Love on Cue by Catherine Hapka

Author:Catherine Hapka
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Published: 2009-08-20T04:00:00+00:00

“Argh!” I cried as my voice cracked—again—on the high note near the end of the show’s title song. “I just can’t hit that one!”

“You can do it. You just need to let go and trust yourself to hit it.” Nico tapped out the note on the music-room piano. “Try it again.”

I sighed. It was Saturday afternoon, and we’d already been at it for more than an hour and a half. I wasn’t sure how Nico had procured the keys to the music suite, or permission to be there on weekends. But I wasn’t going to ask. “Don’t you have somewhere to be? Band practice or work or something?” I asked him, remembering him mentioning something about that at the beginning of our session.

“Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“No!” I blurted out before noticing his sly little half smile and realizing he was joking. I blew out a sigh. “Um, sorry. Guess I’m just a little tense.”

“It’s okay.” He stood up from the piano bench and stretched. He was wearing a slightly ratty old Ramones T-shirt, and as he stretched it rode up, revealing a slice of his lanky torso. He had pretty nice abs for such a skinny guy. I looked away quickly, feeling weird about noticing something like that.

“So what am I supposed to do if I can’t hit that note?” I asked.

He finished stretching and blinked at me. “You can hit it,” he said. “Your range is better than you think.”

“Maybe.” I chewed on my lower lip, feeling all my worries about the show welling up inside me. “But anyway, hitting one note is the least of my problems. Ms. Dana said we’re going to start choreographing our dances soon. After that, it’s only a matter of time before she’ll expect me to sing and dance at the same time. What then? I still can’t sing with my eyes open.”

“Oh, is that why you’ve been looking so freaked out for the past couple of days?” Nico took a step toward me. “Okay, then let’s deal with that.”

Before I could wonder when he’d decided I was freaked out, he was standing right in front of me, holding out his hand. “Um, what are you doing?” I asked.

“You’re worried about singing and dancing at the same time, right?” he replied. “Then come on, let’s try it. Let’s dance.”

I blinked, not quite understanding for a second. Then he held out his other hand too, and I got it. He wanted us to dance together. Gulp. Dancing, abs, his noticing how I was feeling—what was going on here, anyway? Once again, I thought back to Calla’s theory that Nico might be interested in more than a student-teacher relationship.

“Come on, don’t leave me hanging, dude,” he joked.

I smiled and relaxed. Okay, all my anxiety about Derek was clearly making me paranoid. Nico wasn’t making a pass at me. He was just trying to help, as usual. I had to trust him. He’d been right about everything I needed to do so far.

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