"You look like your dog died." Claire looked up from her dinner and leaned her head into the living room. "Duke? You doin' okay dude?"

Our ancient Lab thumped his tail twice on the floor. Claire smiled. "Good." She turned back to me and when she saw I was still glaring down at my plate, she leaned over the kitchen island and poked me with her fork. "What gives?"

"Nothing." I was only picking at the stir-fry I'd helped make for my twin and her. I grabbed my dishes and scraped the leftovers into the trash, then dumped the plates in the sink, all the while ignoring my sister's laser-like glare.

"Is it about how Rachel didn't stay the night?"

"She wouldn't have!"

"I mean." Claire shrugged innocently and jammed a pile of rice into her mouth, then stabbed the air with her fork. "It sure looked like that was where things were headed."

"Shut up. And stop talking with your mouth full, you're gross."

"Bleeehhh!" She showed me a mouthful of chewed up food then swallowed. "Did she get all fundie-cult on you at the last minute? Is that why you're such a grouch?"

I shook my head. "I shouldn't have pushed her so hard."

My sister raised an eyebrow. "She didn't seem to be raising many objections."

"It wasn't right."

"I mean, she did say yes when you invited her."

I looked at my confident, bossy sister. It wasn't often I went to her for advice over, say, Jonah, but this was different. "Hey, you're a girl."

"Well done." She raised a snide eyebrow. 

I rolled my eyes. "I just..." I sighed heavily. "Am I an asshole for wanting a girl like that?"

"A girl like what? A grown ass woman who's been making her own life and her own choices for two years now? Someone who left the only life and family she ever knew and struck out on her own with nothing but her own hustle?" Claire shook her head and softened her voice. "You're not an asshole, Beau. And she's not a child. As long as you stop when she asks you to—"

"Of course."

"Well then? What's the problem?"

I let out a long exhale. Claire was right, what was the problem? Except - "I have no idea what happened to her in there."

Claire lifted one shoulder. "So find out."

"How?"

"Jesus Christ you are such a hopeless man. Of all my brothers, I always thought you had the most sense and yet... here we are."

"Claire."

She opened her eyes wide and let her jaw go slack. "Duh! Ask her?"

I blinked. "It's not that easy."

"I assure you, it is." 

"How do you know?"

She rolled her eyes. "I have twenty-three years of experience as a woman backing me up."

"Okay fine, but like... when?"

Her eyes gleamed in a way that I'd learned to be cautious around. "Beauregard Donovan King, I have never seen you so worked up about a girl before."

She had me there. But letting Claire think she was right about something was dangerous. "That's because you're not around much."

"Bullshit." She dismissed me with a wave. "Go get your girl and ask her questions about herself. Be her friend then her boyfriend or whatever. See how that works?"

I narrowed my eyes at her. "You know I'm right," she sing-songed. Then burst out laughing as I silently grabbed my keys and headed out the door. 

Driving across town reminded me that Finn and I still hadn't nailed down our living arrangements. Right now, I could be across Crown Creek and out on the western border of the county in less than ten minutes, but when we moved out into the woods the way Finn wanted? Shit, I wondered if he even knew how much life would change, how much more of a project everything would be. 

Did I want that change too?

I pushed the question aside once the college came into sight. Far from the leafy campus and stately edifices of your usual university, the campus of Crown Valley College looked like a federal prison. Apparently, the school founders saved on blueprints by just asking a penitentiary designer to just hit copy/paste. It was ugly with a capital U. Even the streaks of color from the setting sun couldn't make the box-like towers look beautiful. Crown Valley earned the nickname Frown Valley, and most of the students commuted rather than be surrounded by its hideousness twenty-four seven. This meant that the parking lots were huge and the bus shelter pretty much an afterthought. It was located in the remotest corner of the campus and to reach it, Rachel would have to cross acres of baking asphalt first. 

I wished like hell I knew which direction she'd be coming from so I could save her the trip, but I didn't know her shifts very well. This was awkward as fuck, but Claire had said to be her friend, and a friend would pick her up from work, so she didn't have to waste an hour riding around on that broken down country bus that only showed up once in a blue moon. And a friend would ask questions about her day and listen in the hopes of finding out more about her. 

