“Well... not like you,” I start carefully, ripping out my borrowed earbud as Justin starts telling the listener that we’re the love of his life over, and over, and over again. “But sure, it’s okay.”
Yep, she thinks I’m one step up from the psychos who drown kittens. “Do humans not resonate with feeling when they hear beautiful pieces of music?”
I don’t drown kittens! “I’m sure lots do. I can promise lots of people have cried over this song. Damn near myself included.”
Inara’s brows inch closer, her face softening, her expression hopeful. “You too?”
“Yep. For a while there, the radio stations wouldn’t quit playing it. I actually like pop music, but there comes a point to any song when you’re ready to drive off a bridge if one more listener calls in to request it, you know? Who are these DJs and do they not have souls?”
Her ears make slapping sounds as they whap her hair aside and slap flat to her neck. She’s full-out frowning at me, blue scales pulled tight over her amazing cheekbones. “You should be asking yourself if you have a soul!”
I hit my blinker, glance left, and speed up to take over the lane before the bossy little Fiat gunning up on me cuts me off, and assure her, “We are not fighting about a Justin Timberlake song. I refuse to.”
Her answer to this is chilly silence and she very pointedly stuffs her earbud back in, drowning me out and crying her music-lover tears all alone.
I lick the inside of my lower teeth. For some reason, I feel like I’m in hazardous territory.
I reach over and tug her closest earbud out again. When she glances at me (in scrunch-faced) askance, I venture, “Cue up ‘Photograph’ by Ed Sheeran.” I catch her hand. “Sweetheart… ssss.” (Because, you know—she’s got more than one.)
Me saying this, making a reference to the fact that I remember her multiples situation, makes her melt a little. Thank God. She’s still angled all aloofly, but she’s relaxing, a little less rigid and go-fuck-your-heartless-self.
“I’m sorry, baby. What I didn’t say because I don’t have a great big deal of practice with putting my feelings into words—” although God knows my mom and sisters tried to force me to learn “—is that I think it’s sweet as fuck that you were so moved by music that you cried.”
Inara turns her head enough to really look at me. But she doesn’t say anything. Her big Bali blue eyes are wet and pretty and a little unsure.
A wild groan catches in the journey from my chest to my throat, making a rumbling noise that has her pupils popping, her eyes going darker. At a perfectly timed stoplight, I drag her close enough to put the moves on her and go in for a kiss.
When we pull apart, she’s dazed and back to being sweet.
I’m clearing my throat and wishing it was appropriate to rumble up to the nearest curb for a backseat bang. I feel like this is a good make-up sex reconnection moment that we’re having to waste because it’s not safe to drive a 429 while having sex. Especially not with Inara’s horns. I still wince when I see the window that got cracked, even though it’s been replaced. “Anyway, If you like Ed Sheeran’s Photograph, I’ll call my sisters over and you can all watch a movie together.”
Inara’s face clears of even the last vestiges of passionate-music-unappreciation pique and begins to glow instead. “You wish to show me to your sisters?”
I take my eyes off the road for yet another split-second look at her. “You want to meet my family someday, right?”
They have been dogging me for details on her, and I can’t put them off for much longer. Frankly, I’m shocked as shit that they haven’t shown up on my doorstep demanding to meet the woman I’m hiding from their snoopy noses.
(Because yeah, like I said, I have it coming for all the times I’ve given their men the third degree. I know that. Believe me, I won’t be a whiny little bitch if they drop by—to the contrary. I want to introduce them all to Inara. I know they’ll get along great and… I want their approval. I’m going to need their approval.)
Inara plants her hands on the forearm I’ve got on the 2 o’clock position on the steering wheel. “Oh, Matt, yes!”
Pleasure and relief mingle inside me. “Good,” I say, giving her a brief, burning glance. “Because they sure want to meet you. We’ll make it happen.”
She pulls back, eyes dropping to her iSquid, her loose earbud tripping along her tunic’s collar. “I’ll find the Sheering song,” she says happily.
“Sheeran.”
“Ahhh, Sheeran,” she murmurs to herself. But then she pauses. “You said ‘you can all watch’—you won’t be with us while we partake in this movie?”
Hell no, never again. “Nope.”
See me being all careful splitting my thoughts and out-loud words? Go me.
“Whyever not?” Inara asks innocently.
“Because the movie I have in mind is Me Before You, (which played “Photograph” as a too-apt theme song, which is what made me think of it) and it’s so memorable, I never need to see it again for the rest of my life. But content notwithstanding, it was traumatic because I thought my mom and sisters asked me to a movie day so we could all get together like real old times, before everyone was married. It was just me and the girls again, I thought it’d be great.”
“It wasn’t?”
“That movie got done and I had shit in my eyes—”
“You what?”
“Dust or something. Anyway, I’m discreetly working on swiping my eyes—when all of a sudden, right there in the theater, five females explode in tears. It was like… it was like going to the first screening of Titanic, ever. But worse. Because when I heard the movie title, I thought it was all a big joke, like the women in my family were going to end some chick-flick day with a moralistic reminder that I should make sure my future girlfriend got to come first before me or something.” I cut her another glance. “I was going to inform them I had that covered. Instead, we left the theater with one man guiding five women who couldn’t have been crying harder if they’d just watched a litter of puppies get mowed down by an eighteen-wheeler. And I still had my own shit in my eyes to deal with. It was horrific.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I watch Inara clasp her hands, and unclasp them. She’s fidgeting, and it’s adorable. “What will your family say when they see me?”
“They raised me. They aren’t stupid women. They’re going to take one look at you munching on popcorn and think your costume is too elaborate for a prank and too realistic to be believed.” I shoot her a look. “I need to tell them the truth.”
Inara doesn’t startle. Instead, she bites her lip. “You are going to tell them that I’m not from here?”
My lips quirk in a smile. “I’m probably going to start there. ‘She’s not from around here’ will probably be the very first words out of my mouth.” I eye her quickly. “You’re not afraid for them to know, right?”
She shakes her head. “I have never been afraid. I would have told everyone I met the truth, if you hadn’t been convinced of my safety being at stake.”