For a long moment, Jax fish-mouthed in her general direction, too stunned to say anything. Then he lurched across the couch, Alice still in his arms, and wrapped both ladies into his embrace. “Fuck, tell me you’re not joking.”
“I’m not joking,” Sam repeated, her voice sounding suspiciously choked.
“Good.”
Alice squirmed, and Jax pulled back. “Hey, hear that, Hobbes? My sister is moving to town.”
“I heard. We’ll be glad to have more friendly faces nearby,” he added with a raise of his glass.
“Thanks,” George said. “It was a long time coming. Sam’s always thought about moving back, and now that Jax is based out here… no-brainer.”
Jax beamed at his brother-in-law, then at Hobbes, then Sam, who laughed at him and ruffled his hair. Nothing could get him down right now.
ARI SPREADhis notes out on his closed grand piano and then lifted his violin to his chin, ready to try to make sense and order out of the chaos.
He was still at it—alternating between scribbling on the pages and testing the notes on the strings—when Afra arrived.
“Come in, Theo. Don’t worry about him. If you wait for an artiste to be ready for you, you’ll grow old and die.”
Ari scowled at his music but refused to otherwise acknowledge her or her digs. She was interrupting him in the early morning when he was working. What did she expect?
“Noted,” Theo said softly. “Where should I put…?”
“On the table. I’ll get the starving artist.”
Ari set his violin on the piano and leaned in to make various notations on the page, perfecting the line. Still, his eyebrows climbed up his forehead even before he turned to her. “I’m hardly poverty-stricken.”
“No,” Afra agreed. She put her bag down on the coffee table and inched up to the piano so she could see his work. “But you’re probably hungry. It’s after one.”
He blinked at her and then looked at the clock. His stomach gurgled, pleased to have an audience.
It also earned him a big-sisterly look of contempt. “Did you even eat breakfast?”
Not wanting to answer that minefield of a question—did one leftover eggroll count?—Ari put down his pencil and followed her to the table, where Theo was setting out plates and cutlery.
“So what brought on this splurge of writing?” Afra asked him over their lunch of takeout Chinese.
“I felt inspired.” How could he tell her that another encounter with the subject of his music boner prompted him to write for hours in an attempt to perfect the piece humming through his veins?
“Inspired.” Afra took a bite and chewed it slowly. Then she looked at Theo, the intern she had picked up at the university job fair. “That’s basically Ari code for ‘I’m writing an opus for the pretty face I met at a bar,’” she said in the teaching tone she had adopted for him.
Theo, who had the babiest of faces, widened his dark brown eyes and nodded very earnestly. “I have seen the video. It is a very pretty face.”
“Isn’t it? Maybe we should go meet it in person. See the muse for ourselves.”
Theo nodded enthusiastically.
After months of working with the pair of them, Ari was not charmed by their double act. “You have jumped to conclusions regarding my inspiration. Your ideas are unsubstantiated.”
“Uh-oh, Theo. He’s going debate club on us. Better run for it.” Her eyes twinkled at Ari:I see through you.“Did I ever tell you about his stint on the high school debate team?”
Theo’s lips twitched. “No. I bet he was… a formidable opponent.”
“Damn right, he was.” Afra grinned and launched into one of her favorite stories—the time Ari absolutely destroyed the MC and judges at a formal debate for suggesting the topic of repealing the newly legal gay marriage act. She had never been prouder of him than when he ignored the timer to continue speaking about the damage such debates could have in a high school setting.
“Very cool, Ari,” Theo murmured quietly to him as they gathered up all the dirty dishes and cleaned the kitchen.
“I don’t know what you’ve done to do that”—Afra pointed at the piano—“but keep it up.” She hugged him tightly and then dragged Theo out of his apartment and left Ari to it.
