Little Red Gem (22 page)

“
It’s the only thing I
could think of to say that wouldn’t get me slapped in the face,” he
said with a wink. The way he looked at me, I should have slapped
him. But I was struck motionless.

“
Well,” he prompted.
“Aren’t you gonna make me guess something?”

“
Umm. Guess what book I’m
reading for English.”

He laughed out loud and
accidentally brushed my arm with his fingers. Shivers exploded up
and down and I hoped they’d never settle. “That’s too easy. We
share the same class.”

I grinned. “Okay. Guess if
I have a boyfriend.”

This time when Leo brushed
his fingers along my arm I could tell it was intentional. “You do
have a boyfriend.”

“
Really?”

“
Yes, really. Me. When I
saw you up on stage, I felt like you were singing only to
me.”

“
Maybe I was.”

“
Cool.” His eyes had a
dreamy hue, his hair was ruffled, he seemed to be swaying gently to
an invisible tune, and his grin was lop-sided. How could I not fall
in love instantly?

“
Ruby,” my father called.
I ignored him.

Leo took my hand in his.
“We’ve known each other for a long time yet tonight’s like the
first time we’ve ever met.”

My throat was dry. My legs
were weak. My heart was beating fast. I wanted to kiss Leo and I
wanted to be kissed by Leo.

He bent forward, to
suggest he might kiss me. I wouldn’t have minded if he
did.

“
Little Red Gem,” he
whispered.

“
What did you
say?”

“
A little red gem is what
you are.”

I felt a tingle inside my
pants. I’d never had sex, but I wanted to have sex with Leo right
on the floor in the middle of the crowded café.

“
Why? Because my name is
Ruby?” I asked.

He shook his head. “One
day I’ll tell you.”

“
Ruby!” My father was
practically shouting. I spun to face him and in that second I
noticed he wasn’t happy about me talking to Leo. It was as if he’d
read my horny mind. Why else would he be shooting daggers at
Leo?

I swung my gaze back to
Leo and smiled sheepishly. “I suppose I’ve got to go.”

Leo refused to let go of
my hand. “Say you’ll be mine.”

This wasn’t a question. It
was a command. And I didn’t hesitate to respond. “I’m
yours.”

He kissed me lightly on
the lips, right in front of my parents, and when he pulled away his
gaze flicked toward their table.

“
Until tomorrow, Little
Red Gem.”

Chapter Ten

I left Dad and Teri to
sort through a pile of gifts better suited to a toddler and headed
for Rock-A-Lilly’s. Leo greeted my sour mood with a knowing smile
the second I walked through the front door.

He set the guitar aside.
“Parent problems?”

“
That obvious,
huh?”

I hopped up onto the stool
at the counter. He picked up the guitar again and angrily strummed
a chord.

“
Your dad was on the phone
with my mom earlier. He told her I was spending too much time with
his daughter.”

“
How ungrateful of me to
oppose the King’s wishes.”

It felt good that I could
make Leo laugh. “Hey, I’m used to it,” he said. “He got pissed off
when Ruby and I started going out. Suddenly he’s the protective
father. Mrs. Parker had a word in his ear and afterward he chilled
out.”

“
Really?”

Couldn’t have been my mom
advocating for true love. She’d carried a torch for my dad because
she still loved him, but she’d also carried a sword to cut him down
because she didn’t trust him not to break her heart. I guessed
she’d have to sheathe the sword now she was moving to Texas with
him.

Leo shrugged. “He’ll
realize the more he tries to pull two friends apart, the closer
these friends will become.”

I struggled to stifle a
grin; I was sure I detected an emphasis on the word ‘friends’.
There may yet have been advantages to my dad’s
interference.

“
Well, he can butt out,” I
snapped. “He disappears from my life for a million years and now he
has the nerve to order me around.”

Leo winked at me and my
sour mood melted into a gooey pile. Forget about a bath in rose
scented water. If you wanted to calm down a million degrees, have
the love of your life wink at you.

“
He’s under the impression
bad things will come from us spending time together.”

My voice trembled. “That’s
crazy. Like you said. We’re friends.”

Leo’s gaze was on the
corridor but I saw him reach under the counter. When his hand came
out, it was wrapped around a pocket-sized bottle of
bourbon.

“
Leo,” I hissed, flicking
my gaze in all directions. “You can’t drink that.”

“
My girlfriend just died.
I need it to calm my nerves.”

My heart raced at the
thought of Rock walking out and busting Leo with alcohol in his
hand. Rock would have lost his business if anyone blabbed that a
minor was drinking on the premises.

“
Put it away,” I
begged.

Leo took a long swig,
screwed the cap back on, and hid the bottle back under the counter.
Then he picked up the guitar once more and ran his fingers over the
frets. The guitar wasn’t plugged in so there was only muffled
noise, leaving the current of anger in Leo’s voice clearly
audible.

“
You dad has no right
telling me who I can and can’t spend time with,” he
growled.

“
I’m sorry he called your
mom. He got back together with my…my step-mother, Ruby’s mom, and
now he acts like he’s got the lead role of a play called Pretending
To Be A Dad.”

Leo’s attention was fixed
on the guitar, but from beneath his fringe I sensed his eyes shift
to meet mine.

“
Good. Because I doubt I
can get over Ruby’s death without you.”

Or a bottle of bourbon, I
thought dryly, but this thought was pushed out of my mind when a
blast of loud noise attacked me. Charging in its wake was Rock who
had stepped out of the rehearsal room. He shut the door and the
noise was gone. Almost. My heart hammered that he’d rummage around
beneath the counter and find Leo’s secret stash.

“
Stop lounging around Leo,
I need you to set up studio 3,” he yelled – though I was positive
he yelled because he was deaf from the loud music, not from
anything else – but at least he stayed away from the
counter.

