the urge to check my temperature.
He strokes his beard a few times as he checks me out. “Damn, girl. I thought you were a nice little hippie chick all about peace and harmony, loving thy neighbor, and all that jazz.”
I can’t stop grinning. “Nope. I’m one of those badass hippie chicks you’ve heard about, who you should never enter a bet with because they always win.”
He drops his arm to hang by his side. “You know . . . I don’t think I’ve ever heard of one of those before.”
I hold my hand out for him to shake. “Hi, my name is Emerald Collins, badass hippie chick from Glenhollow Farms. Nice to meet you and it’ll be nice to beat you too.”
He slides his hand into mine and slowly tightens his grip. I’m tingling all over with this simple touch.
“It is really nice to meet you, badass hippie chick. My name is Sam . . . the man you will be paying two hundred bucks to tomorrow afternoon.”
I snort. “You wish.” We should stop shaking hands now, but we don’t. Instead we stare at each other, the warmth from our skin making its way up my arm and into my heart. I can feel my pulse beating at my neck. He moves closer. And for a moment, I think he’s going to lean down to kiss me, but then his cell phone buzzes and he backs away, dropping contact.
“Yeah?” he says to the caller. He walks away and continues his conversation in low tones I cannot discern as words. The funny, silly, warm mood that our bet created has dissipated, and in its place is this feeling of dread. I cannot believe I just agreed to come out to Central Park and draw something in front of a crowd of strangers. What the hell! I’m not a badass hippie chick! I’m a bawk, bawk, bawking chicken!
CHAPTER TWENTY
Sam turns around and walks back in the direction we came from, continuing his phone call. His voice is low, but I hear parts of it. I’m sad because it sounds like someone back home is trying to convince him to return.
“I can’t do that. I can’t leave. Not right now. Just . . . call Patty. Maybe she can help.”
I think he’s talking about Sadie. It’s his girlfriend, it has to be. And if he has a girlfriend, I need to stop flirting with him.
Manhattan looks a lot more dismal to me now than it did thirty seconds ago. I wonder if our bet will still be on. I don’t really want it to be, of course, because the idea of painting in front of anyone, let alone a park full of strangers, sends fear slicing through me. It’s bad enough trying to create something all alone in my studio when my muse has abandoned me for parts unknown, but trying to come up with something worth looking at in front of a group of strangers in the middle of Manhattan? Holy balls. What made me say yes to that bet? To upping the ante? Madness. It had to be the connection I felt between Sam and me . . . the shared fear we have about performing in front of people who are expecting something great to come from our hands and minds. Somehow, that shared fear is easier to manage, I guess.
“Call me later and let me know how it goes,” he says. “I’ve gotta go. I’ll talk to you soon.” He ends the call and slides his phone into his pocket.
He doesn’t say anything about the conversation, and it doesn’t feel right to question him about it. We walk along the path lit by streetlamps, Sam with his hands in his pockets and me with my arms folded over my chest. The temperature is dropping rapidly, and I can’t stop shivering. We’re both staring at the ground as we head out of the park.
“You hungry?” he asks, startling me. His voice sounds abnormally loud now that the park has mostly emptied and we’ve been quiet for so long.
“I wasn’t hungry . . . earlier.”
He glances at me briefly. “Does that mean you’re hungry now?”
“I guess I could eat something. But I don’t mind eating what’s in the fridge back at the apartment.”
“You on a budget or something?”
“Not exactly. I just don’t know any place to eat around here. That hot dog wasn’t so great, and I’d rather not repeat the experience.”
“Yeah, I’ve had better, which is too bad because I had high hopes for New York.”
I smile. “Yeah, me too. It’s my sister’s favorite place, though.”
“What’s up with her and that guy? The one outside the place.”
“The homeless man? Ray?”
“Yeah, him.”
“I don’t know, really. My sister’s the kind of person who sees a problem and then wants to solve it. I’m sure she took one look at that guy and decided she was going to help him out somehow.” He definitely looked to me as though he needed help from someone.
“That was nice of her to buy him that blanket.”
“Yeah, it was.”
I can’t think of anything else to say, so I focus on the rhythm of our footsteps on the sidewalk. We’re out of the park now and headed back in the direction of the apartment. Maybe we’re going to eat there after all.
“So, I guess my brother and her are pretty serious,” Sam says.
“Yeah, I guess they are. They live together.” I look at him, wondering if he’s fishing for information, but I can’t read the expression on his face; it’s too dark out. “How much do you know about it?” I ask.
“Not much. Just that they’re living together and that they met a few months ago.”
