Hot and Bothered(85)

                He didn’t seem to mind, though. She didn’t think she’d ever seen him smile that much, for so long, as if he was being lit up from inside. What a glorious smile he had. What a way of looking at her, like she was all that mattered, ratty hair and streaked face and all.

                “Did he show up?” Elisa asked.

                “Yes,” said Haven.

                “You’d better go, then,” said Elisa.

                “Yes,” Haven repeated, and she didn’t even try to find the right button to end the call, she just held down the off button on the phone and tossed it into her purse. And then she said, “You’re my date.”

                “Yeah,” he said.

                “I was going to stand you up,” she said. “Because I didn’t think it was you. I thought it was another guy. And I didn’t want another guy. I wanted you.”

                She seemed to be saying the most obvious things in the most obvious ways, but that didn’t seem to bother him, so she kept talking.

                “That would have been funny, I guess. In a missed-connections, hopefully-we-would-sort-it-out kind of way.”

                She felt as though the more she talked, the less she was saying what mattered, but again, he just nodded, and his smile grew a little.

                “What were you going to do?” he asked.

                “I hadn’t gotten that far,” she said. “I was going to find you. Wherever you were.”

                “And when you found me?”

                “I was going to kiss you,” she said.

                “Like this?” he asked, and leaned down to press his mouth against hers.

                “More like this,” she said, and grabbed his head and really, seriously, kissed him, stroking his tongue with hers and biting his lower lip, feeling him already hard against her belly.

                A car honked.

                “They’re saying we should get a dressing room,” Haven said, and Mark laughed, a deep, unexpectedly rich and uninhibited sound.

                “I went to see Elisa,” Mark said, taking a step back from her but leaving his hands on her waist. “I needed to know how you felt about me. But then I realized I already knew. The problem was that I didn’t know how I felt about me.”

                “You felt like you were a burned out, has-been, scruffy guy with shit taste in clothes,” Haven said.

                “Is that a verbatim quote?”

                “Pretty much,” she said. “I think I missed a few. I think you also said drunk.”

                “So I realized something,” Mark said. “You helped me realize it, whether you know it or not. I am a burned out, has-been, scruffy guy with shit taste in clothes. Which is, like, the essential definition of a blues musician. I’m a blues musician. I’d just completely lost track during my years of Sliding Up, and then believing what Lyn said—”

                She started to protest, but he said, “You were right. Lyn was wrong. And I was wrong to listen to her. I let her derail me for so long. I’m ashamed of how long.”

                “You were very young when she said that to you,” Haven said gently. “And it was a very vulnerable moment. Things like that have a way of sticking.”