Throw Him My Way

Chapter 10

Heidi smiled and bowed.

The standing ovation – no matter how many times she got it, and in the last couple of weeks she’d gotten it at least four times, there was no getting used to it.

“All right, everybody, now we’ve got for you the people you really came to see. Put your hands, and whatever else you can, together for The Spinettes!”

She even heard a couple of calls for an encore as she waved and walked off the stage, the guitar clutched in her hand like a lifeline.

She walked straight to her bag and pulled her phone out.

She smiled when she saw the message. Christian, of course. He always wished her luck at the exact moment she walked onstage. She didn’t know how he did it. But every time she walked on, she heard her phone beep his tone, and she knew that everything would be fine. She would do great.

Once she was done, she replied.

Went great.  I miss you.

She would send him the link to the video later.

Heidi knew she’d made the right decision by doing the tour. But she missed him, so much. Every night, they talked about everything.

He was better. He was beginning to complain about not being back at work, so he was definitely better. Heidi would never have thought that she’d feel such relief at somebody whining about not being able to go back to work!

Her dogs were fine, too. Bobby was doing an excellent job with them. Not being made principal dancer didn’t seem to weigh him down so much anymore. He even sounded happy now.

Would he realize soon that he had never really been happy as a dancer? She hoped he would.

She was saving money. If somebody gave her a recording deal, she’d be able to put aside enough to invest in their grand plan.

She’d make it work, she promised herself.

“Hey, Heidi! You blew them away tonight. At this rate, by the end of the tour, they’ll have to open for you instead of the other way around!”

Heidi laughed as she accepted compliments gracefully.

She was getting used to those, too.

Finally, thought Heidi – finally, she was a singer. She no longer felt like a fraud when she told anybody she was a musician. Until the tour, she’d felt like a worker in a dead-end job pretending to be a singer because reality was so bleak.

The relief that she could make it, that she finally had proof that she was good enough, was stupendous.

But there was another kind of relief – relief that they were halfway through the tour. She needed to go back home, to Christian.

The tour was another kind of test, too. It was a test that her feelings for Christian could handle the distance. And that his feelings for her could last despite the distance, despite her hectic schedule while he was obviously bored out of his head.

Two weeks until he could go back to work.

Until she went back to him.

Things would change then. Heidi knew that. But she was beginning to embrace change, too. Even if it also meant uncertainty about her future with Christian, she would embrace it, and trust that they would find their way.

Until then, she would perform almost every night, and she would make those important contacts.

She would do her best and leave the rest to chance, because for once, she felt that luck was favoring her. It didn’t happen too often. She was going to make the most of it while it did.

*****

Christian needed to breathe.

It was odd. He hadn’t felt so suffocated when struggling to draw air into his lungs when there was only smoke.

His family meant well, but they were smothering him.

It galled that he had to sneak out for a walk. But he needed to breathe.

So Christian bided his time until he could sneak away from his mother’s loving but strict eye, and went for a walk. He felt like he’d found freedom, and felt heady with it.

He walked to a park, and sat down on the bench, feeling disgruntled that he was ever so slightly out of breath with just a fifteen-minute walk.

But now that he was alone, he didn’t feel the soothing solitude he’d been looking for; he only felt loneliness.

He missed Heidi.

Maybe he could only breathe when he talked to her. When he saw her smile.

But he’d wanted to get away from his family because of the hints they kept dropping, too. Subtle, they definitely weren’t.

Apparently, they had already gotten him married with a brood of kids, and Heidi was already part of the family.

It should’ve scared him and made him run.

But it didn’t. It seemed to ease that tightness in his heart when he thought about it – when he thought about Heidi, with him.

He wanted them to sit on their porch, sipping something cold on a summer evening, when they were both old and gray. He wanted to watch Heidi soar higher than she thought she could, because she was everything.

He smiled, as his heart settled, slowly. He knew where he was headed.

He was happy with it – happier than he’d thought he could be, when trying to escape his family’s damn matchmaking schemes.

But fate had a way of setting you up in the strangest ways.

He’d needed time to breathe, to get away from everybody. And he had found that what he needed was exactly what his family had been trying to tell him he needed.

What he needed was Heidi.

There wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

Maybe it was time to finally ask his mother for his grandmother’s ring, because in a month, Heidi would be home, and he wanted her and the world to know that she was his.

She would be.

Just as he was hers.

Boy, thought Christian, as he got to his feet and meandered back home, his mom was going to have a field day, telling him she’d told him so.

Heidi would say yes, wouldn’t she? She’d have the world at her feet when she was done with the tour. She could choose everything she wanted.

But he’d be right there, beside her, through every step of the way, if she’d let him.

*****

Heidi had known he’d be there, of course.

She got off the bus and saw him, and everything that was tense inside her seemed to relax.

She didn’t think. She dropped her bags and ran to him, right into his arms, and he swept her up, swinging her around in a circle, leaving her dizzy.

When he finally set her down, she looked up at him, into those eyes, and said the words that sang in her heart.

“I love you.”

He kissed her, and she felt those words swimming through her, from his heart to his, and knew that she was home.

No matter where she went, no matter what she did, she would always come back home. He was her home.

“Let’s go home,” said Christian, and she smiled.