“Heartbeat,” I said again when she began to follow my fingers on the other end of the piano.

“Like sex again?” she said, grinning as she glanced at me.

“No, not like sex.” I looked down at her hoping that the grin would grow. “Like…like love.”

“Oh,” she said, moving her hands into her lap.

“Why’d you stop?”

“That’s why I can’t play it right.” I didn’t move my hands from the keyboard and she didn’t ask me to. Aly shrugged, her usual unconscious movement and wouldn’t look me directly in the eyes. “I…I don’t know love.”

“Everyone has been loved, Aly,” I said, not wanting to test the waters quite that much.

“Not everyone, Ransom.”

My chest ached a bit then and I wasn’t sure if I felt sorry for her or pissed off at any family that wouldn’t love a girl like her. She was smart and strong and beautiful, and so damn determined. What parent wouldn’t love her? Be proud of her?

But I pushed back that anger and moved one of her hands back over mine. “Come on, slacker,” I nudged her free hand, “No rest for the wicked.” She followed my lead, her arms less rigid, like she was becoming comfortable being so close to me. “It’s not just being in love that counts. That heartbeat comes from the people who love us. The people who are important to us. Being in love is just a bonus to all that.”

“Not sure if I want that bonus,” Aly said turning to face me when I stopped playing. She had an eyelash underneath her left eye and I brushed it away, noticing that tonight her breath smelled like strawberries.

“You don’t want to be in love?” I held my breath, not really sure why I did. Aly shook her head, but didn’t speak. “That’s too bad.”

“Why? Is the sex better or something when you’re in love?”

God, she had no idea, but I wasn’t about to talk about that or how deeply I’d fallen at sixteen or why I’d suddenly felt that tattoo burning on my chest. She would hate me then, and I wouldn’t get such a close view of the small shine on her bottom lip or the smattering of goose bumps that covered her arms and ran up her neck.

“It’s a lot better when you’re in love.”

“Guess I’ll never know,” she said, leaning into me when I brushed my face against her shoulder, inhaling that exotic scent.

“Guess…” I moved closer, something about those lips, the small peek of her pink tongue drawing me closer, wanting to take, wanting to keep taking. “Guess not.”

She was inches from me and I took my hands away from her arms and slid my fingers into all that thick, wavy hair, closing my eyes when I gripped several strands between my fingers. I was going to kiss her, take again something too good, too perfect for me, but just as I grazed my lips over hers, before I could apply any pressure at all, a loud groan came from my parents’ bedroom, followed immediately by the sound of my father shouting over and over “Fuck, Wildcat! Fuck!”

“Son of a bitch,” I said, laughing right along with Aly when the noisy scream hit our ears. “God,” I said, resting my forehead on Aly’s shoulder before I stood. “They’re worse than teenagers.”

“Oh I’m aware,” she said, standing off the bench.

“You’ve heard them?” She nodded. “Do they know?”

“They don’t even try to hide it when they come out of the room and realize I showed up early or Koa and I didn’t spend enough time at the park.” Aly waved off my wrinkled nose, still laughing. “You can’t blame them.”

“Uh, yeah, I can.”

She leaned against the piano, shrugging again. “Keira is still young, so is Kona and they’re stupid for each other and they’ve got a lot of years to catch up on. Besides,” she moved away from the piano and crossed her arms again as though she just remembered she wasn’t wearing a bra, “if I had a man who looked like your dad, I’d keep him in the bedroom.”

It wasn’t something I hadn’t heard before. Women, no matter their age, went a little fangirl over my father. “Typical,” I told her. “But you know,” I said, resting my elbows on the piano. “I look just like him and I’m younger, have more energy.”

Aly shook her head, like she thought I was a little pathetic. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

And when she walked down the hallway, leaving me alone, I couldn’t help having the smallest hope that she’d remember the heartbeat and that one day she wouldn’t laugh when I told her what I could give her. What I thought I wanted to give her, not some dancer, not some faceless woman. Just Aly.

9

I’d done this a thousand times and not once had I been able to leave my car. One thousand and one and I sat still, hands gripping my steering wheel as I watched the family on the porch.

They couldn’t see me, not from the heavy cover of the oak trees and wisteria vines brushing against the street. It was a spot I remembered well, one I’d used so often I was surprised there weren’t grooves in the pavement from my tires. I hid here in the past waiting for Emily to shimmy down the back balcony and hop in my Mustang.

We’d been a little desperate, too caught up in what our hormones and all that stupid emotion did to us. She’d risked being caught, being forced into a pointless, fake infatuation with a guy she’d never love, just to throw off her father. I’d park in this very same spot, hidden beneath that leafy cover sometimes all night. Sometimes for just long enough to touch her, make her come, kiss her soundly enough that Parker wouldn’t even register when she was around him.

But Emily wouldn’t come today. She wouldn’t wait until her father had downed his third bourbon and passed out on the sofa before she’d move down the ivy-weaved lattice. She wouldn’t keep to the edge of the fence line to avoid the motion detector lights.

Emily wouldn’t leave that house again. Not for me.

Maybe it was being around Aly, feeling things I thought would never come to me again, wanting something I knew I couldn’t have, that had led me back to St. Charles watching Emily’s mother and little brother sit on the swing, swaying front to back. I wondered what they talked about, if maybe the turning temperatures would remind them that her birthday loomed. I wondered how often they cursed my name, hated me for everything I hadn’t been able to do for her.

I still didn’t have the strength to tell them how sorry I was.

One thousand and one times, just like the others and I still couldn’t say it so I drove through that thick brush of limbs and leaves and sped away from that large house and the people on the swing. I was late for another practice in Metairie and this time, when I thought about exerting myself in that dance, I didn’t dread it.

You should. You should dread ever seeing her. She’s too good for you.

Aly was too good for me, I knew that, but that knowledge didn’t ease my foot off the gas. Even though I knew how careless it was, even though I knew I could easily let Aly make me forget that I shouldn’t want to be around her, I still drove down the interstate, foot lowering again and again until I left the city behind and found myself at my cousin’s studio.

I probably looked a little obvious, just too damn anxious. My clean polo wasn’t wrinkled, my jeans weren’t faded. Hell, I had even shaved and was wearing my new, black Chucks. Aly would know that I gave a shit about how looked as soon as I walked through the door.

A little worried that I looked like I was trying too hard, I untucked my shirt and pulled a flat brim ball cap from my backseat to hide all the gel in my hair, all the extra time I’d taken to not look like a bum.