Her skin tingled as if there were some kind of magic in the way he was looking at her. In having a beautiful man like him say those words to her and mean them.

“Maybe not about that,” she whispered. “But what about everything else?” Like the pile of quilts in the corner of his mama’s kitchen that he spread out to sleep on every night. Or the suitcase in his room where she kept her clothes, because she was going to have to zip it closed and go back home soon. The pot of gumbo, unfinished because some of his friends didn’t feel comfortable coming over when she was there.

LJ glanced away and coughed, like his throat was tight. “Andra . . .” He dipped his head and kissed her hand. “Let me take you out, okay? Show you a good time in my city.” He flashed her a smile so charming it hurt to look at him, because she knew how hard he was trying to be just that. “Forget those eggshells we been tiptoeing on and just be easy with each other again.” The confidence in his smile cranked up another notch, but his thumb was sweeping a little too fast over the back of her hand, like it was stealing the last taste it was likely to get. “Can we do that?”

“Yes,” she promised, and prayed she wasn’t lying. “Of course we can.”

•   •   •

Andra fell in love with the city all over again with every scrollwork balcony and mule-drawn carriage they passed, but LJ seemed determined to seduce her even further. For his first offering, he bought puffy French doughnuts he called beignets, dusted with a weightless cloud of powdered sugar. She enjoyed the way his tongue wrapped around the word almost as much as the pastries themselves. From there, he walked her past a sunny square full of artists’ stalls to Royal Street. It was blocked off from cars to leave room for musicians to play and tourists to dance, drink, or stroll past the broad windows of bright shops.

They passed a gallery filled with paintings of haunting, skeletal silhouettes of trees, then one featuring photos of naked women, their skin painted with tigers or tree frogs. Drums beat from down the street, and when LJ took out his saxophone and began to play, it curled around the whole tableau like a perfectly fitted embrace.

She’d never tried playing music in the street before, and at first she wasn’t sure what to do with herself. She felt out of place, sitting beside LJ’s open saxophone case as tourists tossed small bills and sometimes change into it on their way past. But then a young girl wearing an out-of-season bunch of Mardi Gras beads stopped to dance, and an older couple paused as well, tapping their feet as they listened. A guy with some form of trumpet came and played alongside LJ for a while.