Leo set the guitar aside
and hopped off the stool. “Gotta do some work. Wanna
help?”

“
Sure.”

“
If you want a Coke go ask
Lilly. Workers get free drinks.”

I laughed. “In other
words, you’d like a Coke but you’re too lazy to get it
yourself.”

He winked at me again, and
while my mom would have had a fit to know I was letting a boy
influence my moods, and while I knew I should have been riddled
with remorse for wanting to do anything for him – feminism and all
that – I was unabashedly ecstatic to be on the receiving end of Leo
Culver’s winks.

I raced down to the office
where there was a fridge filled with bottles of water, Coke, and
other fizzy drinks. Rock and Lilly didn’t bother with vending
machines, it was a help yourself honest system where you left two
quarters for each drink you took, and the bucket of change was
always overflowing. They made a tidy sum, except Leo drank enough
Coke some days to send their profits into decline.

Lilly was sitting on a
couch reading a magazine when I walked in.

“
Hi Lilly,” I
said.

She looked at me curiously
over the top of her magazine. It was easy to slip into my old life
and forget that nobody recognized me.

“
I’m Audrey, Leo’s
friend,” I explained.

“
Friend? Yeah, not from
this angle.”

She looked me up and down,
and I was taken aback by her hostile scrutiny. I was then struck
dumb when she licked her lips and rubbed her hands across her
breasts.

“
You can’t fool old Lilly.
You two are hot for each other.”

I froze to the spot in
front of the open fridge, the comprehension of why I didn’t like
her running coldly along my spine. Rock was nice. Lilly was vulgar.
I’d no idea what he saw in her. Yet, she had one redeemable quality
– she was honest.

“
Did Leo say something to
you?”

Lilly crossed her
high-heeled feet one over the other. “He doesn’t need to say
anything. The way he looks at you and the way you look at him…more
than words.” She sighed and fanned herself with the magazine. “Rock
gets the same look on his face right before he—”

I cut her off. “I don’t
need the details.”

“
Sorry, I get carried
away. Guess this kind of talk is a bit over your head.”

My cheeks warmed. “I know
about sex.”

“
You’re a kid. You
think
you know about
sex. You know nothing. Anyway, I know Leo’s girlfriend died
recently, and it’s terrible of me to say anything other than ‘sorry
for your loss’, but it’s uncanny. Leo looks at you the same way he
used to look at her.”

The can, which had been
growing warm in my hands, chilled once more. That was two people in
a few hours who had pointed out the same thing. Leo was falling for
Audrey Adams.

“
Isn’t it too soon for him
to, you know, be looking at someone else?”

“
Hey, what can I say? Men
are horny goats. If I kicked the bucket tomorrow, I’d be naïve not
to expect Rock to be on top of the cutest filly around.”

The phone rang and Lilly
swung her legs off the couch and got up to answer. Too stunned to
speak or move, I was left standing in front of an open fridge,
hating her for her honesty, but also quietly admiring her. Leo
shouldn’t have been looking at me the way I wanted him to. It was
too soon. In fact, a hundred years from now would have been too
soon.

The bunch of conflicting
nerves in my stomach had the allure of rotten fish. Wearily, I
dragged myself into the recording studio where Leo was knee-deep in
cables. When he spotted me, he tossed the cables to the floor and
rushed over to take the warmish Coke out of my hands. He guzzled it
down. Afterward, he looked at me questioningly but I wouldn’t
oblige. At last he tossed the empty can into the trash and kicked
the tangle of cables on the floor.

“
This mess isn’t
cooperating,” he said. “Must be why they get the plebs to deal with
them. Hey, wanna see a grand piano? It got delivered yesterday for
a recording session. Must be for someone famous.”

Leo grabbed a hold of my
hand and dragged me through a set of carpet-covered doors. There,
in the middle of the oak-paneled room sat a glossy black grand
piano.

“
Isn’t she beautiful?” he
said with an admiring sigh.

When I was Ruby, I’d
practiced piano once a week. Practice had been three times a week
but school had put more and more pressure on my time so I’d had to
cut back. I’d never played on a piano this stunning, though. My
fingers ached to stretch themselves over the keys, but my left
wrist was encased in plaster and I didn’t know any one-handed
pieces.

Leo walked over and sat on
the stool. He patted the seat beside him and promptly ran his
fingers over the keyboard.

“
Listen to those
acoustics.”

“
You know how to play?” I
asked.

Tentatively, with Lilly’s
words still ringing loudly in my ears, I took the seat beside Leo.
I snuck a peek – was he really staring at me the way Lilly
reckoned? – to find he was concentrating on the keys so my
curiosity went unquenched. He started playing
Moonlight Sonata
by Beethoven and I
was struck speechless. Firstly, I didn’t know Leo was skilled on
piano. Secondly, his musical tastes usually ran to the dark side.
This was a new side to Leo, and I wasn’t happy that Audrey was the
one he was showing it to. Maybe if he’d shown this side to me, I
wouldn’t have doubted his love.

“
You’re sweeter than I
remember,” I muttered.

“
Huh?”

I hadn’t realized I’d
spoken out loud. “The song, it’s sweeter than I
remember.”

His fingers continued to
dance across the black and white keys and I became swept up in the
airy music. His next words snapped me out of the
reverie.

“
Did you know Ruby was
pregnant when she died?”

I couldn’t have felt
sicker in the stomach if he’d asked me to murder someone’s
dog.

“
The doctor told Ruby’s
mother. Ruby’s mom told Ruby’s dad. Mr. Parker considered it his
duty to inform my mother. He also considered it his duty to call me
every name under the sun and then some.”