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I’d known this girl a short time. This quirky, beautiful, honest and practical girl who was unlike anyone I’d ever known. As a pro soccer player, my life had been full of people who told me what they thought I wanted to hear and people who suggested the world should be exactly the way I wanted it just because I had some talent at driving a ball down a patch of grass. But April wasn't impressed by that. She seemed to focus on the present, on the moment—and that was good for me. God knew I’d spent enough time looking back at what I’d been, at what I’d lost.
And when she'd dubbed me the dick wizard…well, I had felt a twinge inside my heart. It had been a feeling that lay next to amusement and charm, somewhere near to sentiment and nostalgia, but squarely in the realm of adoration. Maybe even something deeper, I realized. Only April would accidentally utter such a ridiculous moniker and then try to cover it up with something even more ludicrous. I loved the raspberry stain of embarrassment on her cheeks as she explained that her friend had an ailing lizard. She was beautiful. She was adorable.
I wanted her to be mine.
"You look amazing," I told her when she emerged from my bathroom, her hair in an elaborate knot at the back of her head and the long velvet sheath dress we found for her to wear to the ballet showcasing every curve I’d come to know by heart over the past week.
"Thank you," she said, her eyes running the length of my body and slowly coming back to my face, more heat in them than had been there when the door opened. "You look good too."
I had broken out my favorite suit for the occasion, the dark grey Italian made for me last year. The cloth was fine and fitted, and paired with a deep green tie, I felt confident. The look in April's eyes only buoyed my confidence more.
I held the door for her in front of my house, helping her into the truck as she pulled her long coat tighter around her. "It's freezing!" she laughed, and the sparkle in her eyes as they met mine made my heart squeeze tightly inside my chest.
“I’m not used to the cold,” I told her. “Next time I’ll warm the car before I put you inside it.”
I went around, and once inside the car, I blasted the heater, wishing I’d thought to heat it ahead. It was freezing, and the predictions were calling for snow this week. I knew April had to get back to work, and that when she finished, she'd be leaving, so I didn’t feel guilty about wishing for a storm to dump feet on the area, making it impossible for anything to happen on schedule. I’d take whatever excuse I could get to keep her here now. To spend more time with her. To maybe find the courage to ask her to stay. Or at least to come back.
"Are you ready forThe Nutcracker?" she asked me, a grin pulling her berry-glossed lips wide, and my mind jumping immediately to what those lips would look like wrapped around certain parts of my body.
"Your tone makes me think you're expecting something less than professional quality from this production," I said, forcing myself to think of things besides the fact that April called me "dick wizard" or how much I wanted to go on earning the name.
She lowered her brows and her hand squeezed my arm. "We did see the rehearsal," she reminded me.
"I liked the part where the little boy who is playing the mouse king ripped off a couple of the heads, screaming about how there should only be one head."
"Think he'll do that in the show?"
"We'll have to wait and find out." April had scooted as close as she could to me on the bench seat, leaning into my shoulder as I drove, her hand resting on my thigh. I would have made the drive last forever if I could, but it wasn't long before we were pulling up in front of the little theatre and had to get out or risk being late for the curtain.
Cormac was waiting for us in the lobby, looking put together in a dark suit and a red tie.
"Hey," Cormac said, greeting me with a clap on the back and a handshake. "You clean up pretty good when you try. Hello, April." He kissed April on the cheek as she smiled up at him.
"Are the girls excited?" she asked.
"Over the moon," he confirmed. "Especially since they're the only girls in the dressing room to receive a dozen long-stemmed red roses each." He gave me a wry smile.
"Isn't that appropriate?" I asked innocently as I felt April's eyes staring intently at the side of my face.
"I had to explain what 'break a leg' meant," Cormac said as I helped April off with her coat.
I grimaced. "And maybe," I said, limping slightly toward the coat check. "Maybe 'break a leg' is a little too on the nose at this point." I nodded at my own leg.
"I bet they are thrilled," April said, moving along with me. "I can't wait to see them."
"The roses were from both of us," I said, earning a huge smile from April. I turned their coats into the coat check, not really noticing the action as I took the tickets and stuffed them into my pocket. My mind was stuck on that huge smile, on the very fact of being here with April, feeling like a couple. I liked it. Hell, I loved it. She was like a life raft that had appeared from nowhere atop a broad empty sea where I’d already resolved to spend the last of my days floating until the eventual end came. Instead, here was April, and the hopeless shipwreck of my life had turned into an exotic cruise.
April had my hand as we found our seats, and after the welcome speech from the woman who Cormac explained was the director, the show began.
All in all, it was only an hour long, something I found myself becoming more grateful for as group after group of tiny dancers took the stage. When Taylor and Maddie appeared for theWaltz of the Flowers, I was surprised at the way my heart fluttered and pulsed inside me—like there was a chance it just couldn't hold much more. Taylor kept her face serious, moving her arms with the other girls and performing a very respectable rendition of the steps she'd learned and practiced. Maddie started out with the group, but then she seemed to notice the audience seated out in the dark expanse of the theater, which had been empty during their one dress rehearsal in the space. Her eyes rounded, and gradually she stopped moving, except to take a few steps closer to the edge of the stage and to shield her eyes from the stage lights and peer out into the dark. My heart stuttered—was she scared? I hoped she wasn’t going to cry.
The audience chuckled and cooed appreciatively, but Maddie seemed fixated and had forgotten entirely that she was supposed to be waltzing, turning and leaping with the other flowers.
"Daddy?" She called loudly, searching for him. "Daddy are you ow dere?"
I poked Cormac in the arm, grinning at him as I urged him to answer her.
Cormac got to his feet awkwardly, but then Maddie went on. "Did you bring Uncle Cawan and Auntie Ape-will? I can't see you!"
