I shrug. “It was my hometown. After college I spent a few years in Athens with a guy I was dating. When that ended … I didn’t really have anywhere else to go. Didn’t want to stay in Athens. So I came home.” The super exciting story of my life. I change the focus of the conversation. “What about you?”

He leans back. “Fort Lauderdale. The bank can’t do without you for a few days?”

I shake my head. “No, they can’t. Why Fort Lauderdale? What do you do there?”

“I sell boats.”

God, this guy is a regular chatterbox. I let my eyes float over the suite, the dining room table we seem more likely to fuck on over eating at, the watch draped over his wallet, a brand I don’t recognize, but one I can guarantee is worth what I make in a year. “You sell boats.”

He chuckles. “Yes.” He slides over, pushing his tray forward, so close to the edge of the bed that I watch it nervously, my attention redirected when his lips close over my neck. “Stop thinking,” he whispers, taking another taste of my neck, this one more aggressive, one that will probably leave a hickey. Super classy, Riley. My mother will be thrilled. I close my eyes. Lean into his mouth. Let his arms slide me up the bed and roll me atop him.

“I was overdramatic last night. What I said to you. About owning you.”

“I figured it was for effect.”

“But this isn’t something I do. I don’t make a habit of fucking strangers.” His words tumble awkwardly over the expletive, as if he isn’t used to swearing.

“Neither do I.” Hell, I live in a town where strangers don’t exist, and I still haven’t done any fucking. Shows what happens when I try to brave life outside of our dirt roads.

“What are you doing next weekend?”

“Nothing.” The lie comes out convincingly. Kasey Craig, my second cousin on some distant family member’s side, is actually having a baby shower on Saturday. Her fourth one in the last six years, yet there will be serious repercussions if I am not present. It is the South, after all. Not to mention, I also have plans to spray the garage for bugs. Super important stuff that my lie pushes to the side. I want this man. I know little-to-nothing about him, but I crave something outside of my world. I’m sick of pantyhose and mutual funds. Potluck dinners and familial obligations. This weekend is the most alive I’ve felt in a decade. Part of it is the location; the majority of it lies atop me. Had moved inside of me. Had woken me at four AM begging for five minutes inside of me, then blessed my world for twenty.

I am thirty-two. I am not dead. I am not in a relationship. I am bored. I am tempted to say, had he asked me to pack up my house and move to Florida right now, I would say yes.

“See me next weekend. I’ll send you a plane. It won’t be the jet you girls flew in on, but it’ll get to Lauderdale easier than commercial.”

I look at him. “How do you know what we came in on?”

“Don’t get too excited. I was at the private airport when you arrived.” He runs a hand through my hair. “Pretty blondes always catch my eye.”

I let out a huff of air. “We’re almost all blondes.”

He smiles, that grin tugging hard at my vulnerable heart. “You leave them all in the dust.”

The blush hot on my cheeks, I lift my mouth, stopped from a kiss by his hand on my chest. “Next weekend?”

I smile. “Next weekend. I’m not promising anything more after that.”

My words may not have promised, but my heart? It is toast. It is already booking wedding venues, picking out baby names, tying unbreakable knots in the bond between his heart and mine. I feel his hand relax, the resistance gone, and he closes the distance between our lips. Surrendering myself to him, I feel the crush of our souls, as our touches say what our lips are not ready for.

I came for vacation. I found, in those hours, the other half of my soul.

The End

At the height of singing the last note, when my lungs were still full and I was switching from pure physical power to emotional thrust, I was blindsided by last night’s dream. Like most dreams, it hadn’t had a story. I was on top of a grand piano on the rooftop bar of Hotel K. The fact that the real hotel didn’t have a piano on the roof notwithstanding, I was on it and naked from the waist down, propped on my elbows. My knees were spread further apart than physically possible. Customers drank their thirty-dollar drinks and watched as I sang. The song didn’t have words, but I knew them well, and as the strange man with his head between my legs licked me, I sang harder and harder until I woke up with an arched back and soaked sheets, hanging on to a middle C for dear life.

Same as the last note of our last song, and I held it like a stranger was pleasuring me on a nonexistent piano. I drew that last note out for everything it was worth, pulling from deep inside my diaphragm, feeling the song rattle the bones of my rib cage, sweat pouring down my face. It was my note. The dream told me so. Even after Harry stopped strumming and Gabby’s keyboard softened to silence, I croaked out the last tearful strain as if gripping the edge of a precipice.

When I opened my eyes in the dark club, I knew I had them; every one of them stared at me as if I had just ripped out their souls, put them in envelopes, and sent them back to their mothers, COD. Even in the few silent seconds after I stopped, when most singers would worry that they’d lost the audience, I knew I hadn’t; they just needed permission to applaud. When I smiled, permission was granted, and they clapped all right.

Our band, Spoken Not Stirred, had brought down the Thelonius Room. A year of writing and rehearsing the songs and a month getting bodies in the door had paid off right here, right now.

The crowd. That was what it was all about. That was why I busted my ass. That was why I had shut out everything in my life but putting a roof over my head and food in my mouth. I didn’t want anything from them but that ovation.

I bowed and went off stage, followed by the band. Harry bolted to the bathroom to throw up, as always. I could still hear the applause and banging feet. The room held a hundred people, and the audience sounded like a thousand. I wanted to take the moment to bathe in something other than the disappointment and failure that accompanied a career in music, but I heard Gabrielle next to me, tapping her right thumb and middle finger. Her gaze was blank, settled in a corner, her eyes as big as teacups. I followed that gaze to exactly nothing. The corner was empty, but she stared as if a mirror into herself stood there, and she didn’t like what she saw.

I glanced at Darren, our drummer. He stared back at me, then at his sister, who had tapped those fingers since puberty.

“Gabby,” I said.

She didn’t answer.

Darren poked her bicep. “Gabs? Shit together?”

“Fuck off, Darren,” Gabby said flatly, not looking away from the empty corner.

Darren and I looked at each other. We were each other’s first loves, back in L.A. Performing Arts High, and even after the soft, simple breakup, we had deepened our friendship to the point we didn’t need to talk with words.

We said to each other, with our expressions, that Gabby was in trouble again.

“We rule!” Harry gave a fist pump as he exited the bathroom, still buttoning up his pants. “You were awesome.” He punched me in the arm, oblivious to what was going on with Gabby. “My heart broke a little at ‘Split Me.’”

“Thanks,” I said without emotion. I did feel gratitude, but we had other concerns at the moment. “Where’s Vinny?”

Our manager, Vinny Mardigian, appeared as if summoned, all glad-handing and smiles. Such a dick. I really couldn’t stand him, but he’d seemed confident and competent when we met.