Blue Note – Chapter One

“Christ. Goodnight.”

Niels must have said it a dozen times now.

His mom raised her eyebrows when he said Christ and shut the door in his face.

It was so nice having his mom visit – like an additional circle of hell designed for his suffering.

At least he had a guest room with a door. His bedroom had a door too. That made two gorgeous barriers between him and the bane of his existence.

But he didn’t go into his bedroom. He didn’t have a tv in there. For now, he went to the living room to unwind.

He sat on the couch and took his shoes off. He should watch a movie, relax before he tried to sleep. Otherwise he was just going to have nightmares of his mom all night, and that was the scariest thing he could think of.

Remote in hand, he leaned back and scrolled through movie genres – romance, drama, historical fiction romance, the Austen flicks.

Austen, yes. Then if his mom came out she couldn’t complain. His mom was so into formal perfect, she’d even made him take fencing and dancing lessons when he was a kid. He’d stuck with the fencing, for the fun of it, and the dancing helped with his career, but he wouldn’t have chosen either.

Austen would be perfect.

He had his thumb on the play button when someone knocked on the door.

It was just going to be that kind of night.

He shut everything off before he answered. The only people who ever came over were his band members, and the only one who came over without texting first was his obnoxious downstairs neighbor Hattie, who insisted she didn’t need a phone.

He didn’t need her High Holy Phonelessness commenting on the Austen thing. Having a conversation about romance movies – with the girl he refused to admit he liked – would be a nightmare.

She knocked again, more demanding. Christ. You’d think it was her apartment, not his.

He wrenched the door open. Hattie stood in the hall, her brown hair frizzy and wild, her face coated in a thin sheen of sweat even though it was December and fucking cold out.

How the hell was she so gorgeous?

She jumped at him and threw her arms around him in a bear hug.

“What?”

She never hugged. They had a strict no-touch rule between them to help them ignore the fact that they had feelings for each other. It was going well so far. Denial was a sweet thing.

“I was working at the soup kitchen and that kid that hangs out with Aalok was there, and…” She stepped away from him, enough that he could see she’d been crying. She straightened her shirt, pulling it down over the drawstring waistband of her pants. “Nothing. I just. Hey. What’s up?”

What the actual fuck was that? Get him drunk on her scent and then back up and be platonic again? Act all freaked out and then insist everything was fine?

It was not fine.

He pulled her the rest of the way into his apartment. “Get in here.”

“I am in here,” she said, teasing despite the earlier panicked freak out hug. She turned and shut the door behind her. “I ran. I thought he might be following me or something, so I ran.”

He side-stepped into his kitchen area and grabbed her a soda. He passed it to her. “Who did you think was chasing you? That Luca kid?”

Luca hung out with an old guy, Aalok, who claimed he’d been an airplane pilot. Aalok had been coming to the soup kitchen almost as long as Niels had been running it. He mostly kept to himself, but a few weeks ago Luca started joining him.

For a while, Niels worried that Luca might be a human trafficking victim or something, but Aalok and Luca insisted they were grandfather and grandson. They did look alike – same dark skin tone and puffy lips and sharp eyes.

Hattie nodded her head about Luca. “Yeah. Him.” She sipped the soda. “He…did something weird.”

Niels’ back muscles tensed all at once. Hattie lived here, in Niels’ building, because Niels had found her living on the streets after she ran away from home. She wasn’t a typical runaway: She was running from her dad who had assaulted her a minimum of four times.

It might have been more. It probably was: The odds of getting pregnant every time you were raped were pretty low.

He scowled at Hattie, demanding answers.

“Not assault,” she reassured him. “But…”

Maybe they had different definitions of assault. “Did he touch you?”

“My arm.” She took a deep breath. “Niels. Do you think magic might be real?”

No. He straightened the framed poster on the wall – a blown-up image of an album cover – that Hattie had knocked out of place when she brushed against it.

“Magic like…Hogwarts and shit?”

“Maybe. But like. Other magic.” She tucked her hair away from her face and pulled her denim jacket off. She was staying, apparently. He took her jacket from her and hung it on the extra hook by the door. “He touched my arm,” she said, “and we were somewhere else. Then my mom was there.” Tears welled in her eyes. “She’s not dead.”

Niels had no clue if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Were the tears bittersweet? Frustrated? Relieved? He knew which one he’d feel if he saw his dad again at random.

Hattie seeing her mom had to be a hallucination; the moving somewhere else…it was creepy.

“Did you drink anything at the kitchen?”

“I don’t know.” Her tone dropped as her voice calmed. “I don’t think so. I don’t know.” She took another long drink.

“So you hallucinated.” Niels’ friend Jace had worked tonight too. Tomorrow morning, he would ask him if he’d seen any of this.

“Yeah, probably,” she said. She leaned against him. Another violation of the respectful no-touch clause. “Can I sleep here?”

He stepped away from her. “What?” Christ, no. If his mom saw them together, she’d see right through his façade and he wasn’t ready to discuss his feelings for Hattie. Especially not with her.

