“Well …”
“I suck so much, Eric.” I let it all out, exploding with every ounce of frustration these past couple days have packed into me. “Nina hates me. Ugh.”
“Nina cast you. She doesn’t hate you.”
“And Victoria hates me. And you hate me.”
“No, no. I am not Victoria,” he tells me, wagging a finger in my face. “We are very separate people.”
“You didn’t say anything when she went off on me in front of the box office,” I point out. “I just figured you agreed with her and—”
“Victoria’s … touchy. She’s always been like that. Don’t think about her. And as for your sucking,” he goes on, “everyone sucks in rehearsal. That’s the point of rehearsal. The point is to suck. Did you even hear the Stage Manager’s twenty-thousand opening lines? He sounded like a cucumber with a mouth. So suck away, Dessie. Suck lots. Now is the time to suck.”
I try to sigh, but it turns into a chuckle. “Is that what this is, then? Our Suck?”
“Suck Town,” he agrees.
I pull my phone up to my face. Nothing. “Maybe I’m also letting a little … something else … get to me.”
“Wanna spill about boys at the Throng together?”
“Eric, I’m exhausted.”
“Me too, and I have an early morning class. But we’re still going to the Throng.”
“Ugh. We are?”
Twenty-five minutes later, Eric and I are sharing that same booth near the tiny circular stage at the Throng & Song. Being a Monday night, it’s far less noisy than it was before. The same musicians are playing—that sexy guitarist Victoria’s obsessed with and his piano sidekick—while Eric and I vent over our respective boy troubles.
“So I told him, ‘Listen, I’m not into anal,’” Eric goes on, “and he called me a ‘gay anomaly’ and said I needed to give it up or else give him up. Who the hell makes an ultimatum like that?”
“And here I am,” I say, spilling my problem at the same time he’s spilling his, “waiting on texts from him after we had an amazing night Saturday … I mean, what the hell? It went well. It ended well. And now I’m staring at my phone like some lovesick—”
“I wouldn’t put up with that for a second,” Eric spits back. “Do you even know how many guys have asked me if you’re single? Guys that I wished played for my team? You lucky bitch.”
“The only one I want is him,” I complain, mashing my face into my hands and sulking.
“Hey, you.”
The voice echoes through the room, startling Eric and I out of our conversation. I glance to the side and notice the musician staring at me, his guitar resting in his lap and the microphone bent to his mouth.
“Yeah, you,” he says, grinning. “I remember you. Full of the feels. You got any new music for us?”
Eric and I share a look before I turn back to the musician. “I’m not really a singer.”
“The hell you aren’t,” he spits back, half his face shadowed by the beige bowler hat he’s got on. “You got a pretty set of cords on you.”
“No, really,” I say after sharing an amused chuckle with Eric, “it’s just a hobby. I’m more of a sing-in-the-shower type of gal.”
Gal. Listen to me, sounding all Texan already.
“Come on, girl. I know you got some tunes in you. Don’t hold out on me.” The guitarist smacks a chord on his guitar for punctuation, inspiring a couple cheers of encouragement from somewhere in the back of the room. “We all got some blues in us we gotta get out. Some feels. Some pain. Don’t you want to get that pain out of you?”
I take a breath. “Well, when you put it like that.”
A moment later, the guitarist scoots over and I stand in front of the microphone, facing an audience that’s one tenth the size I had before—an intimate crowd, far more preferable.
Though Clayton is clearly not here, I pretend to see his face, focusing on an empty table in the middle of the room. Then the song comes, some new thing I’ve played with in my head, and I let it all out to that empty table while the musicians improvise, following my lead. No rehearsing. No judgmental stares. I just open my heart to the room and let the music go.
On the last note of my song, my phone, quiet as a fly, buzzes.
CLAYTON
I stare at the text I just sent her.
My insides shiver. Every nerve in my body is all knotted up and shit.
Brant and Dmitri play Xbox on either side of me, sandwiching me on our couch, and I feel every shift and jerk and annoying jump of their bodies.