Hurts So Good Read Online Free PDF Page A

knew to be real.
    She couldn't be for real. Which was fine, considering he didn't feel too real himself at present. Andrea was more potent than a whole flask of brandy.
    By the time he'd insisted on paying the small bill and agreed to let her pick up the next tab with "the tips she was sure to earn," Neil was real worried about keeping the Vow.
    * * *
    They held hands that they swung between them. Leaning against each other, they ran fingers down the iron gates of the St. Louis Cathedral, the oldest cathedral in the United States. It had such history, something they didn't, but it didn't seem that way to Andrea. She knew they were still strangers, so why did she feel they were long-lost friends?
    After tossing coins into a shoe-shine box without stopping for a shine, they ran like two thieves until they stopped, exhilarated and out of breath, in front of the crumbling building she called home.
    The first place she'd ever called home.
    It was hers for now, at a ridiculous price, and as they held on to the wobbly banister up three flights of stairs, past graffiti-covered walls, Andrea felt her anticipation grow. It wasn't just the promised kiss from this enigma who was nothing and everything like the man behind the music she'd expected to find. Humble though her apartment was, she was eager to show it to Neil.
    They shared some kind of kinship she didn't understand. He did scare her at times, something she'd anticipated and steeled herself for, but there was a tragic and honest edge about him that she gravitated to. She instinctively trusted it. Enough to invite him into the place she made her own without fear he would renege on his promise of just a kiss.
    "We're here," she said excitedly, fitting the key into her front door.
    "I noticed the other doors have peeling paint. Mind if I ask why yours is missing the same distinction?"
    "Because I painted it. And the landlord agreed to knock off a week's rent in exchange for me painting and cleaning the inside." She opened the door, enormously pleased with her accomplishment as she inhaled the scent of potpourri. "Isn't it cozy?" she asked, wanting his approval and not sure she was getting it as he looked around the one-room efficiency.
    "It's... cozy, all right. Maybe a little too?"
    "Not for me. And since I'm the one who lives here, what anyone else thinks really doesn't matter."
    But it did. At least, what Neil thought mattered, even though she knew it shouldn't. She anxiously watched as he ran a finger along the fringe of a vintage shawl she'd draped over the French doors leading to the balcony. He spread a palm against a pane of glass, then clenched his fist tight, as if wanting to pound his way out. Instead, he pressed his forehead against the glass, then stepped away fast.
    "I would have fixed it up anyway, but the landlord didn't know that. I've learned to wheel and deal and make a dollar stretch. And that's fine, because I'm fond of my things, and making do doesn't bother me. It can even be fun, depending more on your imagination than what's in the wallet."
    She couldn't seem to make herself quit talking, telling him what he might not even want to know. But even as he paced, he seemed to be listening, and it had been so long since she'd had someone she could talk to. When he traced a broken stained-glass window before moving to the shelf of knickknacks, she fought panic. He'd picked up a vintage picture frame and was studying it closely.
    "It's like a game for me," she rushed on. "I have a thing for flea markets and—"
    "Where'd you get this old publicity shot of me?" he demanded. "It's been out of circulation for a good ten years. Did you find it at a local flea market for, say, a dime?"
    Andrea claimed it from him and held it to her possessively. Had she imagined the slight tremor in his hands?
    "No, Neil, it's one of the few links to my past that I'm attached to. When I was thirteen, I joined your fan club. It cost me four dollars to join, and I spent an afternoon