“You sound unimpressed.”
“I’m grateful that she feeds me,” I hedge.
“You don’t cook for them?” His question contains an element of surprise.
“I don’t want to be in the way.” My answer contains a dash of chagrin. Lately Dax has reminded me that I’m valuable, and I’ve been noticing the ways I try to make myself smaller. To stay out of the way of people who are leading real lives. “I’m interloping hard-core.”
“That’s what family’s for, Princess. They step up and help out when someone they love needs them. It’s what I did for my mom. It’s what I did for Barrett.”
My heart squeezes. What a simple, awesome way of looking at life.
“Who does that for you?” I ask. “Who helps you out when you need it?”
“Don’t need it.” He lifts those big shoulders into a shrug. Shoulders the people around him lean on.
“Everyone needs someone,” I say quietly.
He squeezes my fingers as we walk.
We pass a gaudy T-shirt store, a movie theater, and an antiques shop.
“Oh, I love that.” I pause in front of the window and admire a tall grandfather clock. I can’t stop staring at the intricate woodwork. It’s beautiful—my dad would love it. I wish I could afford to buy it for him for his upcoming birthday.
“Princess.”
“Yeah?” I turn to face Dax, but he’s not transfixed by the clock. He’s pointing at a faded poster taped to a telephone pole. “This you?”
I run a hand over the weather-beaten, faded hot-pink paper. The title reads ONE NIGHT IN TUSCANY. My name, in bold type, sits beneath a photo of a country landscape, but the staples have rusted and the orange streaks make it hard to tell what it is.
“A few months ago, I danced at the cancer ward in the hospital.” I pull up a torn bit of paper and piece together the name of the hospital with the address. “I wanted to perform. I wanted to make people happy. I figured patients undergoing chemo needed a reason to smile. I made the flyers for locals who have relatives going through treatment.”
I glance up at him. He takes his attention from the flyer to meet my gaze, his eyes narrowing in consideration.
“Cute. Sweet. And you care about other people.”
“I just wanted to dance.”
“Yeah, sure,” he says, but I can tell he doesn’t buy my excuse. “You’ll have to show me sometime. What else you can do with your amazing body.”
I take his hand and pull him with me. I wait until we pass a few loitering teens to lean close and say, “Was that a request for a striptease?”
“It wasn’t. But I could put in a request for that as well.”
I laugh.
“I’m serious.” He stops in the middle of the sidewalk, heedless of slowing pedestrian traffic. “I want to see what you did for the hospital. Will you show me?”
“Here?” I look left, then right. People are walking in and out of shops. Couples linger on the edge of the street and sidewalk.
“Why not? Street performers are a thing in Tennessee too, I assume. Do you have the song on your phone?”
“Yes, but—”
“Perfect.” He drops my hand and walks over to the group of teens. He has a brief conversation that involves him pulling out his wallet, and then he returns with a ball cap. The teen holding the money has a bad case of hat hair and a grin on his face.
Dax tosses the hat on the ground and plunks a five-dollar bill into it, along with the change from his pocket to keep the bill from blowing away.
“I’m your first paying customer. Let’s see whatcha got.” He backs away, leans on the telephone pole, and crosses his arms over his chest.
My heart is fluttering but not from fear. From excitement. I love to perform. Shakily I pull out my phone and cue up the song, do a few stretches as the music starts, and then I dance.
Dax
Eyes closed, Becca moves her body to the beat. I’m transfixed. On the periphery, I notice a crowd gathering, but I don’t take my eyes off her. I have no idea what kind of dancing this is, whether there are bits of ballet thrown in with interpretive dance, or if this is something new—a combo of the two.
Whatever it is, I’m rapt. And not just me. Even the kid I paid for his hat is a part of the circle of people surrounding Becca, his crooked smile suggesting a dirty fantasy is brewing inside his mussed head.
One of the first details I noticed about Becca was the way she moves. She’s in complete control of her body. She’s not the least bit afraid to use her body to communicate what she’s thinking or what she’s feeling.
That’s when it hits me. She’s shared a million tiny secrets over the course of the last week, and she’s said them all with her body. When we make love, when she cooks, when she snuggles against me and we watch TV.
She’s incredible.
The instrumental music shifts and the beat picks up and, yeah, I’m not ashamed to say that I recognize the pop princess my pop princess is now shaking her ass to.
The crowd knows their Taylor Swift. They’re clapping, cheering, and dancing along with the moves Becca beautifully executes.
She drops her head back and laughs—a sound of pure joy—when a little girl steps into the middle of the circle and starts dancing with her.
Becca meets my eyes over the crowd as she lifts her arms, drops her hips, and swivels. I uncross my arms and clap, as mesmerized as the rest of them. We’re all eating out of the palm of her hand.
Or maybe I have been since the beginning.
She finishes with a flourish, doing a dramatic bow as the song fades to an end. More clapping accompanies more cash in the hat.
She scoops up the money, puts the hat on the head of the boy I bought it from—he gives her a sheepish smile—and stuffs the bills into her pocket. She delivers a hug and allows a photo with the little girl who danced with her before waving farewell to her fans.
At her side, I put an arm around her and pull all that warmth against me. She’s a little out of breath. Lately there’s nothing I’ve been enjoying more than the sound of Becca catching her breath.
“That was incredible.”
“Thank you.” She wraps one arm around my waist, coming so close our hips bump as we walk. “Now that I’m independently wealthy, can I offer to take you for dessert?”
“No. Save that money for the restaurant you open. Or, hell, the dance studio you build.”
“How do you do it? Own two bars and have a life? I’ve seen the way Tad burns the candle at both ends—and then buys more candles and lights those up too.” She shakes her head. “It’s a nightmare.”
“Hire people you trust. Don’t hover. That’s how I do it. I put in a bid for another location about a week and a half ago.” The new place is close enough to my other two that I can check in, though it’s going to need a lot of work inside. “It used to be a coffeehouse. I want to turn it into a restaurant and bar like McGreevy’s. But with a different style.”
“Sounds amazing.”
“It doesn’t have to be as miserable as your brother makes it look, Princess. Some of us can handle running a business alongside burying a family member and still appreciate that life is pretty fucking great.”