“No, for real. I’ve been trying to find someone to take the pictures for the last five minutes, and I needed a guy who’d get what I was doing. You’re the first American couple I’ve seen.”
“Congratulations,” Tara said.
“Thanks!”
I picked up my cello case as the guy strode to his fiancée, excited to see how the pictures had turned out.
“Are you?” Tara asked as we resumed walking, this time at a faster clip.
“Am I what?”
“American?” She said it casually, as if she were merely curious.
“Yeah.” I chuckled. “Much to my family’s disappointment.”
“Meaning?”
We came down the concrete steps leading toward noisy Michigan Avenue as I thought about how to answer. “My family has always looked down on Americans.”
Her expression went guarded. “Oh, yeah? For what?”
“This is my South African family, not me. I’ve always been the outsider compared to them. I’m the black sheep.” We’d reached the curb, but when I said that, she glanced up from her phone in surprise. Was that recognition lighting her eyes?
My wealthy and white South African parents had spent their entire lives at the top of the class hierarchy. Their status was so engrained in their personalities, they were unbearable.
I hesitated before answering. “They think Americans lack culture, that they’re unrefined.”
Tara raised one perfectly arched eyebrow. “I’m sure that’s true for some people. But I also know people with a dollar to their name who have more class than people in the penthouses on Lake Shore Drive.”
I couldn’t agree more. It was just one of the many reasons I’d left Johannesburg.
She gestured toward the black SUV with the purple Lyft light on the dashboard. “That’s us.”
I needed to keep it light and steer the conversation away from my family. “You know someone who has a penthouse on Lake Shore Drive?”
She pulled open the car door and gave me an enigmatic smile. “Actually, I know several.”
-9-
Tara
Our Lyft driver was amused when Grant put his cello in the passenger seat and buckled it in, and I was pleased about it too. It meant Grant and I would ride together in the back seat and it’d give us time to get to know each other better. Although the drive wouldn’t take long.
“South Africa, huh?” I said. “I’m sorry, I would have guessed New Zealand.”
A smile tugged across his lips. “That’s at least better than guessing Ireland.”
“Wait, is that real? Someone thought your accent sounded Irish?”
“Oh, I get all the bloody awful guesses. Australian the most, which . . . all right. They’re similar. But I don’t understand when people ask if I’m Scottish or Irish, or . . . from New Jersey.”
I snorted. “New Jersey, oh my God.”
The car pulled out into traffic, and I fiddled with the strap of my seatbelt. How was I going to play this? God, I hadn’t flirted in so long, I was sure to be terrible.
“So,” I drawled, then corrected to not sound like a fool, “you don’t look like a guy who plays cello. How’d that happen?”
His expression hinted he’d told this story many times, but still enjoyed it. “Growing up, my parents despised rugby. All sports, really. Me—being the black sheep—of course it was all I wanted to do. So, I struck a deal. They’d let me go out for rugby if I took up the cello.” His blue eyes gleamed. “I was sure I’d fucking hate it.”