She nods.
“I need you to say you understand.” I shut the door, and her eyes lift to meet mine.
“I understand. I won’t dust in there.”
“Good. I have to get going. I’ll be back later.”
Tying my hair into a low bun, I tuck it under a baseball cap and put on my sunglasses. It’s the only way I can go about my business and not be recognized so easily. My instinct is to go to Sofia’s bar,La Oficina, butIndustrial Novemberis still connected to that bar ever since she got together with Bren. It’s a shame because I like the vibe there. And I really enjoy the Spanish rock she plays. A few of the bands do some exciting things, weaving traditional Mexican music into the metal sounds. But I don’t want to risk being photographed, so I find an alternative.
I settle at a table for a few hours, sipping beers, staring at blank pages in my notebook. I’ve written a few songs, and I always hope I can impress Bren and maybe get him to record one, but I always chicken out before actually showing him any of the lyrics. I’m not the seasoned poet he is.
The blank page stares at me, and I want to write something new, but everything that comes out is cheesy and overdone. After thirty minutes of brainstorming, I look at all the words I listed: Cherry lips, golden hair, forbidden fruit, sad eyes, temptation, biting the apple, Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights . . .
It’s all useless and so damned cliché. And all of it is about my fucking housekeeper. I wonder what she’s doing.
The morning passes me by at the bar. I order lunch and eat and keep trying to write something semi-decent. I stare down at the words on the paper in front of me. There’s no way I’ll show Bren any of it.
It’s all crap. I pay my tab, head to the bank to get Lola’s money, and go home earlier than I thought.
Earlier than I told her I’d be.
The house is quiet when I go in, and I’m amazed that the living room is spotless now. She works fast, but I don’t see her anywhere. Maybe she’s moved on upstairs, so I go looking for her there. I head over to Pixel’s side of the house, and the door to my ax room is open.
I smile.
She couldn’t resist.
I tiptoe over and press my back against the wall next to the doorframe, twisting to peek with one eye into the room. She has a rag over her shoulder, her hair up in a bird’s nest bun now, and she’s perusing all the guitars. She reaches to touch one but then stops herself, pulling her hand back. I have to clasp my hand to my mouth to stifle my snicker so I don’t give myself away.
She looks between the axes as if undecided on which she should pick:the blue one, Iggy,I think.Pick the electric blue ax. She scans them all one last time, and I have to tell my heart to be still when her hands gravitate to the ax on the middle of the wall. My Blue Dragon. My favorite guitar. It’s the least expensive of them all, but my most precious—a gift from the closest thing to family I ever had. The guitar I auditioned with forIndustrial November.
My lucky guitar.
Lola weighs it in her hands, runs her fingers over the curve of the side body, then turns it over to the other side. She gasps excitedly when she sees the blue dragon painted on the back of the guitar. She is a vision holding that ax, even if I can only see her profile from where I stand by the door.
She brings the guitar close to her body, my dragon kissing her lower belly—lucky-fucking-dragon—and she holds on to the neck of the guitar with her left hand. The ax pressed close to her body, she draws her fingers down the strings, then taps them gently, but she doesn’t dare strum them. She doesn’t know what she’s doing, and her touch is unsure, but she strums the strings once. Her eyes draw closed, either in pleasure or paying attention to the sound. I’m not sure.
But there is one thing I am sure of: I just witnessed Lola’s very first spark. When her eyes open again, there is light in them for the first time all day as she looks down at my blue dragon in her hands.
I step in under the doorframe and cross my arms as I watch her. She still doesn’t see me even as she puts the guitar back on its display hook. When the guitar is safely out of her hands, I do my best to sound angry.
“I thought I told you to stay out of here.”
Lola jumps, startled, her eyes wide and cheeks flushed. “You said you’d be back at the end of the day,” she stammers out.
“I finished my errands early. It doesn’t matter. If there is one thing I told you not to do, it was to touch my axes.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.” She drops her head.
“Why are you in here?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. Once you showed me what was in here, I just . . .”
“Couldn’t help yourself?” I ask.
She nods, and she looks so embarrassed, it’s adorable. “I’m so, so sorry, Mr. Sommer. I’ll never come in here again. I swear. I don’t know what happened . . .” she trails off.
What the fuck?Mr. Sommer?For some reason, her calling meMr. Sommerre-directs all the blood from my brain to my dick, and I have to scold myself inwardly.She’s seventeen, Karl!