X makes a show of looking around. “So you didn’t bring me here to seduce me?” he asks.
I actually sputter. “What?! No!”
He leans back and belly-laughs with his giant hands resting on his stomach. “Got your goat,” he says.
“Leave my goat alone,” I grumble.
“Don’t make it so easy to catch, then,” he says. His dreads are half in his face.
“Also, you shouldn’t flirt with me. I’m not one of your groupies.”
He does the single-eyebrow-raise thing. “Who says I’m flirting?”
“My flirt-detection meter,” I say.
He leans forward. “Where do you get one of those?”
“Same place I got my bullshit-detection meter,” I say, leaning back into my seat.
Another belly laugh from him. “You’re funny,” he says.
“I bet you flirt with everyone,” I say.
He shakes his head. “Not everyone.”
I persist. “But you flirt a lot, right?”
“I like girls,” he says. He turns the vase centerpiece idly with his long fingers. “I especially like the smart, pretty, snarky, slightly confusing ones.”
“Too bad there aren’t any of those around,” I say.
Then I remind myself that he’s probably had no less than ten thousand girlfriends. I wonder if he’s ever loved any of them, if he’s ever had his heart broken. I know for sure he broke Jess’s heart while cycling my bike around studio five.
Like I should’ve done several sentences ago, I change the subject. “What was that last song you played? The one that’s not finished yet?”
Before he can answer, the waitress drops off our food. Chicken and waffles for him. Waffle with berries for me.
He bites into his chicken. “Damn, that’s good.” He devours it in about two minutes flat. “Sorry,” he says, leaning back and wiping his hands. “Being onstage makes me hungry.” He watches me construct the perfect forkful of waffle, strawberry syrup and whipped cream.
I pull my plate in closer. “Don’t even look at my food,” I warn him.
“Don’t worry, I’m good now,” he says, leaning back. “The last song was ‘Black Box.’？”
“What’s it about?”
“A lot of things. But mostly my pops. We used to be close, but things have been messed up with us since Clay died. I don’t see the world the same way I used to, and now it’s like we can’t understand each other anymore.” His voice is a mixture of regret and confusion and anger.
“What happened?”
“We don’t agree on the direction of my future,” he says, using a deep, imperious voice, like a judge pronouncing a verdict.
I take a guess. “He doesn’t want you to be a musician.”
“He says it’s fine for a hobby.” He picks up his fork, drags it across his plate and then puts it back down. “The messed-up thing is, he’s the one who got me my first guitar. He gave me my first lessons. We even had our own band when I was little.”
“You did?” I picture a younger version of X, which is basically the same as this version of X except shorter and rounder and with smaller hands.
“We called ourselves the WoodsMen. Get it? Because my last name is—”
I interrupt him. “Xavier Woods, I’m not an idiot.”
“My middle name is Darius,” he says, grinning. “I’m telling you so you can yell my full name when you’re yelling at me.”
“Thanks, that’s very thoughtful of you, Xavier Darius Woods,” I say, laughing.
“Anyway, me and Pops would do these little concerts for the rest of the family at Thanksgiving and Christmas and stuff.”
“What kind of music?”
“I like to think we defied genre labels,” he says.
“That means you were terrible, doesn’t it?”
He laughs. “Worse than terrible.”
A waitress comes over and refills our water glasses.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to bring us down with all that about my pops,” he says after she leaves.
“No, it’s okay. I know how you feel. I used to be close to my dad too.”
“Yeah? What happened with you guys?”
I hesitate. The only other people who know about this are Martin, Sophie and Cassidy.
“No worries if you don’t want to get into it with me,” he says. But I do want to talk about it with him. He knows what it’s like to miss the way things used to be.