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “What if he uses one of those things and comes here?”

One of what things?

“It’s probably the drugs, but what if I had too many?” she said, with a touch of drama. She leaned against the wall, suddenly weaker. “I might OD. I just…please? I’ll take the couch.”

She wasn’t acting high. He didn’t have much one-on-one experience with high people, but enough to know she wasn’t acting high.

Except for the crazy shit.

“What things?” he asked.

She looked off to the side, at the wall. “When he moved places, he had these little bags.”

Didn’t magic people have wands and shit? Not bags…

“Where did he take you?”

She shrugged again. “Just to the park. Then back to the kitchen.”

He was sure it was a hallucination, but this was Hattie. Trying to get her life on track; she was honest and open. And Jace would’ve said something if anyone had touched Hattie’s drink.

“And you saw your mom?” he said, because he was out of other things to ask and he felt like picking at that wound. Her mom abandoned her and her sister right around Hattie’s thirteenth birthday and hadn’t been heard from since.

Hattie hugged herself. He was an asshole for not comforting her. “Yeah. She’s fine. She said she had to leave when I was little because it wasn’t safe. Which, duh. But,” her tone darkened, in a flippant way. “She didn’t bring me.”

She knew it wasn’t safe, but she’d left Hattie behind to face her dad alone.

It wasn’t exactly the kind of thing she would fantasize about her mom saying. A complex explanation about how her mom didn’t have a choice, would be better.

Even I love you and I missed you so much would be better.

“Ja,” he breathed. “You can stay here. I’ll take the couch.”

He wouldn’t touch her at all. The last thing she needed, after what she’d been through, was his clumsy attempt at connecting with her.

“Excuse me, Mr. Poulsen?” she laughed, instantly more relaxed. Christ, she really was freaked out about Luca. He would have to talk to him.

She crossed into the living room, moved his guitar so it leaned against the coffee table, and flopped onto his sofa. “This couch is taken.”

“You’ll sleep better on the bed, and then you won’t fall asleep cutting deli meat at work and chop your hand off, and then you won’t lose your job.”

She scoffed. “I do not sleep walk.”

“No…in this scenario, you were awake cutting meat…and then you passed out and hurt your hand. Like when drivers fall asleep at the wheel, except you were at the deli slicer.”

She sat upright. “I need to go to the hospital.”

“What? Why?”

“One of us is sick. I’m not cutting my hands off slicing deli meat, Niels Poulsen. If your couch is worthy of your godly ass, I think it can take care of mine just fine.”

He glowered at her.

She preened back.

“Fuck you too,” he muttered. “Fine. I’ll sleep like a god and you can sleep like a plaid couch.”

“Mmmm.” She stretched languidly down the length of the sofa, accentuating all her delicious curves and angles he tried so hard not to notice. “I’ll feel so reticulated and fresh.”

“Maybe you’ll get a promotion.”

She laughed and shifted to one side of the couch, leaving room for him. He stared at the seat. He could join her.

If he did, they might accidentally touch.

He stared.

She waited.

His mom was just down the hall, like some kind of self-appointed chaperone of his Christmas.

“Thank you for letting me stay,” Hattie murmured softly. She pressed the red button on the remote and the TV came to life.

Thank God he’d turned off the Austen shit. “Want to watch something?” she offered.

He sat. Way over on the other side of the couch. “My mom’s here, so try not to look like you slept over in the morning.”

That earned another laugh that made him feel unexpectedly warm.

“Where is she?”

“My guest room.”

Hattie peered towards the hall and then focused on the television, scrolling through genres, and settled eventually on the original Night of the Living Dead.

“Is that why you wanted to hide me in your bed?” she teased, as the car on screen eased its way up the hill into a black-and-white cemetery.

It didn’t matter where Hattie was. “Either way, she’s going to freak. So…will you be okay? I can talk to Luca.”

He was going to fucking talk to Luca. He’d banned people from the soup kitchen before. He hated doing it, but if Luca was upsetting Hattie…

“Yeah,” she shrugged, yet again. “I’ll be fine. I just got spooked.”

“Well your choice of movie should help.”

She laughed, and then did the unthinkable: She slid her legs onto the couch, across his lap.

He kept his eyes on the television, his hands behind his head.

“I have you, right?” she teased. “God of Rock. You’ll protect me.”

She was never going to let the god thing go. That was twice in one conversation, all because of a joke on his business card.

He grinned at her. When he joked, it was easier to hide his feelings. “I’ll stun them with my hair,” he said. He flipped it for emphasis and for a second he could see the bright blue flop of bangs at the top of his head.

Without realizing, he placed his hand on her calf. Okay. He’d just rest it there.

“I’ve got you,” he promised.

He bet they would fall asleep like that and his mom would have a field day the next morning.

That was tomorrow’s problem. Tonight, he had a crazy girl and magic and zombies, and together they made tomorrow feel like a dream.

You can pre-order the ebook on Amazon. Blue Note releases June 21st, 2019, and will be available on multiple e-book platforms as well as in paperback through Amazon (we’re just not there yet…but soon!)