shifting away from the bar and toward me. “You play the bar beautifully.”
I rolled my eyes at him.
“I’m serious, actually. If you got into it, I bet you could be really good.”
“You probably say that to all the girls,” I said, waving my hand at him, dismissing the compliment. I gracefully picked up my gimlet and slowly brought the filled-to-the-brim glass to my lips. It was sweet and clean. Just the littlest bit dizzying.
“Just my students,” he said.
I looked at him, confused.
“Now seems like a good time to tell you I’m a music teacher,” he said.
I smiled at him. “Ah, that’s awesome. What a perfect job for you.”
“Thanks,” he said. “And what about you? Are you some big travel writer now? My mom said she saw your name in Travel + Leisure.”
I laughed. “Oh yeah,” I said. “I was. I did that for a while. But, uh . . . no, now I’m actually running the store.”
“No way,” Sam said, disbelieving.
“Shocking, I know,” I said. “But it’s true.”
“Wow,” he said. “Colin Blair’s greatest wish. There’s a Blair running Blair Books.”
I laugh. “I guess dreams do come true,” I said. “For my dad at least.”
“But not for you?” Sam said.
“Not the dream I originally dreamt, as you know,” I said. “But I’m starting to think you don’t always know what your dreams are. Some of us have to run smack into one before we see it.”
“Ah,” Sam said. “Cheers to that.” He tilted his glass toward me and I clinked mine against his. “May I change the subject ever so briefly?” he said.
“Be my guest,” I said.
“You seem to get even more beautiful with time,” he said.
“Oh, stop it,” I said, pushing his shoulder away with my hand.
I was flirting. Me. Flirting.
It feels so good to flirt. No one ever talks about that. But in that moment, I felt like flirting was the very thing that made the world go around.
The excitement of wondering what the other person will say next. The thrill of knowing someone is looking at you, liking what they see. The rush of looking at someone and liking what you see in them. Flirting is probably just as much about falling in love with yourself as it is with someone else.
It’s about seeing yourself through someone’s eyes and realizing there is plenty to like about yourself, plenty of reasons someone might hang on your every word.
“So you’re a music teacher,” I told him. “Where do you teach?”
“Actually, not far from Blair Books. I’m just over in Concord,” he said.
“Are you serious?” I said. “You’ve been that close by and you never stopped in to say hello?”
Sam looked at me and said, very sincerely, “If I had known you’d be there, I assure you, I’d have rushed over.”
I could not stop the smile from spreading across my face. I grabbed my gimlet and took a sip. Sam’s beer was almost finished.
“Why don’t I get you another?” I said.
He nodded and I waved the bartender over.
“Your most expensive beer on the menu,” I said to her gallantly. Sam laughed.
“That’s a pretty rich stout, are you sure you want that?” the bartender asked.
I looked at Sam. He put his hands in the air as if to say, “You’re in charge.”
“That’ll be fine,” I said to her.
She left and I turned back to him. We were both quiet for a minute, unsure what to say next.
“What’s your favorite song to play?” I asked him. It was a stupid question. I knew it when I asked it.
“On the piano?”
“Sure.”
“What do you want to hear?” he asked.
I laughed. “I didn’t mean now. There’s no piano now.”
“What are you talking about? We played ‘Chopsticks’ right here on this bar.”
I laughed at him, game to play, but suddenly having a hard time remembering what songs are played on a piano. “How about ‘Piano Man’?”
Sam made a face. “A little on the nose, don’t you think?”
“It’s all I could think of!”
“All right, all right,” he said. “It’s actually a good choice anyway because it has a nice bit of show-off flair at the beginning.”
He straightened his posture and rolled up his sleeves, as if he were playing an actual instrument. He moved a napkin out of the way and then picked up my drink. “If you could please get this out of my way, miss,” he said.
“Certainly, sir,” I said.
He interlaced his fingers and stretched them out away from his chest.
“Are you ready?” he asked me.
“I was born ready.”
He nodded his head dramatically and began to