This girl with the alabaster skin had walked out of an early aughts Jet video in his head, in black and white. Setting off his nerves like a jangly tambourine, his heart knocking between snare and bass drums right before the catchy guitar intro.
Don’t let her get away.
Dude, let go of her!
His brain was misfiring opposing thoughts as he dropped her wrist like the silver bracelets around it had seared his skin. He never put his hands on the fans.
Although he had a feeling this girl wasnota fan. Particularly of him. But she might be his only hope of ever making it to the gig on time.
“Sorry, but…Newton’s Law. You put it in motion.”
Her father’s so-calledmenschwas hot on her heels as she strode toward the exit. What the hell was he even talking about?
“A body at rest –” Infuriatingly, he moved forward to get, and hold, the heavy door for her. “ – stays at rest. Unless an outside force acts on it. Newton’s First Law of Motion,” he added.
“A body at rest,” she echoed, “at a rest stop?” Her cheeks flamed hotter once the cold air hit them. “I wasn’t even sure you were alive.”
She didn’t like this awake, chivalrous side of him, getting allBill Nye the Science Guywith his justifications. Was she supposed to have just sat beside him and waited patiently for his Royal Highness to wake up from his disco nap?
She had places to be and a list of items to cross off.
Avi walked in front of her, hands jammed into his sweatshirt pockets and shoulders hunched. He turned so the wind was at his back. Perhaps hehadbeen mugged after all. Why he had no coat – or close-toed shoes – were questions she wasnotgoing to ask.
Not her circus, and definitely not her monkey.
Yet somehow, this creature had gotten out of his pen, escaped from his keepers at the rock-n-roll zoo, and had called her father.
And nowshewas in charge of getting him to Erie.
Still walking backward, he snapped his thumb and ring finger, all the while pointing at her. “You’re…the older one.” He squinted. “Lizzie?”
“Nope.”
Hard nope. She was not going to help him beyond the two hundred and thirty-eight miles it took to get rid of him, and then she was going to put another four hundred miles between them. And hopefully another ten years or more before she even had to think of him again. The sooner, the better.
“Bertha’s parked over there.”
He brightened. “So Cantor decided to come after all? I can’t believe he still has that beast! I hope he’s keeping her warm.”
Leah’s steps slowed. It was evident this guy knew nothing of the last ten years of her family dynamics. Starting with her name. And the fact that her father hadn’t been able to drive in quite a while. Yet Avi must’ve clearly been remembering the first incarnation of Bertha, her dad’s 1979 Buick LeSabre.
Much to Lucas’ embarrassment and Lizbet’s horror, their father never once drove a new car off the lot, always content to be about two decades behind the times. Leah never minded the various land boats her father had a fondness for nicknaming ‘Big Bertha.’ Especially that LeSabre and all its associated memories. It had been the mode of transportation to countless dance classes, ball games, ice cream runs, temple youth trips, and visits to congregation members throughout Jacobsdale for various reasons.
It hadn’t occurred to her that Avi Wolfson had been harboring his own memories of it as well.
She beeped the key fob for the Subaru and watched his face fall. “No, this is Bertha 3.0 – we’ve at least made it into the new millennium now.”
“Youareone of the Gellman twins, though?”
Avi seemed determined to figure it out before getting in the car. He’d already ruled out Lizbet…and if he was implying she was the twin with the mustache, she was gonna knock him on his ass into that slush-filled pothole.
Or at least not tell him he was about to walk backward right into it.
A yowl and a string of curses emanated from his mouth as the icy water sloshed up to his ankle. Leah immediately felt terrible.
This was not who she was, wishing ill – and hyperthermia – on anybody. Even if that anybody was a larger-than-life somebody like Avi Wolfson.
“I’m Leah.”
