of sight before gasping. “How long has he been here?”
I bite my bottom lip, finding it extremely difficult to tear my eyes away from his intense stare. “I’m not sure. I just spotted him.”
She grabs my arm and leans toward me, yelling over the music, “I thought you said he wasn’t coming?”
I shrug. “That’s what he told me.”
“Looks like he changed his mind,” she says.
“It appears so.”
Instinctively, my body pulls itself in his direction. It’s so superficial to say this, but the first thing I always notice about Ace is how insanely beautiful he is. The next thing is his intensity. He’s always so focused and serious, and it’s very alluring. I want to know his secret. I want to know what he’s hiding, and why he’s so hot and cold with me.
“Iris? Where are you going?” Birdie asks as I take a step toward him. “Don’t you think it’s a bit stalkerish for him to come here and not approach you, but just stare at you like that?”
I pull away from her grasp and laugh as I try to reassure her. “I invited him. I’m glad he’s here.”
Bodies swaying to the beat block my path, and I push, pull, and squeeze until I make it off the floor with Birdie close on my heels. My eyes dart back to the spot where I last spotted Ace, but he’s nowhere to be seen.
I stand there, completely frazzled as I shove my hair back and search the sea of faces one by one, hoping he’s merely just moved. A long sigh pours out of me as Birdie finds her spot next to me.
“Where did he go?” Birdie asks as she begins looking around too.
“No clue,” I answer and am glad for the loud country music covering the pouting tone in my voice. “I don’t know why he would come here and then run away when he knows I’m about to approach him.”
“You should stay away from that guy, Iris. He seems like nothing but a bunch of trouble to me—sexy trouble, but trouble nonetheless.”
She’s right, but that doesn’t stop this strange pull I feel toward him that lingers inside me. Him showing up here tonight tells me that he is interested in me but is holding back for some reason, and I want to know why.
On the way back home, Birdie cranks up the radio as the DJ continues to go on and on about some pop rocker who’s gone missing, while my drunken brain tries to figure out the riddle that is Ace Johnson.
“They should try looking in every sleazy hotel around where he was last seen. The dude’s probably on some two-week drug binge and doesn’t want to be found.” Birdie snorts in a fit of laughter as the radio starts playing an upbeat song by a band called Wicked White.
The repetitive lyrics of the song quickly get on my nerves and I turn the music back down, not able to handle the annoyance of a song I don’t like in my drunken state. “I hate pop music. It has no soul.”
Birdie laughs, instantly turning the music back up. “You think any song where the music overpowers the lyrics has no soul. Sometimes, Iris, music is just meant to be fun.”
“Singing is a difficult talent to master, and the craft should be respected, not hacked to bits by synthesized drums created by a computer.”
“Says the woman who dreams about being a singer on Broadway.” She nags me all the time for being too picky musically, so her statement doesn’t shock me. “You should lighten up and learn to have fun with music—to not take it so serious all the time—like this band, for example. They’re relatively new on the scene but have already had like four or five songs on the radio. Are they memorable? No. But they’re fun as hell to dance to.”
I know what she’s getting at, but music is special to me. When I discovered I had the gift of singing, it helped my self-confidence so much. People praised me for it, and in some weird way I felt like it would’ve made my mother proud of me too. So, needless to say, singing became serious business to me. It was important to perfect every note and feel every emotion in the lyric, which is why show tunes really grabbed hold of me. They all mean something. They tell a story. Not like pop music, where most songs are written to make money. Pop isn’t written