“The same way you can easily design a video game. Years of repetition. Also, I have really good ears. When I started trying my hand at covers, all it took was hearing a song once and playing around until I found the chords, then obsessively fixating on it until I could effortlessly play it. It would take me a day to get the bones of a song down and about a full week to absolutely perfect it.”
“You’re a lot more relaxed here, confident,” he notes, and my cheeks flame with a blush that he’s caught on so easily.
“Imagine you’re at work,” I begin with my fingers still twiddling away at the keys for some background noise. “Would you rather be behind the computer or in front of a group of people who basically tell you your game is bad?”
“Okay, fair point,” Brandon says and chuffles.
I play the last of the melody and place my hands in my lap, but keep my foot on the pedal to keep the note going for as long as possible. “Thank you for the outfits. I was going to tell you tomorrow, but since you’re here…”
“You’re welcome. Which one are you gonna wear?”
I turn on the bench and straddle it so I’m facing toward him. “I’m gonna keep that a surprise.”
“Tease,” he jokes and mirrors my position, but surprises me and sets my legs on top of his. The movement drags me closer to him and the mood changes from playful to something more.
“What are we doing?” I ask and trace his face with my eyes.
“You mean right now? Or in general?”
“In general.”
“Well,” he starts and places his hands on my thighs, “I know I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you for weeks. But I also know that our families, mine specifically, would forbid us from being together. Or even cut me out if they knew we were together.”
“Because of my brother,” I interrupt.
“Yeah. But I also know that you’ve lit something inside me that has been dark for the last two years.”
“Brandon…”
His demeanor drops and I fear he’s about to bring reality into our bubble. “If our brothers were still alive?—”
I shake my head and look off over his shoulder. “I don’t want to play the alternate universe game because I know where that leaves us.”
“Hey,” Brandon says and gently hooks his thumb on my chin to keep our eyes locked. “Yes, if our brothers were alive…who knows if we’d have found our way to each other. But I think one way or another, our paths were always meant to intersect.”
“And what about our age difference?” I ask because that’s something that rears its ugly head.
He shrugs like it means nothing. “What about it?”
“You’re older than me, you’re years into a career that you love, and I’m still trying to figure out what I want and where I fit. How are we expected to make anything work?”
“How does any couple make their differences work? They talk it out. They don’t give up. And so you’re still figuring out what you want to do. Who says you need to have everything figured out by a certain age?”
“Yeah, says the guy who loves what he does,” I snark.
Brandon’s lips twitch with a smile, and I narrow my eyes at the movement. “You’ll figure it out, Ang. It doesn’t have to be tomorrow or next week or at the end of the year. If the piano bar is what you want, then it’ll happen. If not, then something else will come about.”
“You make it seem so easy,” I muse.
“It can be. As for what we’re doing, we’ll take this one day at a time, okay? And if you don’t end up madly in love with me by the end of the year, you can dump me,” he says lightly.
“Stop joking,” I exclaim, and he pulls me closer toward him.
“Okay. If I don’t end up madly in love with you by the end of the year, I can dump you,” he tries to compromise with a straight face, but fails.
“You’re ridiculous.”
Brandon sobers up quicker than I’ve seen. “I am ridiculously falling for you, Angela Taylor. I know you said slow and trust me, I respect that. But I realized something about myself—and it’s that I am incapable of doing anything half-assed when it comes to you.”
