Smiling nervously, she laced her fingers together, studied her open sheet music and flashed me a grin. “God, I’ve never felt so nervous in my life,” she confessed.
“Me neither.” She chuckled. “Don’t sweat it, performing one-on-one is much more intimidating than playing to sixty thousand people. You can’t see the whites of their eyes,” I joked.
The girl huffed out a breath of relief, dropped her shoulders and crooked her head from side to side.
“Okay, I chose ‘My Life’ by Billy Joel because… well… I love the song,” she muttered. Delilah’s cheeks turned pink as she met my gaze, and I laughed.
“Good song. Billy’s a phenomenal artist,” I said by way of encouragement.
I slid up on the desk across from her and crossed my legs at the ankles. “Have at it.”
After a beat to compose herself, Delilah began to play, and a fresh form of magic filled the air. The moment she began to sing, I realized she was the whole package: beautiful, with a mesmerizing performance style, a huge bunch of talent and a unique sound to her tone.
Only one other person had hooked me in from the beginning like that. My mind wandered to Lily again, as snippets of her early performances floated through my mind. The lightness they brought to my heart quickly replaced by thoughts of all the time I’d wasted back then when I’d convinced myself I could never make her mine.
And here I am now, risking losing her to prove a point?With that thought, I figured enough time had passed between us, and I needed to reach out and talk to her.
It was only when the last piano note died in the air that I realized Delilah had finished, and when I met her gaze, she looked terrified.
“You know… I don’t think I’ve heard an arrangement of that song that’s ever come close to being as good as what you just did,” I remarked, sliding off the table and rapping my knuckles on the wooden top of the piano. “That was an insane rendition of that song.” The beaming smile she gave me almost split her face in half. “Delilah, I need to split right now but I think we’re going to have a lot of fun together,” I muttered.
After saying goodbye and arranging for her first tutorial session, I pulled out my cell phone, took a deep breath and with a pounding heart, I put in a call to Lily.
CHAPTER 22
LILY
I was making a sandwich when my cell phone rang. My heart lurched then sank when I saw that it wasn’t Alfie calling, but my bandmate Lennie instead.
“Hey,” I said flatly.
“Hey yourself. Are you okay?”
Am I? Not at all.“Yeah. What’s up?”
“Rick’s down in South Beach with me. Do you and Alfie want to hang with us?” he asked, sounding hopeful.
“Alfie’s not here right now,” I said, trying to sound casual about it.
“No? I thought you two were joined at the hip when he wasn’t working.”
I chuckled, but it sounded hollow. “Mostly, but not today, he needed to take care of something,” I said in vague terms.
“Then do you want to hang?”
“She’s hanging,” Rick muttered. “Are you coming to us or are we coming to you?” Rick asked, having obviously taken Lennie’s cell phone from him.
“To be honest, I don’t feel like socializing,” I argued.
“Welcome to my world,” Rick agreed. “To be honest, I fucking hate people… well not all, just most of them.”
“And I thought you were a social butterfly,” I quipped, smiling despite my low mood.
“Come on, Lily. I don’t know when the next time I’ll be around. Tell you what, we’ll come to you. We’ll pick up some Pizza and Calzone, you’ve still got plenty of booze in that big ol’ mansion of yours, right?” he insisted.
I’d wanted to say no, but with Rick that would have been pointless, he’d arrive anyway.
“Yeah, there’s booze,” I conceded with a note of resignation in my tone.
