Calvin made a face like he’d just sucked a lemon. “What, you think I wouldn’t recognize that as my cue? I’m going. Nice meeting you, Ari.”
“Likewise.” Ari raised his hand in a halfhearted wave. His head felt like it was spinning—not, he suspected, an unusual sensation for people who spent a lot of time around Jax. The man was like a tornado full of razor blades. It took a lot to keep up with a mind that sharp, but Ari enjoyed the challenge.
Only now that they were alone, some of Jax’s edges bled off. “So. You and Naomi know each other, obviously?”
“I used to be her violin teacher,” he admitted. “But actually I’ve known Kayla longer. We went to school together.”
He should say hello, except—no, she was setting up her pails to do a guerrilla drum demonstration, and he enjoyed those too much to delay her. He’d talk to her afterward, and maybe she’d be willing to let him borrow a rhythm if something struck him just right.
“Yeah? Kayla is awesome. We would be deeply in love if it weren’t for the whole aromantic thing.” Jax sighed gustily, clutching at his chest, full of drama yet completely oblivious to the fact that, to Ari, the world had just suddenly flickered into black and white. “Alas.” When Ari didn’t respond right away, Jax looked over and touched his shoulder. Color flooded back in. “You all right? You look a little wan.”
Somehow Ari managed to clear his throat. “Fine,” he said, taking a healthy sip of his drink to give himself some breathing room. It worked—he found something to change the subject, at least. “You’re not drinking?”
“Oh.” Jax shrugged as they made their way back to the drink table, where he fished a bottle of water out of a cooler. “Sort of? Downsides of moving in with a doctor. Twenty-six years old, and last year I got an unlooked-for ADHD diagnosis. Surprise!” He cracked the top off and chugged half of it, condensation running down his arm. Ari watched his throat work and debated just climbing into the cooler. “Anyway, being medicated is mostly great, but alcohol interferes with the time-release mechanism, and let me tell you, when your resting heart rate jumps from sixty to eighty-seven it isnota fun adventure. So I’ve got a strict two-drink limit, and I pretty much can’t start until after dinnertime. No day drinking.”
That was the most Ari had learned about Jax in a single conversation, and it left him reeling. “I see.”
He’d been operating under the assumption that Jax was trying to seduce him as a game. Ari had been holding out because sex without intimacy wasn’t his style and falling into that with Jax would be ruinous for his heart. He’d thought maybe, if he were patient, Jax might take him seriously. Maybe they could have something real.
But if Jax didn’t feel romantic attachment, then—what?
The smart thing to do would be to walk away. He was playing a game he couldn’t win. He could cut his losses and struggle through the writer’s block on his own. Eventually the music would return. He knew enough about himself to know that.
Or he could follow through. He could let Jax flirt with him until he couldn’t take it anymore, until he gave in. Ari would fall in love with him—he was already halfway there.
It would end with possibly the most beautiful album Ari could ever dream of composing and Jax breaking his heart.
“Well,” he said, reaching out for the first time and consciously touching Jax at the waist, so that he turned toward another table, “if you can’t drink, how do you feel about refined sugar?”
Chapter Six
JAX HEFTEDanother keg out of the supply room and brought it to the bar, enjoying the strain in his muscles—one of the better distractions he’d had all day. He hooked the keg up to the tap and tried to ignore the nagging feeling in the back of his brain.
He didn’t want to think about MIT right then.
He turned on the tap to prime it and watched the foam collect.
The email had been easy enough to ignore, to put off for another time. But there was something about a letter…. Jax had to read it.
Frustrated, Jax cut the tap and wiped down the clean bar—no customers around yet to make it dirty. He cast a glance at the clock and wished the next seven minutes would pass so he might at least have work to distract him, to keep him from remembering.
… should you elect to continue your studies, tuition is due no later than January 3. If, instead, you choose to defer completion of your doctoral thesis, the fee for nonresident studies….
As customers trickled in, Jax gladly accepted their requests for alcohol and song, and soon he mostly drowned out the dread and nagging.
When Ari arrived around eight thirty, Jax was stuck at the bar, filling drinks. He barely had time to talk when he dropped off Ari’s usual Sparkling Conversation.
Pulled away to make up a collection of cocktails for a group of ladies near the stage, Jax had to give up Ari-watching for several minutes. When he turned back, Ari was gone and his glass was empty.
Heart falling, Jax grabbed the glass and the twenty tucked underneath it and quickly put both away. Then he turned to the next customer. He had thought they were past the stage of leaving without saying goodbye.
He was pouring some vodka with a service-person smile pasted on his face when he heard the opening violin strings of Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida.” Rosa must be doing the piano, but he wondered who Naomi had found to sing.
Except thatwasNaomi singing. Jax glanced at the stage and—
Ari stood on it with Naomi, her violin tucked under his chin.
Jax couldn’t tear his gaze away as they tore through the song as a duo. Naomi had to glance occasionally at some lyrics, but Ari managed not only the song’s established violin work but also some modified bars to make up for the lack of other instruments. Ari knew the song by heart.
