The Mathematics of Love ✔

Chapter 24

“Great. We’re still lost and the guy thinks it’s a convenient time to play the bongos?” With a sigh, I ducked my head into the store, nodded toward the storeowner before I realized he was snoring, and made my way past rows of violins and violas, searching for a mop of black hair bobbing among the instruments. “Alexander!”

“I’m here by the keyboards,” I heard him call back faintly. He played a few keys.

“May I ask…how this has anything to do with anything?”

Alexander played a few warm-up chords. “Follow your heart, Nancy.”

“Oh, solid advice. I was just thinking that finding a map would make this getting home thing entirely too easy,” I said sarcastically. I scooted around a table of classical piano books to find Alexander sitting in front of a sample keyboard, his forehead slightly wrinkled in concentration.

“Song suggestions?” he prompted when I sat down next to him.

“‘Home’,” I said pointedly.

“Too bad. I don’t take song suggestions.” Before I could say another word, Alexander pressed his fingers to the keys and began to play. His hands danced over the keyboard to an unfamiliar but beautiful tune, easily reaching complex chords, as if his fingers were made to play the instrument. Even the storeowner stirred enough in his sleep to give an enthusiastic snore.

When he finished, Alexander closed his eyes for a moment and then stood up like nothing had happened. “Okay. Let’s get going.” He looked at me expectantly when I didn’t move.

“O…kay?” I managed to spit out in my surprise.

He held out his hand to me, his fingers inviting me to take them. “Unless you want your parents to assume the worst and have all of Indianapolis’s police department out on a manhunt for us.”

“What—of course not,” I said absently, still very confused by and yet strangely attracted to Alexander’s keyboarding abilities. I took his hand. He lifted me to my feet with a little too much power, causing me to stumble into him and his arm to wrap around my waist.

Face flaming, my immediate reaction was to pull away, but Alexander held me firmly to him. When I looked up at him, his face was turned away and the back of his neck was all red again.

“Um…Alexander?”

“Let’s just stay like this,” he whispered, pulling me closer. I considered resisting, but my body refused to listen to my brain. Against my better judgment, I leaned into Alexander’s sturdy shoulder and snuggled a little against him. He felt like warmth and safety. I couldn’t stop my body from tingling from the top of my head to the tips of my toes.

“If you were playing the keyboard to impress me, I was…not…impressed,” I lied after a while.

“Got it.”

“We’re still lost and stuff.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“This isn’t my answer to…you know…your confession.”

“Mm-hmmm,” Alexander murmured. Just when my heart had been beating fast enough for long enough that I thought it was just going to give out, he pulled away and coughed, avoiding my gaze. He indicated the door. “Shall we?”

Alexander held the door open for me as I stepped back out into the freezing air. There was an awkward moment while we both pointedly didn’t look at the other, but then Alexander broke the silence. “Sorry for the random detour, but don’t you get the strangest urge to play on keyboards whenever you see them?”