Truly, Madly, Like Me - Jo Watson Page 0,68

that a few people turned and looked at me.

“Sorry,” I mouthed when someone gave me a dirty look.

“This is their best song,” she mouthed back, and then held her finger over her lips and shushed me.

I looked back at the stage. Faizel and the drummer had left. Mark was alone and he’d changed over to an acoustic guitar. I watched, fascinated, as he pulled a stool up towards the front. He sat down on it and started strumming. A soft, sad, haunting tune came out. The lights dipped lower, the room darkened. Small beams from the footlights shone all patchy and uneven, casting dappled shadows across his face. He strummed the guitar with so much feeling and my eyes were drawn to his fingers, dragging slowly over the strings.

There was something so erotic about watching the tips of his fingers gliding and catching on the strings like that. I looked around the room, and it was clear that almost every female there was thinking the exact same thing.

A collective in-breath was taken as every single woman in the room gazed at him. This acoustic guitar solo was clearly more than simply that. It was one of those elaborate mating dances and displays that birds of paradise give while trying to lure a mate. This was like an advertisement for more . . .

Oh shit, it was working on me a little bit. That pitter-patter on my diaphragm was back. Tiny and furtive, fairy feet. I felt my body leaning in, watching him, every single move he made. The small flick of his hair, the way he moved his neck back and forth to the beat, the way he tapped his foot on the ground. I felt a nudge in my ribs, which zapped me back to reality.

“Told you,” Samirah whispered to me.

I turned to her. “Isn’t there something about him that looks familiar to you?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Nope! So many people have said that, though I don’t see it.”

I looked back at Mark and tried to place this strange feeling of familiarity that he seemed to wield. But couldn’t. I scanned my mind, but it was nowhere. The veil of almost-familiarity started to lift though and soon something else started to emerge. An entirely different picture of Mark. An entirely different Mark. I was totally shocked by this revelation, because trust me, I had not seen this coming, at all.

Suddenly, strangely, Mark was just about the hottest man I’d ever seen in my life. Not hot in that typical way, but hot in a way that seemed to rise up from the inside and spill out of him. His once unremarkable brown eyes were like pools of warm, melted dark chocolate now. Thick and creamy hot chocolate on a cold night. His floppy hair was suddenly something I wanted to sink my hand into, run my fingers through. I wanted to grab a handful of it so badly, like that feeling when you see something cute, like a chubby baby, and want to bite its foot.

I was overcome with a wildly irrational need to bite him on the neck and then squeeze his cheeks so hard. And his body . . . Oh my God. His height suddenly seemed sexy and dizzying and you just wanted him towering above you, looking down at you, pushing strands of hair out of your face. And his soft hands, the way they strummed the guitar strings—well, you could imagine them strumming all sorts of other things.

I looked around again and a part of me felt terribly embarrassed to be clearly feeling the exact same thing every woman around me was feeling. I shook my head, tossing all these ridiculous thoughts out.

I scoffed loudly. I would not be taken in by any of this Mark silliness . . .

Oh, who was I kidding? I was totally taken in.

CHAPTER 34

“Can I get you guys some drinks?” Mark asked, after he’d finished playing. He was standing by our table now, hair a little wet around the hairline from sweat, cheeks reddened and his eyes wide and shining brightly. It had taken him ages to even get to our table. He’d had to weave his way through an army of adoring female fans. There didn’t seem to be any particular demographic to the adorers either. From younger fans who were all red-cheeked and coy-smiled, to older ones who seemed equally smitten.

“Sparkling water for me,” Samirah said.

“Same for me,” I echoed.

Mark leaned across the table