Maybe a friend wouldn't sit there in his car, watching the bus stop until she came out, and maybe a friend wouldn't have startled the fuck out of her by leaping from his seat and shouting her name when he saw her, but at least I was trying, right?

"Beau!" She was still clutching her bag to her chest, but the terror in her face had finally quieted down to amused confusion by the time I crossed the road and met her at the bus stop. "What are you doing here?"

I swallowed. She didn't look exactly overjoyed to see me. Maybe my sister had been wrong. What was I doing here? "I thought you might like a ride?" It came out as a question. Fuck, this girl was reducing me to stammering and upspeak. I'd never felt this off-kilter before, not even when I was playing in front of twenty thousand screaming fans at Madison Square Garden. "It's getting kind of hot," I went on, looking both ways along the deserted, no-bus-in-sight road and gestured for her to follow. "I cranked the A/C for you." Then I caught myself. "Unless you like the windows down better? I can do that too. What do you like? Windows or A/C, I mean?" Fuck, STOP TALKING. 

I forcibly clamped my mouth shut and waited for her to speak. After all, listening to her and finding out about her was the whole point of me coming way out here, right?

But she didn't speak. Not for a long, long moment. She must have been really hot, because the pink that had started on her cheeks was now spreading across her chest, right across those places that I had kissed last night. Or maybe it was just the fading pink sky that had her looking so beautiful. 

Shit, I'm staring.  I wrenched my eyes back up to meet hers. "I just wanted to be sure you're okay." I swallowed and looked down, and had to work really hard to force the words out. "If you're not okay with me being here, just tell me and I'll leave, Rachel. I promise."

"Don't leave."

I snapped my head back up so fast I almost gave myself whiplash. "Really?"

Her smile was like the sun peeking out from behind a cloud. First a small twinkle and then shining full strength. "Thanks for coming." She looked like she wanted to say something else, but caught herself and fell silent. 

Feeling unreasonably proud of myself, I nearly sprinted across the road to open the door for her. She followed behind me, still quiet, and I had to catch myself to keep from running my mouth even more. 

Rachel let out a small sigh of relief once she sat down. I'd run the air conditioning down to meat locker temperatures. You could almost see your breath. "It's early in the year for it to be this hot." Oh, awesome, I was making small talk about the weather. The back of my neck heated and I jammed my foot down on the accelerator in frustration. We lurched out into the road in the least graceful bit of driving I had ever done in my life, and I decided that I would count backward from three hundred before I was allowed to say anything else.

The silence in the car was thick and heavy, the silence of waiting, of held breath and furtive glances. It was not friendly silence and I was here trying to make friends with her, to get to know her. 

I was only to eighty-three when I lost it. "How are voice lessons going?"

"Good." She answered quickly enough, and her voice didn't hold any traces of hostility toward me. Why was she so tense then? "Your sister is really nice."

I was about to disagree when I remembered that Claire's advice was why I was here with Rachel in the first place. "She's okay."

"She's teaching me a little more about music that's popular right now." She glanced at me from under thick lashes. "I've got a lot of catching up to do."

Here. Right here would be the place to ask her. But my tongue tripped over my question and I ended up asking the wrong one. "Can you sing something for me?"

She shook her head. "I don't think I'm ready yet."

"Are you sure?" I dared to nudge her with my arm. "You've done it before."

"With a few drinks in me, yeah."

"It doesn't have to be a popular song. How about that hymn you were singing before?"

A quick glance at her revealed that the blush was back again, and this time I had to wrench my eyes back up again before I drove us into a ditch. She was so fucking beautiful, the way she sat there poised and proud, yet shy and vulnerable too. There were so many angles to her, she could be a wholly different person depending on which direction you approached her from. "It's okay." I took a deep breath. "You're right, you're not the performer here. I am."

I cleared my throat and started to sing. 

I didn't know the words much beyond the first verse. But I knew them well enough to startle Rachel. "How sweet the sound," I sang. "That saved a wretch like me."

I let the last line fall away as I pulled into her driveway and slid into park, then held my breath. "Rachel?" She was watching me with her lips slightly parted, the pink high in her cheeks, eyes glittering. In that moment she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen and fuck being friends, I couldn't do it, not with her. "Rachel, I—"

She threw her arms around me and silenced my doubts with a kiss.