“Oh. Well, you have the basics.” I shrug, loath to divulge too much of my sister’s business, even though it’s his brother’s business too. Maybe there’s a reason they haven’t shared details with him.
“How did they meet, exactly?” he asks.
He’s looking at me, waiting for an answer, and I’m stuck in that place again where I want to keep conversing with him, but I don’t want to reveal too much about our private lives. The band means nothing to me, and I’d really love to tell him why, but they’re a group of men that he wants to work with, so I hesitate to say anything that will cause any negativity between them.
So . . . how do I explain how Amber and Ty met without revealing our big secret? Argh. I hate subterfuge; I’m so terrible at it when I’m not bluffing at the poker table. But I have to say something. “My sister got a job with the band, and Ty was kind of showing her around in the beginning, and they just . . . connected.” I shrug, hoping this will be enough for him.
“But you said that she was living in Maine, right? With you?”
“Yes. But she always wanted something more. I guess she didn’t realize it until she got here, but she was meant to live in the city.”
“Unlike you?”
“Yes. Unlike me. I prefer a quieter life, I guess.”
“Nothing wrong with that.”
I nod.
“If you don’t mind,” Sam says hesitantly, “I’d rather grab something to eat outside the apartment. I saw some of the food your sister has in the fridge, and no offense, but I’m not sure it’s my thing.”
“Sure. No problem. And hey, you don’t have to stick with me. If you want to go find something on your own, I’ll just head back to the apartment by myself. It’s no biggie.” Actually, it is a biggie, but I’d never admit that to him.
He shakes his head. “No way. I’m not letting you walk around out here in the dark by yourself. This place isn’t safe.”
There are still plenty of people around, many of them walking down the sidewalk right next to us, so I don’t know why he’s feeling this way. “I’m not alone, as you can see.” I gesture at all the strangers busy going somewhere. “And I’m not totally helpless either. One of our guests showed me some self-defense moves, so, you know . . .”
“Oh, yeah, I heard; you’re one of those badass hippie chicks. I still can’t let you go home alone when it’s dark out. Sorry. Call me old-fashioned.”
I’m flattered that he feels so protective toward me, and I’m hoping in a tiny corner of my heart that he knows full well I could catch a cab home and be perfectly safe. It’s a little inconvenient, though, because I don’t want to waste all my savings on restaurants in the most expensive city in the world, and I have no desire to spend Amber’s money. So if we’re going to eat together at a restaurant, I either have to order a tiny salad that’ll probably cost me twenty bucks or tell him to take his chivalry and stuff it. “Okay, fine,” I say. Despite my financial situation, the decision is easy; I’d rather spend another hour with Sam than assert my feminist power. “What are you in the mood to eat?”
“I don’t want to force you to hang ou
t with me,” he says in a teasing tone.
“No, no.” I wave away his concerns. “Ignore me. I was just worrying about my budget.”
“How about pizza? I hear that’s pretty cheap around these parts.”
I smile, grateful he isn’t mocking me. “I can handle that.”
“Cool. I understand they’re pretty good here, too.”
“Like the hot dogs?”
He chuckles. “Let’s hope not.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
We go only three blocks before several choices for dinner appear. We pick the third one, enticed by the garlicky smell coming from inside. Even though it’s almost eleven o’clock, they still have several tables full, and other people are coming in at the same time we are to start their meals.
“You want to share a pie?” Sam asks as we look over the menu.
“Sure.” I’m looking at the prices: twenty bucks for a single pizza. “Order whatever you want. I can be adventurous.” I flip my menu over and slide it to the edge of the table, folding my hands and resting them in my lap when I can’t think of anything cooler to do with them. It sure is toasty in here. I feel like lying down on the bench seat of the booth and taking a nap. My cheeks are going warm as my body recovers from the cold that had started turning me into an icicle.
Sam peruses the offerings on his menu and then puts it to the side. “I’m ready. You want a beer?”
I shrug. “Sure, why not?” What’s the worst that could happen, right? I’ve already spilled most of my secrets and showed him my hand—he now knows I’m deathly afraid of doing things in public that strangers will see, just like he is. And he’d have to be completely dense to miss the fact that I’ve been flirting with him for half the day. But I do need to stop doing that, assuming Sadie is his girlfriend.
“So . . . who is Sadie?” I ask, blurting out the question before bothering to weigh the consequences.
He sits back in the booth and looks left and right, almost as if he’s searching for an escape hatch. He sighs when none appears. “She’s a girl.”
I chuckle. “Oh, because I was wondering if maybe she was the family dog or something.”