Blue Notes by Carrie Lofty Page A

head as he sweeps his fingers down my throat, between my collarbones.
    Then he straightens to his full, impressive height and meets my eyes, his demeanor businesslike. “I don’t need a spy, Keeley. I need an ally. She’s gifted. You saw that. I don’t want that wasted. And I don’t want her hurt.” He pauses. “She could use a friend.”
    As if by agreement, we both glance toward Adelaide and the professor. She happens to look up. Her brows lift. She grins like a conspirator who just got found out, but who has enough dirt on her fellow conspirators that she doesn’t have to worry. Then she’s back to the professor, her hand on his upper arm.
    “But everybody loves her.”
    “That’s part of the problem.”
    “What makes you think I can keep up with her, as you called it?”
    “You’re keeping up with me just fine,” he says, his smile regaining its playfulness. “That’s a start.”
    I want to laugh. That’s like saying a girl in a parasailing rig kept up with a speedboat. No choice in the matter.
    “And now you’re back for more. Are you going to play again tonight?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “I’ve decided, you know. I’m not going to waste my breath one way or the other.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “Either you will, in which case I don’t need to say a thing. Or you won’t. I’ve had it up to my eyes with Adelaide today. I don’t have the energy to play cat and mouse, luring you toward where you belong.”
    His arrogance doesn’t surprise me, but the contradicting emotions in his voice do. The cat and mouse reference feels like a double entendre from the man who’s spent the last ten minutes flirting with me, kissing me. Then, in the same breath, we’re back to worrying about his sister. Has he been arguing with Adelaide? About Dr. Saunders? He sounds tired. This is the first crack in the overwhelming, superhuman impact of Jude. Suddenly I realize that yes, he has a life outside of Yamatam’s, a life beyond the games he insists on playing with me.
    Still . . .
    What if all I’ve needed to get onstage all these years was just the right combination of goading and the urge to impress someone who seems above being impressed? Jude certainly gave me both in spades. He could do it again without a second thought. I don’t know if I can muster up the courage to do it on my own. Not yet. It doesn’t make any sense, considering what I’ve seen and done and been. But what I’ve seen and done and been has taught me that not a lot in life makes sense.
    “You don’t have the time,” I echo. “Then why are you here? Don’t you have better things to do than slum it at a college jazz dive?”
    “This was my dive once,” he says with a return of his terseness. It grinds all of the smooth and charming out of his New Orleans accent, leaving his words a low growl. “But things were different then.”
    He strokes his thumb up the inside of my wrist. One place of contact. One touch of skin to skin. I try to hide my shiver. He sees it. I can tell, not because of a smile or some tease, but because of his eyes. A gleam of light from the stage has crossed his face. I can see every detail—the length of his lashes, the lines at the corners that seem so harsh and out of place for a man of only twenty-six, and even their hypnotic blue color. They’re even darker, more intense, probing, as he pets my skin. He can probably feel every rampaging beat of my blood.
    “I came here when I was an undergrad, before the whole city got turned inside out. Before . . .” He stops short and shakes his head. I know that feeling, when I have to swallow words, knowing just how revealing they’ll be—more than just facts. But he hasn’t looked away, and I can’t . He leans close and whispers against my cheek, “A whole lot of good memories got swallowed by the bad. But you, sugar . . . You’re making it feel brand new.”

 Thirteen 
    I chicken out of performing.
    Maybe I knew I would even before I left