I draw a look of mock surprise over my face. “What? Am I not even close?”
“Not even.”
I skip off the step and go down a couple more. Ten follows me. I hop off the bleachers onto the squishy, sodden grass and wait for him.
“So what do you want to do, Ten?”
“I don’t actually know.”
“You don’t?”
He shakes his head. “No clue.”
“How can you not have a clue? Don’t you have a passion?”
“Not really.”
“How can you live without passion?”
“Most people don’t have passions; most people enjoy certain things more than others, but that’s it.”
“What do you enjoy, then?” I ask as we head toward the doors that lead to the locker rooms.
“I like driving around. Running clears my mind. And I love to cook.”
I stop walking so suddenly that he stops too. “So basically, you’re a stay-at-home mom locked inside the body of a teenage boy?”
He kicks a stone with his mud-soaked sneakers. “That’s what playing substitute for an absentee mother will do to you.”
I’ve gone too far with my teasing. I touch his forearm. “I’m sorry, Ten. I didn’t mean to … to make you think of her.”
He looks at my hand. I snatch it back, return it to the strap of my tote bag.
“Try not to tell your friends about my very masculine ambitions, or I’ll be turned down when I ask one of them to homecoming.”
It feels as though he’s just flicked my heart. Which is stupid because I don’t even like Ten. I mean, I like him more than I liked him this morning, but I don’t like him like him.
He stuffs his hands into his pockets. “Want to go to homecoming with me?”
“Me?”
“My first choice was Mrs. Dabbs, but she was taken.” He delivers his comment so seriously I blink. “That was a joke.” A blush stains his jaw. “Not a funny one,” he mumbles.
I’m way too shocked … thrilled … dazed to give him an answer.
He rubs the back of his neck. “You’re probably already going with someone.”
“Actually, I am.”
He flinches.
“I’m going with Rae, Mel, and Laney. We decided to go dateless.”
“Is that a thing here? Going as a group instead of as a couple?”
“Not usually.” I bite my lip. “We’re going to be so late for class,” I say, although what I really want to say is, Will you ask someone else? I don’t want him to go with someone else, which is all shades of selfish and strange since I have no claim on him.
Finally, he shrugs. “I didn’t really want to go anyway.”
“I’ll save you a dance if you come.” Could I sound any lamer?
“I don’t dance.”
“What? I assumed all good stay-at-home moms were avid ballroom dancers.”
He chuckles.
I heave a theatrical sigh. “If you’re really against dancing, then I’ll save you a”—I push more wet hair off my face—“long, boring conversation off the dance floor. We can discuss sauce-making.”
A soft grin settles over his face.
And that smile undoes me way more than it should.
12
Bwirling Hearts
By the end of the day, I’m still reeling that Ten asked me to homecoming. I mean, the fact that he talked to me in the first place is shocking enough, but asking me to be his date to the school dance … that’s got my heart spinning. Or like Steffi would say—she loves naming her choreographies—bwirling.
By the time I reach my coaches’ house, I resemble a sewer rat from all the puddles I biked through, but I don’t even care. I leave my shoes by the door and go change into leggings, a workout bra, and a T-shirt with a Buddhist quote that would make Mrs. Larue proud, then go straight to the piano parlor.
“I’m sorry about Monday,” Lynn says, ushering me inside.
The shy girl with the smoky voice supplants Ten’s image inside my mind and squashes my high.
“I didn’t mean to be so … nosy.” Confessing this out loud makes me realize that Ten wasn’t totally wrong about me. “I was so mesmerized by the girl’s voice that I wanted to put a face to it.” I study a patch of discolored velvet on the chaise where the sun bleached the deep teal. “And maybe I was a little jealous.”
“You have nothing to be jealous about, Angie.”
I’m sure she says that to reassure me.
“And I’m not saying this to stoke your ego.”
Okay, so maybe she isn’t.
Instead of the chaise, I look at the bun that puffs up from the top of her head like an atomic mushroom cloud.
“Someone once said that comparison was the thief of joy, and it truly is,” Lynn says, stroking the varnished wood of her piano. “Never compare yourself to anyone else in this life.”
Easier said than done.
“So, you wrote the lyrics to your song?”
“Yeah.”
She sits on the bench and begins playing a melody. “Let’s warm up first.”
We start the usual way: I hum a sound that sounds like mniam to soften my palate. The second exercise is a smooth, soft legato oo-o sound, then a louder ee, then staccato. The series of short, sharp notes pumps my diaphragm and heats my already flushed skin. At the end of the warm-up, energy crackles through me.
I chug down half a bottle of water, then pull the sheet music I wrote on from my bag and set it in front of Lynn. The soft but frenetic tempo kicks up my pulse. I ball my fingers into fists, then stretch my jaw wide and fit the verses to the notes, adding a deep hum to the bridge. My palate vibrates with the song, and blood rushes and gushes against my eardrums, drowning out my own voice. When I’m finished, sweat beads on my upper lip. I swipe it away with my tongue.
As Lynn’s fingers slide off the keys, I massage my corded neck and yawn to loosen my cramping jaw. I feel drained, like I’ve just finished a triathlon. I stretch my arms over my head, roll my shoulders, crack my fingers. I bet the dance studio’s ceiling is vibrating from my frenzied pulse.
“So?”
My voice coach shakes her head, and the colors around me smear together in a dark, gloppy mess.
She hates it.
I pick up my bottle of water with shaky fingers and lift it to my mouth again.
“The chorus sounds great.”
I assume the other pieces of the song must not sound all that great if she’s singled out the chorus. “But the rest isn’t as strong?”
“The rest is good. But do I think we can make it better? Yeah. I think we could even give Lady Antebellum a run for their money. Want to work on it?”
“Hell yeah, I want to work on it!”
Lynn laughs. We spend the next half hour piecing the verses in a different order, and then I sing everything from the top. When the last note peters out into a gentle, exhausted hum, clapping sounds from the doorway. Steffi’s eyes gleam with admiration. She steps into the room and lays her hands on her wife’s shoulders.
I feel like a mouse intruding on a private moment. But then Steffi puts her hand on my shoulder and connects me to them. “Angie,” she murmurs. “Angie. Angie. Angie. Lynn said you were working on something, but she failed to mention how incredible it was.”