Chapter Thirty

The Small Wonders

“I’m Darius Carver,” he told the bouncer, flashing his press pass. He pointed a thumb back at me. “And she’s with me.”

The bouncer shrugged, letting us both inside.

I glanced around the loud, crowded club. I’d called Darius this morning to set up a date to talk at my house (Dax was going to be out—otherwise, yikes!). Darius had agreed to the tête-à-tête at my house before changing venues on me. There was a band he wanted to hear that was doing “really revolutionary stuff—new wave meets jazz meets big band.” Apparently I, the woman who still thought the Talking Heads were cutting-edge, was going to “love it.”

Eh, who knew? Maybe I would. I was just pissy because I was about to attempt a very difficult conversation in a noisy bar.

“I know the manager here,” Darius said, neck craning. “Oh! There he is. Joe!” Grabbing my hand, Darius led me over to one of the only people about our age in the whole building. “Joe!”

Joe shook Darius’s hand. “Great to see you.”

Darius gestured to me. “This is Annie. We were hoping you could get us a good spot tonight.”

Joe looked me up and down, and I squirmed under his lecherous gaze. There was a reason I stopped going to clubs like these when I hit thirty. “Oh, absolutely.” He pushed through the crowd, leading Darius and me up to the front, to a roped-off section of tables marked VIP just to the left of the stage.

As we took our seats, Darius leaned in and whispered, “You didn’t think I’d make us stand the whole night, did you?”

I laughed. “I kind of did, yeah.”

He perused the drink menu. “My bumping around in a crowd of young strangers days are over.”

“Yeah. Mine, too.” I respected that Darius was mature enough to recognize that sitting during a concert was an underrated thing. We could be cutting-edge and old at the same time.

“I wanted to talk to you about something!” I yelled over the thumping bass of the DJ.

Darius didn’t hear me. The waitress came by, and he pointed at the menu to place our order. I couldn’t hear what he picked for me.

I opened my mouth to try again, but Darius jumped in first. “How’s Gayle doing?” he shouted.

“Gayle?”

He nodded.

“She’s doing well!” I yelled. The music cut out at just that moment. “She’s doing well,” I repeated more quietly.

He frowned. “I went to visit her yesterday, and she looked so frail. Her husband said they gave her a…throm…something?”

“Thrombolytic,” I said. “Her husband’s the real hero. He noticed the symptoms early and was able to get her to the hospital fast, which is excellent because it increases her chance of a full recovery. Still, it’s possible she has a long rehab ahead of her. We just don’t know yet.”

“But she’s going to make it,” he said, his eyes watery.

I squeezed his forearm. “She’s going to make it.”

He blew out a long breath. “Good.”

“I didn’t realize you two were that close.”

A guy came out and closed the stage curtain.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “She’s my mentor. She found me when I was doing man on the street spots in Dubuque.”

“Iowa?” I accepted my drink from the waitress. Darius had ordered me a glass of red wine. Not my first choice for my one drink of the night, but not the absolute worst pick he could have made. Kelly’s True Love’s Kiss probably would’ve fit that bill. I tamped down the wave of sadness washing through me. Kelly and I no longer had anything in common. It was time to start getting over that.

“Iowa,” he repeated.

I took a sip of my wine. “I can’t picture you in Iowa.”

He chuckled. “You couldn’t picture me on the farm, either.”

“Still can’t.” Okay, now was the time to bring up Rob’s proposal. I opened my mouth.

“So, hey…” Darius leaned across the table. “I have an important dinner coming up. It’s a Wednesday, the thirty-first—”

My stomach dropped at the mention of that date. “Oh yeah? The thirty-first?” I shrugged, casually scratching the back of my neck.

“The head of the news department is organizing a magnificent summer bash at the Brookfield Zoo.” He laughed. “We’ll be dining near the giraffes.”

I focused hard on swirling the wine in my glass. “That sounds like fun.”

“So, you’d like to attend?”

“To watch a giraffe steal my dinner roll? Who wouldn’t?” I glanced up, and my eyes met his wide, hopeful ones. My chest tightened in advance of having to deliver this bizarre bit of information. “But I, um…well…I have to tell you something.”

At that moment, the curtain onstage opened, revealing a cache of shiny instruments from guitar to drums to keyboard to saxophone.

“Here we go!” Darius jumped up, the crowd enthusiastically cheering for the band, for this group apparently called Farouche, who were making their way out onto the stage.

I shifted around the table so I was next to Darius. The roar of the crowd resonated in my chest cavity, and I could barely hear myself think. “I wanted to tell you,” I shouted, “I saw Rob last night—you know, the other guy?”

I could feel Darius’s eyes on me.

The band all wore the same silver jumpsuits and white New Balance sneakers. They kind of resembled a cult, actually. The lead singer, a guy with chin-length bleached blond hair, leaned into the microphone and said, “We’re Farouche.”

The crowd roared.

“Rob proposed to me last night!”

Then the drummer counted the band off, and they launched into a song that was, yes, somehow new wave and house and big band. It was actually really amazing.

“He proposed to you?” Darius asked.

“Yeah!”

I took a moment to scan the various members of the group—the small woman on bass, the very tall, bearded man on lead guitar, and the hot guy with the dark hair and stubble on the keyboard.

“He proposed to you?” Darius said again. “What did you say?”

Suddenly, I barely heard him. I was too busy leaning forward, squinting, peering up at the dour and serious keyboardist tapping his foot in time to the music.

Yes, it was him. It was Dax.